This is my first time posting in a forum, but I've been reading through some of the other threads on here and have found some really great inspiration through others' stories, so here goes.
I've been a day-drinking, shame/solo-drinking, but employed and 'functional' (if you can call it that, my life was still a mess) alcoholic for the past three and a half years, in what I've felt has been a slow but steady downward spiral pretty much the whole way- which seems to be a common theme, and I'm glad to feel less alone in the feeling!
While there were some times during this period where I might go up to a week without drinking, it was fairly rare. And while I had cold sweats and some fatigue, I'd never had any major health issues, so it was easy to rationalize to myself that it wasn't that bad for my body and that I could still put off dealing with my addiction until I was 'ready'. I was drinking about 4-5 days/nights a week, with the daily intake being usually around 400ml (just over a mickey) of vodka.
Last Saturday I had a health scare in an unintentional 'detox' at the end of a particularly bad bender.. I'd been drinking for the past 4 days straight, with my intake being a bit higher than usual. When I woke up that morning I was barely functional, and spent most of the day sleeping and trying to drink water, thinking I was just hung over but feeling like I could barely put sentences together because my brain was having the kind of hangover I like call 'the pink squiggle'. I was really dreading that evening, because my fiancé and I had plans to go to his sister's house for dinner. I knew he was disappointed that I'd been doing so badly with drinking in the past few weeks, and that conversation at his sister's would be awkward due to my blank stares and half-jumbled sentences while I tried to be social.
Long story short, in the car on the way to dinner I had what I believe was a seizure (not confirmed by the ER doctors I ended up seeing that evening) in which I had a really strange wave of an uneasy sensation inside my head, then lost control of my hands (which clenched up very painfully into balled fists and went tingling then numb from muscle pain) and then the bottom half of my face went numb which impaired my speech and caused slurring. The whole episode lasted about 3-5 minutes and then luckily subsided. I never lost consciousness but would absolutely not have been able to walk as my feet/calves were also numb and tingling.
It was extremely frightening, as I was not at all expecting or prepared to go through withdrawal.. especially not such a serious complication of it.. and had no idea how serious the risks of detox are when drinking as much and as frequently as I was over the period of a few years.
Although the experience was awful and frightening and pretty much just horrible all around, I feel like it couldn't have come at a better time because I'd been starting to finally really start to feel over the past month or two that my positive/manageable relationship with alcohol was so far behind me that I didn't even know what I was doing still drinking. I'm on my second DUI and therefore have a suspended license, my fiancé (who I fell in love with while I was sober) was starting to lose faith that I could (or even wanted to) change the path I was on, I had alienated all of my best girlfriends, and my work was suffering. I'd had a written warning for falling asleep at my desk (due to being hammered), and in the summer I was put on a 3 week leave of absence to deal with my drinking issues (which I used partially to solo-day-drink. sigh.). I was sick of being constantly either drunk (usually) or passed out/hung over as **** (the rest of the time), and having days blur together from being on a bender and drinking pretty much every waking moment.
I felt like I was really losing control, and getting to the end of my rope with drinking because I just didn't know how to break the cycle of habit, so I'm taking what happened to me as a reality check that I hope I can really use for the better.
It's been 8 days, and I'm feeling like, for the first time, I CAN DO THIS!! I've never felt like I belonged in a forum like this before, or at AA meetings, because I wanted to believe I could be independent enough to just kick it on my own 'when I was ready' ("and when will that be??" is what I've asked myself so many times in the past...). But I see so much of myself in a lot of the stories on here, and feel like there are probably others out there going through similar feelings.
The withdrawal was okay after the initial scare of the seizure, had some bad headaches for a few days, a lot of fatigue, and some upset stomach issues. At this point I'm feeling better than I've felt in a LONG time.. no cravings for alcohol, mentally or physically. I feel like for the first time, I'm just done with it. I even walked right past the BC Liquor Store near my house last night with no urge at all to stop and get some liquor (which, even if I wasn't planning on drinking it that night, I would previously ALWAYS stop to get some to stash away somewhere in the apartment for later use). My fiancé was even out for the evening, which is usually when I would take advantage of the situation and drink myself to blackout at home alone. I couldn't believe how much my outlook has changed, but I'm a bit concerned about how drastically different it is..
I'm worried though about the initial 'high' of being sober wearing off.. when have most of you started facing those types of challenges? How did you deal with it when it came up? And are there any other newbies out there?
Thanks
