In a way, I'm glad it's happened. No matter what the future holds. I really couldn't take one more year of drinking, like the last neigh on 20 have been.
I know people say about the anxiety and angst that come with drinking. But mostly brush over the physical disgustingness of full on alcoholism. Like having to come home from the hospital, still feeling like death, half doped up, and having to face a house with piles of vomit in surprising places. Like unwashed dishes with mouldy food on all over the place. Like finding jeans in the wash basket with poo stains on them. Like 50 texts, unanswered on my phone from worried people. Like not washing for 6 days. And having to clean everything up when you feel you can barely stand.
No..couldn't keep on like that.
Sounds disgusting doesn't it? Like living like an animal.
And yes, it was like living like an animal...and I just couldn't have gone on much longer.
I remember some time during that last binge, on my knees praying for God to somehow make me stop.
They say he moves in mysterious ways. This has stopped me in my tracks, and made me see I'm not invinsible. And it will be some weeks before I know the full extent of the damage I have been doing to my heart for years.
But it's been doing damage to my mind too.
And although the hospital staff were very nice, I could see the pity in their faces as they hooked me up to machines and I couldn't stop shaking enough till they sedated me, and they patted my arm, and I thought "I bet they are glad they are not me, I wish I wasn't me"
Now the choice is drink or die. And I'm glad that's the choice, because I haven't been able to stop it before. Well I have, but not for long.
I know full well the horrors that await if I don't stop, all my family die of heart disease. All my grandparents, in their 50s or early 60s. My father diagnosed with angina at 52, still drank, heart attack at 57, still drank, quadruple heartbypass at 58, still drank and the wound wouldn't heal for 2 years, kidney failure, coma, eventually recovered, still drank. Now dying at 73, still drinking.
His mother, drinker, dropped dead at 60 from heart attack in front of her 15 year old daughter. Aunts and uncles with strokes in their 50s. A cousin died of drinking in 40s. None of this has struck home until now.
But I'm glad it's happened.