Thread: Warts and all..
View Single Post
Old 02-05-2017, 01:07 PM
  # 1 (permalink)  
Grymt
All is Change
 
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Australia
Posts: 1,281
Warts and all..

how desperate did I need to get?

( Originally Posted by Grymt View Post
Ah, there is a name for where I came from. 'Gift of Desperation'. Hmmm...who'd'a thunk it.

I still say it's a matter for the KISS principle.

I was being enabled by a lady who brought me booze and expected sex. She didn't drink. I had the dt's and had tried suicide. She was a nurse and had talked to a doc at work who said until I get into rehab to keep drinking and then detox in rehab under supervision. I think that was good advice.

First I kicked her out of my life. Then I gave a couple of mates my things to do with what they liked and then I rang the rehab and got a bed and time, had my last drink, caught the train and spent a month at the rehab, got away with a lapse, moved on to a six month stretch at a recovery farm, busted, another couple of months back at the farm. joined a travelling evangelical tent for the rest of the year, ended up in brisvegas, busted, locked myself up at a dryhouse for a month and finally I think I was trying to get serious. 3 meetings a day for 30 days. I saw friends I made there falling down all the time but for some reason I found the determination to keep going.

I managed to not drink when I left and took a trip around the world but busted in europe. Somehow managed to get dry and back home with the help of some great AA people in a little danish village. Back home met up with a lady I hadn't seen for decades, almost at the beginning of my drinking career. Stupid codependent relationship. Got a dui. Hunkered down to an unbroken 6 month binge.

Then finally, after all that, having never got the bit about av's, beasts, etc the craving was gone in 2004. I had a brief lapse (a day and a half, again a relationship thing) about 2008 and nothing since.

I got there by stopping drinking long enough to start to deal with life as it is sober. It took a few goes but that's it.)



The time frame covered by my post is about the last two years I drank. The last months before I went into rehab my sole concern was getting alcohol. I was living in a half built house, open to the elements, with no running water, whatever I ate came out of cans. My dsigestion was shutting down. My toenails were ingrown. (I discovered a way to get rid of planters warts: don't take off your shoes and socks for 6 weeks.(it was winter and I had no heating) They get disgusted with the conditions and leave.)

My day was: wake up, or rather become conscious. Locate the booze, start drinking. Smoke. Read. I had a tall stack of readers digest condensed books. When I finished one I dumped it through a hole in the floor, which also served as toilet. I kept drinking until I passed out. I repeated this without regard to what time it was. Approximately 3 cycles per 24 hours.

Once a week I bought booze. A big stack of cheap wine casks. Occasionally I'd heat up some water and have a wash and walk along the railway into town where I'd go to the free food depot and pretend to be respectable.

____

cut to brisvegas....

I had no money, having spent my last few cents on a cask of wine. I had lost my shoes and trudged the streets picking up cigarette butts and looking for somewhere I could get a bite of food. Shoes are actually quite important. Shoes and something to eat.

A priest told me there was a salvation army dry house that could help.

I found the dry house and got a room. I had to be in by 8 and couldn't leave til 7. I could only get back in for the night if I was sober. During the day I'd walk from AA meeting to another. That was the time when things started to look up. By the end of the month I was volunteering, teaching seniors how to use PC's and had made a couple of good friends. Then my dad died and left me a bit of money so I bought a car and headed south. My last big binge was yet to come...
Grymt is offline