I think you started out just right.
I could have said a lot of the very same things about where I was at in my thirties.
It's remarkable how quickly things went downhill.
In a matter of a few years my drinking had changed markedly.
Previously I'd managed to mostly hold it all together.
Once I started hiding my drinking to mask the reality and my tolerance had increased to the point that I was needing to drink more and more.... the ball really began rollling.
Next thing I knew, I woke up one day and I was drinking in the morning. Going to the liquor store on the way home.... drinking before I got home.... going on a "walk" just so I could go slam down a pint......
I really am not sure where the tipping point was between 'holding it all together' and totally losing control. I don't suppose it really matters. And in hindsight I was not holding anything together nearly as well as I believed.
I wish I'd pulled my head out of denial when I was back where you are now and really gotten it and embraced sobriety fully. I'd be way further in life now and would have saved myself a lot of misery.
But I'm glad I'm now 3.5 years sober and life is a million times better.
I'm glad you popped in. You're asking all the right questions. You've painted a picture for us in just a short post that - if you look at it and are honest with yourself - reveals some very telling things about your relationship with alcohol.
I promise you.... I absolutely promise and GURANTEE you, if you choose to embrace sobriety and do everything it takes to live a present, rich, deep, meaningful life without alcohol - it will be rewarding beyond your wildest conception. It will come back to you, to your children, to your wife, to the whole experience of your life a millionfold.
It's all up to you though. You have to make a choice.
Does alcohol mean so much to me that I'm willing to risk losing all I have?
Or does my life and all the people in it and all I've got going for me represent just the leaping-off point of a life of grateful abundance in sobriety - and is that vision worth more to me than booze?
Up to you. We are here to help.
