Originally Posted by zjw

it sounds like a lot of anxiety revolves around speculation you may have health issues as a result and so on.

I think its normal to have that anxiety or well i've heard this and had this myself after i quit and in my final drinking days.

The good news is quiting drinking helps.

But i'm also reading it seems like you have a lot of guilt / shame about this as far as your kids on concerned and i'm sure and in other areas.

that shame and guilty are tricky tricky. They can help you quit or they can help you run back to the bottle to try and numb those horrible feelings out.

You can address the shame and guilt and so on once you get to the making ammends phase / step. But I think its almost critical to make sure it doesnt drive you back to drinking. Staying sober at this juncture is the most important yet the most difficult issue on your plate right now if I had to guess. Trying to deal with that shame and guilt at the same time can be really hard.

So in my case I kinda had to put the blinders on to that sorta stuff till i was equiped and ready to handle it. and had to focus primarily on staying sober.

That shame and guilt is in the past about your past behavior. Maybe try to leave it there and prevent it from coming back by staying sober.

I heard a saying one time along the lines of when your driving the rear view mirro is small because your not headed in that direction. Try and focus on the hear and now and whats in front of you right now at this moment. I'd imagine that is more then enough to handle. The past and the future well the past is done and over the future is unwritten so no sense in dealing with either at this time.

Hang in there. your not a bad person. Take this from the guy who has 6 kids and was drunk day in and day out. Oh man I could list out a long list of things to be shamed and guilted over.

I used to think "i swear i'm a good person omg i swear i'm a good person". I bet your a dang good person too. I too sat there flabbergasted at 33 years old wondering how in the hell my life led me ot the drunk trainwreck mess i was how did this happen how how how. One could drive themselves nuts trying to figure out how or why etc.. the reality is I somehow was in that place and somehow had to get out of that place. How i got there started to become irrelevant why i was there was unimportant. It took all my efforts to just to focus on getting out of that position.

I'm glad your here and glad you posted. You can beat it.