GoodLife32

Hello,

I have been reading the posts for a while, and I finally decided to post myself. I need to quit drinking. I am 32 years old, have a great life, 2 beautiful children and an awesome wife. I made the decision to quit drinking on Sunday, but I am finding it very difficult to imagine life without alcohol.

I have never been a daily drinker, more of a weekend , holiday, special occasion drinker. Sometimes I have 3 or 4 drinks and stop, and sometimes I have 20 drinks and pass out. Sometimes I won't drink for 3-4 weeks, and other times I’ll drink all 4 weekends out of the month. The problem is, when I do drink, a lot if the time I get blackout drunk and I make extremely bad decisions. I’m talking awful decisions. Drugs, driving, fights, risky sex, excessive gambling, spending a ton of money. These are things I would not consider doing sober. I regularly wake up after a bender absolutely disgusted with myself.

On top of the bad choices I make while drunk, my hangovers have morphed into something horrible. Extreme anxiety and self hatred, shakes, and constant vomiting, night sweats, are the new after effects of a single night of drinking. In my 20’s, I would rarely blackout, and my hangovers were just a headache and a little nausea.

This weekend I realized that I need to quit drinking. On Saturday I was watching football at my house, just sipping on some beers. My wife and 2 kids decided to go get Chinese food for dinner. At dinner, I proceeded to drink 4 mai tais in about 1 hour. I blacked out at some point. I was cut off by the bartender, an I then proceeded to cause a scene at the restaurant. My wife was absolutely appalled by this, and we left. On the ride home and when we returned to my house, I got into a very heated argument with my wife ( yelling and swearing) because she wouldn’t give me my car keys. This was all in front of my 2 young children, aged 1 and 4. My wife had to call my sister to come over to calm me down. I don’t remember any of this…

Obviously I can NEVER allow anything like this to happen again. I refuse to let my kids see me like this again. My wife made it very clear that if something like this happens again, she will leave and take the kids. The truth of the matter, is that I have no self-control when I get drunk. It’s like playing Russian roulette, as I never know when an if I am going to get to that point when I drink. Anyways, I am looking for some support. I know I need to stop, but I can not imagine my life without drinking.. 90% of all my social interactions involve drinking.