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Old 03-14-2021, 03:58 PM
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JPA
Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 36
Down and almost out

That’s how it feels. My mind and my body are shot and it’s impossible to see things getting any better. I put my kids to bed tonight and I must have spent an hour with each of them after they had fallen asleep, just staring at their peaceful, innocent little faces.

Why? Because I don’t know how many more times I’ll do that. My wife keeps talking about plans once we’re out of lockdown; where we’re going to go, who we’re going to see. But it’s weird, in my mind I simply cannot see beyond the next four or five weeks. As I sit here tonight, I don’t expect to be alive beyond that point.

The concept of taking my own life has been in my head, with varying degrees of prominence, for about 18 months now. But it now feels very real. To the point of having everything I would need, knowing what I would do.

I know I’d be walking away from so much. I have two beautiful children, a fantastic wife. My career is flying and I have never been wealthier in my life. And yet here I am, at the depths of despair, and the end of my tether.

For the past two years, I think, I now believe I have been suffering with major depression, anxiety, alcoholism and anorexia (I could speak at length about that one) - none of those things mutually exclusive. I feel embarrassed saying that as a married father of two, but that’s where I am. The pain of grappling with alcoholism at the same time as a restrictive eating disorder has been exhausting.

Drink is killing me. Killing myself feels like the only way of taking back control.

Logically I know I have so much going for me, but I cannot bare life with drink in it and I feel like I cannot bare life without drink. I can go little more than a day or two without cracking - either the withdrawal is too crippling, or my willpower is too weak.

This is my last roll of the dice. I know that if I am to see out the next few weeks, I have to quit drinking. And yet there’s loud voice in my head telling me that I just don’t want to. That I can’t. It’s deafening.

Please, any advice would mean the world. How do I get through the next 24 hours dry? The next 48? How can I soften the hammer blow of anxiety, discomfort, insomnia and physical pain that comes with stopping to at least give myself a fighting chance?

I’ve posted on here too many times, for too long, to absolutely no avail. I’m at least posting sober tonight, that’s something. But time is running out for me, I fear.

Pray for my kids.

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