overcomer32

Hi,

Im a chronic alcoholic who has visited this site before.... (VERY good site!). I am still drinking..... still having mood swings and increases in my endogenous depression due to, I am sure, my chronic misuse and abuse of alcohol (in my case, beer).

I know exactly what all I need to do to quit, but still cant get up the "want to" strong enough. I am a thinker, a dreamer, but not a DO-ER. This applies to every area of my life, unfortunately. I keep saying and praying that I dont want it take something REALLY bad to cause me to quit or want to..... but I really dont care about anything and I have no idea how to make myself care.

Ok, the above was a nice little ADD-fueled blurb.... I wanted to ask those of you who did abstain and stay free of alcohol, what made u finally decide to, once and for all, DO something about your problem? I dont care if u went to AA, or a rehab, or on some religious retreat or did nothing at all but lock yourself in your room for 2 weeks. WHAT made you finally get tired of this mess of drinking, ruining your life, feeling lousy (or much worse than that), getting sick, run down, jeopardizing relationships, jobs, etc...?
What made you "give in" so to speak...?

Thanks in advance for any responses.

Peace.

CarolD

My long term depression
is why I wanted to quit.

This book convinced me...

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...influence.html

I use God and AA to continue recovery.

Good to see you again

Barto

I think it was just time. I had hit yet another bottom, and I was mercifully removed from my old life one day at a time.

Sheemie

I had proven to myself by experience that I couldn't function in life as a drinker. The unpredictability of not knowing what would happen after that first drink was dangerous. I was also tired of being sick and drunk all the time and not being able to control it. I had other things I wanted to do with my life that I couldn't accomplish if I was drinking. I was tired of being embarrassed all the time for what I did, hiding, lying, etc. I thought about quitting for years and never wanted to badly enough until I really had enough. That having "had enough" stage came as I lost more and more control. The eroding of the usual safety inhibitions that most normal sane people have left me, and I became "emotionally and morally bankrupt" as they say. I tried quitting before, but I guess I just hadn't gone far enough, unfortunately, and had to just keep drinking. That was where I hit the famed and fabled "bottom". Some people get to that bottom this way and seek help out of desperation, but I think smarter people than myself would get to the bottom simply by seeing what's coming and stop digging the hole.....

collinsmi

Got worn out to try AA long enough to want to keep trying it.

Spiritual Seeker

Sounds like you know that you are powerless over alcohol and that you know that there is another way to live your life. I hope you find within you the strength, courage and self-respect to take that 1st step, and then the next, etc etc

Peter

It was realizing and accepting that I was losing my sanity, my loved ones and my life.....

Sugah

Oh, it's complicated

One of the reasons that I think it stuck was that, like all alcoholics, regardless of how little I thought of myself, I still had a huge ego.

Everyone around me seemed to accept that I was going to die. They let me go. And if I'm really honest, I wanted to matter more to them than that. I wanted them to fight for me. But first, I had to fight for myself.

Then, I had to surrender.

Gee...funny how that all works.

Peace & Love,
Sugah

aasharon90

Walk The Walk and Not Talk The Talk.

Family intervention allowed me to walk thru the
doors of recovery. Sure i could have gone back
to my misery, but I decided to take the suggestions
of many before me that were staying clean and
sober one day at a time....i figured if they could
for as long as they have....then maybe i can too....

But....not by myself....i rode the coat tails of many
as they carried me each day sharing with me their
own experiences strengths and hopes on what it
was like for them when they were drinking/using.
what happened to them while drinking and using....
then where they are now that they r in recovery....

Im so glad i didnt have to get sober by myself
because i tried so many times that it wasnt even
funny.....and im glad i dont have to stay sober
on my own....because walking or trudging the road
of recovery by myself can get lonesome......

Im glad ur here for me....each of u.

Introvrtd1

For me I knew it was the alcohol talking. I would celebrate several days of sobriety with a 'couple' of beers and kid myself into thinking i could handle two a day. Ha, after the first two guzzled down, my inhibitions were shot. Once that slight buzz kicked in, i had to have more for that ultimate 'high' which over time became harder to reach.

You will eventually make it. My unqualified advice is, just dont stop quitting. Ironically, i should follow my own advice.

Introvrtd1

in_a_pickle

I realised that if I were to continue living my life the way I had been doing, then I would die.

My step father, a heavy drinker, has just been diagnosed with Liver cancer.

I'd started stealing to support my habit, I had to steal as I'd usually spent every penny I had on booze.

I thought back over the years, all the hurt I'd caused to myself and others.

I'd always wished I'd never started drinking all those years ago and I wondered how different my life would be if I didn't drink.

Being drunk actually sucks and wanting to be drunk all the time even more so.

GrouchoTheCat

According to William James’ “Varieties of Religious Experience”, a book that was instrumental in the formulation of Bill Wilson’s recovery theory and ultimately the 12 steps of AA:

After a period of great suffering, some will reach a point where they experience “complete ego deflation at depth”, meaning that deflation of the over inflated ego, was what was required for an individual to ready them for a lasting, deep change of life.

This deep and lasting change has been called variously, “a significant emotional event” (by some shrink somewhere), or possibly a life changing spiritual or “religious experience”.

I can sum it up in AA lingo:

I was sick and tired of being sick and tired.

I finally realized that whatever “the great ego “’I’” had tried to control my drinking or even to stop drinking simply was not working. “I” could simply not get or remain sober by myself. “I” could not do it.

I needed help. I reached out to AA and found people that had found a way to get and remain sober.

Today “we” help each other stay sober.

It works for me,

Nuudawn

It was time...hell, it was more than time. I had 20 years of drunken debauchery to look back on. The pain had seeped on thru. The drink just simply wasn't working anymore. Nothing was changing so I knew I had to.

Barto

If you are referring to my “time” reference, I meant “God” decided it was time. I still don’t believe I can keep myself from drinking even after many years of sobriety.

NOMOMERLOTMAMMA

In a moment of clarity, I realized that I was going to end up just like my mother, and die at a young age. I was also very lonely, very worried, very tied up in ME ME ME.

I gave up. I couldn't do it anymore. I said, that's it, I'm an alcoholic.

A sense of complete and utter peace came over me at that moment. I knew that everything would be ok.

That was a little over four months ago. I've been sober since that moment. And everything IS ok. :-)

Tazman53

A moment of clarity. My wife had just told me her and the kids with the assistance of her father were moving out in a month because she, nor the kids wanted to watch me drink myself to death.

Initially I thought to myself "Cool, I can drink all I want when ever I want and nobody will bitch at me!" Out to my garage I went, no arguments or "Please don't leave", I had surrendered at that point to King Alcohol! I popped open another beer and sat down to enjoy.

I have no idea if it was during that beer or the others that followed it, but as I sat their drinking, my future fast forwarded in my head....... I stood at the edge of a cliff, if I kept drinking I stepped off of it, short version I would lose everything and be left with just me and my bottle to drink myself to death, or I could stop drinking!

The problem was I was 10 years beyond stopping on my own, I had no idea what to do so I put myself into detox, they told me if I wanted a chance at staying sober I should go to at least 90 AA meetings in 90 days. Well not wanting to die, I did as they suggested, here I am over 9 months later.... sober and happier then I have been in over 30 years.

You know I spent years trying to Trust me if you have to think about it you have not drank enough yet.

You really need to drink enough to where your ass is kicked bad enough to want to stop enough to do something about it.

When you have drank enough to where you are willing to do what ever it takes to stop drinking, then you will be ready to stop, some of us never have enough.... we die.

nan07

For me, drinking wasn't being that much fun anymore. On top of that, alcohol made me an insomniac and I would lie awake in the wee hours dreading the damage I was doing to myself. I knew that it was only a matter of time before alcohol would take a serious toll on my body. I was worried that I wouldn't have "fun" any longer if I quit drinking, but guess what? I was wrong. Also, today as I was leaving the grocery store I saw a guy about my age leaving the liquor store section carrying his brown bag, his gut protruding in that unmistakable bulge that says "liver disease". Really made me stop and think, you know? Who wants to go through end-stage liver disease? Not I.

kojac

Personally, for me the pain really outweighed the pleasure.....it was no longer cool to use. And, in these brief moments of sanity which we all have at one point or another; I realized that everything in the world around me were changing for the betterment of all, but me. Even though the change that i were going through was my owe self-made hell; which ends where only destructive to my well-being; and to anything in which i may put my hands to to do. My story in a nutshell. seloth@. tfs

~Troy~

The reason I pulled that line in your post was because what made me quit was I was the exact opposite of that.

Physically, I was far from addictions killing me, one thing I am grateful for today. My mind on the other hand, was all but dead. I held a gun to my head and squeezed the trigger. Obviously, since I'm here posting this, the gun wasn't loaded. I thought it was. In that instant of the "click", the real click was the one finally in my pea brain that made me realize that I no longer had any hopes, dreams, or goals in life. Not only that, but I no longer had the will to live.

It was an extreme spiritual experience for me, in that moment I wanted to live again, I always look at it as a second chance. Thing about suicide is that more times than not, it's too late to turn back once it's put into motion. I've had two close friends in my life follow through with it. I've wondered if through that last moment, they got that will to live back but it was too late for them. One jumped off a building, did he realize this halfway down? The other hung himself, I'm the one who found him, he had his hand in the noose around his neck, so I truely feel that he was trying to escape the fate but it was too late.

The will to live, either quickly or slowly, is something I truely believe all of us struggling with addiction cross at some point. For me, no matter how bad of things life throws at me, recovery has given me that will to live back. A friend several years ago was struck by a car on of all days, his sobriety anniversary. The last words he spoke before dieing, "I want to live". I know in my heart recovery gave him that.

A little extreme I'm sure, but back to the quote; I never thought things through and even had a concept of consequences while using, especially towrads the end. I definately was not a thinker. I covered the dreamer earlier, but to repeat, I had zero hopes, dreams, and goals in life. I was a do-er though. I'd do anything to hurt you and hurt myself. I'd do anything to get drunk or high.


Do you still have the will to live???? The crossroads are, you can quit while you still have it, or you can quit when you loose it (if you can).

sonas

colinsmi, that quote in your sig always makes me smile. Because yeah, that was the way I was sometimes, if I step back and look at it objectively. Ya don't see it anything like that at the time of course. Just a bit down on your luck and stuff.

I had a few personal "bottoms" in the past few years. I had to bounce back or not care or both. You end up making lots of compromises... compromising who you are so that you can drink, and then you realise that you don't know who you are. Except a drinker and a drunk. And you don't care.
Except a tiny part of you occasionally does care but you just have another slug of that drink!

I can see now that in the end I'd cut myself off (deliberately or drunkenly) from anything that I could possibly feel guilty about. Jobs, friends, family...
Next would be losing my flat. Groundhog day all over again. And being back where I'd been 9 months earlier cos I'd had no money then either, was living from paycheck to paycheck until job ended and just spent whatever money I had left buying time.
Well I didn't lose my flat this time, cos I couldn't let that happen.
Though sober now, I'm still barely holding onto it, cos I haven't got a job yet.
But hey at least I am on the right track now.
Rambling, sorry!!
To answer the question, I reckon it was really my mind.. Losing my mind.
Knowing that if I didn't change that something really bad was going to happen. Something REALLY bad!!
Merlotmamma, what you say reminds me of when I came to to the end:
I dunno, it was a weird day. It was unplanned. I lost consciousness. I thought I was dying. Again. Something came over me then. I became grateful to be alive and I began to feel very small and "at bottom", I suppose. The only other alternative that was mapped out ahead was 100% self destruct.