spryte

Hi,

Well. I don't like that term, but maybe that's what I am. Grrr...I am begrudgeingly describing myself in this way.

I'm going through a hard time now, and I'm wondering if anyone else was a HBA?

Where did the motivation come from to get out before the basics were seemingly gone (job, family, safe haven)?

Just tossing this topic out there,

spryte

xoffender

Hi Spryte,

I think I understand the term, you mean as in realising you had a drink problem before you lost everything, job, family - the good things in life right ?

I think I can pretty much identify you, I've managed to keep hold of my job, my family, my dogs, I've got a heap of debt which is down to nights out on the razz but, money's replaceable whereas, as we all know, the really important things aren't.

My motivation comes from not having to do 'the last leg' the part of alcoholism where you do lose everything, it's possible it might never happen, but for me I was pretty sure I was just on the journey where it would. So, for me, it's a great feeling knowing that I don't have to do that 10 or 15 years of misery, and I can instead spend them having a far happier more constructive life.

My sponsor put it to me this way, if you're on the alcoholic bus, it's up to you what stop you get off at, you don't have to stay on the whole journey and lose everything, you can get off way before.

In my AA meetings I see people much older than myself, I'm 34, who spend many years in the misery of alcoholism and I thank my lucky stars that I , hopefully, have many years where I don't need to do that. So if you look at it that you've not had to trade many more years of your life for misery - that's pretty good motivation right ? .

Take care,

Andy

ImReadyToQuit

Same here.. Didn't lose anything... Have some health issues that are working themselves out and I have a huge IRS debt I have to pay (I was so drunk I thought I didn't file or pay for 7 years)...

But I'm thankful I have my wife.. baby on the way and my Jack Russell..

Norther

My first time in the program I used to fret over being a "high-bottom" alkie. It was just a mode of denial:I was just looking for an excuse to drink again. If you want to drop lower, you can (if you live), but it isn't necessary.

DayTrader

"High Bottom" and "raise the bar to the point where it would hit them" were helpful to me in my early days of recovery. It stroked my ego just enough to make admitting I was an alcoholic an easier pill to swallow.

My motivation came from hooking up with a substance abuse therapist (court ordered) who was, and I mean this affectionately, a 12-Step Nazi. She walked me through the 1st step, explained it, & got me to see if/that it applied to me.

Once I realized what I was, and once I understood where alcoholism left unchecked was absolutely going to take me, it wasn't that hard to start working the rest of the steps. I figured, no matter how much I didn't want to do the steps, it was WAY better than dying an alcoholic death.

As I've said before.....little did I know that working the steps would improve just about every facet of my life. Now, life without booze is pretty darn cool! I can't believe what I was accepting in my "prior life" and thinking it was normal or okay. Having never really lived my life the way I do now, there was no way for me to know in advance what I was missing out on. I'll be eternally grateful for the new life I have now.

ConfusedNC

Got out b/c health issues were waving a big red flag in my face, even though I was keeping my sh!t together in all other respects. My motivation is staying alive, nothing more complicated than that.

CarolD

My motivation?
To be the very best woamn I could be.

spryte

Thank you so much for your replies, I was really glad to read them

I guess this is typical, but I'm still riddled. I haven't lost things, yet emotionally I don't care. Please don't see this as a suicide warning b/c it isn't, but how should I deal with wanting to check out of life?

I don't know if anyone has felt this continual emotional darkness. I think I drink (and used to do drugs) as a way of inviting the destruction in. I'm running towards the darkness; I can't help it. I don't know what I'm running from.

This is self pity at its height, but the feelings are real. I still have a job, but the darkness is real. And I really wish it was depression or anxiety but it isn't. It isn't something that can be treated.

ConfusedNC

Everybody is different, but yes, I have my own emotional darkness. I drank to dull that (didn't work). I still have it after stopping, but now I deal with it head-on, and it is getting better.

All I can guess about your situation is that the drinking won't help you deal with the emotional darkness, and there's a good chance it will make it worse. I don't know if it can or can't be treated, but I would suggest at least talking to somebody about it. If you have the resources, a therapist familiar with substance abuse issues might be a good step forward.

Toronto68

I'm riddled too, Spryte.

And of course other people feel like that! Alcohol keeps it empty too, while it seems like it's filling up. (That's what it used to do with me.)

Norther

The darkness is indeed real. Best of luck to you.

hendershot

Never liked that term, although perhaps it applies to me. Everyone's bottom varies--for some it is the emotional darkness, others external consequences, while many keep marching forward, drinking through both. Really, your bottom is wherever you stop digging.

Dee74

Hi Spryte

I used to think I didn't care - I insisted - vehemently - I was fatalistic whether I lived or died.

That changed in an instant when I nearly did die.

I found out, without a shadow of a doubt, that I wanted to live....and wanted to very badly indeed.

I really hope you don't have to drink down to being a low bottom drunk...lose everything you ever held dear including your health...and then nearly die on the bathroom floor to find that out...cos then you'd be as big a fool as I was.

D

Mark75

Well I guess by some standards I am "high bottom"... didn't feel very high bottom when the people with scary ID cards and badges came to see me, didn't feel very high bottom when I drove myself to treatment so I could enroll in a "voluntary" recovery program, 2 months inpatient treatment, doesn't feel high bottom 50 to 60 thousand dollars later in added expenses in one form or another...

Yes... I still have the job, career, wife, family and house. And I am very grateful to have the opportunity to keep all of that. But still... it made the first step journey full of ways to deny, question, what if...

I am an alcoholic. I drank alcoholically. Never had the chance to quit on my own, never wanted to... another brick in the wall of denial... How sick is that, really, to have everything a man needs to have a full and happy life... and still... I wondered.

My experience was that I resented all that intervention and coerced recovery for a long time... I had to finally fourth step it.... real proper like... I resented it, this not being able to drink like everyone else.... I didn't have to quit, I still "functioned"... This resentment, it effects my... what?

PRIDE

Well that's my experience. Once I got on my knees and asked God to remove this meaningless and destructive PRIDE I began to move forward once again in my recovery.

Mark

artsoul

good discussion..... I don't know if I'm a HBA or not. I just knew I really didn't want to live the way I was living anymore.

The problem is that the low bottom could have hit me any day. I may have been really close to developing liver disease, or pancreatitis, or running someone over while drinking under the influence. I may never know how close I was. So, why hang around to find out which drink will do it?

When I feel like I wasn't that bad off, I just try to remember all the mornings I spent in bed feeling plenty "bad enough." ugh.

Groucho

How do you know? It sounds a lot like depression and anxiety to me, along with the drinking issues.

FWIW, I struggled with the high bottom thing myself, and repeatedly used it as an excuse to go back out and drink. I tend to think a person stops when they're ready, and not really before (again assuming they live that long).

Recovery1983

Hey Spryte. I'm 27 years old and the old timers or even people with some time always tell me that they wish that they took care of this when they were younger. The alcohol bus metaphor is a good one. Yes, some people have more than others and what not but when you are an alcoholic, we are all on the same path.

I didnt lose everything in life but I sure did lose some things. I have a lot of regrets and shame and those emotions hit hard. Had I quit drinking 4-5 years ago, I would have had a really high bottom. Being an alcoholic and being stubborn, I didnt stop and things happened. I know I cant dwell on the past but I do and it is something I will work on.

It was probably a month ago when I went to a meeting with my aunt and she lives in a really affluent community. I immediately noticed the difference of attendees between my regular group and this other group. My sponsor has me call him every day so that day I told him that I went to visit my aunt and we went to a meeting near her place. I told him what a difference it was between my group and that group. He said that the only difference is that those people have higher bottoms.

When it comes down to it, a bottom is a bottom. If you had a gun shot wound and went to the hospital, do you think the doctors really care what neighborhood or city you got shot in? Their job is to treat that wound and make sure you dont die. The same is with an alcoholic. Alcoholism does not discriminate against ethnicity, age, gender or class levels. I'm sure if you pick that analogy apart, you can argue little semantics but I think you get my point. I always hear the phrase, "look for the similarities and not the differences." If you havent lost your family, job, or other important things then that is awesome. Do you want to see if you'll lose them if you keep drinking? There are so many people who can attest that they have lost everything. I know I dont want to lose any more.

MelindaFlowers

Hi Spryte,

I can definitely hear you about the high-functioning alcoholic thing. It's amazing how much lying and planning it took to fit my life around my drinking. I recently completed a graduate degree in business and during my final month, my heaviest month of drinking, I finished with two A's. Imagine that?

What my professor's didn't realize (online courses) was that I was writing the papers at 5 pm in my pajamas with messy hair in my messy office, hung over with half a dozen glasses from the previous night next to the computer. Heck, I think I wrote my papers so diligently so I could drink right when I finished.

This was my life as a high-functioning alcoholic, exhausting myself to keep up appearances, which I pulled off for the most part. One thing I don't miss is everyone at my work telling me I look tired or asking "Why are your eyes bloodshot?" "Oh darn these contacts lenses " I would always respond.

Now that I am successful in my early sobriety I look back and wow, I was not high functioning at all. Give sobriety a try. It's amazing how much more we're capable of when we're not drinking.

spryte

Back to this thread. Thank you so much, everyone who posted. I am so glad to have the help of all you guys at SR. Really.

I think maybe it comes down to the war within: the forces inside me conspiring to take me down vs. the survival skills I have.

I grew up lucky. My parents were kind, they grew up (somewhat) poor (it's all relative), so they were always working to create better opportunities for me and my brother.

And they were both teachers, so they knew how to explain and how to force me to work hard and learn on my own.

They are amazing and I'm lucky. I don't know why me and my brother have our problems.

My point is: my parents gave me many survival skills. Exposure to different situations. The more we see, the more we can imagine. And so on.

The forces within? I don't know where they come from.

But I feel I'm at war. Arg! I'm at war again!

I have great survival skills. I know how to float at certain levels. But the emotional effects are real and continuing.

smacked

Are you open to seeing a counselor? Seriously.. I found that my drinking was about 1% of the **** I needed to work on. Might help.