hollybear

Tonight it hit me like a ton of bricks how embarrassed I am in myself. I've always took pride in my resiliance (spelling?) and strength. And tonight I look at myself and see so much weakness in letting myself ever get this far. How clould I do this to myself?? It's degrading and humiliating.
I have never felt this intensely ashamed in myself before... I guess not drinking is making me feel things much stronger again. And the burden of these emotions is almost unbearable!
Has anyone ever felt the same way? How did you deal??

MTWildflower

Well I don't know about you, but I'm kind of a perfectionist, so I use alcohol to make me feel better about not being perfect, but then I feel bad because I drink so I'm not perfect, so I drink to feel better...

I think we all have these "Dude, what the heck was I *thinking*!?!" feelings when we examine our drinking.

I don't know how to deal with those emotions. I just kind of ball them up and say "So that happened. What am I doing about it today?"

I don't know anything about AA or other structured programs so maybe someone else will chime in about what those programs have to say about dealing with the emotions.

I joined SR this month too and used to live in SLC. Howdy, former neighbor!

Dee74

I think most of us felt the same way at some time Holly. For a long time I drank on it - then I realised that wasn't helping.

Stopping the drinking helped me to start re-elvaluting myself - I've found I'm not embarrassing, I'm not weak, and I'm not a loser - I am an alcoholic tho.

Do whatever you have to and deal with your drinking - go see a doctor, a counsellor, look into inpatient or outpatient rehab, or go see any one of the many recovery groups like AA or SMART.

I believe no matter how smart or resilient we are, none of us does this alone.

We all need help to get to where we want to be.

whatever way you want to go, reach out and start a new life now Holly - you can leave the embarrassment and despair behind

D

Balou

I'm sorry to hear about your pain. I understand your feeling guilty. You are right, we have numbed ourselves for so long that we masked and buried our pain. That pain has been there all along, it's just surfacing now. If you read the posts around here, you will notice that there are a great number of people feeling the same way you do. It may sound crazy, but I welcome and embrace the pain, I've never cried so much as I have during my detox/recovery. However, it feels good to know I'm alive again, and not just a robot walking around living life. Your honesty to share demonstrates that you have strength. You can do this, and this too shall pass
Good luck to you, and we support you.

David 1

Knowing that drinking makes things a hell of a lot more embarrassing! Needing help to walk/crawl home from a party, waking up and wondering what you did the night before and having the worst headache ever!!!

Drinking numbs our feelings so we don't have to face up to life issues - Good and bad. Do you really want to feel numb during the great times?

Dave

Supercrew

I took my similar feeling of pain remorse and what could have been humiliation and I try to remember that feeling over and over, and I have tried to associate it with picking up the first drink. So whenever I have a thought like "a cold beer would be great right now", I am instantly feeling the pain, remorse and humiliation that i felt at my lowest point. It has made it easy for me not to pick up that first drink these first 31 days. By really feeling that gut wrenching feeling that really pushed me over the edge and made me really want to get sober everytime I think about or see alcohol has made a tremendous difference in my quest for sobriety. I have eternalized that feeling, and I hope that feeling, as sickening as it feels, never fades.

findingout

I found that when I accepted I was an alcoholic, I had an explanation for a lot of things. During all the years that I drank, and especially at the end, I behaved in ways that would have seemed insane or shameful or stupid (or all three at once) to me if it had been someone else who was doing them. But because it was me and I was deep in the denial that comes with alcoholism, I just could not see it. If I did catch a glimpse of the real me, I quickly wrote the behavior off as a one time thing that I would never do again. But of course, I did do it again even if the actual details were changed enough so I could pretend to myself that there was no connection.

When I got into recovery, I had to face that it was me who did those things. It was me who did those things but I did them because I was suffering from untreated alcoholism. I get it, I'm an alcoholic. It's not like knowing this is a get out of jail free card though. It's an explanation, not an excuse. I can't allow myself to think "Oh I can't help it, I'm just an alcoholic." Once I know that I am an alcoholic, it becomes my responsibility to do what it takes to treat my alcoholism. I can't change history, but I have to make sure that I don't repeat it. That starts with not drinking one day at a time, but there's more to it for me. I needed to change my thinking and actions in areas that would seem to have nothing to do with "not drinking".

penny74

l am very ashamed of of lot of things l did and said.
Ofcourse everyone and there dog knows what you are and what you did.
At least here.
Anyway, just think "who cares ?.. l'm getting better now and what do do you do behind closed curtains ?
People forget after a while...
Give it time...

BullDog777

that is an extremely lucid, well written statement. nicely put.

i'll also add that i don't think the tragedy in our "illness" is anything more than the lack of action most alcoholics take once they know what they are.

most of us realize it's our responsibility to treat this illness far before it ruins lives, but i think most of the shame comes from knowing this and doing nothing about it.

most alcoholics are people with above average intelligence and the shame that i live with, the saddness i carry in my heart is almost solely from the apathetic nature in which i carried myself in light of how it impacted others.

they beauty of this whole proccess is the healing that can take place when positive action follows rightful intention and real relationships are mended.

LexieCat

12-Step recovery (AA) does have a way for dealing with all that shame and guilt. First, we examine it (Step 4's moral inventory), we bring our "shameful secrets" into the light by admitting them to God (or whatever we call our higher power), ourselves, and one other trusted person (Step 5), identify and make amends to people we've harmed (Steps 7-9).

Other steps are aimed at not repeating the same kind of harmful behavior. The idea isn't to beat ourselves up with guilt over the past, but rather to clean up our own messes so we can move forward without being weighed down with the shame, guilt, and resentments of the past.

GettingStronger2

Holly,

I don't know how long you have been sober. . .I know for me, the first few days, and more specifically, probably around the 3rd or 4th day, it really hit me about some of the things I had done while drinking. I wasn't too horrible considering things I have read and heard, but things that just didn't fit with my values. It was crushing. It was humbling. It was embarassing. But it was.

It made me want to rush quickly into the 9th step. . .thankfully I did not. Those things are still there, but I am at peace with them for the moment. I cannot change the past, I can only move forward and use today to make a better tomorrow.

omegasupreme

You are a child of God...and God does not make junk.

jamdls

I hated myself when I first got sober because I was able to look at my life over the previous 10-12 yrs and I was so ashamed/disgusted/humiliated at the person I had become. It took me about a year to deal with most of the past and begin to make amends and to heal. Now after nearly 3 yrs of living life sober I love myself and although I regret that I wasted so many years of my life I'm greatful that I lived through it and came out a much better person than I likely would have been otherwise.

artsoul

The good news is that we realize how sick we were and can now heal that sickness. I couldn't connect to anyone (including myself) while heavily drinking, except on a superficial level. Recovery brings a lot of insight/emotion that needs to come to the surface, but once it does we have to find a way of releasing it.

Think kindly of yourself. See yourself through spiritual eyes and embrace the love still inside you.

murrill

Hollybear, As others have mentioned, you are not alone. I've said it before (and because someone told me): I drank because I drank because I drank......Everytime I considered quitting I was reminded of all the horrible things I had done, things that would haunt me forever. I didn't think there was any getting over it. My early sobriety was spent in treatment, and hearing stories from so many other people that were so much like mine made me feel less alone. In fact, it never sounded quite so bad when other people described what they had done--and I had done the same! I also discovered that I might not worry so much about what others thought of me if I realized how seldome they did. The "disease concept" was very popular when I sobered up, and I embraced for dear life. I'm not trying to open a debate on that topic, and I have since modified my views on that issue, but it was useful in letting me start to forgive myself: Maybe I wasn't responsible for being an alcoholic, but I was responsible for what I did about it. I volleyed between forgiving myself and taking responsibility for my actions. The two seemed irreconcilable in the beginning. Somewhere along the way I came to an understanding: It isn't something I can define....sort of a gray area, actually, but something I think of as a spiritual place. That, too, was a long time coming, but since I could believe that others had made it, so could I.

Kjell

Heck YEAH I felt that way and I sometimes still do and I'm over 7+ months sober. The guilt, shame, remorse, embaressement, and just sheer BS of it all. I can't believe what I've done, who I was, what I had become and most importantly, how many people I had harmed b/c of untreated alcoholism (and my own selfishness and stupidity).

How did I deal? The program of AA and AA meetings. I'm changing who I am (and isn't that the point of recovery?) and how I think. I now have a design for living. I needed that. Maybe this is true with you too?

Life on lifes terms, being of maximum service to others, and living for my higher power's will instead of my own - what a concept! What a turnaround in my quality of life. It's an amazing program.

spryte

I feel really overwhelmed thinking of all the...stuff....that happened; things I did and so on. I deal with those feelings better when I keep it simple - what am I doing today?

I'm not drinking, taking small humble steps (like doing basic things for myself that I never did when I was drinking), trying to be a good person (smiling, bringing some positivity to those around me, listening, returning phone calls, offering to help). The past is in the past. My immediate concern is today, and I'm going to try and do it well.

Congratulations to you for stopping!!

RobertHugh

Hang in there Hollybear.

Through doing 12 step work, I realized that my problem was not alcohol, it was sobriety. Said another way: I used alcohol to treat my feelings of inadequacy, distress, restlessness, etc. It was medicine, it was my higher power. And it worked, for a long, long time. Until it stopped working. And then I stuck with it, not unlike an abused spouse, hoping that it would come around and give me what I needed.

So when we stop drinking, that condition-- the spiritual malaise that the Big Book talks about-- surfaces in all its glory. It makes us guilty, angry, embarrassed- whatever it can do to drive us back to alcohol.

I kind of view it like being in between powers-- alcohol, and whatever power you are going to find to help you deal with life sober.

So, try not to stay "in-between" too long. It's a scary place to be, and it's hard to stay sober there. Some days, you just grit your teeth and do it, because you know that going back is worse than going forward. But eventually, it gets better. We are promised that after the ninth step-- "Feelings of uselessness and self-pity will disappear."

penny74

This helped me a little bit :

The Buddha said, “Whoever has done harmful actions but later covers them up with good is like the moon which, freed from clouds, lights up the world.”

Dee74

Penny74 (no relation ) reminded me of something I meant to add to my post...

the past is gone and we can't change that, however much we'd like to...but we have all the power in the world to make today different, and then tomorrow and the day after that....

I've spent the last 3 years or so trying to do what I know is right....some days I do better than others, but I try....

It's my default position now - that really helps to put all the years of insanity, 'wrong' living and general silliness into perspective for me, Holly.

D