Justfor1

After losing my long battle against the Social Security Administration I am now preparing to fight the Secretary Of State for my Drivers License. I had to get a DUI evaluation and was asked, "do you feel you have hit a bottom?" I was surprised by this question and answered yes and no. Let me explain. I was a chronic drunk driver who did not learn from from first DUI. It took a total of 3 and several car accidents to finally get the message that drunk driving is dangerous. I answered I hit bottom in driving and stopped driving and moved to the city. I continued to drink/drug to the point of brief homelessness where I was sleeping in an alley in downtown Chicago living with rats (the size of small cats!) Thankfully, I got accepted into a housing program & got my own place. Sadly, homelessness was not my bottom either. My bottom is when I am 6feet in the ground dead from the disease of addiction. The DUI evaluator was kinda shocked by this response because I was brutally honest. The truth is I punished myself more than the Secretary of State or criminal justice system could ever punish me. Getting sick & tired of being sick & tired is an AA phrase that can perhaps sum up why I'm sober today. What does "hitting bottom" mean to you? Do you even like that term? I'm curious what others think. Thanks

BackToSquareOne

Justfor1, the older you get the worse the withdrawal periods get, I kind of think our bodies eventually run out of the ability to go through the detox periods. You just reach a point where you finally throw in the towel, the brief relief that the alcohol provides is no longer worth the living hell that's sure to follow. Throw anxiety/depression into the mix and alcohol is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline.

Justfor1

I agree, BACK. It seem towards the end every time I would go on a bender I would need a medical detox. I was seeing bugs and spider webs the last time. They were pumping me full of detox drugs too even! I even resorted to drinking rubbing alcohol & other household products just to ward off withdrawals. Thankfully, I've been sober since the beginning of the year and slowly getting my mental illness more manageable. I had mental illness before I ever hit the booze so I will probably always struggle with it off and on even in sobriety. Medication helps but of course it only helps so much. The rest is up to me. Effexor is not going to get me a job if I don't turn in applications.

BackToSquareOne

Justfor1, the last time I wound up in the hospital I was buying vodka by the case and eating valium like skittles. A group of cardiologists came into the room and told me my ejection fraction was between 8-14% and that I wouldn't make it through another episode. When I was younger I was heavily into bodybuilding and had used a lot of steroids so I already had an enlarged heart from that. It's now as of my last tests back to normal and the ejection fraction is 65% which is also normal.

Vi0let

Hi, i've only been here a few days and i am realizing i don't know sh**, but i can tell you that for me, hitting rock-bottom took a suicide attempt (after downing a 5th or so of vodka).
Once the reality hit that if i don't stop, i'll DIE - things began to turn around.

I know that, hard as it may be, it can only look up from here - and i'll never go back to that place again.
It actually sort of helps that detox is so bloody painful, too!

mercurial me

I think my bottom was over a year ago when my liver biopsy revealed significant cirrhosis of my liver. This arrogant intern smirked at me and said "well, you just cut at least 25 years off your life expectancy young man."

I've been sober these last x2 weeks. Despite the doc being an assh*le I've done the research and he was correct in his prognosis. Hard to think about starting a family with this kind of future

defyinggravity

My bottom was also a suicide attempt after shooting up a bunch of coke. I knew then that I either had to die this way or live another way because living that way just wasn't going to work anymore.

CarolD

Iconsider my bottom was mental...nothing to do withexternal circumstances.
I had become a depressed empty woman who detested herself...


I'm so grateful to have changed ..it took action to find the new me....

KathP

What kind of a bottom do you mean? After one relapse, I hit a very physical bottom, which had me wake up in a detox after an apparent suicide attempt (in a blackout). I thought I was ready to change & managed to not drink for over 5 years, although by the last 3 or so years I had completely disconnected myself from my AA friends. After my last relapse, I stopped before I was anywhere near the physical hell I'd been in before, but it was a much more spiritual bottom -- this time I find I am much more accepting of my alcoholism & am really willing to work for my sobriety.

David 1

Carol, my "bottom" was mental and consequential in nature in that it involved making a decision. I had got drunk in front of my family for the last time and was given an ultimatum; pick drinking or the family. That got me on the road to recovery.

Odd as it may sound, I also feel I had a spiritual awakening of some sort that night. I was looking at the stars searching for something; answers I suppose, when I felt like now it's time. It may have been something deep inside me, kind of a self-awakening but it sure felt weird! It is kind of hard to explain.

I had tried to quit/moderate many, many times before to no avail and finally realized that I would need help to obtain sobriety.

Dave

Dee74

My bottom was the decision I made not to live my old drunken life one minute more.
It wasn't an event for me.

D

suki44883

My opinion: Hitting bottom to me, means staying the same for one more second is more painful that doing whatever is necessary to change. It doesn't have to be an event, such as a DUI. It can just be a realization of how miserable you are and becoming willing to do the work necessary, whatever that is, to get out of the hell you are living in.

Terminally Unique

I don't like the phrase - I consider it dangerous. Some people get to thinking that they just haven't hit bottom yet, and that they can keep going deeper and deeper until they do, at which time they will quit. Those "bottoms" tend to have trap doors, though, and for some people, the only real bottom is six feet under.

Elisabeth888

My bottom was mental also. But it also included a myriad of consequences.

It was like, oh my God, what and why am I doing this to myself and those around me? Is this the life I want for myself? The answer is no. Then I had a bunch of anxiety attacks about my station in life. (read: loser)

Soberpotamus

My "bottom" must consist of the following: Turning 30, atrophied writing skills & nonexistent creative writing, coming to a turning point in my career and quitting my job to be self-employed, attempting travel and realizing I didn't have the discipline not to drink the travel money away (and not working enough to create enough travel money), realizing I was literally killing myself binge drinking wine... going to jail on an alcohol related charge (for the 2nd time... and the court system excusing me AGAIN thank god... I took the SAME class again and finally felt like such a loser... MAJOR wake-up call as I looked around and saw (1) college kids (i.e. me 10 yrs ago), and (2) old people who were drinking themselves to death...

AND last and certainly not least: My Mom's tragic death last April from complications from a suicide attempt. It was a prescription drug overdose... she was a lifelong alcoholic/addict who put me through some hell as a child. That was a hard thing to handle... taking her off life support. I was her only child.

I could keep going and who knows how I'd end up? Why keep on? So I'm here because of a self-imposed "bottom" rather than a down-and-out rock hard bottom from desperation.

I do NOT want to end up on a life support machine in a hospital while my only daughter hyperventilates as they cut off my oxygen and let me die... and my mother was beautiful, brilliant, educated, and had all sorts of fun in life... she did not have to die like that. She told me never to end up like her. She is my motivation to live sober.

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom” - Anais Nin

ImReadyToQuit

My bottom was a accumulation of terrible health and mental problems that led up to me finally accepting fact that alcohol was one thing I was not in control of. (I'm a bit of a control freak about my life)...

I also accepted that I could not drink again and live.. As soon as I did that (REALLY DID THAT) life has been great.

Justfor1

An old timer at a meeting don't me I can always pick up a shovel and keep digging. lol Alcoholism is a serious disease but I like to laugh at meetings sometimes and that made me chuckle when he told me that. I think the legal issues and stuff are external bottoms and the depression and feeling lost in life is the internal bottom. If that makes any sense?

24hrsAday

my bottom was drinking (on average) 2 fifths of whiskey almost every time i drank and ending up in the ER while trying to detox. it nearly killed me.. for real.

Justfor1

That is a lot of booze. I tend to listen to people that have had the low bottoms. I consider 2 fifths a day is very serious. Even the BigBook stories are divided into sections. I think the ones towards the back are those who were very low bottom. If someone is wondering why it should matter to me I don't know, it just does. I became the stereotype that people think of when they think of an alcoholic. I became dirty, penniless, and mean. A social worker at one of the shelters use to joke with me that I had more college education than some of them & there I was sleeping in a nasty, bug infested homeless shelter because of booze/cocaine/heroin. Ironically, booze caused the most damage to me.

24hrsAday

yes indeed. i could not get serious until i was Beaten.. it is that way for most of us. the good news is it gets better. a LOT better..