petiot

I've heard that most people will not quit drinking until they hit "rock bottom." I was just curious what some of the people on this forum considered rock bottom.

I believe I DO have a drinking problem and from what I've read, I go through a lot of the same patterns, saying I'll stop only to drink again a couple days later, trying to hide it from my family, etc.

I don't think I've hit rock bottom..but I do think if I don't kick this habit soon, I will really mess up things in my personal life.

PaperDolls

Rock bottom to me is death. That's where alcoholism will lead for me if I continue to drink.

Everyone has a different bottom. For some people it's simply losing their job. For others, it's losing their marriage, their children, their job, their home. killing someone while driving drunk, landing jail, beating their wife and/or children, the horrible things that can happen are never ending.....

I think ultimately, you get to decide how bad you let it get. It will get worse if you continue on a destructive path.

How low do you want to go?

laurie6781

Well ............................ I was one of the 'stubborn' ones and my 'rock bottom' was to the MAX. My rock bottom was ............. the last year and a half of my drinking I lived on the streets of Hollywood. My 'rock bottom' was when I took a swig in it felt like it was coming out of every pore in my body as fast as I took it in.

It was then I knew I was dying and I was going to die if I kept drinking and I was going to die if I tried to get sober, but I wanted to die sober.

By the next morning I somehow made it to the ER in Van Nuys. They worked on me all day, as I kept going into seizures and my heart kept stopping. The last time, the ER Dr was putting the T O D on my chart after 28 minutes of trying to start my heart when my heart started on it's own.

I pray daily that NO ONE has to take this disease, affliction, whatever you want to call it to the bottom I did.

YOUR BOTTOM can be RIGHT NOW.

J M H O

Love and hugs,

bellakeller

(((Laurie)))

I didn't realize what my bottom was until I started to get sober and saw what pain alcohol + I were really causing in my life and to those around me. I was in hell and close to death and had no clue, despite what was so obvious to those who loved me. I am glad, so so glad to be on the other side of that today.

Frustriert

My second DUI. Sitting in the jail cell the night I got picked up. I had been drinking while packing up to kick off a 11 hour drive for a trip. Got picked up an hour from home.

My only thought in the jail cell was "Jesus I hope my wife gets here soon to pick me up, my buzz is almost gone and I have more booze in the fridge at home!!!!".

I couldn't wait to get home and drink.

Sick, sick, sick, sick, sick.

dybehfar

I am a person that is very much driven by shame / guilt and really worry about what others think of me. So when people started to say things or assume that I was out drinking to the extreme I began to hit my bottom. It was also tied with the beginnings of my body breaking down with pains all around my abdomen and back. Only sleeping for 5 hours and failing in my work and family responsibilities. I simply could not be known as the guy that can't do X or Y because of alcohol.

Self centered...absolutely...narcissist...quite possibly. If it helps me quit drinking I don't care.

Bottoms are all relative. The final outcomes are the same.

PaleMale

Each day we kept drinking put our bottom a little deeper. Many do not survive their bottom.

CarolD

By the end of my drinking....I detested the depressed woman I had become....

Externally nothing was going wrong in my life...it was an inside job.
That was when I gave up drinking....and joined AA....

Yes...my saturated brain was my botom.

doggonecarl

Rock bottom might be too late. Have you considered that? You've had difficulty quitting since joining SR in 2009. What makes you think things need to get worse in order to make your recovery easier? That is false logic. Alcoholism is progressive. It only gets harder. For many alcoholics...they never recovery.

alaskasunshine

I had two DUI's and third one would be a felony. This past summer I was pulled over for tossing an empty "shooter" out the window. The cop was undercover, driving next to me. I drank it, rolled my window down threw it out so no empties would be found in my minivan because my b/f regularly checks. The cop watched me throw it, I turned and looked at her at that moment and she got this disgusted look on her face and turned her lights on. When she approached my minivan she started to chew me out about the "garbage" I threw. She didnt know it was booze. Anyway, I handed her my ID, not my liscence, and she went to her car. I sat there and thought, this is IT. Jail. Felony, goodbye to my job, my family and any sense of a normal life ever again. I even thought about how I may be able to kill myself in jail. I was trying to find something to put in my mouth to take away the smell of the booze, I figured I would try to do something rather than sit there and just get arrested. All I had in the car was this brownie that my teenage son had made me and brought to me at work earlier in the day. Talk about heartbreaking knowing what was about to happen and how it would affect him. As I put the entire brownie in my mouth the cop came back, handed me my ID and said "I dont have time for this". Went back to her car and left me there.
I drank a few times since then (when my ex got married I drank pretty heavy) but I did finally make the commitment, that was my bottom. You know, on August 15 of 2013 the first DUI will fall off my 10 year window and if I were to get another DUI it wouldn't be a felony. Somewhere in the back of my mind I hear a little voice saying "jus wait, just wait" you'll be able to drink again. I HATE that voice!

dybehfar

Wow. Reading these has really helped me and I hope helped you as well Petiot. Don't wait to find out what your rock bottom is. The pain that everyone feels is just mind blowing and it feels good to know that we are not alone in this.

I am not that long into sobriety, but even my worst days sober have been better than my good drinking days especially near the end. I understand the hiding of your drinking all to well.

I wish you all the best.

Linz

I've heard that rock bottom is when you can't drink, and you can't stop drinking....Made sense to me.

least

My absolute rock bottom was emotional. I was sick to death of myself. Every morning I woke up hating myself and wishing I were dead. I couldn't kill myself cause of the damage it would do to my kids and I couldn't stand to go on like I was doing. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. It felt like I had to get better or just give up and drink myself to death. I chose to get better.

Nowadays I wake up feeling good and not hating myself anymore. I'll never go back to drinking because altho I'm sure I have another 'drunk' left in me but I'm not sure I have any more recovery left in me... and I don't want to find out...

camper67

Just the fact that I was no longer physically feeling well almost all the time was enough for me to want to stop. Then, just as I was planning my quit date, my blood results showed increased liver enzyme levels.

wendellgee1985

For me:

When I wasn't drinking, all I wanted to do was drink. Then, when I started again, I would consciously think about how I wished I hadn't done what I just did (i.e. started up again). Nevertheless, it didn't stop me - and I would get trashed again. The process would then repeat itself. Over and over. I couldn't stop until I either got myself to the hospital, or my parents came to physically take me back to their house.

ElvisInASkirt

I don't think there is such a thing as an absolute rock bottom.

Holding on for THE rock bottom takes away personal responsibility of checking how unmanageable your own life has become. It can be like driving blind and celebrating that you haven't crashed yet and continuing on relentless.

Too easy to think along the lines of 'I'm bad, but he's WORSE.'

bmwcycle

You do not have to go to the bottom of the ocean to know that it is sand. Rock bottom is a rear view mirror indicator to the situation at hand, you will only know after you have the view from above.

I never got arrested or had a DUI. Never lied or hid my drinking. Many close friends didn't think I had a problem. Still I could not handle the roller coaster drinking had become to me, and am much happier now that I have stopped.

In hindsight my rock bottom was the constant lowering the bar of the acceptable behavior that I allowed myself to justify while drinking.

Best of luck and take it one day at a time..

coffeespoons

I smoked a cigarette in front of my parents while blacked out. I suppose that's pretty mild, but they were so disappointed as I've always been a "good kid" in their eyes. I was so ashamed. I know there are many things that led to me quitting drinking, but that's the "moment" for me.

flyawayfromhere

I agree with Elvis. I feel that if alcohol is causing problems in your life...to ANY extent, that should be the point where you stop and quit, rather than wait until you've lost everything and are nearly dead. Thinking that you need to hit a certain low point in your drinking career is simply just feeding into your addiction. Having booze in your life is not more important than your friends or your family or your job. So why trade them in for it?

Eliasson

I was just like "least". I just couldn't stand me anymore. Nothing bad was really happening on the outside because of my drinking. Lots of people were surprised when I quit because they didn't see a problem. I just got, as they say, "sick and tired of being sick and tired". I did not want to continue living my life the way I was, but because I have kids I knew that I could not take my own life. So I had to keep living. If living was my only choice, I knew I'd have to choose a different way to live. Everyone's bottom is different. You do not have to ride that elevator all the way down. You can choose to get off on the floor you are on.