SoberRecovery : Alcoholism Drug Addiction Help and Information

Hello everyone, I have been reading your forum for some time and while I haven't ever really posted, a lot of the thoughts and feelings, struggles and experiences with alcohol posted here have kept me strong through my continuing sobriety.

I guess I have held off so long because I never really saw the benefit in anything I had to say. My drinking went hand in hand with my confidence and as I'm sure a lot of people may have experienced, depression can follow after you quit drinking due to it being what kept you away with having to deal with everything you didn't want to have to deal with. I guess it is easier for me to think that not posting my experiences is easier because it won't help anyone, rather than doing the hard thing and maybe accepting something I have to say might help at least one person continue on their path to sobriety.

So here goes. I began drinking when I was aged 12, and it started out very small. This was during the whole alchopop craze where they mixed vodka in with fruity flavours and marketed it at younger people. My parents would buy me a pack of four and I'd drink one at the end of the week, and then it would be more over the weekend. Eventually I began drinking four bottles of the stuff a night even during school weeks, but as I had to get up early it tapered off back to the weekend.

Around the age of 15/16 I began to get into the harder stuff, whisky and straight vodka. I drank half a bottle of vodka to myself one weekend and spent the entire weekend hungover because of it, after that I stopped on the harder stuff and moved onto cider at the age of 16/17. At this point after I finished school, I drank until I was drunk nearly every night. I would easily consume upwards of four to six bottles of cider a night, and I would be going to sleep at around 6/7/8AM and waking up at 4/5PM everyday.

My parents knew I was drinking a lot and yet they didn't really try to prevent it, but I don't blame them. They never forced the drink into my hands, and ultimately the choice to drink so much was mine and mine alone. Between the ages of 18/21 things got much worse, I was drinking more and more and was looking forward to getting drunk every single night. To make things worse I would eat at strange times, and I would always eat the worst kind of food. I didn't care about how I looked or looking after myself, I would spend the nights doing what I wanted, eating what I wanted and thought there was nothing wrong with my lifestyle at all. However after I turned 22 I began to get a nagging feeling that what I was doing was wrong, that if I kept on like this then I would do a lot of damage to myself and probably to those around me.

The first time I tried to quit I got every bottle of booze in the house and poured it down the sink, and left the last one. I drank it telling myself it would be the last I ever drank, and for four weeks that was true. But I gave in, I needed to drink to keep going, to keep myself mentally stable. When I wasn't drink I was extremely anxious about everything, I began to self-harm during the daytimes as I couldn't control my anxiety and it was my only way to do anything about it. I swore I would never drink during the daytimes, something which thankfully I never graduated over too. I always said that was what made me a drinker, not an alcoholic. I took comfort in that fact, but I knew deep down inside that I was drinking every single day until I was drunk and waking for 6-7 hours and then doing it again. I drank so much that all I cared about was wrapping myself in anything that would immerse me away from my real life and what I was doing. Truth be told, it's a very seductive lifestyle when you feel like you can do whatever you want because you're too drunk to care and nobody is stopping you.

As seductive as it was, my health started to deteriorate and I began to get pains in my liver. I put it down to something else, diagnosing myself with the Internet instead of seeing a doctor. Sometimes the pain would go away when I drank, making me think that my drinking was still fine because it wasn't causing the pain. I'd completely blanked out the fact that alcohol dulls things like that anyway, but it got so bad one night that it felt like my liver was about to explode. I was lay in bed and terrified that if I fell asleep I wouldn't wake up and since my folks were on vacation, I was alone in the house and knew if I called an ambulance that I'd have to explain everything. I fell asleep before anything happened, and I was grateful I woke up some seven hours later. I'd like to say I did the right thing there and then and quit drinking, but I didn't, I put it down to something else and carried on anyway.

My health and my liver got so bad that I went to see a doctor, who booked me for an ultrasound appointment that never came. Rather than try to arrange it again, I just carried on drinking regardless. Towards the end of 2008 I was wearing the scars of my years of being an alcoholic but hid them from everyone, even my best friends. It was at this time I met someone I began to fall in love with, and she fell in love with me as well. The first day I wasted being in bed hungover and missed out on seeing her it fired me to do something, so I told myself if I couldn't stop drinking I didn't deserve to be with her. It was the hardest time in my life, I told no one that I was quitting because I knew I had to do it on my own or I would never do it. I remember many of the early nights, looking down at the can in my hand, tipped on a knife-edge and trying to rationalise everything that I had done so far. I still don't know to this day how I managed to not drink that can in my had, I wish I could bottle whatever did it and give it to all of you to keep you sober forever.

I was sober for a year before I told her about the entire mess, the drinking, the sobriety battle. I felt confident enough to share it with her, and herself having her own problems she appreciated that I understood more than she knew. I'd like to say we rode off into the sunset and everything was peachy, but unfortunately our relationship broke down as she changed completely and lied a lot. Towards the end of 2010 she disappeared and I never heard from her again, she blanked me out of her life and left me alone to pick up the pieces. I could feel myself wanting to give up and start drinking again, and for a long time I was depressed and suicidal. I'd lost hope in everything and became deeply pessimistic about everything my friends were doing and were interested in, making me an absolute misery to be around. But every single time I wanted to give up, every time I wanted to throw in the towel and just end it all, every time I tried to convince myself I had achieved nothing in life, there was always one thing that kept me going. That I managed to become sober and stay sober despite everything telling me to give up and drink myself to death.

I lay in bed every night and read this forum every night, a lot of what is posted here brings me comfort. Knowing that there are other people out there that have had their own struggles and still continue to struggle, I guess that is why I finally decided to post. I know deep down that if I ever start drinking again that my liver couldn't take it and I would most likely die. Sobriety represents everything to me now, if I don't remain sober then I will most likely not get a second chance. I'm slimmer than I was and I look after myself more, things are still hard at times and the anxiety is always there in some form. I don't self-harm any more, and truth be told the only thing I am addicted too now is music. I feel extremely lucky that I have the chance to hear some of the things that I hear, that raw expression of human creativity that makes us what we are. I feel sad knowing that if I hadn't stopped drinking, then I wouldn't be able to hear some of the new music that comes out, listen to new DJ's and the like.

I've met someone new and we're going strong, though we've actually known each other for well over six years now. I can't say life has changed to the point where I'm writing this from my own personal jet on a laptop made of solid gold, but I am alive and I am sober, that is what counts to me. If you've read this far then I thank you for that, and I hope something I said might of helped you or someone else. I know words alone are not enough to fix things and inspiration can be difficult to get at times, the sum of advice I can give you bombarding you with another wall of text is.. well, do it for you. You deserve to live, and experience everything at it's fullest. You might not think you have a problem, and it's not my place to judge you or anyone else, but when you have that same, niggling, gnawing doubt in the back of your head, please do something about it. Before you end up like me, laying on a bed wondering if you will wake up after you fall asleep.

Thank you for reading