FreddyBear

Greetings to everyone,

I had a major problem when I was drinking - I was telling other people absolutely ridiculous things about myself, tried to present myself way better than I really was. What I told to different people was:

- had a family and kids. In fact, I am and was single for my whole life
- had a serious illness and recovered from it (wtf??)
- been to countries I've never really been to
- heavily involved in charity, while it's not truth
- had sex with awesome girls (not even close to the truth)
- worked at Secret Service (oh boy, I was totally wasted ...)

This list goes on and on, and I can't even remember everything. Now they can easily catch me for these lies because I used to tell different stuff to different people. This really hurts my life, I can't even get several buddies together and maintain the conversation in the fear of being caught.

Can someone relate to this? How did you manage all this stuff?

Jitterbugg

Hahaha! FreddyBear, I couldn't help laughing because I did the same while drunk. During the height of my alcoholism, I was fired at a few jobs, so I really spent the better part of 4 years unemployed and drunk. Of course, I was ashamed of this, so I told even my closest friends that I was working 'here' and 'there'. I would also lie to girls I met in bars and spin a tale like I was a contestant on 'Jeopardy' once or that I went to Harvard. I was caught in a lie a few times with girls I dated because I could never remember what I told them. When I am sober, I am much more humble and matter-of-fact, but when drinking I become this arrogant ***** that boasts about how great I am. I guess deep down I must be really insecure or something. I know what you mean about not wanting to bring certain friends together. I spun such a web of lies when i was drunk, I'm afraid of it all unravelling if these guys traded information haha.

Fallow

Yeah thats funny. I could never get away with stories for a second, but a good friend of mine would go on for hours! Actually he went on for years. Great guy. We were on the phone one day 3 years ago and talked for hours. Got into some deep convo while both drunk. He told me lots of BS that day lol. But thru that conversation he decided to go to rehab states away (heroin addiction). As far as I know he got sober but he ended up dying about 6 months after that. Dont know what happened but I miss him alot. Your story totally made me smile just thinkin back on stories he told over the years. Thanks

Dee74

I eventually went for am honest stock response - I'm sorry... I must have been drunk when I said that.

It's embarrassing - but not as embarrassing as making up new lies to cover up the old lies or something...the madness has to stop somewhere.

It gets better.
I find nowadays most people don't remember that me anyway

D

onehotsummer

I'm glad that you bought this up, I used to do exactly that same thing and I was ashamed about it for years. And for some reason, for a really long time especially when i was younger, i thought it was just me that did this, and that I had something seriously wrong with me. Although I realise now that others must do it too.
I had the same problem where I had people that I couldn't get together, I couldn't really have a group of friends or get close to people because different people thought different things about me.
I used to lie about my nationality - I am partly bilingual, and I used to say I was from the other country that I knew the language.. Seriously more people thought this about me than knew the truth. I also used to lie about things that didnt even make me sound better, like my name and my age, just making myself a couple of years older or younger. It used to cause me soooooo much anxiety.
For a long time I didn't know what to do but the problem sort of went away on its own, over years though, and when I changed profession and sort of drifted into different social crowds. Had to make embarrassing confessions to a few people though along the way, who must have thought I was some kind of pathological liar.
The funny thing is, now that I am sober I find that I am very honest and really would hate to have to lie about anything

tomsteve

a line from a brad paisley song popped into my head: i'm so much cooler online. i was so much cooler when drunk. but not very smart. i managed it by drinking.

24hrsAday

^ thanks for the laugh FreddyBear! i just had to reply to this one!

in all Honesty i could not even begin to recount (even to MYSELF) the number of stories i came up with when Drunk! LOL! (i am fairly certain that i never really was abducted by Aliens though..)

Nevertheless

I can relate,I used to tell stories like that in my younger years. (my older years I sent out some dooozie drunken emails) I don't care who you are. If you are an alcoholic,sooner (probably sooner) or later you are going to do things you regret. We need walk in closets to store our skeletons in.
The only solution is to stop drinking. Once I stopped,I realized I was doing things sober (or hungover) that I wasn't too happy with either. Looking back I never realized just how much booze was running my life both sober and drunk.
Fred

SoulFly

Well I guess you are not alone on that, cause I was lying around everywhere. Even with my families and now when I remember I feel so bad and cause lying I ruined relationship with them. Don't wanna talk about outside lol it was so weird I can't even imagine I could even do that when I am sober. But now I am sober so I won't do that same mistake for sure.

Drexo

We're in the same boat FreddyBear.

While drunk I could be anything I wanted to be - telling people convincingly about my education and the progresses I made. Only one thing progressed: my alcoholism.

awuh1

Dishonesty is a quality that many alcoholics are good at. We get lots of practice telling ourselves that we really don’t have much of a problem, and that we can basically control our drinking. If we want our lives to improve however, we need to face the truth. We need to change how we do things. Part of that process is to stop drinking, obviously. After that it’s important to stop a lot of other destructive behaviors that made our lives unmanageable.

When leaving people with misimpressions, you are, in a sense, continuing to perpetuate a lie. Consider correcting your mistake by telling those you have lied to that you have misled them. I would not suggest you do this all at once, or even with everyone, but you might want to try telling a few people about of how you have been less than honest, and see how it goes. Be sure that if you do, your motivation is to repair damage and not to create more or make yourself feel less guilty (like possibly telling a spouse of an affair). The idea here is to live in accordance with a principle.

A good start in recovery is to simply stop lying… to ourselves. Being truly free involves much more.

penny74

l'm sure there is a reason why these lies came to surface when you were using..
have you found it out yet ?

BASEjumper

It's funny how relatively quickly that can happen. Even professionaly. People forget.

TSDD

I got pretty used to that phrase before I stopped drinking

The good news is if you don't drink you'll stop having to appologize for stupid things you do/say when you're hammered.

jrome14

The worst is when you don't even remember your lies because you blacked out and you speak to that person or people the next day or so....WOW!!!

NYCDoglvr

Don't drink and tell the truth. It's the easiest way to let go of this fear, guilt and remorse.

DayTrader

--Not content with my life-- <--- that basically sums my a big part of my alcoholism.

I didn't like me, didn't REALLY enjoy life, was always looking for something "more," and while I was happy a fair amount of the time......I rarely felt JOY.

My mind told me the way to deal with that was make up stories, lie, manipulate, cheat, steal, etc......

While I liked to think I only did that stuff when I was drinking, I saw that I did a lot of it "sober" too. "A new design for living" as the AA book says - I needed a new way to go through and live life. It TRULY didn't seem possible. How could I 1. fix all those old lies and not lose every friend I had? and 2. How could I go forward being honest? It seemed a daunting task.....but really, it was pretty easy once I got some new direction and some help from ppl who'd been where I was and found a way to change.

GetItTogether

Yep I'm guilty too. I've said utterly absurd stuff while drunk. I once hired one of my best friends and offered a huge wage as well. When I sobered up I realised that I'd have to fire some of my existing staff to make this happen and very uncomfortably had to have a hard conversation with my very disappointed friend.

indakut

Thanks for the laugh Freddy I used to tell HUGE lies!

OklaBH

Oh wow this hits home big time. I cant tell you how many times my husband would say "that doesnt add up" and I would only dig myself deeper. Its gone on for years. I hated blacking out & having to fill in the blanks. Sometimes I would get bored and just create a story and spread. Hell I have made up people that had accidents. WTH? I thought I had it under wraps one. When I relapsed it was 10 times worse. Here are some of the questions I would get after a binge:

"so what happened to your dog?"

"is your dad still in the hospital?"

"now..how do you know this person?"

"i thought you said you won those tickets?"

"no you said he called YOU"

====I am SO SICK OF IT!