Kasia71

I've been drinking nightly for roughly 20 years, aside from my pregnancies/nursing. I've never put in much of an effort to stop. The first 10 years were beer & wine and then bumped it up to vodka/tonic. Over the past few years I have found myself hung over more days than not and having many internal dialogues about how I need to stop this, but never do. It's become worse because I feel like I can't connect with other women to make new friendships unless they want to go out for drinks, that's what I do, drink. I don't participate in other leisure activities. Non-drinking activities sound like a huge bore to me. I typically don't drink crazy amounts Su-Th, but come Friday and Saturday we (husband and I) start drinking and don't stop until I black out and pass out. I sleep until 11ish, and have 3 kids 10 & under. We've trained them to behave & be wquiet while mommy & daddy are sleeping. They're getting to an age where soon they're going to figure us out...why we sleep so late and still have to take an afternoon nap on the sofa. It's pathetic! I fear when my kids go play with neighbor children that they may let it get out that "my mom sleeps until almost lunch time", maybe have already?? I hide it fairly well (I think)...closet drinker & smoker too...which is another thing I beat myself up about. I didn't attribute this to my drinking, but last summer a few things happened in my life that led me to be depressed, drink even more, and the depression became even more crippling, I finally went to a therapist for help...talk about everything except my drinking...I didn't share that part of the story. Now I'm on antidepressants, which helps, but I wonder if I wasn't drinking so much if that would be necessary. I feel like I cannot do this anymore and at the same time feel like I can't stop because I feel like I will be giving up my best friend & the only leisure activity I have known for 2 decades. I'm so unhappy with my life though, I have no job (been a stay at home mom for a decade), but when I think of getting one I don't know how I will do it and keep up my boozing, so instead, I keep drinking and sit here alone all day everyday feeling isolated and sad.

Ugh, I don't know my purpose of saying all of this....I guess getting it off my chest. I haven't drank since Saturday night...last night (Sunday) was hell. It did feel good to wake up this morning not being sick, but I feel completely overwhelmed. I know tonight will be like last night...anxious and sick!

Grymt

Fear of the grief of letting go is sometimes dealt with by facing and feeling the fear and grief.
Without that load other things become easier to deal with.
You're taking steps in the right direction.If you take steps in the right direction your chances of getting where you want to get increases astronomically. Keep steppin'.

courage2

Hi Kasia!

I was a daily drinker for many, many years & like you hid it from my kid and eventually from my husband too. I can tell you if it's bad now it will only get worse. I was so full of self-hate the last year of my drinking! It was my whole life (I was completely self-isolating), but it was killing me. I relied on the booze to shut down my suicidal thinking, but it was really the drinking and my empty alcoholic life that were depressing me.

Coming to SR helped me to put together a few sober days, and AA and SR helped me to turn that into 4 months. I'm not perfectly happy or perfectly sane, but I no longer wake up every day wishing I was dead. I'm accomplishing things, and building/rebuilding relationships.

I hope you stick around on SR. There's tons of great support for you here.

robgt350

Kasai
i was drinking like you do for several years. i woke up many times disliking my self. we taught our daughter to be self reliant. at work alot of our conversations involves drinking and have fun when drinking. alot of activities has always as always involved alcohol. like yours my choice was vodka. but one morning i was sick and tired of being sick and tired and decided to do something about it. i stopped drinking. that was 20 weeks and 4 days ago and have not had a drink since. so if i can do it, i have faith you can do it also.

Kasia71

Thanks for your encouragement. That quote is me...I find ways to blame everything around me for making myself miserable, but my drinking is to blame. There are so many things I'm ashamed of and most I can directly link to my alcoholism. I haven't shared with my husband, yet, that I think we need to make a huge change. I hope he can be on board with it. He doesn't typically drink on "work nights"....come Friday/Saturday though...yikes, I don't know how to get through that, especially if he chooses to drink.

Kasia71

Hey Robgt

Yep, I'm the same....all talk about fun I've had or will have revolved around drinking activities with friends/husband. I feel like it's always been my identity..."the fun party girl"...I don't know how to identify myself differently. I think that most people that I'm friends with loved me cause I was always the fun one...cause I can be a fun drinker if I don't get out of control. Recently though, I went away with two girlfriends for a night and on the way home from the bar at 1am, walking, I fell more than once! I'm almost 42 years old...that is completely disgusting. If I saw a woman my age, a mother, falling down drunk...I would be disgusted. I was covered in bruises the next day and had a two day hangover. I am sick of being sick, but there's still this part of me that wishes I could get control and be able to still have some wine at a party, or a cocktail when out to dinner, etc. Am I kidding myself?

robgt350

kasia, yea i know if your number reflects your year of birth, i am the same age. yea i dont know how many times i fell over drunk. one time i had a shiner in my left eye from falling and looked like i got into a fight. i really felt ashamed.
but everything you said is nothing but positive reasons you want to stop drinking. you can do it! it was hard for me, but i did it. why dont you come into the chat room here and talk to others in real time about it. i did and it helped me alot. so try it out, i did.

LouLa

Your post sounds exactly like my story!

I wake up every morning thinking about how much I drank (and smoked) the night before and that leads into a downward spiral of thinking for the day. I wonder, how do I not remember making the kids lunches, giving them baths, etc. I suffer from panic/anxiety and I finally realized that the cause is from drinking. I had been thinking of getting on an anti depressant, but every time the doctor wrote a prescription I thought to myself, why am I going to get this filled? I know the cause of my depression and anxiety but I continue to drink even more. Actually, if I know I have to be somewhere I drink just to calm my anxiety. It is a vicious cycle.

I just want you to know that you are not alone.

whiskeyman

If you are an alocoholic like i am i had to accept that I could never drink again.
it was hard to accept that fact for along time.
But i finally realized I WANT TO LIVE to see my kids grow up. I missed enough as it was.

It isnt hard to let go if you think of it more as poison. Do you want to hang on to the fact that you keep posioning yourself.

Imagine it as arsenic. you keep getting sick after drinking your arsenic. eventually you decide hey i just cant drink arsenic