Bjorn

New Guy here... Let me introduce myself... I'm Bjorn.

I don't know that I'm actually an alcoholic, by most of the horror stories of rock bottom alcoholism, DT's and withdrawls, I've been 5+ days without a drink and haven't experienced any of those horrors.

But at the same time, I'd be lying if I said that alcohol didn't have a negative presence in my life.

If you wanted to ask me why I decided to take a break from drinking?

The answer is: Because I knew I wasn't being the best father I could be for my 4 month old daughter.

But if I'm honest, there's probably more that's true there. I also wasn't the best husband I could be.

I also wasn't the best salesman drone I could be.

And I kept putting what was once the fervent pursuit of my dreams on pause.... Then put them on hold... Then Delayed them a bit...

These are all mixed in with their own little troubles and circumstance that exist beyond the influence of booze. Still booze wasn't helping.


So I woke up last Sunday morning with a hangover and a bunch of problems lingering in at the edges of my life and just decided it was time to stop.

It's not like I was a rapacious drunk getting loaded every night. But at the same time, I never missed out on a good excuse to open a beer or enjoy a double of whiskey on the rocks. If it was a weekend, it was an excuse to get drunk. Bad day... 2 beers and 2 fingers... Mowing the lawn (Which is 3 acres) and I'd stuff beer cans in my pockets as I left the house.


So far in 5 days it's been pretty easy.

I've had some minor bouts of anxiety on day 2 and 3... But we're having money trouble as a family that was related to that.

Sleeping... Drunk or sobre I always sleep like a log. But now it's like I go to bed an hour early, and get up as late as possible and I still feel like I could sleep for two more hours.

Weight loss, I've lost 5 pounds in 5 days. But I also live in the wilderness and there's been a lot of physical work in and of itself. And in general I'm 6'6" 260 former football player, so 5 pounds is little to me.

Now I find myself on a Friday night, which is usually my big drinking night, after a week mixed between watching the baby and working at a career that is bereft of passion. And I feel the itch to have a drink.

Not sure if I have a point... Or if I'm just waking up to my old self and looking for a place to share where I don't have to watch my back for the judgement of in-laws and facebook friends.

Dee74

Welcome Bjorn

I think it's a bit of a wasted effort to try and compare yourself with others - there was always someone I feel was worse than me with drinking, always someone who seemed better.

Fact is I had a problem and I needed to fix it

Glad you found us - there's a ton of support here

D

silentrun

Good for you. Your reasons are basically the same as mine for quitting. I just had to have my face rubbed in it a little. Some websites suggest the word "alcoholic" is out dated. Apparently the say alcohol abuse disorder and alcohol dependence. the abuse is what leads to the dependence. I use the term "alcoholic" on myself even though I wasn't dependent because it reminds me I really can never drink again.

artsoul

Welcome Bjorn!

Congratulations on 5 days sober! I think you'll find plenty of people here that can relate to your story - good for you for making the decision to stop before things get worse (because they always do)....

The first Friday night was the hardest one for me, too. This forum got me through a lot of those times. Glad you're here!

Bjorn

Yeah I have friends who are 12 step alcoholics or who are living in their parents basement or cabin slowly drinking themselves to death, unable to escape their addiction.

I don't feel like that. And when I talk to them I can't really related to them.


I feel more like a "Problem Drinker" Like problems started piling up in my life and I started drinking a little more and a little more and it made my problems a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger, until they were threatening to be big problems and I've just got too much to lose to want to risk really losing it.


I mean I was born in deep poverty. The first 8 years of my life I wore home made clothes 6 days a week and had a piece of rope for a belt. The early part of my life was poverty, violence and watching most of the people I loved die.

Through most of my childhood I was told that I would never amass to anything. My second grade teacher referred to me as a "Worthless Nobody."

I'll spare you the Autobiography... But with the caring and hardwork of others helping me out and a sense of passion and blind faith in myself I made it out, educated myself privately and then got a college degree and built a dubious career.

Then in the recession I was "Surplussed"

Ten years as a good little office drone and on my 10 year anniversary they showed me the door and handed me the $150 gift card for 10 years of service.

Things have been a crazy... Crazy roller coaster ever since then.

4 years later, and I'm living in my dream home in the country with a beautiful wife and a perfectly healthy 4 month old daughter that has me re-examining all the choices I make in my life.

For so long I've lived with my back against the wall... And every time I moved forward, so did the wall.

I could afford to live recklessly, if life was 4th down and long I could always throw it, because I had nothing to lose.

Now I've got all these things to lose, and I feel like playing it safe is killing my soul... But running at life full volume feels like too big of a risk.

silentrun

What do you mean "play it safe." Consider that beautiful wife and that 4 month old healthy daughter the universe's way of paying you back for that crappy childhood.

Bjorn

When I was coming up out of poverty, and I took risks, people would tell me "Oh that's stupid... Why would you risk that, you could lose!"

Well I had nothing to lose.

As a result I kind of started to build a mentality in my life of pushing my limits. I worked in a miserable career in an ad agency, as a middle of the road corporate drone by day. And on my weekends, week nights and vacations I was on the road, traveling America, or living for days on an ice sheet fishing through the ice, or getting myself into wilderness retreats and survival situations that would make Bear Grylls drink his own ****.

The whole time I was cultivating this dream of translating all of this into a successful writing career. That "One Day" I'd park my butt in the chair and instead of writing short stories and such for myself that I'd ply it all into that mythic "Next Great American Novel."

I got to a certain point in my life where the challenges were running short. I mean you can only push yourself so much down this adventurous bachelor life before it's all really redundant.

I realized that the next set of challenges was going to come in family life.

To be honest... While it is rewarding and good and I've been told I'm a good father and a loving husband... My life inside and out has been... "Out of Balance." (And not just in the hectic schedule way... I actually kind of find the hectic schedule to be a bit or a "Rush.")

Especially when I was booted from the Evil Ad Agency... At first I saw it as the opportunity to park my butt in the chair and get to that writing I've always been promising to get serious about.

So I did.

For six months I plugged away. Then I showed my work to a literary critic and she tore me to shreds. I don't want to turn to a cliche, but it was sort of like the death of my dream.

So I went back into advertising again, as a 100% commission, working with no net ad sales rep. I hit the road again, selling ads, getting into random adventures and "Getting by" on the outside, while slowly suffocating on the inside.

I can drive across half a continent, walk into a room full of strangers and pitch them an ad campaign to visit Canada in the Winter time with a plastic fantastic smile painted on my face. But there's no passion in it for me. It's not what I want to do, it's not who I want to be.

Since moving out to this 10 acre spread in the woods, I live off the land 6 months of the year, I juggled my carreer so I could spend a year and a half at home taking care of my wife while she was pregnant, and now watching the baby. And doing "Phone Sales"

Every now and then I have to hit the road for a couple of days, and I remember the excitement of it, but hate myself, because the place my heart really is is at home.

I want to be here for every moment of my daughter's life. Changing diapers, cleaning up puke, having her scream in my ear is a small price to pay for the chance to be for her the kind of parent I never had.

There is this sense that all the blood on my hands, all the sacrifices I had to make to get here are all worth it, if she grows up to be a good person as a product of my love.

The thing that's honestly making me sick in my heart, is that I gave up on my writing and I've been medicating that pain with booze while trying to work a career where I have no control and no passion for.


Sorry if I'm over self psychologizing.

Soberpotamus

So you let a literary critic end your dream of writing a novel? You sure about that?

I'd say you have the guts to do whatever you want. It seems that you do anyway, from the way you describe yourself. Don't let a critic stop you. My goodness! Keep writing. Writers write because they can't NOT write

Bjorn

Well... I think you're spot on...

I mean I've kept writing since... Only because writing is what I do for me.

What I did is let the fear in.

It's that risk, of putting my energy into it, it goes in the toilet and living with the knowledge that I should have just sucked it up like my Mother in Law would have me do and keep working a career I hate.

The truth is that I lost myself, not because of the booze, but the booze let me stay lost. Something in my gut knows that I gave up to early. Now the Advertising career is going poorly and I have to find a way to do both the writing career and the advertising hack... While not sacrificing my passion for being a Dad.

silentrun

History is full of authors that were not even appreciated at their time. Medicate WITH your writing not because of it.

Luckygoldfish

1. I can relate to your experiences, I also haven't crossed the threshold into alcohol dependency, but have definitely let it get away from me, and have developed some problems with controlling alcohol. This is why I'm stopping now, so that my future isn't jeopardized by continuing down that path. I applaud your self-awareness and humility.

2. As a fellow writer, don't give up! Join a writing workshop, or an online group where you can submit short stories and hear constructive feedback. Writing is like everything else in the world, it takes practice, learning, and the occasional failure to eventually succeed.

Soberpotamus

Ok, well you have the insight. And it does sound like this might be the case. I know it was going that way for me Maybe that's why your post caught my eye! Haha

I can sit and philosophize about time, lost time, giving up, why things went the way they did, and who wanted me to do what... truth is that once you uncover yourself again (taking booze out of the picture), realize your passion is still there and going strong underneath it all, well... there is the saying that goes something like this: Time is going to pass whether we do what we want or not. Why not go ahead and make the effort, and do the thing we really want to do? We're going to be six feet under the ground someday anyway.

Soberpotamus

Write because you know you have to. Write to **** off the critics who'd just as soon toss your manuscript in the toilet than not!

Write because you know you can

And... write even though you may never show it to anyone ever again.

Bjorn

Yeah it's strange to think that I'm 5 days straight as an arrow and remembering things about myself and the philosophy that I... Well I guess I would normally say "The philosophy that I live my life by." But it's really the "Philosophy I used to live my life by... And just need to get back to."

I have my "Bjorn-isms"

Bjornism#1 "Personal accountability is the high water mark of a person, don't spend your life making low tide excuses."

Strange that I made it so far with this ardent personal philosophy and then slowly, in bits and pieces lost it so easily. Only to have it slowly creep back into awareness by the cute smile of my blue eyed baby girl.

Soberpotamus

Not strange at all. Addiction erodes and devolves anyone, no matter their abilities or talents or drive.

Bjorn

It's my first Saturday morning in several years without a hangover of any kind.

I've got the baby today... So instead of waking up with cotton mouth or a head ache, I woke up to my daughter smiling at me big in realization that today is another Daddy-Daughter play day!

john44

I couldn't relate to "real" alcoholics a few years ago when I first started wondering if I had a problem (at age 47). I remember reading the Big Book for the first time and thinking "I'm not like that!!". As time passed and my drinking progressed, the bad consequences started mounting. I got 2 DUIs, lost jobs, entered rehabs, hospitals and detoxes. This all happened in less than 2 years. I guess my point is: if you are indeed alcoholic, your situation will not remain static. If unchecked it progresses, sometimes so quickly and horribly that it can leave you absolutely stunned.

Bjorn

A pretty good day today.

Spent the day with my daughter, she rolled over completely on her own mutiple times today!

Wife got home from work and I had a chef salad on the table, made from garden picked greens and fresh onions, roasted chicken and cheddar cheese.

Laundry done, bottles washed, dish washer running, everyone's lunches packed and ready to go for tomorrow, daughter tucked in and hopefully sleeps through the night!

Next up, I'm tempted to set a writing goal for myself considering I've got a 1 day work week next week?