needtostopthis

I am eight days sober. It has been easy to go 8 days this time. I don't know why really. I think I have just made up my mind that this is what has to be done. I have not even thought about drinking. Which is crazy because this past week has been very stressful and usually stress equals drinking for myself. I feel better about myself and I have more patience with my son but I am having issues not related to my drinking that are making me very depressed. I am afraid these issues will impede my sobriety.

This may be long but here it goes: I live in a very loud area. My husband and I rent a home from his parents and it is a nice house with fairly cheap rent but on a very busy road. It is so loud and we have biker neighbors. They are not new neighbors, but they are crazy and they keep moving new people in and have all these biker people come over and I listen to bikes come and go all day. Sometimes until 12 am. I have had to move from my bedroom and I am now sleeping in the couch. I am having insomnia lately and everything is bugging me. I can hear the busses going by every half an hour too and when I a trying to go to sleep I focus on all the noise. So needless to say I have not had much sleep, it is messing with my head. I don't know if I need sleep medication or what because I used to sleep through a lot of this but now I cant. I also am feeling very on edge. We thought about moving but can not afford a house or to rent anywhere else. Our only way out is to move farther out and have to drive farther to work or move into a mobile home park. I have been thinking non-stop about this stuff. One day I think oh just stick it out here, next day I get all pissed about this stupid neighborhood and think I am outta here. My whole family is being affected the funk I am in. I feel like everyone else in this world is moving on to bigger and better things and I sit around being stagnant. All my friends are moving to nice houses, having babies, traveling, just having fun and here I am wallowing in my sadness. I have no job, just a stay at home mom, we barely make it on what my husband makes and I feel like we are just living, but not living life! What is wrong with me? Should we just move and move on with life or stay here and be stuck? Do I need therapy again? Why cant I ever stay happy? Will I ever feel normal? Is this because I am an alcoholic? I don't know what I want from my post here, I guess just someone to listen.

karate

They make White noise machines , my wife has kept a small fan running at night for years for background noise .

zerothehero

I confess I ate a lot of valerian root in my first few weeks of withdrawal. I couldn't sleep and my anxiety was through the roof. Valerian is pretty benign and it helped with the anxiety and helped me sleep. You can find it with herbal and vitamin supplements in most grocery stores. I also slept with a fan on even though it was winter. I just needed to drown out the random dogs and trains. I was also an emotional wreck. I've leveled out, but still have my moments. Give it time. If you haven't already, it helped "normalize" my experience to read about acute withdrawal symptoms and post acute withdrawal symptoms. I go back to articles about withdrawal when I think I'm losing my mind. Hope this helps.

gettingbetter64

You say all your friends are moving and having fun, which sounds good but nothing is ever what it seems. Everyone has problems weather there an addict or not, I think the worst thing you can do is compare your life to others,I've done that before and all it ever made me feel like was crap, I'm slowly learning how to not do that. Congratulations on 8 days sober that's awesome just try to focus on the good things that are happening in your life I know that's hard at times. Take care

deeker

Try not to make any major decisions at 8 days sober. Your body is still recovering. You are feeling things that you used to numb. I bet all this didn't bother you as much a couple weeks ago. And if it did you could just numb it. What you are going through is so normal.

We have to start somewhere. Start with working on your sobriety, get some time under your belt, find some support on top of SR. AA, RR, etc.

I wear wax earplugs. I can't hear a thing. I live behind a major grocery store and semi trailers come in the early morning making their deliveries.

These things are awesome!

But right now it sounds like your mind is racing.

You have plenty of time to build your life up to where you want it to be. But you really don't know if your friends are happy. The more you have the more problems you have.

You don't know what goes on behind closed doors. You have the most important job in the world. Raising your children. Be grateful that you are able to stay home with them. I would trade places with you in a second for a chance to be home raising my son again.

Try to relax. Or put on your headphones and listen to music at bedtime.


Your addictive thinking is looking for a reason to drink. It will tell you that life sucks, just to get you to slip up. It is our thinking.

Look for those earplugs, They are plugs for swimmers.

Gottalife

Deeker has some good practical advice for you. Your life sounds pretty grim at the moment and I think anyone would find it tough going, especially if they could see no way out.

As an alcoholic who recovered through AA, I can offer you some hope. It is possible for you to recover, the first step being to reach out for help.

The thing about alcoholics is we usually don't want any help until it gets really bad. Many, maybe even most of us were finding life unbearable when we recovered. I myself had lost everything and was living in parks when I reached out for help and got well.

It seems a bit of a paradox. So many of us at times thought we drank because life was, difficult, that if only things would get better we would not need to drink. Then, when things do go well, what do we do? Drink to celebrate our good fortune.

There is nothing so bad that a drink won't make it worse. Most of us push that to the limit. It can always get worse. But it seems when things are really bad, that is the best time to get sober. It seems we have to be defeated to win.

It could be a very good time to call AA and talk to someone about the solution to your problems.

needtostopthis

I have a fan in my room for noise but even that is bothering me now. I focus on the sound of it and i keep thinking it is even making weird noises. I am a lost cause.

needtostopthis

Thank you, I have tried ear plugs and they drive me nuts. Do the wax ones go in the actually ear? I cant stand the way ear plus make me feel like my ears are all clogged up. I then focus on my ears and can't sleep. Lol. Like i said i am lost cause here. You are right about what i would have done before. I would have just drank and pushed all these worries out of my head. The thing is now that i am more clear headed i feel like i REALLY want out of here. I just hate this neighborhood. I feel like i am trapped here. I know i need to take one thing at a time and focus on not drinking for now but it is very hard when you hate your surroundings. I home is supposed to be your sanctuary.

I am just feeling so blah. Is this normal for 9 days? I am not happy. Not that i was a joy before with my drinking and all but now i feel like i am just a stick in the mud.

Rar

I have a thing about noises too, so I can understand. I sleep with a fan for noise, but if there is the tiniest squeak or irregularity in the whirring, it drives me crazy and I can't sleep. 3 years ago we moved from a house in a wooded area to a city. I live less than 1/2 mile from a small airport and less than a mile from a railroad crossing. For months I was so tense due to those noises which interrupted my sleep. As I became more accustomed to my new neighborhood and less lonely for my old, the noises didn't bother me as much. Most times now I don't really hear them. I rather like the airplane noise now as long as they aren't flying directly over my house.

I felt blah during my earliest days. It seemed everything bothered me and I blamed my unhappiness on those issues, but what was really bothering me was that I couldn't drink. You will cheer up as you have more days.

needtostopthis

Oh Rar, I am so glad to meet someone as neurotic as me about noises. lol. I just tried to lay down in my bedroom again and I just cant stop focusing on the traffic. It is really weird because we have lived here for years, why is this affecting me now. Do you really think this is some alcohol come down? I do wonder if I feel blah because of not drinking? I don't even want to drink, not one bit so why do I feel so blah? Can this really affect your body this bad? I did not even drink everyday. Anyway thank u for your help.

Nuudawn

I don't even have a full 24 hours under my sobriety belt but I did sober recently enough to recall how freaking thin my skin was in the beginning. Everything and everyone..BUGGED me for the first few weeks. I remember suddenly noticing how loud a certain co-worker was and I wanted to run up and beat her senseless...like really smash that talking head to a pulp. Actually, I was very audio sensitive for awhile..but hell, I was sensitive bout everything. I think that's why I picked up the drink in the first place...no coping mechanisms. Didn't learn any growing up..and well, I am still now grown up..despite the wrinkles : )

Thank you for posting this...good reminder of what I have signed on for again. But I do know..the good far outweigh the annoyances.

I also couldn't help thinking (although I don't know how much you drank) that I know I have long tolerated jobs, relationships, situations when drinking. Drinking helped me cope with what a normal, healthy person simply wouldn't tolerate.

Maybe your house situation really does suck and you really need to change it. But 8 days in? Far too soon to know I think. It will calm...or it will change.

karate

Very common to be agitated when you first quit .

I was .

You can power through it ,exercise is your friend .

I will suggest this too ,since you are married -sex works too .

sugarbear1

sounds like untreated alcoholism to me. alcohol treated my alcoholism.

without alcohol or a new solution, life sucked.

I wish you well on your sober journey!

grubby

It's only day 8, at this stage your mind is no doubt a big tangled mess........ i know mine was.

I'd say its too early to come to any conclusions, just keep moving forward. My head cleared up a lot after the first 4 weeks or so. What you are describing...... feeling anxious, irritable, depressed, is nothing unusual at only 8 days in........

Amazingglazier

Yes it is very normal to feel blah, your AV is trying to tell you you could sleep if you just give in! Why not get a set of over the ear headphones and listen to your favorite music, it sure helped me to sleep when I was in jail , with all the anxiety I had worrying about how my SO was with no one to help her! Give it some more time needtostopthis, it will get better! And if your just getting by on your husbands salary, how the hell would it get better spending money on alcohol? Congrats on 9 days! Stay Strong and Well ! Bobby

karate

The receptors in your brain are returning to normal .

And rest assured they will .

Then you will feel better .

heath480

Congratulations on 8 days sober.

I use wax ear plugs,I cannot stand any noise at all when trying to sleep.

Sudz No More

Exactly what I was going to tell you. I always have something like that running, a fan or air conditioner in the summer and an air purifier in the winter. It works really well, just focus on the white noise of them and you will almost not hear the outside noise any more. I also focus on the feel of the air blowing and it is comforting and distracting to any outside interference.

For added noise blocking, try ear plugs as well as the white noise if the noise outside is bad enough to keep you awake.

needtostopthis

Just checking in here. Still doing well in the drinking department , I did slip up once and started all over, but I have been sober for at least two weeks now, but I am still feeling terrible if not worse. I have not had a full nights sleep in a month now. I really do appreciate everyone helping me out here. I always use a fan, I have for years because I always needed the white noise, the problem is my favorite fan broke and i got a new one and it just drives me nuts, I don't like the sound it makes. I know it sounds crazy, heck I feel crazy but I focus on the sound it makes and then I can't sleep because of that. So now I use my husbands fan but it is not very loud and the traffic is so loud I still hear the buses and loud cars zoom by all day and night. I hate earplugs, they make my ears hurt for some reason. Are there any good ones. I am afraid the wax ones will get into my ear. Is that possible. We are still talking about moving but it may be a bad investment so we are just waiting for new windows in my bedroom. I hope that helps. Anyway I do not want to drink at all. It really never crosses my mind. I think I have replaced drinking with this not sleeping worry or something. I don't know right now. I think this is deeper then alcoholism now, I think I was blunting out a lot with drinking, and now all my anxieties all coming out. I am really thinking I need medication, and some deep therapy.

karate

The issues you are facing ,all normal .