Was there one moment that made you quit drinking?
quat
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: terra (mostly)firma
Posts: 4,823
Originally Posted by jay37 
Its a sincere question. Some of your stories help me look at my own life and decide what I want to do. If I run into some issues that sound familiar in my own life that i can take that into account in my own situation. Thank you
Well SR is a great resource to find out about other peoples experiences, hope it helps /points to some solutions for you .
What are your plans about future alcohol use?
Guest
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2014
Posts: 36
Originally Posted by dwtbd
Jay
Well SR is a great resource to find out about other peoples experiences, hope it helps /points to some solutions for you .
What are your plans about future alcohol use?
Well SR is a great resource to find out about other peoples experiences, hope it helps /points to some solutions for you .
What are your plans about future alcohol use?
quat
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: terra (mostly)firma
Posts: 4,823
Jay
We all/each live our lives and experiences as unique individual people, but we can at times share commonalities. I drank to get drunk and I loved the feeling of being drunk, I tried living with the 'enjoyment' of drinking while trying to avoid the consequences of living that way, but it's impossible to out run them in the long run. At 37 I didn't drink in the am, but I loved drinking, without the consequences , of course. I pooh poohed the idea of the progressiveness of alcohol abuse, I seemed to be immune and then somehow I wasn't any longer.
wish you well and I hope you find the answers you are looking for
We all/each live our lives and experiences as unique individual people, but we can at times share commonalities. I drank to get drunk and I loved the feeling of being drunk, I tried living with the 'enjoyment' of drinking while trying to avoid the consequences of living that way, but it's impossible to out run them in the long run. At 37 I didn't drink in the am, but I loved drinking, without the consequences , of course. I pooh poohed the idea of the progressiveness of alcohol abuse, I seemed to be immune and then somehow I wasn't any longer.
wish you well and I hope you find the answers you are looking for
Sober Alcoholic
Join Date: Dec 2014
Location: northern AZ
Posts: 796
Goodmorning Jay. I see some sincerity in your words now... thank you for that... and just want to address what you've said. In the future, as you monitor your drinking (a very good idea you've had there) may I suggest that you also watch what acquaintances you choose to hang out with. I found I subconsciously, or whatever, chose people I fit in with so doing that would really be observing myself in a way. Its also a good thing that you're observing our stories and how there is a common thread of differences rather than similarities when we begin the process leading us to realizing that we do, indeed, have a problem with alcohol long before our lives had become unmanageable to one degree or another depending on what's acceptable to us individually. For some of us merely being controlled by anything, to any degree, is unacceptable. For others we had to go through the horror stories after we drank enough for actual physical addiction to take hold, which by the way, happens as if over night much as allergies suddenly show their ugly heads we think suddenly. While you're going through your own process, you might want to think about why that beer you stop off to have wasn't an NA one. In my experience, social drinkers don't have a drink for the affect but to be polite or have been acculturated for celebration in social situations. They sip and often don't finish. There's a joke that used to go around: The difference between an alcoholic and a social drinker is... an alcoholic always knows where they put their drink if it accidentally leaves their hand.
Well, that's it except, I wish you well Jay. I hope your journey is gentle. If you ever decide you need support, I hope you've noticed there are good, caring, people here who will give you that. Take care.
Well, that's it except, I wish you well Jay. I hope your journey is gentle. If you ever decide you need support, I hope you've noticed there are good, caring, people here who will give you that. Take care.
Member
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Vashon WA
Posts: 1,035
I think that Turtle82 makes interesting points. After three years of sobriety I have been coming to grips with losing a few friends who were drinkers and what that says about me. One guy in particular has been a friend for 38 years and now he lives in a time zone 12 hours away. Every time he calls he's plastered and I'm working sober and it made me realize that we always were drunk together and that I really don't have any use for him anymore. It used to make me sad, it might have even been an excuse to keep drinking but not anymore. Quitting drinking and drugging has set me free to grow and I'm glad. I've had a few drunk albatrosses around my neck over the years and I don't have to put up with that anymore!
EndGame
Join Date: Jun 2013
Location: New York, NY
Posts: 4,677
The short version is that I was living a shite life. My future no longer existed in the form I'd imagined it would in my early twenties. The best I had to look forward to was increasing pain and suffering, unbearable losses around every turn. I was isolated from the greater community of the living, and alienated from my truer self. Life as I knew it, or longed for it to be, no longer existed as I imagined it, as I knew it. I was a carrier in the quarantined land of misery, regret and despair. I received nothing good from my artificial world and had nothing good to offer in return.
On another level, the material world as I knew it did not at all align with my internal world. This is, I believe, always the case; it's part of the human condition. Yet now, instead of immersing myself in that relentless conflict, I was on the sidelines and virtually disappeared when I attempted to enter the world of the living. I had disqualified myself without reservation from outlets for genuine friendship, intimacy and love. That ever-present empty place inside became my home...empty calories for a starving man. I was a stranger in a stranger land, and came to expect, often wallow in, my misery. It was my closest companion, my constant lover in a relationship that did not come even close to the qualifier 'unhealthy'. And though it took me years to get there (or, from another perspective, to discover that this is where I'd always been, or at least was always headed), it all seemed to happen overnight. Time itself is an unrelenting adversary in a life that is not immortal, but even more of a cruel and unforgiving tyrant for those of us who seek to suspend it's power by attempting to flee it.
I experienced Nietzsche's death of God. A death that is not at all of the religious variety, and finds no solace in the illusion/reality that suffering is our lot. There was no saving grace in living, and the opposite only grew in its appeal. How, exactly, does one rise from the dead without a living God? And, given my set of circumstances, why would I even want to? I was writing a chapter in my life that should never had been written...living someone else's life.
My eventual recovery was "spiritual," not in the sense that Divine Intervention played a role in it, but that science, reason and logic were on holiday for the process. There is no logical reason why someone who is wholly dead on the inside should later on experience life and living for the first time, and no act of science or logical sleight of mind brought me there. Leaps of faith are often bandied about as though doing so were a choice in line with choosing fish or fowl as the main course. Instead, I see a leap of faith as choosing either nourishment or starvation; a starving man will eat anything to release himself from unbearable suffering, and it is the very false sense of fulfillment that lead me to starvation in the first place. At least with starvation I get all kinds of attention that I otherwise would not receive. My suffering reminds me that I'm alive, if not altogether living, and attention from others confirms it, even when it's only pity.
Putting down the drink only added to my misery, at least at first. I was no less a stranger to myself and, guess what? I had to change everything in my life in order to escape the world that, far from having built it with intention, was all I had left. To be, or not to be? Life or death? The starving person who'd learned to settle for stale bread crumbs was himself now crumbling, and there was nothing or no one to put him back together again (although, prior to this, being "together" had never been my strong suit). So I had to learn, not all over again, if only because I'd failed to learn the first time and during the subsequent times that followed. No, I had to learn all that I had avoided learning in the first place. In that initial suffering there was clarity: If I wanted to live, to live for the first time, then I needed to act. There were no other choices, having abandoned both life and living as a lifestyle for the years that preceded my fall. There was very little that I knew or had learned that was going to deliver me from a personal death to a better place. It was necessary for me to discard virtually everything that I thought I knew, which is in itself a painful process, and open myself to a world of possibilities, many of which were both uncomfortable and painful for me, but all of which needed to be tried.
We tell ourselves so many lies in order to sustain a style of life that is without meaning, with or without booze. As an active alcoholic, I was a lying machine that specialized in self-deception and bad faith. This clearly needed changing, and the pain that accompanied that change was exquisite.
I no longer abstain because of the predictable or inevitable consequences -- although that certainly has its place, if only because I live in dread that I'll live a life, my life, that will go unlived. I don't drink because I no longer want to drink; I want to be present for all that I do, for all that happens, and for whatever meaning is available to me. The more I act, the more I become who I am. These may seem like vague or "woolly" abstractions, and may only have meaning for me within the context of my own choices, my own life, but learning to live with and at times embrace ambiguity has its own rewards, while living with the certainty and the twisted security of an inevitable inner death only leaves me hungry to remain there.
On another level, the material world as I knew it did not at all align with my internal world. This is, I believe, always the case; it's part of the human condition. Yet now, instead of immersing myself in that relentless conflict, I was on the sidelines and virtually disappeared when I attempted to enter the world of the living. I had disqualified myself without reservation from outlets for genuine friendship, intimacy and love. That ever-present empty place inside became my home...empty calories for a starving man. I was a stranger in a stranger land, and came to expect, often wallow in, my misery. It was my closest companion, my constant lover in a relationship that did not come even close to the qualifier 'unhealthy'. And though it took me years to get there (or, from another perspective, to discover that this is where I'd always been, or at least was always headed), it all seemed to happen overnight. Time itself is an unrelenting adversary in a life that is not immortal, but even more of a cruel and unforgiving tyrant for those of us who seek to suspend it's power by attempting to flee it.
I experienced Nietzsche's death of God. A death that is not at all of the religious variety, and finds no solace in the illusion/reality that suffering is our lot. There was no saving grace in living, and the opposite only grew in its appeal. How, exactly, does one rise from the dead without a living God? And, given my set of circumstances, why would I even want to? I was writing a chapter in my life that should never had been written...living someone else's life.
My eventual recovery was "spiritual," not in the sense that Divine Intervention played a role in it, but that science, reason and logic were on holiday for the process. There is no logical reason why someone who is wholly dead on the inside should later on experience life and living for the first time, and no act of science or logical sleight of mind brought me there. Leaps of faith are often bandied about as though doing so were a choice in line with choosing fish or fowl as the main course. Instead, I see a leap of faith as choosing either nourishment or starvation; a starving man will eat anything to release himself from unbearable suffering, and it is the very false sense of fulfillment that lead me to starvation in the first place. At least with starvation I get all kinds of attention that I otherwise would not receive. My suffering reminds me that I'm alive, if not altogether living, and attention from others confirms it, even when it's only pity.
Putting down the drink only added to my misery, at least at first. I was no less a stranger to myself and, guess what? I had to change everything in my life in order to escape the world that, far from having built it with intention, was all I had left. To be, or not to be? Life or death? The starving person who'd learned to settle for stale bread crumbs was himself now crumbling, and there was nothing or no one to put him back together again (although, prior to this, being "together" had never been my strong suit). So I had to learn, not all over again, if only because I'd failed to learn the first time and during the subsequent times that followed. No, I had to learn all that I had avoided learning in the first place. In that initial suffering there was clarity: If I wanted to live, to live for the first time, then I needed to act. There were no other choices, having abandoned both life and living as a lifestyle for the years that preceded my fall. There was very little that I knew or had learned that was going to deliver me from a personal death to a better place. It was necessary for me to discard virtually everything that I thought I knew, which is in itself a painful process, and open myself to a world of possibilities, many of which were both uncomfortable and painful for me, but all of which needed to be tried.
We tell ourselves so many lies in order to sustain a style of life that is without meaning, with or without booze. As an active alcoholic, I was a lying machine that specialized in self-deception and bad faith. This clearly needed changing, and the pain that accompanied that change was exquisite.
I no longer abstain because of the predictable or inevitable consequences -- although that certainly has its place, if only because I live in dread that I'll live a life, my life, that will go unlived. I don't drink because I no longer want to drink; I want to be present for all that I do, for all that happens, and for whatever meaning is available to me. The more I act, the more I become who I am. These may seem like vague or "woolly" abstractions, and may only have meaning for me within the context of my own choices, my own life, but learning to live with and at times embrace ambiguity has its own rewards, while living with the certainty and the twisted security of an inevitable inner death only leaves me hungry to remain there.
Member
Join Date: Oct 2011
Location: UK
Posts: 5,678
I knew throughout my drinking career that I didn't drinking 'normally'. I just procrastinated a long time before I did anything about it. And eventually health problems tipped the balance in favour of quitting.
Member
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: northern michigan. not the U.P.
Posts: 15,281
Being responsible for tHe death of another human while drunk
Didn't stop me.
Watching, up close, a good friend take his last breath after alcohol destroyed him
Didnt stop me.
Funerals of frIends that died from OD's, alcohol related accidents, or suicide while drunk/ high
Didn't stop me.
2 DUI's
Didnt stop me.
Desperation- the pain of getting drunk exceeded the pain of reality and my choices were get help getting sober or kill myself
Is what it took.
It doesn't have to get that bad, but can.
Didn't stop me.
Watching, up close, a good friend take his last breath after alcohol destroyed him
Didnt stop me.
Funerals of frIends that died from OD's, alcohol related accidents, or suicide while drunk/ high
Didn't stop me.
2 DUI's
Didnt stop me.
Desperation- the pain of getting drunk exceeded the pain of reality and my choices were get help getting sober or kill myself
Is what it took.
It doesn't have to get that bad, but can.
Guest
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2014
Posts: 36
Originally Posted by Turtle82
Goodmorning Jay. I see some sincerity in your words now... thank you for that... and just want to address what you've said. In the future, as you monitor your drinking (a very good idea you've had there) may I suggest that you also watch what acquaintances you choose to hang out with. I found I subconsciously, or whatever, chose people I fit in with so doing that would really be observing myself in a way. Its also a good thing that you're observing our stories and how there is a common thread of differences rather than similarities when we begin the process leading us to realizing that we do, indeed, have a problem with alcohol long before our lives had become unmanageable to one degree or another depending on what's acceptable to us individually. For some of us merely being controlled by anything, to any degree, is unacceptable. For others we had to go through the horror stories after we drank enough for actual physical addiction to take hold, which by the way, happens as if over night much as allergies suddenly show their ugly heads we think suddenly. While you're going through your own process, you might want to think about why that beer you stop off to have wasn't an NA one. In my experience, social drinkers don't have a drink for the affect but to be polite or have been acculturated for celebration in social situations. They sip and often don't finish. There's a joke that used to go around: The difference between an alcoholic and a social drinker is... an alcoholic always knows where they put their drink if it accidentally leaves their hand.
Well, that's it except, I wish you well Jay. I hope your journey is gentle. If you ever decide you need support, I hope you've noticed there are good, caring, people here who will give you that. Take care.
Well, that's it except, I wish you well Jay. I hope your journey is gentle. If you ever decide you need support, I hope you've noticed there are good, caring, people here who will give you that. Take care.
Member
Join Date: Jan 2015
Location: Lubbock, TX
Posts: 2
I like this question. I only just signed up, but I find reading other's stories to be a great help, and very motivating. I was just reading stories about people's detox. It was slightly horrifying for me. I guess I'm lucky. Over the course of the last 15 years of drinking, I'd sometimes just take a month long break from booze. I never really experienced the horrific withdrawl symptoms many here have. Part of me wants to immediately say maybe I wasn't that bad. But, I still know I want to quit. I got lucky. I guess it was that I still ate right, went to the gym, and took my vitamins. I'm no scientist.
Many things made me decide to quit. I used to be a weekend drinker before. I started seeing someone and went 6 months with nothing to drink without a problem. We broke up because I missed going out with friends every weekend. Around 2 months later I realized how bad I messed up and started drinking more and more. 7 years later I was drinking a 12pk a day, still never getting over her. As time progressed I began to wonder how much of my drinking was keeping from moving on. I noticed how irritable I was getting. I didn't have empathy anymore. My erection quality was suffering. Lots of things.
Then last September my best friend died. His drinking problem was as bad as mine. He had depression though and had begun smoking that fake weed. He never mentioned either of those to any of us. That was the day I decided to quit. I was sober for two months. Then my mom had a heart attack. 13 hours a day in a hospital room for a week broke me and I drank. I wasn't drinking daily like I was, but still I know I needed to quit. After New Years Eve I was done. I want to give it another go. It's only been 2 days, but so far so good. I found this forum earlier. I think it'll help a lot. Hopefully things improve for me after a while.
Many things made me decide to quit. I used to be a weekend drinker before. I started seeing someone and went 6 months with nothing to drink without a problem. We broke up because I missed going out with friends every weekend. Around 2 months later I realized how bad I messed up and started drinking more and more. 7 years later I was drinking a 12pk a day, still never getting over her. As time progressed I began to wonder how much of my drinking was keeping from moving on. I noticed how irritable I was getting. I didn't have empathy anymore. My erection quality was suffering. Lots of things.
Then last September my best friend died. His drinking problem was as bad as mine. He had depression though and had begun smoking that fake weed. He never mentioned either of those to any of us. That was the day I decided to quit. I was sober for two months. Then my mom had a heart attack. 13 hours a day in a hospital room for a week broke me and I drank. I wasn't drinking daily like I was, but still I know I needed to quit. After New Years Eve I was done. I want to give it another go. It's only been 2 days, but so far so good. I found this forum earlier. I think it'll help a lot. Hopefully things improve for me after a while.
Don't Blink
Join Date: Sep 2014
Posts: 342
I had an argument with my husband that led to a physical altercation and ended with my 3 year old waking up to find me cowering under a bookshelf screaming at my husband to leave me the f*&k alone. I didn't quit right away but I'd say that night is my biggest motivator.
Member
Join Date: Jan 2015
Posts: 251
Originally Posted by erin8
I had an argument with my husband that led to a physical altercation and ended with my 3 year old waking up to find me cowering under a bookshelf screaming at my husband to leave me the f*&k alone. I didn't quit right away but I'd say that night is my biggest motivator.
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