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When was the time?

Old 04-28-2015, 02:04 PM
  # 21 (permalink)  
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Before I started drinking this last time, I promised myself that if I ever got to a certain point, I would quit. I got to that point, I had a few family members remind me, and I quit.
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Old 04-28-2015, 02:24 PM
  # 22 (permalink)  
getting that power back.
 
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and well done, bmac.
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Old 04-28-2015, 03:38 PM
  # 23 (permalink)  
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i'd been in AA for about 5 months and i could not get hold of sobriety.

i woke up yet again not knowing what time of day or even what day it was. i woke up because i was vomiting in my bed. i didn't have the strength to move so i just found a dry patch and tried to sleep. i went through a day and night of severe withdrawals, culminating in going to the kitchen for water and just plain collapsing. my heart was beating out of my chest and i remember thinking well, are you happy now? you've finally drunk yourself to death'. i took a chance and a handful of pills (i hadn't taken my meds for around 3 days) and hoped the auditory hallucinations would quiet enough for me to get some sleep - i kept hearing people shouting in my living room, and loud knocks at the door - i was alone and nobody knew to check on me.

i woke up the next day and someone in AA got me to a meeting.

it was life or death for me. i chose to live (although i have days still where i wonder if i made the right choice) and at just a year sober the rewards are immeasurable.

i loved booze. it didn't love me back though. i had to get to a place having lost my job, my daughter who went to live with her dad, my husband and my home, where i had to say enough was enough. i live alone and was accountable to nobody except myself. i do it a day at a time, because i deserve to live.

we all do. please be well.
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Old 04-28-2015, 03:53 PM
  # 24 (permalink)  
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I was told by my doctor to stop drinking or die. In case you're wondering, doctors do say those words exactly. I drank hard and fast nightly with no breaks for ten years. There was no slow buildup just burning bright and burning out fast. My blood pressure was in the 180's when resting.

The health stuff didn't actually make me quit. I stopped on June 27th because the daily hangovers became unfathomable. Undoable. Unrelenting. Trying to maintain a daily life of work and then binge drinking every night had become impossible. With how I felt everyday if someone said "you are going to die one one week" I wouldn't have blinked. Fearful? Yes. Surprised? No.

I also did not even get buzzed anymore. I would almost go as far to say that I did not even get drunk anymore. I would get uncoordinated and sloppy but there was no enjoyment and no relaxation. I would also black out sometimes still but it was like I skipped any drunkenness and just went right to black out. It was really weird in the end because there was no amount of alcohol that made me feel good anymore. Alcohol truly stopped working for me.

The only way I can describe it is if you switched and OxyContin addict's pills with sugar tablets. I was terribly confused as to why I didn't and couldn't enjoy drinking anymore. It was as if somebody is switched alcohol to floor cleaner or just something poisonous that had no enjoyment. It was very strange.

I couldn't live with drinking and I couldn't live without drinking. I was one miserable, miserable soul. I basically had to choose between being miserable sober or being miserable drunk. I figured being miserable sober would not kill me and it would also cost a lot less money. So I gave it a shot.

The only way I can really explain it is that I couldn't drink anymore. I don't know if this happens to people after that 400th blackout or the 2000th hangover in a row? When does this happen? All I know is it happened to me. When I joined here in 2010 I was at daily blackout drinker but I still loved drinking and it made me feel great when I was doing it. Boy did that change by 2014.

I never gave up on alcohol. I never gave up wanting to drink. It gave up on me.

My body did not process it anymore. When I was drinking you could've set me on a beach in a lawnchair with the fifth of vodka and 2 L of Pepsi and said "drink away. drink as much as you want!" And it would have done nothing for me except given me one of the worst hangovers known to man the next day. Would have I tried to drink it? Yes. I would have drank probably the entire fifth. I most likely would have just sat there and cried as I drank.

That's when I simply could not do it anymore it was a mixture of impending death and barely able to live because I felt so horrible every minute of every day.

The reason I stopped on the exact day I stopped which was June 27, 2014 is because I had shooting pains in my back and pains in my right side and pains in my left side and I really thought I was going to die that day.
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Old 04-28-2015, 03:56 PM
  # 25 (permalink)  
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I remember the day I said "I can't do this anymore"...don't even think I knew what "this" meant, it was something to do with drink but more than that...the lying, cheating, dodging, grafting, hiding...yeesh.

Not my worst ever drink either. I stepped out of a casino at 10 in the morning, had been there since 9 the previous night. I'd taken to drinking in casinos when I could for the cheap booze, anonymity and the "glamour" hehe.

Had £40 in the bank, lost the first £20, debated whether to risk the rest or just drink it away. By ten in the morning I had cashed £1200 and was so drunk I walked out with an extra £900 in chips by mistake. I was in a panic about whether they would let me back in to cash the rest. My rent was due and I needed to eat.

The sun was shining, but my skin was crawling. I had a fair dose of the heebie jeebies but knew I couldn't continue drinking or playing without my heart exploding. I was late for work (again), knew I couldn't go in as I was and couldn't face calling in (again) with the same old excuses. Couldn't do "this" anymore.

I took a few more drinks that night (30 March 2009) and attended my first AA meeting the next evening. So far those were the last drinks I ever had to take.

P
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Old 04-28-2015, 04:40 PM
  # 26 (permalink)  
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When my kid mentioned the color of my eyes were blue with some yellow around them
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Old 04-28-2015, 08:09 PM
  # 27 (permalink)  
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For some reason today I happen to think that I remember my first drink, a beer at festival thingy when I was like fourteen, the "adults" must have thought it was fun to see a kid drink themselves silly because I was taken home later full blackout first time. I also remember my last, poured out a half a beer near the end of a quasi self calculated taper. It was very close to my join date.
I had vowed hundreds of times in between those two to get off the merry go round, but finally realized I could do it and mean it after reading about RR and AVRT, which I heard about from SR. I've had enough, a sufficit amount .
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Old 04-28-2015, 08:28 PM
  # 28 (permalink)  
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When I was at the point, starting to shake a bit from withdrawal after a 3-week all-day/every-day binge, where I was either going to go to the store and buy more alcohol and convince myself I didn't care that my wife was going to walk out for good, knowing deep down that that would be the end of me and I would wind up dead soon, or I was going to go through the full detox hell but with support from my wife. So I went through 3 days of the full detox hell with no meds, and on day 4 I went back to the medical treatment group I had relapsed out of and never drank again. Still amazes me that I went that far down the hole before turning back, but I did and it worked out, so maybe that's what I needed to do at the time.
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Old 04-29-2015, 08:40 AM
  # 29 (permalink)  
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Like some others have said, for me it was stop or die, I had a choice. I actually picked my "quit day" a couple months in advance, and that was that, my last drink was just before midnight, July 24, 2011.

For the record, these last almost four years have been... FAN-F...ING-TASTIC!!!!
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