Surrounded Alone
 

I have stopped drinking successfuly..... so far.

I stopped and now I I can see have to face a monster..... one of many I bet.

The monster in the room in my life is I have a loving wife and kids and yet I feel like a satellite... just in orbit around the family isolated and alone. I surround myself with work and chores and play but most of the times I'm just trying to get through those things so I can go be left alone... weird that loneliness can become a familiar habit.

I'm not happy about it but too afraid to change.... stupid right?

I was adopted into an older family and my mom just passed away a few years back leaving me with no one that I have any history with.

I started drinking heavily when my mom passed. She raised me on her own pretty much and so we were close and man I really miss her. ... even the disagreements!

I feel like I have no roots anymore. My wife's family are all in another country and we do our best with the kids but I feel sad for them especially around the holidays because it just..... "us".

...but they are happy to have a sober daddy.....

I'm afraid that emptiness I feel with never go away. I know I can't/won't replace it with booze and that I have to find something to fill the void for my family and carry on.

I think I wanted to just put it down in words....

I'm surrounded alone.

Hi TnTPoP

I think many of us can identify with 'being lonely in a crowd'.
I was that way all my life.

When I stopped drinking though I decided to stop trying to fill the void, and focused instead on healing it.

A little counselling helped me, as well as opening up and asking for help from those closest to me.

I was so afraid of being hurt I'd put up walls around me all my life - I'd done it for so long I wasn't even aware I was doing it.

I'm sure your wife and kids love you - I think that's something you can trust in, even if trusting is a hard thing to do.

D

There's nothing wrong with just "us" Turn it into a positive. Start a family holiday tradition that just you, your wife, and the kids partake in. Your kids will love you for it and can form a family bond that others would die for. There are kids who don't have an "us". Broken families, families with active addiction,etc. With sobriety you can make a huge difference in their lives.

I could have easily written this. Yikes! One thing I've been doing is scheduling activities with the kids. Hiking, baking, riding bikes, movies, board games, etc. It took a little bit of getting used to as I used to spent a lot of time alone while drinking.

Spend time with your family, and you'll realize how great your new sober life is!

This

There's no question that there is a void left in our lives once alcohol is gone. As bad as it was for us, it was still a big part of our lives. I remember feeling exactly the same way when I first quit, wondering how i'd ever be able to do ANYTHING without drinking. I drank when I mowed the lawn, cooked, went on vacation, did the dishes, pretty much all the time. How could I ever enjoy any of these things without a beer in my hand?

The good news is you can do all those things and enjoy them even more than you did before. In order to do that though you may need to take an inventory of what's really going on in your life. Some of us have underlying issues like anxiety/depression, etc that need to be treated. Others have physical issues from the damage that drinking did to our bodies that needs to heal. Most of us have relationship issues that sober time will help improve. For many, a structured sobriety plan like AA/NA, AVRT, etc will help address not only "not drinking", but many of the other issues.

One thing you'll also hear over in over is that "it takes time". And it's the last thing we want to hear as addicts...because by nature we want instant gratification. But unfortunately that's not the way the "real" world works. Accepting that things will improve over time if we let them is just as important as accepting our addiction.

I heard someone say our drinking is an attempt to fill a God sized hole in us. It kinda made sense, I didn't seem to have a place in the world in which I felt comfortable, my connection was busted.

My pattern was drink = disaster, sober = misery which lead to drink, to disaster back to sober misery then drink..... What was wrong with me?

Alcoholism manifests like this. In a way, my problems began when I stopped drinking. There was something wrong with my reaction to life. The solution I found was through AAs 12 steps. After working through them I underwent a sort of personality change. I suddenly realised I had undergone a profound change in my reaction to life. The world seemed to have chaned from a cold and fearful place to one that is warm and welcoming, and there was a place in it for me. I have been able to relate to people much better, and feel much better about myself. Life is entirely different these days because I am a different person.

Of course I didn't just wake up one morning and think "oh it's a lovely day, I think I'll go to AA and change my life". I went because I was desperate and had run out of options and time. I was willing to do anything to get away from the misery that was my life. Strange as it may seem, the best recoveries can be born out of such desperation.