picturebigger

yeah i know you care. i appreciate it. i hate never having good news to send your way. but i'm finally working on it... you always kept saying come back to the forum and get going. tah-dah.. here i am. seems to work pretty well already.. here in my first post since my last relapse, i'm already seriously reminded that i will in-fact die soon, if i don't quit. lol.. would be funny if it weren't true. glad to be back...

i'm arming up.

picturebigger

that is a great point. i have actually been preparing to do the same. quit reading the headlines, just nail it til it's over. i completely agree w/ you and Scott. but i can't help but be nervous after the last 2 quits made me so miserable. i can say now i'll be man up and accomplish it, but i struggle to forget the last 2 times i had the same motivation and week 5 ruined me. i guess only one way to find out.. and take what i learned from the past 2 times as i go. first quit was 34 days, second quit was 37 days. maybe i can drag it out to 47 days or forever this time. scrape myself up and do it again, my only option.

Dee74

Welcome back

I could drink a case a day or more when I had the money.
No off switch.

I know a little romance makes the tale easier to swallow but there was not much legendary about it for me.

I remember many days (more than I care to count) being passed out, having wet myself and puked a little.

Then I'd wake up and drink some more.

Not very inspiring from this side of the fence.

How I stopped...I came here and really threw my self into the community. I denied myself the option of sating my cravings anbd my mental burblings with beer.

It was rough for a month or so but it got better.

There;'s no reason you can't leave it behind too

D

hellrzr

I also was an 18-24 a night guy. That was during the week in the course of 3-4 hours after work. On the weekends I went through about 2.5 - 30 packs and wasn't sober for a minute all weekend. I was sick all the time, both physically and mentally!

I was able to turn things around by attending AA, getting a sponsor with a great and active sponsorship line, and working the steps. A key is to work the steps and not just attend meetings. Meetings are important but the steps will save your life!

jay01

I averaged about the same, at first I was embarassed being seen carrying beer inside everyday and started carrying a empty cooler to work just hide my daily afternoon malfunction. Once I lost my embarrassment and felt no shame I thought there was no way out.

The vast majority have tried multiple times, and there's nothing wrong in that. You can quit, I suggest you pick a path you think would help you succeed. From many that's AA, religious study, secular groups, solo determination or a combination.

Flyfisher125

I would put down about 18 tall boys in a go in college... Time went by and I got to the point where I thought beer was just too slow. Ended up at about a fifth a night of whiskey. Many nights closer to a fifth and a half. Depressing time was realizing I needed to buy half gallons instead of fifths to satisfy my addiction.

FBL

For the last 10 years of my drinking "career" I was averaging about 18 beers per weeknight. Every Saturday and Sunday I could start earlier and could easily put away 24-36. If not for my job, I'm sure I could do that during the week as well. I thought I was screwed and would never be able to stop until I was dead. The morning shakes, depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, you name it, I had it. I eventually ended up in the ER with severe panic attacks. That was my wake-up call and I haven't had a drop of alcohol since that fateful day. That was nearly seven and a half years ago.

Bottom line, you gotta want to be sober more than you want to be drunk.

The good news is, we CAN and DO recover. If I can do it, so can you.

Ooona

Yes as you read around here you'll find that there are many who drank as much or even more then you did. Ive found comparing myself to others is a way for the annoying chirping little devil voice in my head to either convince me I wasnt that bad, OR that Im just TOO bad off to get this sobriety thing. Either way, none of us are unique...we may have had different patterns of drinking but really the common denominator is that we are all just a bunch of sick individuals in desperate need of mental physical and spiritual change/help.

SnazzyDresser

I wouldn't go that far. For myself, I'd say it's in my own best interest not to drink and leave it at that.

Mountainmanbob

I will admit that explains pretty well my condition during my last two big drunks. But, now and for some time I have been totally Recovered from that.
M-Bob

Timebuster

24 beers a day is chump change compared to what I used to drink every day. I would go through 24 beers as a chaser for my fifth of vodka and not think twice about it.

Personally, I hate that word PAWS. Take away alcohol and that empty hole in your gut comes back and people right away call it PAWS. I know when I stopped drinking all the feelings of restlessness, Irritable and discontent that I would suppress and numb with alcohol came right back without vengeance.

Restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks/drinks which they see others taking with impunity. After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again.

I understand that Alcoholics like me have an allergy of the body and a obsession of the mind and unless I can make the decision to change. But until the alcoholic breaks the cycle of denial there is very little hope. I know in my early stages without alcohol I thought I was going to go crazy and I desperately needed a solution to my dilemma.

I didn't want to drink and I couldn't live this way anymore and I prayed to my higher power of my understanding for help. The light bulb moment came the day when I logged on to sober recovery in 2004. I was suffering from ongoing relapses and a member here wrote back, and I quote, TimeBuster, I am gonna give it to you straight, ok? The reason you are relapsing, I sense a big part of the problem is the resistance (I am not hearin surrender). When I log off that day her words stuck in my head. Surrender. I am not hearing surrender. That my friend was my higher power of my understanding sending me the help that I was so desperately needing.

That was the lightbulb moment I needed to get pro-active in my recovery. I am now 12 years clean and sober. You logged in here for a reason, you needed help with your drinking. This is your lightbulb moment, don't let the denial your in (excuse the pun) "slip" you into further delusion that you can't live without alcohol.

Hugs and prayers
TB

Fly N Buy

How many beers could I drink in a day?
All of them.........

The reality I discovered in sobriety is I wasn't the baddest of the bad or the best of the best, in any pursuit including drinking. I was just another alcoholic on the bus, Gus.......

We share a common thread - life had gotten out of control (to varying degrees) for the vast majority of us. Removing alcohol from my daily living and investing time fruitfully in development of body, mind and spirit is recovery for me. We are not special, just run of the mill drunks who made a decision followed up with putting one foot in front of the other.

I assure you that regardless of the fuel that lights your fire you're nothing unique when it comes to being an over indulgent drunk. There are many, many of us here from all over the globe.

The real question is what to do about it??

ScottFromWI

I don't know that I would word it quite as strongly as that but I definitely agree with this premise. Using the term "PAWS" in some cases I think actually enables some from focusing attention on the actual issues that need treatment - specifically psychological conditions. If you have Depression, PTSD, OCD, Anxiety, Bipolar or any other condition that appears at any time after you quit drinking, you should treat those conditions. There isn't a "PAWS Virus" causing those illnesses to come and go in the background, they in themselves are diagnosable, treatable conditions and need to be addressed as such.

JeffreyAK

I think what we miss when we think this way is, those feelings of restlessness, irritability and discontent are usually CAUSED by alcohol abuse. For sure in my case, after a period of weeks to months of sobriety, those feelings went away. Long-term abuse of alcohol has all kinds of consequences, and some of them only become apparent after we've quit for a while, but before we've healed enough for them to fade.

Zeebs

This. I think a lot of us thought we were the worst of the worst.

tomsteve

it wasn't week 5 that ruined you. youre not ruined. imo, what you did was decide to stop fighting.

surrender- best thing I ever did.

BlissWithin

there were days where I would drink a standard shot of vodka (30 ml) every 30 min right after breakfast, I did manage to drink more than that eventually, but now I'm over 20 months alcohol-free, so yes, it is possible to quit drinking for good.

August252015

I have told my story around here plenty, so I will just say this - I went cold turkey from a handle of vodka every 2 days (or less, and usually a few other drinks around that). That was 297 days ago. I was given a choice to quit, or have a year, 18 mo to live. For whatever reason, the message got through this time.

I decided that an unknown amount and degree of PAWS was better than a certain death by drinking.

I experienced pretty severe PAWS - I was very sick when I quit and the first five or so weeks are a blur pretty much as everything started "rolling" out of my body. I saw a good shift around 100 days, in lots of ways, and continued to get better. All of my tests and levels are completely normal now and my main challenge is fatigue and a propensity for colds; both of those were pre-alcoholic "things".

The only solution to any of the symptoms after quitting is to stay quit.

You can do it- a few months of "bad" was pretty darn short compared to the way I was living and felt, and the way things could have gone the way I was headed.

August252015

I had a severe vodka habit by the end and I was very (VERY) sick. I chose cold turkey and an unknown type and amount of suffering in the immediate term over certain death by drinking. I was just DONE.

I suffered from PAWS and have described it elsewhere on different threads; I don't remember much of the first five or so weeks of my sobriety and saw my first big shift to feeling better around 100 days.

Pretty short amount of time to suffer- and I went through things like leg seizures, routine incontinence, vomiting, spatial difficulties, aphasia, just to name a few things- to be sober and so much healthier on the brink of 10 months.

You just have to decide if you want to be sober more than you want to drink, or are afraid of the immediate term when you quit. I had good drs and meds to support my process - help is there for you if you need it.

Good luck.

TheRepairman

18-24 in a single sitting is not unusual. I was a binge drinker so this was a norm for me. I would not drink for days, even weeks then have a binge for several days of copious amounts of cheap beer and vodka. Would lay waste to my body and would require 1-2 days recovery for every binge day.

How I didn't cause permanent damage is beyond me. Recent blood work and other tests/proceedures all normal.