CLAS

Some mornings I wake up and play a tape of myself last night being drunk. Waking up wishing I had just watched Dateline and drank a diet lemonade.

This morning I awoke and thought what would I be feeling right now had I drank last night? Dark, scary thoughts. Regret. Starting over. Fatness.

That feeling of facing people with that big ugly blank spot of being out of it for 5 hours.

I am sure that the cost of drinking doesn't eclipse the "high" one gets from it. Not drinking today. Or tomorrow.

D122y

Clas,

For me, it wasn't about the good feeling i got from drinking, it was the addiction.

Imo....the addiction starts fairly quickly for us that like the buzz.

It is like any drug.

The crave lasts forever, we get stronger when we quit. Our analytical mind defeats our emotional mind.

It is not about anything else except addiction.

Thanks.

Doug39

I am 110 days sober and it is unbelievable how clear my mind is these days.

Sure I still have some bad moments - and it sometimes feels odd how focused and clear everything is getting. My memory is improving as well.

If I feel this much better now I can't wait to see how much better I will be once I have years of sobriety under my belt.

I can't believe I wasted 27 years walking around in a drunken daze.

SWTPEA61

Doug
I feel the same way I beat myself up sometimes I can't believe I allowed the addiction to take me over...... keep going be strong im right behind you with 100 days

gaffo

I remember waking up and knowing that the whole day was going to suck. Sometimes there were important or fun things to be done but I would feel awful. I was wasting the "good stuff". Even drinking wouldn't make me feel better unless I drank enough to get drunk again, which would lead to feeling like crap again--the dreaded "day two" hangover. I tried to avoid thinking too much about the night before. Good luck with that!

ljc267

When I used to consider quitting I would come up with 100 reasons why I couldn't. There's a game on today, its Friday, hell its Tuesday. When I finally did quit it was because I didn't consider anything else but I'm done. I said if not today then when? I had no answer, so that was it. I never and have not since considered drinking again. That's not to say I haven't felt the desire to, it's that I won't consider doing it at all.

That's what has worked for me thus far.

Doug39

I have so many of these - what bothers me the most is I was a drunk the first 20 years of my daughters life. I was either drunk or hungover everyday and it is hard to spend quality time in an alcoholic haze.

One time that really stood out was my wife's college graduation. She went back to school and got her 4 year degree in 3 years while working a full time job. She was also in the top 10% of her class.

I was so severely hungover that day that I could hardly function. I couldn't eat, was vomiting and dizzy all day. I was trying to force down vodka at 9 in the morning to steady myself. I felt like such a piece of garbage.

gaffo

One of the best things about quitting when I did was that my kids were 6 and 8, five years later they don't have any memory of me as a drinker.

I remember one day, a couple of months before I quit I was suffering through a "slow roller hangover" at the drag strip. I was driving my sweet 10 second Max Wedge Plymouth, it was running like a top, the kind of thing that I generally live for but I just wanted to put it back in the trailer so I could finally get my drink on and feel some relief. That was a true "moment of clarity".