Where would you be if you had kept drinking?
Where would you be if you had kept drinking?
I think about this often.
I don't think I'd have ever started a grad school program on top of my work/parenting. I wouldn't be this healthy and fit (not by a long shot, alcohol always threw off my progress). I think I'd be struggling, more anxious. It's one of the things that keeps me moving forward in sobriety with confidence.
I actually don't know where I'd be if I haven't quit. In a best case I'd be less healthy and going through the same moderation and "bad weekend" game. But there are far worse cases, too.
Grateful every day for sobriety.
I don't think I'd have ever started a grad school program on top of my work/parenting. I wouldn't be this healthy and fit (not by a long shot, alcohol always threw off my progress). I think I'd be struggling, more anxious. It's one of the things that keeps me moving forward in sobriety with confidence.
I actually don't know where I'd be if I haven't quit. In a best case I'd be less healthy and going through the same moderation and "bad weekend" game. But there are far worse cases, too.
Grateful every day for sobriety.
Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Oxnard (The Nard), CA, USA.
Posts: 13,958
Where would you be if you had kept drinking?
I would be dead. I was starting the process of convincing myself that my family would be better off without me. I was on a collision course with suicide.
My daughter was 16 when I pulled out of the spiral. It's painful for me to contemplate what would have happened to her if I hadn't.
My daughter was 16 when I pulled out of the spiral. It's painful for me to contemplate what would have happened to her if I hadn't.
I'm sure I wouldn't be here typing this response. I'd be long gone. I was driving when I shouldn't have been, passing out, putting myself in dangerous situations. I was completely dependent on it and the end was near.
I'm so thankful we are free of it.
I'm so thankful we are free of it.
Dead or wishing hard for it. Near the end of my drinking days I was pretty hopeless and certainly unhealthy, I was resigned to not surviving another year. Maybe that’s me being dramatic, but I believed it then, and I still feel that was accurate. It’s pretty remarkable how much things can change in a relatively short time, Thank-you, SR.
Member
Join Date: Apr 2019
Posts: 97
I think during the lockdowns I would’ve gone from weekend binge to daily drinking. Being home all day, alone, with IPAs in the fridge & vodka on the shelf? Yeah, I would’ve been in trouble, probably lose my engineering job, and that would be yet another excuse to drink.
Damn, I’m glad I quit drinking when I did in 2017. The lockdowns were bad enough, I can’t imagine how miserable I would’ve been if I was still a drunk.
Damn, I’m glad I quit drinking when I did in 2017. The lockdowns were bad enough, I can’t imagine how miserable I would’ve been if I was still a drunk.
Sober since October 24, 1997
Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: Otero County, New Mexico
Posts: 108
If I had kept going the way I had been and didn't quit, I'd be dead by now.
If I had kept going the way I had been for a few years longer and then quit, I'd be dead by now.
The time lost while being a practicing alcoholic is time you can never get back. So, the only thing one can do is add to what we have left by quitting. Obviously, the sooner, the better. The problem with what I just said is that when I was a practicing alcoholic, there was a time when I couldn't quit no matter how hard I tried and no matter how much I wanted to. Even the fear of dying wasn't enough to help me quit. Drinking cured all the horrible fear it caused me to have about drinking and dying because I was drinking. A paradox.
Oh! Such an insidious and under-handed monster alcohol is! But we all know that.
If I had kept going the way I had been for a few years longer and then quit, I'd be dead by now.
The time lost while being a practicing alcoholic is time you can never get back. So, the only thing one can do is add to what we have left by quitting. Obviously, the sooner, the better. The problem with what I just said is that when I was a practicing alcoholic, there was a time when I couldn't quit no matter how hard I tried and no matter how much I wanted to. Even the fear of dying wasn't enough to help me quit. Drinking cured all the horrible fear it caused me to have about drinking and dying because I was drinking. A paradox.
Oh! Such an insidious and under-handed monster alcohol is! But we all know that.
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