SoberRecovery : Alcoholism Drug Addiction Help and Information

This was not my post but "feels" just like me..."Hi all,
am on my day 42 going into 43 (from Jan 2) and I lurked around here on days 0 to 3 or so when I was panicky, sick and in general a total mess, but felt too frightened and ashamed to post. (Stupid, I know.) Reading the posts back then really helped me over that first hurdle though, a hurdle I had fallen at I don’t know how many times. I came back and read the forum again the other day and wanted to introduce myself. It seems selfish and anti-social just to lurk.
I’m in my early thirties, with a similar drinking history to many – not a bottle of whisky by the bed sort of drinker, but unstoppable once I got started. A drinker-to-oblivion from the very first times as a teenager, and as my twenties went on, hangovers got worse and worse, benders got longer and longer, gaps between them shorter and shorter, drinks while on benders getting earlier and earlier in the day, people beginning to notice. Or at least I told myself they were only ‘beginning to,’ it all must have been so obvious for a long time. And lots of scrapes, accidents and bits and pieces of minor trouble here and there, a night or two in the tank, waking up in strange situations, etc. Although I was (and am) reasonably high-functioning, life was peppered with blackouts and panic attacks, terror and self-loathing. I think I hated the blackouts more than anything else – terrifying gap which I would always obsessively imagine the worst about. All of that, all the time sick of it, hating it. But then I would get clear of the latest bender for a few days. I would learn, or just eventually presume, that ‘nothing too bad’ had happened during the blackout, think “Well, maybe it’s not so bad...” and just lose sight of the seriousness of it all. And all the time trying to stop, and stopping and starting again after days or a couple of weeks, and so on. A familiar story to folks here, I guess.
I don’t know why this time has been better, but so far am a clear 6 weeks without booze or cigarettes and I’ve never felt better. It feels like a permanent change, I never want to go back to it, and know I simply *cannot* go back to it, but I’m all too aware of how precarious it is. So I wanted to thank the people on this forum for unknowingly helping me out in those early days and introduce myself so I could participate properly.
so hello to you".