sailorjohn

Anyone care to share?

ToughChoices

I'm afraid mine isn't very dramatic.

I tried to detach.
He "tried" to stop drinking.
He kept on drinking.
He stayed out late one night too many, and I knew better than to think it would be different the next time.

I had to decide if I wanted to replay the same ugly scenario the next week.

I chose not to.

-TC

gns

For me it was being alone with myself and feeling horrible about myself with no man or external validation to make me feel better. Facing the worthlessness I walk around trying to disprove and hide from.

Hope you are doing okay in posting this question.

AmpHusky

Every waking moment was about the A. Didn't want to come home to a drunk. COuldn't do things I enjoyed. Couldn't fart in my own house. LOL, I'm serious, it started an argument everytime. That was my bottom.

Good question

coyote21

My aw was in court ordered inpatient rehab, two weeks in and I could tell it was not "takeing". We were involved with CPS and I went to the "enemy"....the CPS supervisor. I don't know why, I can only guess devine intervention.

I asked her what their (the department's) next move was....she was very candid with me. She said if I allow my aw back home with DD and I , and she relapses, they would move to take my daughter away from BOTH of us. It was a no-brainer for me.

I, right there in her office, made the decision to protect my 5yo instead of my adult wife, the "right" thing. I finally "got it". I've never regreted that decision for even a second. That was almost 2 years ago.

I actually ran into that CPS supervisor in the laundramat a couple of months ago and was able to thank her. They don't get that very often. :ghug3

Thanks and God bless us all, :ghug2
Coyote

Rella927

My codie bottom was when.....

My heart kept racing everytime I took a step into my own home-I was afraid to go anywhere with fear that my A was right behind me (Most time's he was) My A was very verbally abusive and when drinking physically-When I found what peace was for a brief moment that he was in jail- I knew something had to change and the only way that was going to happen was to change it myself!

I kept doing the same things over and over for years and getting the same result DUH! I was in denial, in a fog and just plain alone in my own head! I thank my HP, Al-Anon, SR, Friends, Family and most importanly yes believe it or not my XABF! Without him putting me through what he did I would never have found my "codie bottom" and nothing would have changed! and I would not have done the work to finally love me! I took the hand of that scared little girl and I keep leading her towards a better life! Yeah ME!

Still a work in progress however the saying that I always love "Progress not perfection" :bounce

DesertEyes

What does it _feel_ like?

It feels like the end to a very very very long movie that was awful awful awful. And I sat thru the _whole_ thing.

It is a cold, sick feeling way down deep in my stomach when my brain suddenly gets that "moment of clarity" and I realize that everything I sacrificed the last 20 years for just evaporated.

I've seen so many gamblers at the tables, pasty looking, disheveled, desperation in their eyes, praying and hoping that one last throw of the dice will make their fantasies come true, and then I realized that I am just as addicted, just as desperate, but gambling on a different fantasy. That my wife will miraculously become the woman I fantasize.

It happened when we were visiting a customer. Working a million dollar gig with a cosmetics manufacturer. My wife and I had taken the V.P. and his wife out to dinner. Over the last couple years we'd all become friends, business and frequent visits had made that possible. My wife was happily chatting with the VP, joking, sharing stories. His wife and I were talking about housesand decorating.

Then something happened, something very subtle. A slow chilling in the air, as if a ghost had passed by. There was something different in the way my wife was talking to the VP. Something I could not quite place. The VP's wife suddenly stared at me, her eyes welled up with tears and she ran from the table. I raced after her.

Caught up with her by the front door, she grabbed me by my shirt, pulled me down to her, begged me to tell her he was not having an affair with my wife, that he'd had so many affairs before, that she couldn't live thru another one.

I could see them at the table. My wife and my friend, the VP. And I saw it. The jokes they shared, the intimacy they had with each other, the way she teased her hair and smiled at him. That's when I knew.

The evidence came later. Thousands of dollars in phone calls, secret visits, two other guys, also married. The evidence was unnecesary, all my denial came crashing down that one evening when my friends wife grabbed me by the shirt.

That was my bottom. Today I have a new life thanx to al-anon. A new town, a new job, a whole new "me" that no longer suffers from the insanity of co-dependency. And a charming girlfriend. I'm in love again, and _that_ is something I never thought would happen again. Ok, so she's an addict, a member of Overeaters Anonymous. So who knows what the future will bring, but just for today, life rocks.

Mike

prodigal

My bottom came when I was sitting alone in a very nice hotel room by a marina in Long Beach, California. I had spent a "lovely" evening trying to have "fun" at a bar by keeping pace with my AH's drinking.

We went back to our room. He claims I spat at him. Who knows? We were both drunk. He then proceeded to literally throw me across the room.

I feel into a bruised heap on the floor, started crying hysterically, and he checked into a different room. I called the police because I thought he had taken my passport with him.

He left the next morning and flew back to Arizona. I was left in Long Beach to figure out how to get back home by my own devices.

I was every single bit as out-of-control and downright crazy as the addict. And I could not blame the addict for my insanity. I owned that all by myself.

And I was in an Al-Anon meeting a few days later, and back in weekly therapy.

denny57

My bottom was also in a hotel room.

xAH and I were in Toronto for a festival. He spent our last night there in a room 2 floors up with a mutual (single) friend and 2 prostitutes. He paid for them.

He later tried to tell me nothing had happened and it "would make a great short story." I heard myself say "it isn't about you any more, it's about me." Up until that moment that possibility had never crossed my mind. To this day, I have no idea where those words came from.

It took another year for us to separate (he tried therapy), but that was my bottom. We never truly lived as husband and wife from that day until separation. I got into Al Anon and when I told him about 6 months later he stopped speaking to me and filed for divorce.

Wow - I cannot believe that was my life.

p.s. I just realized I didn't answer the original question: it felt like CRAP. Yet strangely liberating.

Ago

Here's mine, I wrote it all down...it was horrible, I was an obsessive, angry, helpless mess and all I could do was blame and finger point. I wrote that in the days leading up to the break up and posted it moments after the break up.

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...long-post.html

AWEDA

When I felt like I was going to throw-up every time I headed home from work to what I knew would be another drunken night.

The look in his eye,the smell of alcohol.

My kids being unhappy and afraid,and having the police at my home 3
nights in a row.

Thank God it's over....

freeflower

My bottom was also in a motel room. Went to one of his work friends wedding. Bought a new black little dress, bought some new sexy pjs and my swimsuit. Had all these plans to spend a very romantic evening together. During dinner he got up and went outside to smoke and basically stayed outside witha bunch of young guys. I was left to make samll talk with complete strangers. I went to the room, he said he would be right behind me..I swam alone for 2 hours and than sat waiting for him to come. He showed up 4 hours later with the assistence of some young men. He was so wasted he could take off his shoes so I just puched him on the bed. I fell a sleep crying only to be woken up by the sound of him peeing on the carpet. I sat in the chair the rest of the night and in the morning he woke up and was clueless on why I was upset.
note: This was 5 years after 2 duis and jail time and court ordered rehab and a few months of seperation.
I knew I was done and it still took me two years to leave.

TooMuch4TooLong

It feels like crap Sailor. It feels like failure. It feels like your a dumba$$ for not seeing it before. So you work through it. While you are working through it you learn that you are not a failure or a dumba$$, you just did what you did with the only tools you had at the time. You learn to use new tools, better tools and you start to rebuild yourself, bit by bit, step by step. You are more aware and less tolerant of being taken advantage of. You appreciate your serenity, and as my girl Pam would say "You let that pony run."

cmc

I posted this in a reply here almost two weeks ago. To clarify things, my son had been using for about ten years and by this time he was at the stage where his car was often 'found' in the possesion of other people. Known as a crack rental, his dad & I had helped him get his car out of impound once too many times. This particular night, the police had called us saying that if we could come to the scene where the car was found, and drug bust occured, we could just take the car back. So mom & dad drove up there with our son.

GrowingPains

Mine was on a campsite. He usually limited his drinking when we were together, but he didn't this time. I was the only sober person in a group of 9 for 2.5 days. I felt very lonely and isolated, but then became very angry. I then knew this would be the rest of my life unless I took action.

Although I'd been thinking about separating for a couple of years prior, I had a lot of fear due to my being self-employed in the arts. Hitting bottom for me was a realization that I HAD to make this change and would do whatever I had to in order to survive financially.

peaceteach

Sailor,

I found myself in the fetal position in my bed, sinking into a "can't get up-can't go on" mindset. And I realized that someone had to survive this, someone had to take care of the kids, that we both couldn't go down the spiral, that I was the only adult in the house at that point, that my husband--whom I should have been able to turn to with the biggest problem in my life--was the biggest problem in my life. I didn't do it because I was righteous with anger (I'd been there) or because I felt I deserved better (had been there also). I did it so I could live, and survive, and I knew I wouldn't if something didn't change. It scared me to my core, that day, and took every ounce of strength to say this is it, no more. It was so very difficult, and stayed difficult for a long, long time. But I made it. I stuck to my guns on that one thing, kept putting one foot in front of the other every day when I could barely think or function. It's been 5 years since that day, this October as a matter of fact, and I'm pretty strong now and have just begun my first relationship since then.

Good luck, Sailor. You've been through a lot and it sounds like nothing much has changed. Like they say here, nothing changes if nothing changes. You don't have to be strong enough to do it, or mad enough, or righteous enough. You just have to say it, and stick with it even when you doubt yourself, and keep putting one foot in front of the other until the walk you are walking becomes your "new normal" and you realize you made it.

hadenoughnow

My ex had been "trying to quit" for 5 months (after one particularly bad Saturday night I asked him if he wanted help or a divorce). It had become clear to me that he was not serious about getting sober and I was enforcing boundaries (detachment, not allowing our lives to revolve around his drinking, refusing to take care of his finances etc).

That just seemed to antagonize him and one night (Saturday is his big drinking night) when he was "not drinking" he flipped out over of all things what day we should put the Xmas tree up, picked a fight with me and our son who took a page out of the alanon book and left the room. The A then decided that I had "turned his son against him" made a big scene and said he was leaving, I said "ok" and ignored him. He then attempted to get our son to leave with him (creating another scene).

When he was done terrorizing us he finally left, went to a hotel, drank god knows how much and proceeded to drunk dial 411 32 times, call his A BIL and say he was going to kill himself etc. I told the BIL to tell him not to bother ever coming back and I tried to call him myself to tell him but he would not answer the phone. He came home at 5:30 am and tried to act like nothing ever happened.

The next am I took my son and stayed away from the house for most of the next two days during which our son confided that he had seen his dad drinking out of liquor bottles in the middle of the night several times when he got up to get water or use the bathroom, that was my bottom, two weeks later I filed for divorce and told him to get out.

LaTeeDa

I thought my bottom was when I kicked him out of the house. Last straw, and all that, much like some of the stories above. I was angry, sad, and exhausted.

My real bottom came when we were trying to work it out. At a couples counseling session where I looked at him and said "you can do whatever you want." That was the day I finally reached the point of acceptance. The overwhelming emotion I felt that day was relief.

L

vujade

So interesting to see this thread at the top when I logged on. I haven't been on this site for well over a year and decided to revisit today.

My lowest point was actually one of my first posts in this forum, about 18 months ago. It was when I truly realized that although I had bullied and guilted my AH into not drinking (ah...the rationale of a codie), drinking wasn't the source of our problems (GASP!) I had mistakenly thought that with alcohol behind us, our problems were, too. Through a mass of uncovered lies, I found myself suddenly looking at two small children, wrecked credit, no money, a failed business, overdrafts, and a lying, dry drunk of a husband. I FREAKED out...throwing stuff, breaking stuff, sobbing and screaming, threatening and promising pain of any kind available. I was totally out-of-control. Then the fool had the gall to accuse me of spousal abuse (I never touched the man) and blaming ME for his drinking. It was almost so textbook alcoholic/codependant that it shocked me into reality.

That moment was the start of recovery for me although it has definitely been a work-in-progress since then.

lizw

I read somewhere the other day that rock bottoms can always have basements, so with this in mind, I’ve had what I would describe as two ‘codie’ rock bottoms. The first one, heavily involved an alcoholic and our relationship which sent me to Al Anon, and the second one I experienced all on my own, and sent me to SLAA (sex and love addicts anonymous).

The one that sent me to Al Anon, and got me going regularly as I had gone on occasion before that, happened when I got involved with a newly sober alcoholic and AA member, and I am an AA member myself. But once we began sleeping together, I went mad. I become obsessed with his every movement. I.e. how many meetings he was going too, whether or not he was drinking on the sly and how he was working his program. The obsession was so bad that when I reached Al Anon and they told me what he did (in recovery and out of recovery) was none of my business, I was extremely relieved to let go of the control. And slowly, slowly I began to get a sense of self, deal with my own issues and learnt to focus on myself and mind my own business.

That relationship didn’t last and I could probably name a few more rock bottoms the relationship reached, physical violence etc….but I won’t because I don’t think they were ‘personal rock bottoms’, even though they hurt. And in the end I just realized we were just two different people, trying to force the other to want what the other wanted.

So my second rock bottom occurred when I got into another relationship with a guy (4 or 5 months later) who turned out to be a porn addict and despite knowing this, I couldn’t break it off with him. At night I’d be writing ‘break up emails’ to him, ones I just couldn’t send, then the next day I’d be back having sex with him. The only way I managed to leave that relationship was the possibility of another relationship appeared on the horizon so I ended it with the porn addict then tried to get together with this other guy, who, as it turned out was probably 10 x more dodgy than the porn guy, so I then tried to get back together with the porn guy. I tried every ‘trick’ in the book I could think of to get this guy back and he refused every time.

So in a ton of emotional pain, desperate, mental, unable to work, physically sick and unable to think about anything other than men, I talked to a friend of a friend who was a member of SLAA (sex and love addicts anonymous) and she told me a bit of her story (which struck a cord with me) and where their meetings were held and I began attending.

Talk about hearing people saying out loud what I thought! I saw I belonged there instantly. My entire life I had always had an obsession to be in a relationship. And if I wasn’t in one, I had one lined up. And if I wasn’t happy in the one I was in, I was trying to line up the next one. I could see how my entire life had been about getting a partner and/or keeping a partner. I had never done what I wanted to do with my life and left the rest up to God. Being in a relationship for me provide the sense of security I should have been getting from God/a Higher Power and providing for myself.

It’s nearly a year now since all that happened and it was probably one of the most painful times of my life but what has grown out of it is my ability to care for myself and fill my own needs. I don’t have to be something I am not anymore – either wonder woman or a woman who ‘needs’ a man. I actually have a future. I have goals and dreams. Hopes and desires. None of which evolve round a partner. I am becoming my own person instead of so and so’s girlfriend or just a mother, a daughter, a sister. I am myself.

In SLAA they describe how I feel as having dignity of self and at times over the last year I have felt more ‘whole’ as a person, as I ever have in my entire life and despite the pain (which at times felt like it was going to kill me) I wouldn’t swap what I’ve been through for anything.

Rock bottoms often appear to be ‘endings’ but if one looks closely, from the outside, endings and beginnings are very similar.

:day4