Saliena

Last night I was reading the BB and was going back over step #1. Step #1 was the hardest for me. You would think it would have been the easiest… but, for me to know that my life had become unmanageable and that I was powerless was a very very large step. I mean I had a pretty high “lowest” point. I have had times when drinking that I was unmanageable but, my life wasn’t unmanageable. So, it lead me to thinking … what final made me stand up and say “My name is Saliena and I am an alcoholic.”

It wasn’t any of the following things
1) Being arrested for DUI
2) Almost losing the most perfect man in the world because I was such a bitch when I drank
3) Knowing I was following in my mother’s footsteps of drinking.
4) Waking up everyday not knowing what I had done the night before.
5) Getting drunk earlier and earlier in the day… or even at work…


What finally made me stand up and make the statement that I am an alcoholic …. Was my own ability to manage my drinking… as a matter of fact it was my drinking that managed me. When I realized that I was on the road to accepting my alcoholism was controlling me. I was then able to work my way past step #1.

What event/decision/ect made you realize you were an alcoholic?

Mark75

Good post! Very helpful to have threads like this I think.

I knew long before I put the cup down. Why couldn't I just stay away from that next drink? What took me back time and time again... a compulsion... justified over and over.... by anything...

Toronto68

Pretty much the same way you put it. I knew that I needed to drink in order to feel normal and was finally facing it. So quitting started with deciding I wasn't going to say I don't know if I am an alcoholic anymore and seeing that as a fact instead. I don't know what I was missing in the acceptance stage if anything, but those thoughts are some thoughts I had before quitting.

SSIL75

I don't know that one thing really tipped the balance. When I quit I wasn't at my lowest point (like, I had been much, much lower) but I had been really, really trying to manage my drinking for maybe 6 mos and it wasn't working. I was consistently breaking my own rules, constantly thinking about the whole mess.

My life wasn't unmanagable in the way I thought the AA step meant (I'm actually not into AA anyway) but it definitely wasn't fun anymore. I had managed through sheer will to get the odd sober stretch and found that I enjoyed it. But invariably the weekend (or random day) would come and I'd be drunk again.

The dream of moderation was shattered and abstinence became more attractive. Now, I'm pregnant so that sealed the deal. I'm doing everything I think I need to do to make sure I stay sober after the baby is born.

Antiderivative

When I started to drink without my permission.

bettterlife4me

I have never been arrested, had a DUI, lost a boyfriend or husband, or lost a job due to alcohol. In fact, every annual review I have had at work for the last 15 years has been "exemplary", the highest rating one can get.


What convinced me that I'm an alcoholic is that normal drinkers don't

• Do math at a dinner party - as in counting the bottles of wine on the table then counting the number of people to see how many glasses of wine I get
• Have drinks at home BEFORE the dinner party
• Start getting nervous when my drink is half gone at a bar or restaurant, afraid the waiter/waitress won't show up with a fresh one quick enough
• Fix a drink the SECOND I walk into the house after work (don't feed the cats or check the mail first - make a drink or pour a glass of wine)
• Decline invitations to certain restaurants because the restaurant doesn't serve alcohol
• Drink until I throw up or pass out

I could go on and on but you get the picture. A normal drinker doesn't do these things - but an alcoholic does.

Zebra1275

I found out that I was powerless over alcohol.

least

Waking up in the throes of horrible withdrawals every damn morning... Waking up at 3am with the shakes really bad and either drinking to make them go away or pacing the house til the store opened at 8am and I could get a bottle... Of course, realizing it and doing something about it were far apart... I knew I had a serious problem but kept on drinking...

AmericanGirl

For me it required an understanding and acceptance of what alcoholism means... To me, a physiological problem resulting in me not responding to alcohol in a normal way, thus not being unable to control my consumption and developing a dependency, physically, mentally, emotionally. For too long I labored under an incorrect assumption of what it meant ... And thus it was a label I was hesistant to assign to myself. Glad I have accEpted it now!

MyGraySkies

I was unable to function without alcohol anymore. At all, at any time, or I'd start withdrawals and feel absolutely horrible, puking, etc. I knew I was getting there, but once it was an all the time problem, yep, not much denying it anymore.

DayTrader

I learned it in AA.......

Heh, here I was GOING to meetings, SAYING I was an alkie.....but didn't really believe it...or, at least, I wasn't sure.

Some Chris R open talks taught me what an alcoholic is from the AA perspective (vs. what I thought one was) and I fit that mold for sure. I got a muuuuuch deeper understanding of the "unmanageability " stuff as I worked deeper into the steps. #4 brought out a WHOOOOOOOOLE lotta stuff I had not seen/noticed before. #6 brought out a ton more. Just experience.......working with others.....watching them stumble and remembering that I did the same thing helped it sink in even deeper.

I don't know that there was one "event" that helped me get it....it was really the combined effect of a lot of different things at different times that added up to my current understanding of powerlessness over booze and an unmanageable life. Most of the stuff I believe to be true know I would have argued AGAINST early in the recovery process..... a lot of this stuff just takes time....time to understand and time to even be willing to consider it.

Dee74

Coming here to SR - hearing peoples stories and realising I was just like everyone else here....that really opened my eyes

D

AWOL

What convinced me I was an Alcoholic?

1. Waking up in the wrong room. 2. Waking up in the wrong house. 3. Trying to remember where the bruises on my hip came from. 4. Having to put the glass down because I didn't want anyone to see it shaking. 5. The 10 am beer down the hatch in one gulp. 6. The blue eyes of the shrink when she said, "You do know, of course, that you are an alcoholic..." 7. When I realized she was right.

ANGELINA243

When I honestly wanted to, I found that I could not quit drinking entirely. Also, when drinking I found that I had little control over the amount I drank...those are 2 reasons (as mentioned in the BB "We Agnostics") that made me consider whether or not I was alcoholic.


All quotes taken from AA Big Book 1st ed.

Kjell

...but Saliena - you were 100% sober everytime you took that first drink. If that's not unmanageability (and of course being powerless), I don't know what is.

I had consequence, after consequence, after consequence all in short order and all in the last 2 - 3 years of me drinking, though looking back, it happened so fast. Alcohol allowed me to feel greater than and I protected that feeling with my life, which I almost lost in the process.

NEOMARXIST

I knew I was alcoholic without any doubt. I guess once I started drinking as soon as my eyes opened then that really sped the process along. Though I was drinking like that for at least 2.5 years before I finally accepted I was an alcoholic and was beaten. In UK Super-strength isn't really drank by anybody but alkies really or people with a problem. Drinking that when the kids are going to school I knew was pretty messed up. I felt like an alkie and looked like an alkie when drunk. My behaviour in my blackouts even became like your classic steretype alcoholic - you know swearing at the sky and shouting random stuff to yourself.

I guess for me then all of the YETS were unfolding at a very rapid pace. I would sit alone on park benches and just drink and then would cry and scream when i got home and I ran out of boooze in blackout. I would drink as soon as I my eyes opened and I was totally and utterly powerless over doing this. Once I took a drink then i wouldn't stop until I passed out - I was like that from the first time I took a proper drink at 14.

My life was totally unmanageable and totallly hopeless. If I had been kicked out of home then i would be dead now, I've no doubt about that. I would have drank myself to death on a street somewhere. I was in such a dark place for many years and for me then there was no rationalising that I was anything but an alcoholic. I knew it and when under the influence of booze I wouldn't have cared if I died.

Booze did something to me and set off a reaction in me that I knew only an alcoholic would feel, I knew that it would kill me and take evrything from me but I didn't care because of the power that it had over me.

I also was a major Coke head too and incidentally sought out help for me cocaine addiction rather than my drinking at first ( though the local drug and alcohol service was a 'harm reduction' joke). It all happened so quickly for me and my cocaine and drug use was very heavy over the space of about 3 years. I knew I was an addict but for me this only applied once under the influence of alcohol. When it came to booze and drugs then there was only ever more, more, more.

From being somebody at school who had it all and was the person going to do great things I was the person hanging with the low-life who had lost his driving license, dropped out of Uni, unemployed, drunk at 7.00am, spent £10,00 on coke in 2 years and a shadow of his former self.

ISPYSOBRIETY

I once was a smoker. I quit that and know what addiction is all about. It's a mental addiction far more than a physical/chemical one. Nicotine is nothing. It's almost completely out of the human body 72 hours after quitting.... yet the urges go on for up to a year and you are always one cigarette away from a pack a day.

Alcohol is similar. When one drink calls for another and another.... It's happening.

I fully realized that I was more of a functional alcoholic. I worked all day, doing my thing but when I got home, off the road and such... I drank. I did it every night and on my way home always had to pick some up for home.... like cigarettes. Needless to say, if a smoker feels as dependant on having booze around as his cigarette addiction, it's called a booze addiction.

reggiewayne

Great topic. To me knowing you're an alcoholic and step one are completely different. I first knew that I needed to better control my drinking when I was 19. From the ages of 21 - 23 I did control it. Basically only drank when I felt I "deserved it". All school work had to be done, workout's had to be done, job had to be in order. Since then (35 now) my drinking progressed and progressed and I ended up drinking or thinking about drinking most of my days. It consumed me.

I entered AA about 5 years ago. I basically used it as a way to get sober. I would go for a week, or two, or ever three, and then always back to that "first drink". Oh how good it would be I thought. The calmness it would provide, the way it would make life more interesting, how much more interesting I would become... I'd have that first drink and then the next, and then oblivion. I would then wake up the next day and wonder why. Alcohol never changes. For me it means hitting the pause button on life and then followed up by regret, shame, lonliness, and self hatred.... For me, drinking is to die. Spiritually first, then physically later...

I firmly believe that nobody was put on this earth to poison themselves daily. To those that can enjoy a drink and not have the negative consequences I applaud. I no longer lie to myself and think I am one of those people. I am an alcoholic. THE ONLY DEFENSE I HAVE IS TO NOT HAVE THE FIRST DRINK. Like the BB says, honestly is neccesarry for me to stay sane. I have hit bottoms, only to find that I had a lower bottom to come. To me, honesty is what ultimitely got me to quit! Great topic!!!

LittleSparrow

I told a friend that I had to quit drinking, for about the millionth time. As my drinking buddy, she started listing ways to try controlling my drinking. "Why don't you try limiting yourself to two drinks? How about drinking only on weekends? Or only when you go out? Or only when you stay home?" I realized I had already tried all of these and obviously they hadn't worked. They also sounded exhausting...a normal drinker doesn't need to put that much work into it, right? Once I realized that I had run out of ways to stay in control when I drink, my eyes opened up to how much power alcohol has over me.

CarolD

When my drinking turned me into a woman I detested... depressed and amoral
and still....i kept drinking

Hi my name is Carol...an alcoholic