Hf1988

Hi all,

First post here, and I'm not really sure what I'm looking for. I have a problem with alcohol, but I only realised that last night when my husband confronted me about it. But, I don't know where to go from here, I don't know if I'm strong enough to stop on my own, I know I want to, but the anxiety around not having that drink is so damned high right now, I don't know if I can do it.

How do you guys do it? Do you just decide that you're going to stop, or do you have outside help as well?

I don't quite know what I'm asking for really, just some advice maybe?

Gottalife

Welcome Hf 1988.

You will get a variety of views on this. Some have found they can stop by simply making a decision, others, like me found that impossible and almost died while searching for a solution, still others died before they found a solution. Its life and death.

Generally, alcoholics will seek the most confortable and convenient solution, so they will try what appears to be the easy options first. So we have things like:
Control it
Just stop.
Go to a doctor, get some medication and see if that works
Go to counselling or rehab and see if they can fix you
Change jobs,cities, etc. The geographical cure.
Change partners
Read self help books
Take up religion
Usually, somewhere near the bottom of the list, AA will pop up as an option, which funnily enough is where many or the worst cases (like me) find a solution.

It is a matter of trying different things and being ruthlessly honest with your self about results. If you talk to you doctor, be absolutley honest about your problem. The doctor can only base his treatment on what you tell him, so if you tell him wrong information, you are likely to get wrong treatment.

Often, while we are trying all these things, if we are alcoholic, things get worse. We lose jobs and friends, relationhips and so forth, may even come to the attention of the law. It always gets worse over time. There are solutions, and they require honesty openmindedness and willingness to work. Good luck

Ghostlight1

Hello and welcome.
It took a lot for me to quit. I hit bottom many times and bounced right back to the drink.
I got to the point where I could neither drink or not drink. The anxiety was over me like a wet blanket.
There were binges where I was afraid to stop drinking because I knew what awaited me- fear, remorse and anxiety so bad I was virtually paralyzed with it.

Everyone knew I was a drunk and I didn't care. I lived to drink. And I could not stop.
I eventually lost all my material things, and if it hadn't been for some good friends, I would have been homeless.
Pretty dramatic, eh? That's what alcohol did to me over twenty five years.
That's just my story. I wanted you to see it to know how bad it can get.
You may say to yourself, 'I'm not that bad. That guys a drunk' and you'd be right.
But don't underestimate your drinking. If you are an alcoholic like me, and it may be hard to call yourself one, I can guarantee you things could get worse.
Alcoholism is a chronic, progressive and relapsing disease. For the serious drinker, there is little hope of quitting without some kind of help.

I went to AA. I was anxious about not drinking, too. But it got to the point where I couldn't continue on as I was.
I met people just like me in AA. We were all there for the same reason, to stop our problem with drink.
I was amazed. Here were people who understood me and I them. We had little else in common. But, I kept going to those meetings and learned all I had to do is not drink today. Or an hour. Or minute. There's much more to AA than that, but that's the gist of it.

Sorry this is so long. But I feel for you and your husband. I don't want to see what happened to me happen to anyone. My life was a waking nightmare.
I hope you do try and quit, however you may decide, and I hope your husband supports you. You'll find a world of support here, too.

Best to you, and I hope you stick around.

Soberwolf

Welcome to SR HF

Here are some useful links http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...at-we-did.html

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...rituality.html

To add a couple things i would say seeing a Dr is a good idea to get help with WD i would look at the broad range of recovery programmes to see which one fits me best

I would let help in & lay my cards on the table with regular check in's here at sober recovery & i would reach out to one of the mods here as thier expertise & advice is really helpful

Stick around & watch your life improve

Faker

Welcome HF. Everyone has such a different experience, and yet we all have such exact same experiences. That is what is great about SR. I think the members above have given some good places to start. Hugs to you. My husband has been a huge support for this wino mom. Sounds like you may have some good support from your husband?

least

It might be a good idea to get help from your doctor to get safely thru the withdrawal. Alcohol w/d can be dangerous.

Once you're past the physical withdrawal, you might want to get help in staying sober. Many people use AA or other recovery programs. For me, I just use daily visits to SR, tho I used to see a counselor.

I hope the support here can help you get sober for good.

Anna

Welcome. We do understand how hard this is, but you've gotten lots of good advice.

RDBplus3

Another good thing to do is a Web Search for Recovery Speaker Messages. There are many sites and most are FREE.

RDBplus3 ... Happy, Joyous, and FREE ... and I KNOW U can B 2

BBQBOY

Welcome Hf, I was stuck in the cycle for along time. It wasn't until I went to my Dr. and detoxed safely, that I was able to see the light. I had to get over the physical withdrawals (that fear was keeping me in the bottle) first and then work on my overall recovery. Do yourself a favor and make that appt. Best wishes..

Quirky

Hi Hf1988,
Glad you found us. SR has made all the difference in the world for me, and we can help you too. Lean on is for support; that's what we're here for.
Have you thought about AA? Everyone is different, but that works for a lot of folks.
I'm a one day at a time girl. (Sometimes one hour at a time!)
You can do this. Welcome to SR.

48heath

Welcome to SR.

I could always stop drinking,staying stopped was my problem.

I stopped for years at a time,but always started again,eventually I went to AA and I have never looked back. I have never once said I am never drinking again,I choose to do it a day at a time and it works for me.

Wishing you well.

PurpleKnight

Welcome to the Forum Hf1988!!

gettingsmarter

Hi Hf

I stay as close to SR as I can. It has been a life saver.

greens

It was a decision. The drinking was no longer helping me. I think it did help me for a long time. I started therapy for my ptsd. I started recognising I Had addiction issues . I quit different substances at different times but hsve been completely sober now for 4 years.
There is a lot of good info on here , find what resonates with you and start from there. Do not get discouraged if it does not "work" right away . It can take some time for new habits to become old habits .

Dee74

Welcome HF

SR helped me immensely. It meant to much to me that I was no longer alone and that there were people here who understood

read around here and post as much as you like

D

Hf1988

Thank you, you've all given me a lot to think about. The problem I have with AA (and I'm not trying to put up boundaries, or discount anyone's advice) is that I also suffer from social anxiety disorder, and so I'm not sure I could handle being around a group of people I had never met before, let alone having to stand up and talk in front of them. Hell, I feel like such an idiot right now though - how can other people cope with life, and I have to do this to myself???

My husband is willing to support me getting off the drink, but he said if he found out I'd had another one, he'd leave me. And the really sad thing? I wouldn't blame him in the least. The past few months haven't been easy - he's had health problems of his own, and what do I do? Go and get drunk instead of supporting him. Hell, I did more than that. I used to self harm, hadn't done it since I met him, he gets sick, I start doing that again as well. Going to try and get a doctors appointment today, kinda dreading it, but I know it has to be done.

I'm done with feeling like a failure. Work isn't helping at the moment, but that's a whole different story.


Sorry, this turned into a huge rant, and I didn't mean it to.

I've read some of the other posts in here, and some of them are so inspiring, I hope one day I'll be able to help others in the same way, but for now I'm so deep in this hole, I don't know how.

Gottalife

Hi HF, you are not an idiot or a failure. You are suffering from an illness to which there is a solution. take heart from that. It's not your fault, it is not something you caused, but you can take some action to remedy the situation.

A visit to the doc sounds like a good place to start. See what they suggest. They may explain that anxiety and depression, while they can be seperate ilnesses in their own right, are also part and parcel of early sobriety. These things usually get better with sober time and action in therapy or a support program.

Dont worry too much about AA at this stage. You may never need it, and it is almost never the first choice as a recovery method. It tends to be reserved for those of us for whom other methods fail to work, so best try some other methods first if you are comfortable with that.

AA meetings are usually friendly places where people chose to speak or not, it's up to them. I was in AA for more than six weeks before I managed to say anything. It didn't matter, I learnt more by listening anyway.

I remember a year or so before I went to AA and recovered, I was staying in this sheltered accomodation where they had an AA meeting on a sunday night. I looked through the glass doors and saw this happy looking group, but there was no way anyone could convince me to walk through the door and join them. I guess I just wasn't ready. I certainly had no idea what I was turning down. A year later things had got a lot worse for me, and this time AA looked like a good option, and it was. There were people who knew the way out of that hole.

On important consideration is the reason we get help. It is a little unfortunate that your husband says he will leave if you drink. Not drinking to keep him from leaving is not the most successful strategy for long term sobriety. When there is a condition like this attached to sobriety, if he goes, the reason for staying sober will go with him if you get what I mean.

Sobriety can be a wonderful journey but it must be undertaken for your self, regardless of any outside circumstances. When we are sober, circumstances change, often for the better, but not always what we think we want. If we are sober for ourselves, the fact that life will somethimes not go our way will not affect our ability to stay sober.

Faker

Are you there HF? Did you make it to the doctor? Would love to hear how you are and how we can help!

FarToGo

"Sobriety can be a wonderful journey but it must be undertaken for your self, regardless of any outside circumstances. When we are sober, circumstances change, often for the better, but not always what we think we want. If we are sober for ourselves, the fact that life will somethimes not go our way will not affect our ability to stay sober. "

This is great advice from Gottalife and I needed to read it too! Thank you.

Welcome Hf1988, as somebody else has said, checking in here every day helps me a lot (several times a day for me actually).
The rest of my life is also full of complications (job, relationship...family... ) and these are things that will need to be faced at some point. For now, the one thing I know for sure, is that my alcohol dependency meant that either things were never going to change for me, or most likely I would continue to make rubbish decisions and create yet more pain and chaos.
Try to tackle the drinking first and then you'll be in a better place to look at other stuff, this is what I'm working on / doing.
I wish you courage and success.

xx

Notmyrealname

Most people don't know if they can do it. You're not alone there. It's scary to contemplate, and the withdrawals can be pretty sucky.

Some will tell you to just quit, today, now, just jump right in. I think that can work for some people, but for me it's more deliberative. I pick a day that's convenient and I give myself a few days to come to terms with the idea, build resolve, and hopefully cut back a bit in the interim. On the other hand, some might go for the "blowout bash" in that time -- if that's your style it's probably better to quit now, a blowout bash bender might just put you in the hospital or a coffin.

The mechanics of it are pretty simple, though. You don't drink for a day, and then you sleep, and then you don't drink for a day .. and it kinda goes like that.

The hurdle for me has been the "jumping off the cliff" moment: facing the music, steeling for withdrawals, getting past that first day and then the second day and the semi-sleepless nights. After I get dry for a week I feel pretty good and staying dry isn't that hard. But for some people it's the other way around: quitting isn't that difficult, but staying quit is the hard part.

Every journey starts with putting one foot forward. Whether you plan it out and execute the plan or just "go for it!" and pour out all your booze on an impulse, I think you just gotta try it. You might have some bumps in the road -- I think most people do, hell I still hit a few bumps from time to time and I am 2-3 years into the process -- but it's a damn sight better than I was when I started.

It's a process -- the only surefire failure is if you quit trying.