Spacegoat

I may as well say this here, it's no secret anyway and you guys know a lot about what my life has really been.

I am dead if I cannot get the help that I have been so desperately seeking for 5,10,15 years. Honestly, I am.

By alcoholism or related problems I guess, though I haven't drank for years. I cannot cope with the stress anymore.

I haven't been able to cope for years. If you read some of my threads I have tried everything, I have done everything in my power and still I have lost everything.

Nobody will hear my plight. I spend every moment of every day just about keeping my sanity together. I have demonstrated huge resilience throughout my life and still it has fallen apart.

I don't have that resilience anymore. I am a wreck. I don't function anymore. I have been desperately seeking help for a very long time. I have been failed badly

chicory

Stratman I know you struggle.... I can hear it loudly in your posts, and I hurt for you.
Can you call a hotline, and talk to somebody? You can't do it alone, you are right.
You might see a doctor, as it sounds like you need some help with depression.. but I hope you will call a hotline right now. And make YOU your first priority, because without you getting healthy, nothing else is going to fall into place, I am afraid.

take care of you. take the steps, what ever they suggest, do it.

Aellyce

Strat, this post is... well, strange to say the minimum. You have not drunk for years?! Who are we talking about?

Bud, I said this a hundred times and am not sure anymore how to make it sound more serious, but I think you should seek help ASAP. Like now. I think it would be best if you could see a psychiatrist straight away.

Spacegoat

We are talking about me Haennie, the real me.

I have drank less than a handful of times in the past 2 years and I have only been drunk once.

I turned to alcohol because I was not getting help with a diagnosis of clinical depression (other than a pat on the back) and PTSD.

I haven't drank now in years as I said and here I am in the exact same position, the only difference being I have lost everything since.

There is nothing strange about this post, I couldn't actually be more upfront and honest here. I was hoping to speak to my solicitor on Friday as per what the arrangements will be after I pass now that I have legal guardianship to my kid, i.e. if I have any money in my accounts or coming my way from what I'm owed will it go to him.

I am not suicidal by the way. I really was for years, unable to cope. I have one attempt and that was a distinct cry for help. I didn't think that it would kill me, although I wasn't sure but I took that chance. Again, I am not suicidal in the slightest. I love life and I always have done. I just am unable to live and enjoy life for so long now.

Aellyce

It's not being suicidal that I am worried about, mate... it's the intactness of reality that comes through your posts over a longer period of time. And this is not meant to be judgmental, merely an observation.

Spacegoat

Intactness of reality? I don't understand. This is my reality.

I have drank 4 times in the past 2 years. I've been unfit for work almost a decade with clinical depression and PTSD which were only beginning.

I barely drank at all at that time, I was working in banking for years. Read this post to get an idea of what my life has been since on the basic level

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...ml#post5471762

I started drinking slowly but surely to cope. I couldn't find any relief otherwise for a very long time, the depression and PTSD were getting worse and worse.

Now I'm sober again as when it started. I'm not clinically depressed. If I have PTSD it is nowhere near as profound as the hell that I endured, but I have a stress disorder of some kind.

Because I cannot cope. I can't function. I can write to you here in this little darkened room but I can't deal with the outside world for any length. This is exactly how it began.

My stress is not imagined, I used to try and tell myself that but I have a rash all over my body from it for the past 15 years. It's flaring up badly at the moment. It doesn't go away.

I need intensive help and support of some kind. I cannot laugh it off any longer, and I am not going to bounce back by myself. Again read the post I've linked which is a sample of my efforts.

I have tried everything I can to recover alone guys. I have always been a fiercely independent person.

Aellyce

Okay so when are you going to get that help?

Spacegoat

15 years ago.


Joke I never lost my humor did I (did actually for a while) but I need to lie down for a bit Haennie.

edit: I'l add to that- I don't get to decide if I can get any help or not. I've been looking for it for so long and things had gotten so bad, particularly when I was enmeshed in alcoholism that if you offered me help, like a dog who has been abused I wouldn't know then if you were trying to help me or to harm me. Anyway, with alcohol out of the picture now I still have my wits about me but only just, at least that's something. My head is exhausted today.

Verte

You need to GO GET HELP. Keep going. GO, GO, GO. Yes, you have to fight. Talk to the psychiatrist on call. Walk to emergency services. No one is going to do this for you. You must do this for yourself.

Do not allow yourself to be dismissed. Make certain that you are heard. Do not hold back in detailing your struggles in order to save face. Do not talk about the latest sports match of whatever sport. Go forward with the singular purpose of getting help and do not stop until this is achieved. You may know yourself and your life experience but you are not the physician. Let people help you. Get up and go. Help will NOT come to you.

Take yourself by the ear and keep moving towards the goal of proper treatment. There is this big myth that if a person has a definable disease that there would be a definite treatment. This is not accurate. If you want to have the life you envision, Stratman, you must fight for it and get past whatever it is that is keeping you running in place. Today is not yesterday.

Let someone help you help yourself! Make yourself be heard. Today. Then tomorrow. Then the next day. No excuses.

Soberpotamus

Verte has said it well. Nothing else I can add to that.

Strat, I think you know that I've encouraged you all along to go get professional help.

I really hope you do. You are an intelligent, sensitive and thoughtful person. Please take care of you.

Dee74

I agree with Verte Soberpotamus and Aellyce Strat.

There's probably a million obstacles you could throw up, but this is not going to get any better without outside professional help.

Please - get help now.

D

Spacegoat

Ok so back to that. I had that first part down, and the second. But definitely not the third. Much as I tried, inevitably the right words would never come out. In fact I would have some kind of weird nervous reaction where I would end up talking about the latest match of whatever sport instead.

The fact that I am not drinking now should definitely help. The work I have been doing in the Adult Children forum should definitely definitely help, as thats what I have been struggling with this whole time. Intellectualising my lifelong emotional struggles, we have done something great here.

I guess I am worried guys that there will be nobody to hear that plight. Or that they mightn't understand. Or that they may question my sincerity, or blame me for things that happened when I was a child and so on. You can't hide from yourself, and I am really ready to let people in and help me out.

Dee74

Some folks here in the past have printed out threads to take in and found that helped them feel more secure in what they wanted to say.

I've done that myself at times.

D

Spacegoat

That is a really good idea man and thanks for that. Noted. Just off the phone to the psychiatrists secretary, she was really nice actually.

I told her that I was following up from last week. I also read out part's of Verte's post which is a really good one, as are all of your guy's.

She was very reassuring and told me not to worry. Also I explained briefly how I was in contact with the service years ago but was in a confused state, and again she reassured me and told me not to worry. How they know what they are doing and we can move forward, to stay focused in my objective (which I really am). That they would contact me back tomorrow most likely. So I feel pretty good overall about that, again the secretary she seemed really nice.


It's a start guys, amirite? Feels good anyway...

Soberpotamus

Great job. She's right - no need to worry, Strat. Relax

Spacegoat

There was kindness in her voice and that makes all the difference

BobArctor

I just want to say that I can relate to what you have said, though this thread and the link about housing is all I have read from you.

I can't tell if this is your frustration, in part, as well as mine: Going to get help, implies that there is help to be had.

Talking to therapists and groups hasn't really helped me cope with the times when I am in a bad mental state, much. When I have been able to apply advice about coping, it has been once I am already starting to cope and there is less for me to feel paralyzed about. So, some of what I get out of seeking help when in the depths of despair has been distraction until situations change where there is less that can be a topic of my depression.

What has helped has been caring from others, where caring isn't concern or advice. Empathy. But, I can't cause people to have empathy.

I know the feeling that no one will hear my plight. My distress is not felt by comparing it with everyone else's distress. If a princess being carried on pillows by servants has a mental break down because her nail broke, it's not a lesser amount of distress because she is not a starving child with a bloated belly by comparison.

In the same sense, no one's distress is justified. We don't earn distress credit that we then have the right to spend.

My point is, your distress over your plight is real and valid, to me. It's also independent of whether or not you are doing all you can to extract yourself from your problems.

I understand that people can't simply "get help" and I understand that people's pain is real.

Spacegoat

Interesting comments, Bob. I woke up this morning thinking about this thread. The good news is it's a 'reset' day. I got to bed last night, and up this morning.

Seeing as you mentioned it first so I will too. Housing is important, it's a fundamental thing. I am honestly at a real risk of homelessness and always was that.

Is it the most fundamental thing? Not quite, but it has got to be right up there for any person lets be honest. A lot of biggest struggles have been around that.

In that all my struggles have been hindered by the fact that I have never had a stable place to live. Now, as then as ever. It is just a fact of my life I now realize.

I do not have the skills to survive as a transient person. This is obvious to me. I could have developed them when I was younger, I developed some by default.

But I have spent the second half of my life trying to settle down now and I am unfortunately failing or have failed miserably in that regard. I have no solution.

There is no hamster on a wheel living my head, that hamster is long since dead. I spent far too much time trying to revive it and that time it was spent in vain.

I don't know what else to say, your comment touches on a lot. Everything else is a more complex than the housing problem. I'm going to contact my solicitor.

There is one huge dynamic there I really need to be working on (it is all about complex dynamics) and, I will return to your comment then. Fun, fun, F' I mean.

Spacegoat

The didn't call me back so I rang the secretary again. I'm not the best person at fighting for myself

Spacegoat

Hey I got an appointment. I dunno what for, a chat or something. But thats good. (bit of hope)


I had to ring again today which is something I get a little nervous about (used to drink for that too. To make phonecalls, attend appointments, family law dates, you name it)


Some good advice in the thread already but what should be my focus? My sleeping problems? Meh, thats a lifelong thing it aint the root of my problems.

The family law and all my related concerns around that? Well now, that is the important thing for me going forward I do know that much.

My family of origin? Now then, that is the root of my problems. And it is also at the root of my problems going forward. Always was, and always will be.

It is also very much intertwined in my problems and obstacles going forward and at this stage far more than I would like it to be or would have allowed.

But my life is out of control here for me and has been for a very long time. Another reason why I drank but a bit counter intuitive that idea.


What do ye reckon? Cheers