taplow

It's great to see so many people coping so well here. It seems very inspirational. I haven't learned. I reckon I'm stuck in the drinking world. Are you lesser addicts than me? I doubt it. It's probably that I'm weaker than you sober people. It's a complicated bastard this drinking thing. Comes from all directions, so many associations keep me where I am. It's all very subtle and insidious.
I don't want to drink but being sober at my age means reinventing my whole life. I want to stand in front of one of the trains that roar through Newark Northgate on their way down to Kings Cross. That takes proper courage. Looking at that horrified face of the driver halfway through his cheese sandwich as he's hurtling towards you. I've been thinking that it's probably best to kneel down. Wouldn't want to be bounced of it and survive as some vegetable, though I don't think you could ever survive at the massive speeds they go. Even so, I'm someone who checks that I've locked the front door properly so I'm going to obsess about it. I'm not doing it tomorrow I should say but that's the way I'll go when I go.
This afternoon I lay down knowing I can't drink anymore from what I put myself through yesterday and so many days before. I'm poisoned. Now of course later on I'm drinking, but only 2 bottles of wine because in my childish reasoning it's a soft day, a recovery day. But now I'm on my last glass and am regretting being so conscientious earlier on.
This is relentless. I don't know how I work, but I do. Not very well but I do. Who knows about all this?
Stopping drinking, which has been my life means that I've got to find another life to replace it with. Unless something came out of nowhere it can't happen.
I reckon that I don't have a drinking problem. I just have a life problem. You might have substance abuse - take away the alcohol and you're okay. You're addicts maybe. The actual chemicals hook you. You're fighting the the addiction.
With me I could give up alcohol just like that if there was a life to slip into. Of course it's only my fault. I created the measly existence I'm entombed in. Alcohol's just a convenient cupboard under the stairs to hide in. Unlike most people when I get sober I'm even worse. Sobriety is certainly not some release. I doesn't make me emerge into the sunshine. The problem is that alcohol isn't my enemy it's my refuge.
I could give up easily if it solved the problem. It's only when I compare myself to others that I realise I must have a mental health issue overriding everything.
But for you it might be different. You should all appreciate alcohol is a death sentence, living hell etc. You've got lives to live. Stopping drinking will allow you to claw back the life you've got but have put aside.
No easy answers. No answers at all. No requests and no solutions. I'm not going to stop this way of life. I can't be someone I'm not. I'm born to skulk in the shadows. If someones lying injured suffering in agony they're given morphine. Is that wrong?
Anyway, no wine left. Keep sober and be happy.

BixBees505

'This is relentless. I don't know how I work, but I do. Not very well but I do. '

So much, I recognize. My heart and hope go out to you.

You. Can.

But you .... Must. Change.

I reckon VERY FEW of us had "a life to slip into". We all had to build or rebuild these damn things from scratch.

Welcome.

BixBees505

Read more. A little further back. Follow members from their beginnings. Some you will brush off. Others you won't be able to.

Dee74

Hi Taplow

I don't think I was any stronger sober than I was a a drinker...

I'm serious when I say it takes a lot of commitment and dedication to drink like I did.

The thing was - alcohol coloured my world view and my self perception. I felt lost, powerless, hopeless and without a way out.

I stopped drinking because I scared myself and, drunken daydreams aside, I didn't actually want to die.

It actually took some months for the alcoholic world and self view to leave me but what I found was life wasn't the ordeal I thought it was when I was drinking.

The ordeal is the drinking life.

If you're feeling really low, beyond the usual drinking melancholy, there are websites to visit & numbers you can call:

CALM, the campaign against living miserably
Helpline – Nationwide
Call 0800 58 58 58

Our national helpline is open 7 days a week, 5pm to midnight. Callers can talk through any issue, we’ll listen and offer information and signposting. Calls are anonymous & confidential and won’t show up on your phone bill. Calls are free from landlines, payphones and O2, Orange, Virgin & Vodafone mobile networks. Other mobile networks and supermarket brand sims may charge.


Papyrus:
Call HOPELineUK 0800 068 41 41

or email: [email protected] *

or text: 07786 209697* *You do not have to give your name or whereabouts.

Samaritans Call 116 123 (free to call)

I know you're not a AA fan but maybe a meeting based recovery group like SMART Recovery or LifeRing could help?

You'd have real people to connect with, face to face?

D

SimplyFree

Taplow, I hope you were able make it through the very difficult evening. Maybe you can work with Dee,or an AA group to create a strong plan. You can win this battle! It is worth the fight.

entropy1964

Hi Tap
I'm sorry you're so low. I can probably safely say that many understand, including me. But really? I have no idea what anyone else is feeling. I have no idea what kind of alcoholic they are, how 'easy' recovery is for them, whether they suffer from mental illness, how difficult or easy (that's all relative) their lives are. I could ponder those thoughts until the cows come home and it would serve only one purpose: To detract me from taking as close a look at myself as I seem to be looking at others.

Comparisons are totally normal, and I believe addicts compare themselves to pretty much everything outside themselves more than a more adjusted person. He!! I get in AA and compare myself....is my sobriety 'good enough'. Am I 'sober enough', am I 'working the program right'? Its exhausting.

I have an internal problem. Call it a hole in my soul. For many years, probably my whole life, I have been looking for an external solution (drugs, drink, food, excitement, a person, money, 'stuff') to a completely internal problem. I don't have any 'enlightened' advice. I just know for me that filling that hole with alcohol, another external solution, will never work.

So its just not drink, each day, and put the internal pieces back 1 by 1 in a way that works for ME. Not for anyone else, not based on my warped sense of what I perceive I'm supposed to be, but by what brings me some peace. This is only possible sober. Period.

Hang in there. Just don't drink. Get to know yourself. It takes time. If it took years to get where you are, it will take a while to change. But you can do it, if you want it very badly.

BixBees505

FaF...well said. Appreciate your post.

Taplow, I hope you are ok. We'd love you to check in.

taplow

Thanks to everyone for your kind replies. I don't think I was overly drunk. I'm just as drunk now and it's only 5pm. It's to explain or, I don't know really. I wish I was straightforward.
As for me posting on here, sometimes you just want to say something. I don't mean that you have a big statement to make, I just mean that you decide that you have to post something. The fact is that you're going to post because you want to post something. At the time it might be something profound or something ridiculous that's in your mind. And whatever's in your mind at the time comes out. You look the next day and you're either proud or appalled. Drunk people's **** isn't worth anything as I'm sure you all know.
It'll all be different. The sun will come up and shine over everyone.
I'm 55 now. How did I get to this age with the life I've lived? Maybe you've got the same stories.
Tomorrow, day 1. Phoenix stuff.

thomas11

Hey Taplow, not sure this is what's happening to you, but my mind wanders all over the place when I'm good and drunk. It can be immensely positive or I can visit the dark corners of my brain. Either way, alcoholic behavior and thinking is not good for folks like us. Here's to hoping your day 1 tomorrow is a successful one.

Dee74

I hope you can find whatever it is you need to make the next ten years different from the last ten Taplow.

It's absolutely within you, just as it was within me, and hundreds of other people here

D

Berrybean

Taplow. I'm sorry you're feeling so low and hopeless at the moment. But I do truly believe that you are NOT destined to skulk in shadows.

Do you believe that you are skulking in shadows....

(A) .... so you need to drink to cope with that life.

(B) .... that the shadows are caused by your drinking habits.

(C) ... that there are both shadows and light, but your faulty alcoholic perspective draws your focus to the shadows?

I firmly believe that your other life is there for you. Waiting.

Dropping our self-will and those old behaviours and becoming will(give)ing often only becomes possible for us once we are in crisis (or at 'rock bottom'). I remember being in that crisis. It hurt. REALLY hurt. I didnt want to live any more. Especially not as me. But I got given a gift of desperation. It didn't feel like much of a gift at the time. More a curse. But I now look back and truly believe that It was the most precious gift God could have sent me. When i decided, finally, that i wanted a diffrent life (a sober one) like Jacob I got into a wrestle (with myself, or God, or a redeeming angel -who knows!!!) in the blackest period of my own darkness. Maye a wrestle between my own self-will to be drunk against my own self-will to get sober and 'come home' to a life in the light. I was locked in that grapple for a while. It was exhausting.

I only got out of that battle by making a decision. To stop being part of it. Walking away from it. Recognising that it wasn't MY will that was going to get me out of this, when it was MY will that kept me there. In Jacobs story, it was at this point that the unknown one asked for thisnto stop, and Jacob asked for a blessing. The blessing was that he got his name got changed to Israel. ('Jacob' means cheater or schemer, Israel has a far more positive meaning - so it was his identity and personality that changed). In MY story, this was the point where I found it possible to put down the booze, and stay sober, one day at a time.

But that wasn't the end of the growing by any means. I needed to start recognising what part of my own past behaviours had impacted my own existance, and that of others. I needed to stop with my excuses. Be willing to be in the light that showed up my own faults and defects. If I'm honest, the shadows had felt pretty safe for me for the reason that I didn't need to look at things there. It was even better than rose-tinted glasses, because I couldn't see my defects even if I wanted to. Someone told me that we are only as sick as our secrets, and mine certainly kept me sick. My first step to healing was self-honesty. Ouch, that hurt as well. But like Jacob, I limped forward. Out of the shadows and into a new tomorrow. None of us can get to our Eden if we stay wrestling in our darkness. We can't have both.

I wish you all the best for your sobriety and recovery. BB

FreeOwl

Nah. You weren't born to skulk in the shadows.

You were born to fly in the light.

It's your choice.

You're a really gifted storyteller.

Start telling a different story.

The story of YOU CAN.

The story of SOBRIETY.

Leshar

I am so sorry that you are experiencing suicidal despair. It is agony. But jumping in front of a train does not take courage. It takes courage to stay alive, breath by breath. It seems to me that alcohol and /or depression are lying to you.
I'm around your age, and struggling. Finding a new sense of self and feeling like you have some useful purpose isn't easy at our age, but the alternative is too horrible to contemplate. Yes, think of that driver. Stay alive and be sober.
Many good wishes to you.

tealily

Taplow,

I hope you are feeling better today.

Please don't let success stories or others' progress make you feel defeated. I get how it could be demoralizing, rather than encouraging, but maybe it would help to take into account that some people use sharing small victories as a way to cheer themselves on and keep their momentum going, especially if they are hanging by a thread .. but it doesn't mean everything is smooth sailing for them. Anyone fighting this knows how rough it is.

I lurked for years without posting about my struggles and agonizing daily regrets. You can view the range of posts and stories here as a snapshot of different styles of coping, temperament and healing, at many points all along the spectrum of recovery. It's not a straight line for any of us.

I figure that probably all of us here tried many, many times to quit. But sobriety can and does happen, and it can happen for you, just as much as it can for anyone else.

None of us beyond help. There's always hope. A change to be finally made. A corner finally turned.

I quoted Dee above.. I love the point made: That the drinking itself becomes the misery. It sounds so simple, but life becomes so much better, just by removing that one -- massive -- thing.

Please, don't despair. We get it and are here for you!

taplow

I'm still drinking but I'm not drunk. I'm really not so negative and self-pitying when I'm sober. Sobriety is something I love - I've been sober for some long periods - but maybe I don't love it enough. It's the answer, the cure, the solution, but always for tomorrow.
I've had some great answers here. But really I know myself there's only thing to do. I have to make up my mind to make up my mind. Green lines on the calender is the only way to go. I hope I can post back when I've sorted myself out.
I hope you good people can keep sober. I think it's a narrow course to follow and means being strong but not obsessive.
Thanks everyone.

Dee74

Yeah we can give you all the support you want B, but you need to make that leap of faith into something different.

Make it soon - the longer you stand on the diving board the harder it gets.

D