DreamCatcher17

This morning I read the Daily Reflections, which is from AA. Whether you are in AA or not, I think this is good and I wanted to share.

"Why all this insistence that every AA must hit bottom first?
The answer is that few people will sincerely try to practice the AA program unless they have hit bottom. For practicing AA's remaining eleven steps means the adoption of attitudes and actions that almost no alcoholic who is still drinking can dream of taking."

You are free to take AA out of this and replace it with whatever program, HP, or recovery form you would like. But I find this to be really true.

Unless YOU are at the bottom unless YOU are willing to change there is going to be no change. Just the same sad cycle of drinking, regret, anger, and self-pity, repeat.

Everyone's bottom looks different, that is the beauty of individuality. My bottom doesn't have to be living on the streets or getting 1 or 20 DWI, or whatever.

My bottom was when I woke up from my last drunk I was ashamed, I was filled with guilt. That is NOT who I am, that is NOT how a mother acts, that is not living a life of LOVE and SELF RESPECT. From that moment on I choose whatever I had to do to NOT drink. If I had to hide in my house for a week and not be tempted, so be it that is what I did. If I had to hot 100 AA meetings, so be it that is what I had to do, if I had to spend hours upon hours on SR to keep my sanity and keep me from drinking that is what I did.

I made that decision to STOP drinking and to START recovering and I have not looked back.

In the (almost) 16 months I have been sober I have been around someone who was drinking EVERY DAY, I live 1.5 blocks from a bar/liquor store, I pass 15 liquor stores every day and probably 20 different establishments that serve booze, I go grocery shopping and guess what??? I DO NOT GO DOWN THE AISLE WITH ALCOHOL!!!!!

You see, we all have 1 common goal. To stop drinking and recovery. While our individual story is different and truly unique to us (because we lived it) we can share that with others. We can help each other.

We can not help the person who does not want help.
We can not make someone stop drinking.
We can give advice until we are blue in the face or our fingers hurt from typing, but the CHOICE will always be the person who is drinking (or not).
I am sad to see so many people struggling. I do not think they are relapsing every 2 days, as there has not even been a form of recovery, that is still just living in the same cycle. THat is just OK, I am feeling better I am no longer hung over, I am going to go and drink now... My opinon and how I would view my own cycle.

I pray that YOU ALL, for TODAY can live a sober day and do something nice for YOU and remeber we are all here to help, those who really want the help are the ones we can help and touch the heart of.

If you are suffering- When will you make that decision enough is enough? I hope that is today because YOU are WORTH it! YOU are worth so much and while it is HARD nothing worth it was easy.

Blessings,
DC

MantaLady

Lonewolf22

Thank you for that message Dream catcher

Recently my sister has reached out to me which I'm really grateful for. She said to me the other day, 'I just don't know how to get you to change this pattern of behaviour'.
I told her, 'you can't think like that, it is too much of a burden to put on yourself. No one can really help me ', I said, ' the fact you have reached out to me and are offering to help us enough'.

​​​​​​That's what I have noticed, people wanting to support someone in recovery have to know their limits but even a very small helping hand can make a huge difference If for example, the support and honesty you have shown me. The encouraging words and advice that this site provides along with my sister reaching out. That was far more support than I was getting 6 months ago.

a reason I began drinking over Christmas was partly because I wanted to but I was also failed by an organisation that was supposed to deal with my debts and help with getting an assessment for benefits. Help to organise a budgeting plan. None of that happened. I had my advisor miss two appointments at a crucial time. So yes no one can maintain your sobriety but a little consideration for someone's situation goes a long way. It can be the building block for a person struggling to either fall into despair or rising in hope. But like you said recovery comes in many ways. Some times it takes people to be turned away in order for them to realise they need to take a least some responsibility.

💗

August252015

Just read this too! In short, I dislike the word bottom and the whole concept. Why? Because "bottom" is so relative and to me, the only real one is death, which would have become my end much sooner rather than later before I quit.

I knew I could keep going further and further til that happened, and for some reason I was done before that was the end of my story.

Like today's reflection though, AA was my training wheels and now way of life to what was at first an uncertain future but one I tried because I sure knew I wanted to stop living as I was.

PhoenixJ

It was a true rock bottom for me- as I died. I doubt I would have got sober if it had not been for this event- or the next 6 months after this event, where I nearly died all over again from self neglect.

Like jump starting the heart after a cardiac arrest.

D122y

That is part of my reason to quite as well. Plus, I was physically poisoned from drinking 2/3rds a bottle of Jameson. I was going to eventually drink myself to death on way or another.

I don't intentionally go down the booze idle, but if it makes getting somewhere easier, I will. When I do, I see the booze as it truly is.....giant bottles of addictive poison.

I see people buying them booze and I feel sorry for them.

They either know they are hurting themselves and can't stop, or are partially blinded by their addiction.

Thanks.

snitch

Great post DC!!

I read that Daily Reflection this morning. I read them every morning. I can only speak for myself, but my bottom or at least my lowest point ever in my drinking "career" was last April when I just knew I had to do something. No not something actually.... everything!! The whole rock bottom is a funny concept. I feel like April was MY bottom but I could have got lower. I still had my home, my car, my job and my daughter when I got into recovery. But I was clinging on to them by my fingernails. Thankfully my bottom was low enough to make me realise I didn't want to go any further down.

I look back now and wish I had stuck at AA I had first gone 16 years ago and the and second time 5 years ago and then the third, last year. But that was not to be my journey. My previous "bottoms" weren't low enough to make me surrender and accept that I was an alcoholic who couldn't drink moderately or safely. That's one of the worst things about this illness. And I believe alcoholism to be an illness. You can't go to the doctor and have your blood taken and be told 2 weeks later yep you are an alcoholic. It is something we have to determine for ourselves which is why I believe so many of us have to get to our own personal bottoms before we want recovery.

What I would say now though to someone who thinks they may be an alcoholic or have a drinking problem is "when you take a drink can you finish that glass and walk away or do you immediately crave another, then another, then another etc" and "when you are not drinking are you thinking about drinking?" As stated in the doctors opinion in the Big Book of AA, alcoholism is a 2 fold illness. A physical allergy...one drink sets off the phenomenon of craving. And a mental obsession. If you, the person , answers yes to both those questions then it is highly likely that you are alcoholic and it is better to do something sooner rather than later as alcoholism is a progressive Illness and it WILL get worse.

I hear it in meetings and I believe it to be true for me today that I was given the gift of desperation because, for me personally, without it I wouldn't have got sober. My desire to drink was always stronger than my desire to be sober.

I do hope that someone who may be sitting on the fence today may read this and decide today is the day that they will halt the progression and stop drinking because a rock bottom isn't a necessity in getting sober and well and n9ne of us knowing someone's rock bottom will be a fatal one. Then there's no hope.

Lovely to read a post of yours DC. You are, as usual, a constant source of inspiration to me.

xxx

WeThinkNot

To this day I still don't understand it but I didn't have a bottom using the traditional definition of the term.

Over the course of my drinking career the following things happened: wife divorced me, many old friends cut me out of their lives, legal problems, financial problems, career stagnation, and physical deterioration. I was always convinced each milestone would be my bottom and I would somehow see the light.

On the night of April 13th 2017 I finished the last of my whiskey. It was too late to go to the store and I wasn't anywhere near as drunk as I wanted to be because of my ridiculously high tolerance. Just like that I decided I was finished. DUIs, divorce, and debt couldn't snap me out of it, but just like that my compulsions were lifted.

The human mind is an amazing thing.

Fearlessat50

Hi. I agree that everyone’s bottom is different. I don’t think a bottom is a true bottom until whatever it is shocks the person enough to full self awareness and into real action to change themselves. Maybe the bottom is a cumulative series of events for some. I think it was for me. I had a few bottoms (in college woke up in a frat house not remembering anything about the night before, in my twenties blacked out driving, found by police in the middle of a two lane highway facing the wrong direction with vomit all over me, in my forties decided it didn’t matter if I lived or died and drank two bottles of wine plus took a couple Valium, and others). None of these situations were enough to stop me from drinking again. That last incident was the first one where I actually made an initial effort to stop because I knew I had a problem. But I didn’t do the work, so I relapsed.

The bottom that finally stopped me was waking up after a heavy night of drinking (nothing out of the ordinary) and feeling at my lowest low emotionally and knowing I just couldn’t keep doing this. I did have physical symptoms. But I had had those before. It was more about the emotional low and finally admitting to myself that I was powerless over this alcohol thing. I was also seeing some of my friends go down this path. Watching them struggle put my own struggles in perspective.

It is a complicated concept. But for me, it was a process and it did take a series of bottoms that culminated in a final revelation about my relationship with alcohol. It was then that I decided to focus on changing myself and take real active steps to do so. Starting therapy with another recovered alcoholic was the true turning point for me. There were a lot of other tools I used and still use.

I think the realizations that I am powerless and that I do have to work at my sobriety every day to protect myself from complacency is what is different now from the previous bottoms. The one day at a time thinking is also hugely important for me.

Thanks for the post.

listae

I never thought that I hit bottom, despite getting a DUI where I ran into a tree and hit a car (luckily it was a parked car without anyone in it). What if I had hurt someone? I don't even remember hitting the car until I read the police report which described me as "disheveled" and "unkempt." My BAC was three times the limit and that was usually the amount of alcohol that I had every night.

But, I didn't stop. I kept drinking but just not driving. I paid a ton on rides.

Finally, I lost a job that I loved. I have made huge sacrifices and wasted a lot of time to have that job. But I secretly drank every night (by myself). It was impacting my ability to get my work done the next day.

This was my bottom: losing my job and the respect of my colleagues.

Proud2BeSober

Some people don't have bottoms. Their bottom is when they die. I think the key is to love yourself enough to realize that you have a problem and you deserve a better life.

As DreamCatcher17 alluded to best bet is to try to stop drinking as quickly as possible because the longer you wait the harder it will be and the more damage you will do to your life.