sweetr72

I have many addictions. My addictions include food and alcohol. I gave up both, alcohol I gave up just over a year ago and food I gave up a few months ago. I also have experimented with cutting. This week my common law who is also an alcoholic went camping for a week with our children from different relationships. It was a total disater for us not the kids, they loved each other. Today after dropping the kids off at our insigificant others I dropped him off at a friends house so he could help the friend move tomorrow. A few hours ago I got a call from him and he was drunk once again, he stays sober a few months and drops off the wagon. He promised to go back to meetings and I go nuts with worry and make myself insane trying to make him stop. I myself have quit all my meetings and now i sit here alone, cut up, drunk and plan on pigging out when I get drunk enough. I am a total mess. I just want it all to stop and I cant stop it...if you cant beat em join em. Deep down I know this is ****** up but I cant stop myself now. I am half way through a bottle of whiskey and need to vent. I never had a sponsor, big mistake. I just need to type this to make it real as I feel like this is a nightmare and I cant wake up. I have relapsed on food for years, but this is my first time relapsing on alcohol and cutting and im scared.

BaBa OReiley

go to a meeting, get a sponsor, work the program and everything else should fall into place.

ask someone about step one, i doesn't matter if you know what it says in the book or not, ask someone about it, and lkeep asking till you accept it in you're heart. knowing what it says in your head won't keep you sober, accepting it your heart might.

you might wan't to seek help from a hospital with the cutting, you're in a very dangerous space right now, drinking with a cutting instrument is not good.

please stop before you hit a major artery and it's too late.

Anna

Hi Sweet,

Welcome to SR. You will find lots of support here.

I understand how you feel - alone and afraid. But, you can stop it. Just take a step out of the cycle you are in and you can begin to heal. I hope this doesn't sound trite, but it seems like you really need to learn to love yourself because then you wouldn't be trying to harm yourself the way you are. You are worth whatever it takes to get better and you can find lots of support here.

Anna

Don S

Hi, sweetr72,.
In my opinion you have issues which you would benefit from discussing with a counselor. I am not in AA, and some here might not like this comment, but I think that AA is not the place for you to deal with your compulsive behaviors. Just dealing with the alcohol is not going to get at the reasons you eat compulsively, harm yourself intentionally, and have such profound problems with self-image. More than likely if you stop drinking you will have an upsurge in one of your other compulsions. It will be best if you work on all of these issues, not piecemeal but in an environment where you feel safe and where you can start building up your confidence and power.

I'm really sorry you're feeling so badly about yourself. I hope you can come to believe that change is possible. There are lots of folks here who would like to help, just by talking to you, so please keep posting.

When you're feeling better, here's some information about cutting that I found. My son did this, and so did a good friend of mine here. So I did some research to try to understand it a little better.

Here’s a link about cutting that you might find useful:

http://www.palace.net/~llama/psych/injury.html

There's a useful outline of coping strategies there that I think has broad applications:
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Marsha Linehan's Skills Training Manual has several helpful worksheets for getting through crisis situations. Though they are best used as part of a DBT program with a trained therapist, you might find some of them helpful.

Accepting Reality
This concept focuses on learning to accept reality as it is. Accepting it doesn't mean you like it or are willing to allow it to continue unchanged; it means realizing that the basic facts of the situation are even if they aren't what you'd like them to be. Without this kind of radical acceptance, change isn't possible.

Letting Go of Emotional Suffering
In this worksheet, you learn ways to observe and describe your emotion, separate yourself from it, and let go of it. One of Linehan's basic principles is that emotion loves emotion, and this worksheet is designed to help you experience your emotions with amplifying them or get caught in a feedback loop.

Distraction
Distraction is simply doing other things to keep yourself from self-harming. Most of the techniques mentioned above are distraction techniques; you bring something else in to change the feeling. Using ice, rubber bands, etc, is substituting other intense feelings for the self-injury. Other things Linehan suggest substituting includeexperiences that change your current feelings, tasks (like counting the colors you can see in your immediate environment) that don't require much effort but do take a great deal of concentration, and volunteer work.

Improve the Moment
This worksheet focuses on ways to make the present moment more bearable. It differs from distraction in that it's not just a diverting of the mind but a complete change of attitude in the moment.

Evaluating the Pros and Cons of Tolerating Distress
As the name implies, this worksheet leads you through an evaluation: what are the benefits of doing this self-harming thing? What are the benefits of not doing it? What are the bad things about doing it? About not doing it? Sometimes writing this down can help you make a decision not to harm.

Self-Soothing
This, like improving the moment and distracting, is a distress tolerance technique. It's pretty straightforward: use things that are pleasing to your senses to soothe yourself. Some people find that active distraction works better for violent angry feelings and soothing is more effective for soft, sad ones.

Reducing Vulnerability to Negative Emotion
Prevention of states in which you are likely to self-harm is covered in this worksheet, which suggests ways of taking care of yourself in order to minimize the times when you feel the urge to hurt yourself. If you're balancing eating, sleeping, and self-care, you're less likely to be overwhelmed by emotion.

Interpersonal Effectiveness
Being clear about what you want and about your priorities in an interaction are crucial to good communication, and this worksheet offers a series of questions and steps to follow to help you determine how to approach a difficult interpersonal interaction. It is truly amazing how much going through these steps can help.
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Comments from a fellow facilitator on the SMART Recovery message board:
“I have worked in psychiatry for 20 years and have seen all kinds of self-harm.
Most 'cutters' are looked at as so common that they rarely get an inpatient admission. It is a lot of what you found out, Don, even like a rite of passage for many youth. "Nirvana" lightly carved into an arm, a very tidy row of squares from a pin drawn against the skin, a tearful confession as a patient brings us their implements: a tack and a piece of a plastic fork. We are taught to treat these things matter-of-factly. "Here is a bandage." "I will throw these away for you." "Your self-responsibility is appreciated". What doesn't work: "Oh my God, what have you done? I need to call the doctor. We should put you in seclusion. We had better put you on special attention, so get into pajamas". This last reaction feeds into the dynamic; dramatic self-expression. The acts themselves are pretty freaky to see at first, and your reactions here remind me of my initial reactions as a student. It may sound hard, but I got inured to this behaviour pretty damned quickly. It is treated easily in most cases, can involve family dynamics, and is usually outgrown when better coping skills are learned. It is not particularly life threatening.

Self-injury is also strongly associated with something called a "borderline personality disorder". I will summarize from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders III-R:

at least five of the following:

1)a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of overidealization and devaluation
2)impulsiveness in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging, eg. spending, sex, substance use, shoplifting, reckless driving, binge eating
3) affective (emotional) instability: marked shifts from baseline mood to depression, irritability, or anxiety, usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days
4)inappropriate, intense anger or lack of control of anger, eg, frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurring physical fights
5)recurrent suicidal threats, gestures, or behaviours, or self-mutilating behaviour
6)marked and persistent identity disturbance manifested by uncertainty about at least 2 of the following: self-image, sexual orientation, long term goals or career choice, type of friends desired, preferred values
7)chronic feelings of emptiness or boredom
8)frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandoment

Theories abound about the cause(s), mostly of the nature versus nuture variety

Treatment is often behavioural cognitive, plus psychotherapy and group work. Hospitalization is recommended to be short term crisis management only, usually in an ER. Long term hospitalization is contraindicated.

Many people with this disorder are highly functional (think Princess Di).

Well, lecture is over. Any questions? Don't forget, before you go self-diagnosing, AT LEAST FIVE of those points.”

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Here’s another link:
http://www.uwec.edu/counsel/pubs/selfinj.htm
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laurie6781

"AA is not the place for you to deal with your compulsive behaviors"

Thank you Don, I so agree. Get some private counselling. People in AA seem to forget that "we are not doctors" and many times professional help is needed.

Sweet, please keep posting and let us know how you are doing.

Don, I am so glad you are a member of this site. Your replies are always refreshing and very very interesting. Thank you.

Love and (((((to all))))),