This is so exhausting!
 

Anyone else find this whole self recovery/dealing with alcoholism exhausting? My God, I feel like I'm running a 50 mile marathon every day! Some days I feel rewarded like I had a good work out, some days I feel like I've been put through the wringer! It's amazing how just thoughts can drain your body of energy!

incredibly exhausting. :(

Exhausted over here too. Thought I was done with all this, to tell the truth. Been working on myself for 16 years now. I feel stupid. When am I ever going to figure this all out?

While the drug addicts and alcoholics whoop it up, having a good time, no cares in the world.

It is wonderful to hear this. I thought that I was the ONLY one losing my mind. I get home one night, to her sitting on the couch, guzzling beer after beer, and about 2am she starts sobbing uncontrollably about how much she hates her life, and my apartment, and everything. (How did this make me feel as a newlywed of less than 2 weeks???) She reeked of liquor and wanted to drunkenly get amorous and it was much less than a turn on. This began a trend of her sleeping (with the 8 year old, not me) until 11am, waking, showering making me a fast breakfast while not eating, complaining of a sour stomach, then needing to visit her dysfunctional mother (a 65 yr old heroin addict) and her Uncle and Aunt (cocaine and alcohol) and do her daily "cruise" which is a stretch of rural road slightly outside the city in which she had me drive and drank, and had me blow into her breathalyzer, as she listened to irritating "teen" hip hop music, and the cruise always ended with a trip to her favorite liquor store.....then home, where the drinking began, if I was at work about 9pm until I got home at 11, then the 8 year old was up and in our face, until 3am when she would go back to bed with him.

Day after day, except the weekends, where she had found a nightly drunken and drug addled house party to hang out at until 3am....I was bored of it all, and knew I had made a mistake about 2 weeks into this.

Restaurants? Kareokee? Bike rides? Movies? Nights on the town? Forget any of that, it bored her to death.

It was a farce and and absolute failure as a marriage...I am sad that the "fantasy" sober version of her exists only in my head...the reality of the alcoholic that she is, is the reason I am seeing my attorney tomarrow, to purge this out of my life permanently.

Yes, yes, yes, yes & YES!

It's no wonder I need more sleep & a slower pace in all of the other areas of my life, lol!

Add to that I was an emotional nervous mess/wreck. I constantly had sweaty palms and would sweat profusley through the day and night, and just had a constant "nervous" uneasy feeling around her, and also, this strange surreal "sense" of some sort of impending doom. This had to be due to the constant drinking and the fact that I knew (instincts) that it just wasnt going to work out, regardless of my feelings for her. I was correct in the end, but in all reality, the person she was and is now, is not the person I dated all those years ago. She turned into a bitter, and paranoid angry alcoholic with major, major issues, who had no interest in quitting her alcohol, or even having a nice marriage, she was only interested in drinking to oblivion daily.

:c018:I agree that early recovery can be exhausting.
However......while taking itty bitty baby steps
learning each day not to drink or drug it can be
easier, and you know what? You dont have to
do this on your own or by urself. :c029:

There are many who have learned how to stay
sober or clean each day for a long period of time,
so like i did, i listened and absorbed and used
their own suggestions that seemed to be comfortable
for me to follow in my own everyday life.

Find things that can fill in ur day to keep you peaceful
and serene. Some place to escape to where you can
walk, or ride ur bike, or just sit and relax and just be
in the moment. A place that is quiet, away from the
noise of the world. The agrivations or triggers that would
tempt u to want to drink or use.

I learned early on that we are meant to have fun in
recovery and even tho at times right now it may seem bleek,
you will learn to smile, laugh and enjoy life in recovery. :)

Be kind and gentle with yourself because you deserve it.

Can totally relate. I was exhausted when I flew to FL for vacation. Now, 2.5 weeks later I feel refreshed and ready to tackle the world despite the stress of my son's tennis tournament. My son plays high level tennis and this tournament is one of 4 top tournaments that occur each year. Only the top 128 applicants are accepted out of the thousands of kids who compete around the country every year. This tournament was very high stress for us but I felt so laid back and comfortable.

Unfortunately, my fairy tale life can only last so long, LOL, but it's been great for now. After this, I will remind myself that just taking a few minutes to myself each day can be enough to rejuvenate me, even if only for a few minutes. Small steps, every day, right? I love the saying, "How do you eat an apple? One bite at a time." That's how I'm trying to handle my day, everyday, because it makes things much more manageable.

It wears ya down, thats for sure...but its funny how ya still manage to keep on going....even thru the pain barrier - we are amazing people !!!!

Not me. 4 weeks was all I had tolerance for. I get it that a lot of people love the addict/alcoholic and will stay regardless of the misery and stress, but I am ending it, for the hope of being with someone I can have a normal relationship with. It's like keeping a car that is constantly stalling and overheating, and no repair job will fix it, the only solution is to $#@^can it, and get another car that actually runs normal.

This is very true. But, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Keep working your recovery because it does get better and I can say that from experience.

When I came to this forum and started Al-Anon I used to lay in bed at night and think about how great it would be to be dead. I wouldn't have any problems then. All of the pain would be gone. Thank God I found SR.

I have separated from my AW, am in the process of a divorce and love my life. I now KNOW that I am worthy of love, in particular my own love. Every day isn't perfect by far but I can now deal with the issues that come up with patience and compassion. That is because I have a program.

So, please keep reading and posting here, there are happy endings. They just usually aren't the endings you had planned on.


Edit: Had to make some corrections because I think faster than I type. :)

Your friend,

Totally exhausting!

Healing, figuring out, starting over, leaving, losing, starting again, thinking, over-thinking, leaving someone, meeting someone, more figuring out........all drains my soul.

When someone is an Empath (as most if not all codies are), they absorb everything in their path. Every emotion, thought etc.
We are overly sensitive to everything.

This is why it's important to learn the skill called "Not giving a sh*t" ;-)

I learned a new word yesterday thru facebook that may be fitting for this thread.

Exhaustipated!!

Too tired to give a $h!t!

Exhausting for me after a decade plus...
I lost, dammit. Only time in romance I REALLY wanted to win.
Thought all along--"I know you love me, so I will teach you to respect me if it takes forever".
Exactly when does "forever" arrive?
How long does one wait?

Yep, sometimes I need a break from my own "recovery".

I know that feeling all to well & I'm just a newbie! I believe that's called a vacation from your mind!

Sometimes it's healthy for we, the F&F, to take a break from improving ourselves and put the brain in neutral. Take walk, get some ice cream, watch a movie....whatever it takes to NOT think about recovery for just a little while.

Exhausting indeed. I'm so tired from dealing with it for the past year or so, that I'm plain old numb. I feel like I have to wait until I get feeling back before I can really work on myself. I'm doing what I can to support him through his recovery, but dammit, I don't have the energy to work full time and then be throwing a parade for every day he's sober or every time he makes some sort of step forward. That line between being supportive and just being too pooped to care about anything is very very thin!

Yes it is exhausting. I could be riding my bike on the wrong side of the tracks in crack central if ya know what I mean. I'm better than where I was. :egypt: