gravity

Hi tesquizito,

I'm only 3 1/2 months sober and am offering some of my own limited experience & perspective. Hope some of it helps.

I go to two AA meetings a week - 2 hours. So 99% of my life falls outside of AA meetings. However, the rest of my time, I try to live in accordance with the principles of AA – not being judgmental, thinking of others, being kind, being grateful, forgiving myself etc. It really isn't all about not drinking & counting the days.

I have yet to meet anybody in an AA meeting that I would consider hopeless. When I first started going to meetings, perhaps I would judge people by my own, often materialistic standards and way of living - my goals, what I considered to be a great life. "How can that guy be happy, he has nothing!" Last week, I met a guy who after years living on the street, finally got his own place - a small room with a mattress on the floor. He now has a job, hard labour. He has been sober for several months. At the end of the meeting, he put his arm around me, consoling me (I had shared that I had lost a cousin a few days before). Clinging to a string? Maybe, maybe not. Hopeless? Not a chance. I meet all kinds of people at meetings – rich, poor, young, old, first day sober, decades sober – none are hopeless, none are giving up.

I also have a great career doing meaningful work I enjoy. I have a beautiful, caring wife and precious, young children. I have many good friends. I have a very active, full life. All hanging by a thread because of my alcoholism. It is such a fine line. I really believe I should have lost my family & career long ago.

This is the point where my life started falling apart (up until then, I could still rationalize that I was in control, nobody was getting hurt). My alcoholism was really bleeding into the rest of my life, affecting my job & hurting my family. In retrospect, I am starting to see how bad it really was – for example, showing up at critical meetings extremely hungover or still half-drunk, the pain I caused my wife by not being there.

Not offended in the least and I wouldn’t feel like an outcast. You are a guy like me trying to deal with an alcohol problem, looking for feedback & advice - and you are going to meetings, reading your book. Sounds like a you are on a good path. Take care. D

p.s. - I did "get" your first post, speaking from "Mr. Drunk's" perspective. I actually wrote a post the other day about my "insane" thinking - what it was trying to tell me. Glad you didn't buy into it and are still working on your sobriety.

hope45

Thanks for this post. I think most people have been where you are at some point. Thinking they should quit, need to cut down, etc. but not really wanting to. I was there for many years. I tried and tried to drink less but I just couldn't do it. There came a point when "should" and "need to" turned into "I want to". Until I got there, quitting seemed impossible. A lot of what kept me from wanting to stop was the feeling that life would be so boring without drinking. I have a lot of friends, some of whom drink a lot, others moderately, others not at all. Somehow, I always felt, I don't know... threatened almost by those non-drinkers. As if their not drinking was throwing cold water on the party. It didn't, but as a problem drinker, it made me uncomfortable. That may have been where I got the idea that life was boring without drinking. One of the most surprising things I have discovered is that things really aren't boring without drinking. But you can't figure that out for yourself unless you try it. Next time you get up on stage, do it without the booze. I'll bet you a lemonade you still have a ball. Good luck!

Captain Kirk

I agree. Being drunk and/or stoned is boring. The fact that we can only probably remember maybe 5% of the time we passed under the influence of our various substances only means that the remaining 95% of the time couldn't have been any better!
Sobriety rocks!

tesquizito

Thanks everyone. I really appreciate it.

I screwed up my web launch because I passed out at 10pm. It was *only* a 50 million dollar company, crap.

I'm now covering up the tracks, so I'm not completely at fault. Unmanageable....um yeah.

One thing that resonated with me was your posts about humility...step 7..read about that at a book study on Thursday...humbly asking my HP to remove my shortcomings. Far away from me, but I realize I can be egomaniacal at times.

I wanted to speak but was reserved...my parents are ministers, my dad left the seminary to marry my mom and have me. I'm a little bit of a *holy* child. I grew up in the church. My dad is freaking smart, I admire him. I've never gone to public school, k-12 Catholic-Jesuit, we talk about faith, in HS had some interesting conversations when I challenged him.

I always thought faith was for the weak....but here I am....weak. Smart as a mo-fo, but still weak.

I don't believe in God. I only believe in God as a means to an end. To a better self, a bit selfish.

If it's not obvious I'm working through a lot of personal things, and I'm sorry if I'm coming off pompous, I feel like I'm breaking the SR format. But I'm posting honestly, and I guess that's better than living a lie.

Thanks.

tesquizito

Holy crap, I'm screwed.

Walked into the convenience store today and the clerk told me that last night I stumbled in to buy more booze. They reluctantly sold to me...but I don't even REMEMBER it. It must have been a scene or else he wouldn't mention it.

This means I drove there. Bad. I blacked out. Really bad.

Calling my numbers w/ AA today, I missed the lunchtime meeting but I'll try to do something today.

Consequences...someone posted earlier this would bite me in the ass...i feel bitten.

I'm at work in my office and nobody knows the dance with the devil I did last weekend. I'm doing my best to not get completely busted.

Thanks for putting up with my crap on this forum. After 1 month of sobriety my devil is staring me straight in the face...and laughing.

I feel like such a failure.

gravity

Do you have a sponsor and are you working the steps? The big book, the steps, my sponsor, and meetings are all critical components of my recovery.

I mean this in a kind way - look really hard at the first step. D

tesquizito

I don't have sponsor. I have a member that I jive with and has expressed to be my sponsor, but I'm afraid of letting him down. I will be calling him today.

I read the big book and go to 3-4 meetings a week.

I just had to confront my boss in the break room. sh!t obviously went wrong this weekend with my website launch. I took the blame, but in reality, if I was sober there was no blame to be had. The total consequences of this have not been fully realized yet. I suck again.

post-edit: He asked me point blank if everything was okay, I skirted the issue and told him that my phone battery died, that's why I wasn't available. Looking back it's bad that he asked me point blank like that, because he can't be stupid. He must know, and now a big client is affected, but he will back me up because I'm a valuable employee.

I dunno, the whole thing stinks really badly.

gravity

On December 15 & 16, I was scheduled to facilitate an out of town weekend training session with an important client. The client spent money for travel, hotel rooms, meeting rooms and they all committed to spend a weekend away from their families. I left them hanging, just did not show up - I was drunk all weekend. What you are going through right now I went through on December 17 - having to deal with the immediate fallout but it has to be done. December 17 is also my sobriety date, the day of my first AA meeting, the day I met my sponsor, and the day I did my step 1.

You really don't know how close you might have come to losing your job. Be grateful for that. I consider myself a valuable employee (like I can read my boss' mind ) but not an irreplaceable one.

Don't worry about dissapointing your potential sponsor. This really is one day at a time.

Keep pushing through the day, taking positive action. In retrospect, while my day 1 was hellish, I made some of the best decisions of my life on that day. D

Dee74

Tes
we've all been there - I was the smartest guy in the world - I was 'there' for years until my lies and excuses, and my former good will, just didn't cut it anymore - and then I had a lot more time and a lot more 'reason' to drink....

failure would be letting this go and letting it happen again...I don't think you will

D

warrens

Tesquizito,

Sounds like various fans are asking for an autograph. One at least has scales and is rather cold blooded. Hard to tell with all the outstretched hands.

Can never tell when someone like that turns into a stalker.

I was around a lot of musicians when I was young. Some became household names. Many became dead.

You've gotten a knock on the door. Heed it please! I've seen major people in many walks of life lose it all. And they were major people because they were major smart. Major people attract minor people bearing gifts, looking for a little glitter to fall. Any major dude will tell you...

Another beware, T. Beware the feeling that you are "valuable." History is littered with valuable people abandoned in a day (Eliot Spitzer?). If your boss needs a scapegoat, You are giving him a perfect resume. He won't go down first.

Heed the knock on the door, T. Most of us don't. Sounds like you have farther to fall than most. It's funny how those "near misses" are forgotten in a month or so. And every time we dodge a bullet, it gives us a sick type of confidence. A feeling of invulnerability that grows with every near miss. what we don't realize is that it is simply moving us closer to the edge.

What is most important however, is not the material stuff you could lose, but your sanity. Your dignity. Your health. Your free will. The option to not drink.

I will be thinking of you, T. You remind me of me. Best to you.

warren

Hevyn

You remind me of me, also, T - and I hope you will be spared the needless hell I put myself through. In the end, I was clinging on to life by a thread while searching for that elusive high & happy feeling I used to get. I'm sure you have many things you still want to accomplish in your lifetime. Be thankful you've had the good sense to know that this disease is trying to take your soul.

least

You say you feel like a failure. I feel like that a lot and my counselor has to remind me that hating myself is counterproductive to good emotional health. She's right too. So don't hate yourself or think of yourself as a failure. Think of yourself as someone who will start over from day one having learned a valuable lesson from that "knock on the door". All the best to you. You can do it.:ghug3

LosingmyMisery

Here it is right here. This says it all. When you hate yourself for the messes you've created, the lies that you've told, and the disappointment you've created, when you hate what you see when you look in the mirror, and are ashamed of what you've become, yet still reach for another drink, that is when you know this is something more powerful than yourself. This is a viscous, ruthless, merciless, disease. I'll take boring any day.

There isn't a sober day that goes by where I feel I am missing out on the fun. I'm grateful for the second chance at life. I now appreciate the little things that I overlooked before due to my drunkenness, or plain just didn't give a damn. I was so selfish. Every second of the day was about me and my drinking. To bad about anyone else's wants or needs. I look at each day as being accountable for my actions and behaviors. I'm cognitive and able to function at any given moment. Could I say that when I was drinking? I think we all know the answer to that. You aren't a failure. You are only an alcoholic. Just like the rest of us. There is a solution and life goes on, better than ever. I'm glad you are reaching out for help.

tesquizito

I went to a meeting this evening. Actually, I called the guy whom I'm closest with in AA and he invited me to a new one I hadn't been to. He bought me a 12 by 12 book afterwards and he's now my sponsor.

He told me something that took be aback after I told him what happened last weekend. I told him I didn't know what I did wrong. He said that going to meetings and reading the big book was *not* the program. I need a sponsor and have to work the steps. So it wasn't that I was doing something wrong, just that I wasn't doing it AT ALL.

I'm going to call him later tonight, and I guess I'll crack open that book.

Thanks for your support and sorry for being a jerk.

least

What are friends for if not to support you? And I'll not beat up on you as it seems you're already doing that to yourself.


:ghug3

And remember: no one person has the market cornered on "jerk-dom". We all have "jerk genes" in us.

tesquizito

.

GlassPrisoner

Sounds like a plan to me. My plans never quite turned out the way I thought they would.

I hope you don't take the beating I did before I realized I had no control over this thing.

tay-lyn

Wow Tes, the booze took you down super quick didn't it. You wrote at 10:05 Sunday morning that all was great, you only had 2 hours of work to do to get your website launched that evening and come Monday morning you'd be sober again and all would be well. But within hours, you were drunk again, so much so that not only were you not capable of doing the 2 hours of work you needed to do, but so much so that you stumbled into a store buying more booze and not recalling any of it.
That was QUICK! But...that's how it works. We have zero control. When we put the booze to our lips, we give up control. All your good intentions were out the window and the booze took over. You took a backseat and passed out.
I'm not criticising in the least. I came back on to see how you were doing and was surprised to read how fast things went out of control for you. You sounded so sure on Sunday morning that all was ok with the drink. I really am sorry to hear that you are having the trouble you are. I'm in the same boat. As soon as I take one drink, the rest of my life goes down the drain. Sometimes fast, sometimes a little slower, but it always goes. I hope you can learn from this. It took me sooooo long, so many attempts to learn my lesson. I hope you can learn before you lose anything else.
Tay.

Oh ya, and Warrens (my friend), I read your reply to my comment on boring. I think that 'boring' and 'being bored' are two different things. Personally, I don't get 'bored', I have way too many hobbies and things going on in my life. I find there isn't enough time in each day to do all the things I like to do. I lay in bed at night planning my next day so that I will have enough time to get in some time doing this or that. I think I am fortunate that way. I never seem to bet bored. However! I do find certain things BORING! Like phone conversations with my mother-in-law (God help me! lol). When I was drinking, that was a simple problem, pour a drink or two or three and listen to her ramble on and on. No problem. It was fun. BUT NOW! If I have to hear one more story about her neighbors, or her doctor, I'm gonna scream...... OR being at a party where everyone else is drinking and talking to me about how great they are.... OR getting cornered on a nice day by my drunken neighbor, and having to engage in polite conversation, small talk with her about her gardens. That kinda stuff is boring when you're sober. When I was drinking, everything was fun.....for the first five minutes anyways. Know what I mean! There's a difference between boring and boredom. Just my two cents.
Tay.

warrens

Well put, Tay!

warren

gravity

I really appreciate your post. Reaching out, asking what you need to do. Your sponsor will be able to provide an objective perspective with valuable experience to back it up. For me, I am so grateful that I no longer think that I know all that I need to know or that my reasoning is always right - not just with my alcoholism but with everyday life. It's about learning, growth & becoming strong.

No worries about your earlier posts. Apology accepted. D