I Need Help
 

Hello everyone. I am brand new to this website. I am 34 years old and have been a heavy drinker since I was about 17. Sadly, during the past few years, I have become a nightly drinker. I currently drink about 12-15 beers every night, and I drink even more on the weekends. To be perfectly honest, it is not even very much fun anymore. I simply drink every night so that I will be in a good mood. My life has become incredibly boring because I have lost interest in just about anything that does not revolve around drinking beer. Lately, I have begun to realize that I am not living life at all. Instead, I am simply tolerating life during the day in my depressed/hungover state. Then by the time I get home from work, I begin drinking beer in order to numb that pain that I feel from being hungover. And thus the cycle continues. I have finally realized that if I do not put a stop to this now, I will most likely be in some real trouble in the next 10-15 years, if not sooner. However, I am afraid of what life will be like without drinking beer. Is sobriety really worth it? Can a heavy drinker's body really heal itself over time if they remain sober? Or has the damage that I have done to myself over the past 17 years of drinking permanent? I am still relatively young at age 34, but if it will not benefit me healthwise to quit drinking, then why should I? I guess I need to believe that the benefits of staying sober will greatly outweigh those of drinking. These are some of the questions and fears that I have. Any help and advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Hi Jester,

Welcome to the board - I'm glad you decided to join us. Yes, sobriety is possible, and yes it's worth it. I entered into recovery when I was 33 - by the end of it, I was drinking heavily several nights a week. My body has healed, as has my mind, and life is a lot better than what it used to be.

Others will be along to welcome you - you've found a great place. I hope you stick around!

Jester, I was 34 when I got sober. I had many of the same fears you have. It took some work -- a lot of change -- and most of all, a willingness to see it through.

Advice? Suggestion -- find an AA meeting and go there after work instead of hitting the bottle. That's a start.

Peace & Love,
Sugah

hi....:wavey:
Welcome to our recovery community
where you will find many of us winning over alcohol.
:yup:
Chooseing to be sober was the wisest move I ever made.
It's been a fantastic 20 years ...an adventure.

Welcome, Jester. I was much older when I came to the conclusion that you are now, & that's something you should be thankful for. You're still young enough to turn this whole thing around. You have come to the best possible place for help and reassurance.

I was drinking twice what you are, plus adding in some 100 proof vodka when the beer didn't do the job. As they say, it's a progressive disease. Over time, we have to increase our intake in order to get the job done. You've already discovered it's no longer fun & you aren't really participating in your life, just waiting for Happy Hour. I chased that euphoric feeling of my early drinking days for years, & it can never come back.

I recently had a physical and was up front with the dr. about my 25+ years of heavy drinking. I have no liver or other damage, which I almost can't believe - so there's a good chance you may not have anything permanently wrong. I hope you'll get a check up and discuss this with your dr., though - and please be careful about detoxing.

Wishing you a new beginning filled with hope. Let us know how it's going for you.

Hi Jester,

It's a very scary time when you realize that your drinking can't continue, but facing life without alcohol is a big unknown. I hope you make the decision to live a sober life.

Welcome here! You will find much love and support if you decided this is the path for you.

Welcome to SR! I think sobriety is worth it. It's certainly worth not feeling sick so much and not risking injury or death or accident due to drinking. I don't need those risks or penalties.

I'm glad you found us and joined the family. Lots of good info here from lots of different people with the same problems.

Welcome to SR :wavey:

Truthfully, I don't have a lot of experience with sober... many more drinking days in my past. But I can say that even in my short time of sobriety, I have found sober to outweigh drinking... if for nothing else than what you mention, the cycle of drinking to get rid of the pain of last time drinking, is out of the picture. You can do other stuff. And most of the time, I'm improbably happy for no apparent reason. It never happened before...

So yeah, sober has its advantages, even early on.

Take care of yourself,
TB

Welcome. :)

I'm 31 and a year ago my drinking was probably similar to yours...I was forced to limit due to an interlock device in my car and being female I discovered I could only process 7 beers a night before not being able to start the car and get to work...from there I had the same realization that it was not fun just numbing myself night after night. In june I cut down to weekends only. I have been completely sober since 11/15/09 and already I feel much better. Like a weight has been lifted and my mind is clearing up little by little. I have a lot of emotions now, good and bad, but I like that I am feeling again not living life in a blurry haze of nothing.
I would talk to your doctor about your health-it would seem to me like healthwise sobriety will always benefit you, but you may need help from your doc to safely quit. Good luck to you and hope you stick around-this site has helped me more than I can begin to tell you.

Welcome Jester

I was 38 when I quit. My life now is the one I always dreamed of.
It's all yours if you decide you want to work for it, man.

Hope you stick around :)
D

I have only been sober for 12 days now...I had 17 days before but I drank and then started over. I can tell you that life is 100% better sober. Go to AA you'll find people EXACTLY like you. It will take some time but you will change for the better. try it what do you have to loose? You already have such great insight about your drinking...take a leap of faith you owe it to yourself...it works!

Jo

My boyfriend is 36 and has been sober since 10-14-09 and is finally happy to be becoming a man that he can be proud to be. He was a heavy drinker for 20 years. And he is feeling better and better physically and emotionally.

Stick with it and see how you feel! Welcome and good luck.

Welcome! Please keep coming back to SR!
SR is the reason I began to seriously consider sobriety in 2007. At that time I knew I was a chronic alcoholic but I didn't really know anything about this addiction.
I kept thinking but kept drinking. But I finally made the choice to stop in 2008, thanks to SR, an outpatient rehab center and AA.
The stickies about health and addiction were invaluable for me: they helped me make that decision. YES, you can make it happen!

Is sobriety worth it? You bet it is, as it says in the book Alcoholics Anonymous it is like being rocketed into the 4th dimension! Early sobriety sucked, but the fellowship of AA gave me support through the Experience, Strength, & Hope I found in the people in the rooms of AA. As I took the steps with my sponsor I found that all of my fears of sobriety were pure hogwash. Life sober is AWESOME!!!!

Being sober I can do every single thing I did while drinking better and I remember what I did as well the next day, even better I can now do things I could not do while drinking! Sobriety has opened up the whole world to me.

Can an alcohoilics body recover from years of drinking? Well I drank for 40 years, the last 5 years of my drinking I did not draw a sober breath. When I was in medical detox I was diagnosed with a "Fatty Liver" which is a precursor to "cirrosis of the liver". The doctor told me as long as I did not drink it would heal, if I continued to drink it would advance into "cirrosis of the liver" which will not heal. Well in 90 days of sobriety I had my liver enzymes checked again and all the levels were back to normal, the tenderness of my liver was gone as well, the swelling was totally gone in 6 months!

I have been sober for over 3 years and my health has done nothing but improved since I quit drinking.

Every one is different, it is a miracle to me that as long and as much as I drank I have no permanent effects from it. I would strongly urge you to see a doctor, preferably one familiar with alcoholism and tell the doctor the entire truth about your drinking, have him check you out and follow his suggestions.

Find a recovery program and work it!!!! Spend as much time working on your recovery as you did drinking. I and millions of others have used AA with great success. Why do this alone when you are not alone?

BTW even if you do have cirrosis of the liver, if you stop drinking and STAY stopped, the cirrosis will not get worse and the rest of your liver will heal. Stop worrying about what you do not know right now and see a doctor.

All you gotta do is look around in SR .. the shares of what things are like now for us speak for its self .. Is it worth it .. you bet your sweet a$$ it is .. worth everything which wasnt much when I started my road to recovery at 41 and now 6 yrs later Im so not the person I used to be .. Im someone I love and respect for stickin with it .
keep stickin around , thanks for joining our meeting last nite , was a really good share
~ huggles Endzy~

You might be my drunken brother. That is exactly what i did. A 12 back was not enough when i drank. And i drank them so fast. I was pounding through a 12 pack in about 2 hours. Really, my mind just wanted to get to one point- wasted.

On weekends, i would by a case each night, to make sure that i had plenty of beer to keep me drunk.
I quit drinking hard liquor at 32, only to replace it w/ drinking more beer and at a FAST Rate.

I am coming up on 8 months now. I am not bullshitting here when i say this- I can't believe how happy i am to not be drinking. I can't believe that i arrived at this state of mind. I never woulld have accepted this.

Where to you live? You should go to an AA meeting..and just sit back and listen. Keep going even if you are still drinking. You will love it.

Welcome Jester - I'm pretty new at this, Day 42, but after some ups and downs, I overall feel so much better, not only physically but mentally. Less depressed, fewer mood swings, and with increased self-esteem. T'ain't easy, for sure, but so far I can attest it seems worth it. I've spent 30 years (now 47) drinking daily...near a bottle of wine, sometimes more. I *know* that my health wouldn't sustain that. I also personally think that being female, there's a plethora of unknowns about the long-term effects on women vs. men. Face it, most medical clinical trials over the years have been with white male subjects! Sorry to prattle, but you know that you have to attend to matters. Stick with the people here at SR for a good place to start out. The support is fantastic here.
Best to you,

watsonc even in the 1930s it was pretty common knowledge in the medical community that women succumb to alcoholism at an alarmingly faster rate then men. Bill W. even mentions it in the BB.