You were right I cannot stop
 

Hi there
As you know I felt I was not welcome here by some posters and said I was not posting again ,hope you will have me back please

I could not do it, stoppin yesterday that is.
I am wondering now if I ever will and feeling very hopeless, demotivated and very down. Thats not like me I am an upbeat person
Feel embarassed and ashamed that I could not do it
Worry I need "something" to make me feel ok everyday
I am fed up of waking up at 3 in the night and feeling sick, heart palpitations
Fed up of feeling physically crap
Its like a vicious cycle as I feel crap , but a drink makes it "better" in the short term.

I got my bloods back , Amazingly although I was drinking heavily over Xmas and New Years and thru dec, the liver results are best they have been ( dowm to 200 from 750) Makes no sense , but its still not a normal reading

We don't shoot our wounded Daphne. Yeah you might wear on us a little but it's nothing we haven't dealt with before :wink: After all, we're alcoholics!

I got this reading the other day and I've been saving it for a post like this, see if it makes sense to you....

When temptation comes, as it does sometimes to all of us, I will say to myself.- "No, my whole life depends on not taking that drink and nothing in the world can make me do it." Besides, I have promised that Higher Power that I wouldn't do it. I know that God doesn't want me to drink and I won't break my promise to, God. I've given up my right to drink and it's not my decision any longer. Have I made the choice once and for all, so that there's no going back on it?

Now that's how I have to feel every day, that my whole life depends on not taking that drink. It's not an option, it's not my ace-in-the-hole.

Glad you're back. Be gentle.

Everybody needs something to feel ok every day, we just have to learn not to use substance to get there.

I had to hit a few bottoms before I could really accept that walking away from alcohol and not pining over it, has made me much happier.

Have you ever been to an AA meeting? I'm not here to thump them, but it did help me a lot at the beginning, they can give you a lot of hope when you need to feel something KWIM?

Welcome back.

Hence my name......I know where you are right this very minute. I finally got sick of being sick about a week ago. I curled up in a ball for two days and weathered that horrible feeling of withdrawal. It was not a pleasant thing at all, but I knew I had to. Almost a week later I feel like I got a new lease on life. If I can do it, I know you can.

I have an upbeat personality too but you never would have known it over the past few months...holiday blues and heavy drinking left me dark and brought many tears. You can do it.......there is a light at the end of the tunnel, I am living proof. We are all here to support you through it. The first step is the hardest, but well worth it!!!!

Hugs.

Always welcome, Daphne. And this is a good position to start from. Even though I didn't like it much at the time, I needed that experience of trying to quit and failing. Over and over for me, Daphne. I failed over and over and got more and more hopeless.

And some guys who were once just as hopeless as me showed me what they had to do to recover. I did what they did and I recovered. And now I show others what I did, if they want to hear it. Simple.

Welcome Back Daphne...

Mark

Hi Daphne, there is help here and f2f available around nearly every corner. You are not alone and if you want to get better you can. I was depressed all my life, I think I was born depressed, I first went to a therapist in my early 20s-she suggested meds but I said no way; the depression worsened over the years and by 40 I was so deeply depressed all I thought of were ways to die-I went back into therapy and again meds were recommended and again I said no--then on one desparate visit the Psychiatrist said to me "if you had epilepsy would you take medication for it" I said "of course"...and she made me realize that my depression was an illness and I started taking meds and got better.
So in the same way I look at my drinking as an illness that I could not control until I finally accepted that the only recovery was through total abstinence forever-I don't need to take a pill to recover but I need the ongoing recovery work to be my "medicine". I tell people that I'm allergic to alcohol, just like if a doctor told me I was allergic to shellfish and eating shellfish could and likely would kill me then I'd never eat shellfish again.

Daphne,

I am so happy to see you back!

Please know that many of us have gone through the denial that is part of addiction, and like you we have been fortunate enough to have a moment of clarity, when we knew we were in trouble.

Take the step you need to take to get out of vicious cycle. Stay sober today and begin your new life.

Thanks
 

Thanks for having me back I will try and curb my confrontational side!
feeling caught in a trap , in a rut at the moment in terms of drinking
I know I went on about my great life and it is great EXCEPT for the drinking and health problems
Fact I have lots of great people in my life should help me. I feel so bad for drinking when I have NO excuse or need to.
I have so much more than others in this world and should not NEED drink to get me through
That makes me feel ongoing guilt. I appreciate what I have in life so WHY is it not enough for me, Its like I always need to feel stimulated by something ....I could NEVER just sit and do nothing, my mind is always always going,
The thought of a weekend with nothing on fills me with dread !Even though I work in a demanding job and 3 kids I still want to do stuff at weekends. Its like I am terrified of living a dull life so I pack it full of socialsing and other activities. I cannot remember the last weekend where I just stayed home and did nothing much.
Sorry for rambling on ......you will be regretting letting me back
Been very emotional since discovering this board
It has made me reflect on my past and some of the horrible things that happened to me, that is very tough emotionally, but another fear I turn to a victim role.

I am sad to say I was most likely one of "those" posters that made you unwelcomed. Denial is a part of this whole entire addiction. For God sake! I was in denial for years and years.

Becoming sober is a lot of work and I will tell you being sober isn't a bed of roses day after day. I don't know what's got in to me lately but I'm down and I haven't been this down since I stopped drinking.

I actually took my son to the bus stop today and then came home and crawled back into bed. I will remain in bed today until I have to go pick him up. When I pick him up I will straighten my act out.

Had I decided to "handle" my depression today by drinking it would have been played out like this. I would have drank, gotten angry because when I was depressed and drank my emotions usually turned to anger. I didn't feel the depression, right? The anger was worse. I wouldn't have been there for my son and I wouldn't have found out what was going on with myself.

I only have a little over a year of sobriety and so I'm not an expert, but you CAN get through life without wine. I am telling you if I can do it you can too Daphne. I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

Today I feel its okay to be down. Tomorrow I'll be better. I hope you will too.

Daphne...

Glad to have you back here with us.

I know those feelings you are describing. I had to feel stimulated...had to have "something" going on. I used alcohol to keep that stimulated feeling going for a long time. Sadly, it did stop working for me, and I was left with just me, and all
this crap I had carried around. I really didn't know where to go or what to do.

That was frightening to me.

I hope that you are able to find the answers you seek to help you work thru this.

Peace

Use that confrontational side to fight back against drinking. Get mad at it, tell it to %$@ off and take your power over it.

I have some experience with anger and confrontation. :halo:

Welcome back.

Daphne, you sound very much like I did some years ago.

I had a great family and anyone looking in would see that things were very good. I loved being on-the-go and was absolutely terrified of sitting quietly with/by myself.

I have learned to LOVE time with me, by myself, alone. As much as I enjoy people and activities, being by myself has become crucial to my balance.

Hi Daphne,

I am relatively new (about 3 weeks sober) so I don't know about your past confrontations, but I'm glad you're back. Sorry to hear you're struggling. But Horse has a very good point that really resonated with me. When I decided to get sober and immediately felt better, I thought my day to day life would be a bed of roses and all my problems were solved. Not at all true.

I still have days where I am overcome with sadness and pain. I too, in the past would deal with those days by numbing myself to it and drinking all day. I look back now and I see that all I was doing was 'wracking up' days, because it just prolonged everything without change or examination. Now I feel like I have literally wasted years of my life.

I still have those days where I don't want to do anything but feel sorry for myself. But they are fewer and fewer between and I just let them happen now WITHOUT drinking. It was hard at first, just sitting with the pain, but it's getting easier and my problems, and how to solve them, are becoming more clear.

You have to do the work and you have to let the pain and fear move through you. Even though it sucks at the time. :wild

daphne,

If it's already been said, I apologize for the repetition -- I read the first post and wanted to reply, but I'm too short on time to read the whole thread.

Alcoholism IS. Just IS. Intelligence, education, prosperity, religious conviction, intestinal fortitude -- none of those things are protections from it.

Once you realize you have it and can accept that it resides on the inside, not in external qualifications (or disqualifications), you're in a position to do something about it.

Peace & Love,
Sugah

I'm a newcomer myself, but you are always welcome here as far as I'm concerned. We're all in the same boat :)

The hopeless feeling will start to subside when you find strength in a Higher Power and get a few days of sobriety under your belt. You cannot deal with this alone. I don't care who your Higher Power is - God, the sun and moon, an AA group - but you can not handle all you are going through on your own. So you take what you can and give the rest to God (or, i.e., the Higher Power.)

You will stop when you are sick and tired of being sick and tired.

You may hit a rock bottom. I hit lots of them. You would think that after drinking myself into a blackout, trying to drive home (unsuccessfully), having to park my car in the woods so no one would know I was trying to drive it, walking 10 miles on a rural highway at 2 a.m. with no shoulders but plenty of tractor trailers would have taught me a lesson. During this walk I fell numerous times, ripped my favorite pair of jeans, bled from my legs and my face. I was NOT a pretty sight the next morning. An officer finally picked me up and drove me home. Did I stop drinking? Nope.

When you are ready to stop, you will just know. Don't force it if you are not ready; I am living proof that that does not work.

Hi Daphne,

I'm glad you are back, love. :)

We do understand what you are going through. There are plenty of hugs and support here.

Some AA meetings are "open" and that means that you do not have to be an alcoholic to go or have a desire to stop drinking. Why don't you see if you can find one in your area. Perhaps your partner would go with you to support you. Go along and see where you can relate to people rather than how you are different to them. You might meet someone so that you can have some face to face support. Just have an open mind.

Welcome back Daphne!
You can find some wonderful support here.
Take what you want, what works for you, and leave the rest...