mercurial me

The reason I've quit drinking is due to the threat of cirrhosis of the liver & horrible pains I was experiencing in my body along with horrific blood test results.

I got x9 days of sobriety in earlier in late May/early June. I slipped last weekend and now I'm back on a x6 day stretch of sobriety.

The problem is that my primary motivation is my health. I'm 99% sure I'd be drinking right now if I didn't have health concerns. Booze has always been a financial burden & a strain on my relationship with my g/f but those were never factors in me wanting to get sober.

I guess I'm scared that I might be an alcoholic who is past the point of rescue and that the single motivating factor in my sobriety is not wanting to die. Will this be enough to keep me sober if my heath improves or will I slip back to my inherent alcoholic ways? This of course is not taking into account the possibility that I've already done permanent damage to myself and my doc says the verdict is still out on that pending my next bloodtests/possible liver biopsy.

I've always used alcohol as a stimulant & reward system in my life. I could work hard knowing I could drink at the end of the day. I had the work ethic of a Japanese beaver around the house getting home improvements done when I was drinking. This weekend I've honestly felt apathetic towards life and feeling sorry for myself that my body can process anymore booze. I know how incredibly selfish this must sound as I'm sure there are many people here who have lossed loved ones to alcoholism one way or another.

I can hardly be objective of what it feels like to live sober as I don't have a lot of time put in being dry. I guess I'm just curious how other people have fared with their sobriety when consequence of going back to the bottle was the ultimate rock bottom. Thanks for your time.

ConfusedNC

I dunno - I'm still in the scared straight camp, man.

OZboy

yeah,i hear you..

i drink again and it's 'asta lavista'..lol..Oz..

bbt

I just want to say that I am glad to have found this site tonite, I just typed in google"Help I want a drink" and it brought me to you. I will write more tomorrow. Thanks for another day sober.

Dee74

Hi mercurial me

Simply being scared was never enough for me - don't get me wrong it's a great motivator, initially - but it never lasted for me...

I had many many MANY close shaves healthwise with my alcoholism, I lost two careers, I lost two gfs (and many more relationships)...utimately I always came back to the same spot - I always wanted to do what I wanted to do...which was drink.

It took coming here for me to realise how ridiculous that was.

I was willing to put so much on the line simply for the sake of that short term goal of getting drunk or high?

I had to look at myself long and hard and find out why I wanted to get high so badly, what exactly I was so intent on running from, and what I was so scared to face sober.

It took a lot of work but it was worth it MM.
D

Dee74

Welcome to SR bbt

D

mercurial me

I guess I'm in mourning for a sadist friend that has almost killed me. It's like how you feel sometimes after you breakup with a partner in your life & you get all nostalgic remembering the good times while choosing to disregard all of the negatives.

Having said that, hopefully if I continue to stay sober I'll have the chance to mull all of these thoughts over for a while yet

Thanks for your insights friends

shaun00

With my own personal experience with alcoholism...........no.
it may for a fashion.......but the memory would fade.....or loose enough "power" to keep me frighten or scared .

The book alcoholism anonymous had a solution.....in the form of twelve steps.
to be honest i was super sceptical.........and thought is was BS.

Looking back i dont recognize that person anymore.....kinda like a distant memory...but a memory never the less

i went through my first set of 12 steps as if my backside was alight..the reason?.........i was having strong thoughts of suicide......i knew id drink again and felt powerless to refrain.........all bridges were burnt......all options exhausted.

i didnt have that next drink.......and still havent.......ive been relieved of the awful consequences of active alcoholism.

not easy.......no cake walk........but if the old guy never sat down with me and helped me through the book.......i wouldnt be here.......period.
now i look for people like me........trapped.....out of options.

12 steps of alcoholics anonymous gave me a life which was beyond my comprehension........they were right all along.

Draciack

mercurial me, fear always plays a part of it for me, especially when I listen to stories in AA and understand that if I continue to drink, I'll die prematurely and want life to end far before the point when I actually check out. But fear itself never worked before I accepted myself as an alcoholic. I've had some serious scares while drinking heavily but they never kept me from drinking longer than a few days. And once I started drinking again and nothing too bad happened...well, I had the (false) evidence I needed that drinking caused me no harm. Selective memory, in my case. What tipped the scales for me was the unshakable conviction that I either could drink myself to death or live a healthy life. There was no in-between any longer. One or the other, that's it.

I hope you find whatever works for you If that's fear, cool. Best of luck.

Chops

Great question..

For me no, liver issues, serious accident resulting in multiple orthopedic surgeries, ICU admittance due to drinking, pancreatitis blah blah, always went back.

But now that I am sober thinking the drink through and hearing AA horror stories scares the hell out of me.

Something to do with a psychic change I reckon.

Impurrfect

((Mercurial)) though crack was my DOC, being scared and at my wit's end, didn't help me.

I was like ((Dee))..lost a lot...nursing career, went to jail a few times, almost got killed a few times, was on the streets and none of that was "enough". It was only after a year of being "mostly clean" and relapsing and THEN the very real possibility of going to prison that it WAS enough. By then, I'd been lurking on SR for that year and I think I had just a wee bit of recovery in me that I couldn't get high enough to drown that out.

Just "not picking up" never did work for me...had to do a lot of work on me, and SR has helped me, tremendously.

Hugs and prayers!

Amy

topspin

Welcome to SR,


From my own experience , ....I wholeheartly agree w/ Dee and Trucker.

Fear was only one of the emotions I used to medicate with booze. For me, a working (taking action) recovery program is the answer. That's where reading and posting on SR and getting myself to some AA meetings becomes the solution. Finding out what works !


There's a saying I hear in our local meeting ; "....It works if ya work it "


Again , welcome to SR, ...there's a ton of support and knowledge here !



Grateful in Carolina



.

mercurial me

Thanks a lot all for your opinions & experiences.

I'm going to go to an AA meeting this week. I've tried AA previously and after hearing everything that was going on with people in the group I drove to the nearest liqour store after the meeting was over.

I have zero faith in most people (present company excluded) especially when it comes to maintaining confidentiality. I've never found AA annoymous enough as after I went to my first open meeting news of my attendance circulated around. I'm going to give it a shot this week though. I work in the medical community which for some reason makes it especially devastating if people I work with are made aware of my alcoholism (I'm sure many people are already aware)

I'm pretty sure despite my recent attempts being semi-successful that ultimately once my fear dissipates a bit I'll slip again. It's kind of like in high school when they show you the damaged lungs from a smoker and everyone swears off smoking forever. A week later the smokers are back smoking. That's a terrible analogy but I hope that kind of makes sense.

I've stayed sober because everytime I thought of drinking there was a nasty flash of pain in my liver, kidneys, pancreas or gall bladder. Now that the pains are subsiding I need something else to keep me strong.

Thanks again & wishing everyone a sober week

Bamboozle

I don't think it's a terrible analogy at all. Smoking wreaks lives, too (dang...and that's something I need to quit).


Granted, I haven't had the level of physical problems that others had, but being scared for health reasons wasn't enough for me, either. I kept drinking through heart palpitations and was thrilled when I discovered, after I had been sober for a bit and on meds for my palpitations, I could drink without any ill effect.



It took me asking this question: 'Has anything I've done made my life better?'

Of course the answer was no. I called my doctor and got connnected with a therapist. By my third session I had quit drinking and I've been sober ever since...a little over a year.

It's true that people say it isn't just about quitting drinking.

That said, I employ 'fear' in staying sober, which means this: 'reality of consequences'. It is what it is.

vegibean

mercurial, I hope you find a better "reward" system, and they are there. Sounds like alcohol needs to stop being yours as it is a reward that's going to kill you.

I don't see why it shouldn't or wouldn't scare you, your life is truly at stake here. I just lost a friend a few months ago because he couldn't let go of the bottle, and unfortunately I don't think he realized how bad it was getting for him. He was in the hospital when he told me "when the doctor says my drinking is going to kill me, I'm done!" He was out of the hospital, and back in within a few days, and his next trip was in hospice. He was buried this past December, and it was very sad. He is missed greatly by friends who loved him and his 10 year old son. So, so sad.

I miss my friend, I have a few pictures of him in my home. I can tell you that the drink didn't make him a better person, he was a great person already without the alcohol, very smart person and incredibly funny.

The liver is nothing to mess with, if your doctor is telling you to "stop drinking or it's going to kill you", please listen to him/her, they're not lying to you.

As for the rest of your life, I promise you it can be more fulfilling without the bottle in hand and you'll feel tons better.

24hrsAday

merc.. i was Drinking So Much Whiskey That if i Had Continued i Would Not Be Typing These Words Right Now.. Now Almost 3 Years and 5 Months Later.. Still Sober! With The Help of God and A.A.. Good Luck To You!

Fandy

Fear definitely works for me...I'm a health care professional and I should have known better, but i was self-distructing anyway.

so it was fear, knowledge and anger that finally brought me to a sober decision...if i had known earlier that there were others so much like me and I could find the help, support and friendship I've found though SR, i could have quit earlier....but hindsight is 20/20.

now a days I look more forward, not backwards....my life still has problems, but I approach everything differently when I'm sober....I have definitely improved my body and my mental status.

i no longer have that swollen raw sore feeling in my lower abdomen either.

KingsCross

Being scared did help me. I had mental issues, not physical ones, but it still was the wakeup call that I could no longer drink or I was going to drop out of society. It just finally was proof that I could not rationalize around and continue to live the life I was.

I can really identify with the reward system. My work ethic is amazing, and unfortunately being drunk has little effect on my productivity. As long as I can avoid people I can accomplish many things while drunk, so rewarding myself constantly is an issue.

I have found relief only through creating other activities for me to do that cannot be done with alcohol, i.e. a lot more social interaction with people. I hated this at first, but now I really value it, and it's probably the cornerstone of my sobriety. My past life was built around alcohol. I've reworked much of it the last year and it's helped greatly.

You're scared now. Try and use that energy to make lifestyle changes, not just stopping drinking. You can do it.

TwelveSteps

Hey Merc,

I know what you mean as far as confidentiality in AA. I'm a lawyer and even just for professional liability reasons, it's important that my AA membership is kept confidential. I love my sponsor but she's a unionized grocery store worker and she told me at the beginning, "it's illegal for them to fire you for taking time off for rehab" (which she has done). Yeah, but professional standing is about more than not getting fired... Especially in a profession where you are hired for your knowledge/thinking skills. Anyway.

I live in a big city so I can't speak to anonymity where you live, but AA has been huge for me. Not because of the program itself (although I'm working he steps) but just for the oppoirtunity to meet other alcoholics who I can call if I really want a drink (and they can call me too, which strengthens my resolve to stay sober for them). It's been the only thing that has gotten me to stay sober more than a couple of days at a time.

GG

keithj

In my experience and observation, no. Not for the real alcoholic as described in AA's Big Book.

'Fear sobered me up for a while,' was Bill Wilson's experience as well. He knew that if he drank again, he was a goner. And he still drank.

I watched my aunt die of liver failure while waiting on the transplant list. She couldn't stay dry long enough to be accepted. Scared to death (literally) and lacked the power to not drink.

People die alcoholic deaths all the time. Other fears, like job loss, divorce, prison, losing your kids, etc, rarely work for very long.

If you've crossed the line and lost the power of choice, fear is not the answer. My brain has this peculiar way of twisting reality so that a drink makes sense to me, despite the consequences.

Knowing that I was doomed to keep drinking, in spite of all consequences, opened the door of recovery for me.