Goat

Good morning y'all! I finally gave up on trying to sleep

I sure hope I can sleep tomorrow night!

I don't EVER want to feel like this again, but I know I will tend to forget how bad it is like I always do. I need to remember this time.

I like the S idea. I think I'm gonna do that!

-Goat

Chakra

Good morning.....again! I went back to sleep for a few more hours.

Sorry you feel like shite Goat. Is this a bad time to ask why you named yourself Goat? lol

Fandy-If you've had time to look at my album, I'm sure you can see I love cats too.

FrankBarone

Hi, Goat. I'm in the same boat, last night was my first night also - a truly horrible feeling. Glad you didn't drink and good luck.

Goat

Hiya Frank! Yeah, this sucks big time!

I am gonna have to get back to work today. My main customer is pretty good about accommodating me (I doubt they'd be so accommodating, though, if they knew WHY I was so sick yesterday!). But at some point I have to put my head down and work again.

I made contact with a smaller customer that I totally screwed up. I really want to be totally honest with all my customers... but that is probably not a good idea. Anyway, I was honest with this guy. I've really dropped the ball for him. I'm literally months behind. So the contract's screwed anyway. It felt really good being honest about why I dropped it. And he understood! He said to give him a call when I was ready to start in again and we'd get working again!

I can only hope they'd all be that way. But I dare not risk it with my big contracts. That could land me on the street if they weren't so understanding!

Goat's my road name. Dunno really where it came from... I have a substantial goatee, and I like goats. Goats are, to me, an irresistible juxtaposition of cute and evil. For whatever reason, the name has always seemed to fit me.

-Goat

Chakra

That's awesome! Lol. I mean both the customer thing AND the reason for the name.

Ferdygal

Some people will be touched and impressed by your honesty. Others may just hear the bit about being an alcoholic and blank out the rest. Unfortunately, nobody comes with a nice clear label on their shoulder as to how they'll react to any given piece of news!

TWISI, you've been unwell. Whether it was flu, alcoholism, schizophrenia or yellow fever, it doesn't matter - you were incapacitated, you can explain that you've been ill but you hope you're on the mend now, and that in future you hope to be able to be more reliable for them. Beyond that, I don't see it's really their business to know your personal details.

Just my 2c worth - not intended as Zen-like wisdom!

Fandy

I also only tell on a limited basis, from a professional view, for me it is not feasible either....I will check out the pics soon, right now I am dealing with whiney OR nurses crying about their vacation schedules (as opposed to teaching my med students).

it's like herding cats...

Asta1

Hi Goat -- try keeping a journal on computer or paper or whatever. Write down how BAD you are feeling now and yesterday, as graphically as you can. Write good times too. Then when you think you have it "in control", go back and read what you wrote when you were so hungover you couldn't eat, sleep, anything. I hope you can get some food down. I really do swear by orange sherbet. It gives some calories and no matter how sick I felt, I could usually stomach a bowl every few hours. I think the thing that bothered me the most was the aroma of regular food cooking. My husband uses onions all the time. Hungover, they make me more ill -- big time. Pretty much anything cooking did. That's why sherbet was good. Plus it didn't have the milk component which can be hard to digest.

So glad you have stopped again. Not drinking tomorrow will be enough. Then repeat -- just like shampoo (lather, rinse, repeat). Hehe.

RobertHugh

Goat, I might be late to the party here but all I can tell you is that once I realized I was never going to quit on my own effort, I started to make progress.

I needed to realize that my situation was utterly hopeless. I would always drink again-- I was alcoholic. No amount of inspiring talk, incentives or promises was going to work.

If this sort of maddening failure is part of your story, listen to me:

It's time to give up.

Don't re-commit yourself. Say you're done fighting.

Then find someone who can teach you how to do the steps and get connected to a power that will relieve the madness. No prayer, no church-- just you, a pad of paper and a sponsor. Laying out the wreckage, seeing your role in it, understanding that fear drives your character defects, asking to be relieved of them and then making amends to the people you took from.

That process changes us.

It happened for me, and I was the biggest cynic on the planet.

Goat

You're right, Robert. AA, which would be my program of choice, is not available to me where I live. After I spent only a few months working AA when I lived in Virginia (I only stopped because I moved here, where, like I said, it's not an option), I stayed sober for a few years. Imagine how well I'd do now, now that I feel like I am truly ready to give up and follow the program, which I wasn't really before. I need to quit whining about that to myself and find something else.

Last night was rough again, but I got about 4 hours of sleep, so it was better than the night before!

Fandy

good morning everyone....Goat, your sleep will improve tonight hopefully....every day is better sober.

I also found that my need for Nexium has drastically decreased...less stomach acid and that horrible feeling like something is trying to climb up my throat.

Goat

I don't know that I'll ever get away from nexium, or even if I care to. I was quite sober when I first took it, and it was like a miracle drug. I'd felt a little sick all the time since I was about 10, and the nexium took that away. My stomach just makes too much acid. Dunno why, but it's nice that there's a remedy.

What I have set myself back on is my blood pressure. In the time since my last sobriety date, about a year ago, I had gotten my blood pressure down to a nearly normal number. Without any drugs. I had also figured out how to work through the hypoglycemic episodes just by keeping up with what I was eating (when I was drinking I didn't even have any idea what was making my heart race, and there was no chance I could have corrected it while drinking).

But today I can feel my pulse, and I can hear it. I don't want to take a reading of my pressure. I know it will go down again, but it will probably be months.

In the mean time, my left arm hurts constantly, and has for a few years. So even though I've had all the tests and my heart is healthy, I always have that stupid nagging worry in the back of my mind.

AND, in fact, that's one of my triggers! Even though I've been checked out and I'm not too terribly unhealthy, I always feel like I'm on death's door. Even after being sober for a while. In the past I have given in to the alcohol just because I want that feeling to go away for a while.

And the booze does make it go away for a while. But it comes back with a vengeance!

-Goat

RobertHugh

where do you live, Goat?

DayTrader

Here are 50 AA meetings today (Friday) in or around Columbus:

COGF Meeting Locator :: Search Results

RobertHugh

Wait a second! You mean there are alcoholics in Columbus, too?

We're freaking everywhere.....you can run but you can't hide....

Fandy

my stomach and body were perfectly fine until I stopped respecting their functions. I think they were trying to tell me something....("help, stop poisoning us with massive quantities of booze you fool").

it all makes so much sense now.

Goat

The closest of those meetings is 50 miles from me. BUT, you are probably right that I should just go back. I know where the meetings are near me

I was literally booted out of the last AA meeting I went to. I have been directly and clearly told I am not welcome in the meetings.

I would rather this thread didn't turn into all the reasons for that. The fact is that I was very angry at them for a long time, but I never really analyzed my complicity in what happened.

I like to think I am a forgiving person. Well, I should put that into practice, and more than that I should look for my own fault in it.

The fact is that I never really did AA. I never got a sponsor and I never worked the steps. I loved the fellowship before I moved to Ohio. But I didn't do the program. And I need to give it a chance.

-Goat

RobertHugh

Understood, Goat. If you have questions or need guidance, you know where to turn.

I must say I have a hard time calling you Goat.

Chakra

[QUOTE=
I must say I have a hard time calling you Goat.

[/QUOTE]

Ya, can't we just call you Red Beard? :P

Goat

Yeah, actually sometimes I call myself red beard or orange beard... though it's getting less red and more gray as time wears on. I also go by Vort.

-Vort the orange bearded goat :-D