NEOMARXIST

When I drank I erased any hope from my life, for today would be spent in a slurring, messed up world of alcoholic oblivion trying to escape from myself and this world into a place where I didn't even know my own name. I sort of liked blackout in a crazy way as it was literally almost like being alive but not being alive. I used to hate the feeling of coming around after another blackout and slowly opening one eye and checking my pockets for my keys and phone and stuff and then the panic when I couldn't find them. I developed pretty obsessive tendency's in relation to checking my pockets and wallet as I used to always lose them when I was young so I actually never lost them again, just looked like a crazy person checking his pockets every 30 seconds.

I remember the sickening feeling when the session had come to an end and all of the booze was gone and just feeling a total lack of hope. That feeling of hopelessness was what I hated about my active alcoholism. Just resigning myself to have to endure life until my next binge. All of the shame, paranoia and lack of self-respect to live with until I could reach oblivion again.

That's what I love about my sobriety, for as long as I'm sober then I have hope. Hope that I will be OK and hope that things will slot into place 'one day at a time'. It's a gradual process but it's a great feeling knowing you're on the right path and that things will all work out eventually.

I truly love to feel a sense of hope, I hated feeling hopeless and for me then to take a drink would be erasing any sense of hope in my life. The only hope I would have is a few hours of oblivion, which by all accounts I would be in a terrible state to anybody witnessing my behaviour/mental state.

It's amazing how I used to think that by reaching those states I was in some way happy when I imagine to look at me then I was anything but happy; tortured just about sums it up I guess. I was tortured in my own head, trying to run away from myself and life but never being able to. Feeling so depressed that you've woken up again and reaching out to skull another can from your bed only for it to come straight back up and feeling so annoyed that you've wasted that booze. My old carpet was such a disgusting mess, sums up my lack of respect for mysefl I guess. I used to have a 'sick bowl' under my bed as it was routine for me to vomit on my sessions. Vomitting all alone in an ice-cream bowl.

Grateful to be sober. Grateful to be an alcoholic.

peace

Hooped

This post really resonates with me Neo.
Amazing how our stories are the same.
Thanks... you say it all very well.

tmbg

So many can relate to this, I'd wager. The waking up panic and anxiety, "the bowel-shaking earthquakes of doubt and remorse" are the things I try to remember the most when I think of the suffering drinking causes.

You have to shake your d**m head to think that, over and over, you'd go back to the thing that causes so much misery even though it seems to make things better for the time. That's the paradox of alcohol, right there.

In my case, it was the a oh-pity-me cycle: my life stinks, I cant, I won't, I'm mad, I'm sad because, it's not fair (ha!)...drink....still thinking those things but with an ease...as if it doesn't matter or feeling righteous anger....wake up, heart pounding, no resolution. Same life.

The only way to stop it was to stop drinking. And now I'm making some progress on that life.

Dee74

Thanks Neo. I definitely agree

I've had some hard times since getting sober - they don't go away lol...but I never feel as if I'm down as low as I used to be....

I know now that I'll get through things, I have confidence in myself, & I have a good sense of perspective...I find now I never lose sight of the good things that are always in my life

D

coffeenut

Yep.

I made a lot of stupid mistakes. And now I feel like I have a chance to turn it around. No, I AM turning it around.

Slowly, but surely, I'm getting 'better'.

Thanks, Neo.

SDSurfn

Love this thread. Thanks for sharing everyone.


-SD