Lipitor

Try these on for size.....

I loved your post by the way .

Fat gut,
Looking ten to fifteen years older than I am
Upper right quadrant pain
Confusion
Guilt
Anxiety
Tiredness tiredness tiredness


One thing I learned is that the body has about 100 points of energy that is present every day to cope with life, enjoy life etc

After a heavy drinking binge,,,my body used about 80 of those points to revive and reach homeostasis.

I had 20 left to deal with life, stress, joy, relationships, children, traffic, bills, cold weather , hot weather.
Bugger that ..
Im not missing anything now..

Ive got my 100 points a day back every morning.

L

Lipitor

Me too..

Dead in at least one year... At the end of my drinking or should I say ....the beginning of my new life,,, I did realise that I had no idea who I was once alcohol sunk its claws into me.


Google ,,images .....gout..... there is a picture of a foot with a large clawed monster clinging to it..

That was the image that i saw when I realised what the booze was.

Oh,,,and my doctor calls it "a dirty drug"

quite interesting , I saw alcohol as clear , colourless and pure....what a croc


L

LSNP

I think I can understand this post because the last time I went abstinent, it was sort of a game... "How long can I go?" Turns out it was eleven days... but it was easy.

That's been well over a year ago. This time around? Not so easy. In fact, the last five days have been very difficult, indeed.

My concern regarding your post is that if, after eleven years, your disease progressed to the point that you were drinking mouthwash.... why? How do you treat alcoholism? Why didn't you? Did you know that you weren't? Eleven years is an awful long time to be on a "dry drunk."

LSNP

I'm here now. Or there. Where you were. The moment of clarity. The moment of clarity actually happened while I was drunk... but it was still very clear. I cried and cried and cried and wanted to drive my car into a tree. I wanted to drive away into Neverland. I parked in parks and cried and drove and found no satisfaction whatsoever. One cannot run away from themselves, no matter how hard they try. The past is what it is. Alcohol has done NOTHING but keep me firmly imbedded in that past with absolutely no hope of moving forward.

I was at the point that I wouldn't even finish a pot of coffee before pouring a Vodka and OJ <Hey, it's morning.> That sucked.

I don't ever want to go back. I hope I can find the strength like so many of you have.

LSNP

I've said that often. "I don't even know who I am, anymore." I lost the girl that I was. I want her back.

Why does your doctor call it a dirty drug? I find that interesting. I mean, I KNOW it's a nasty, dirty drug... but why did he say that, I wonder?

Francismcan

The strength is found in and through admitting powerlessness and weakness, that is the first step.
One cannot use their strength directly against the disease, one can only use their strength to make themselves swallow the medicine, no matter how bad it tastes.
Not all of the medicine (spiritual treatment) that you have to take to get better, tastes good.

Now come on, open up, it will only taste yukky for a little while, and mommy and daddy dont want you to be sick anymore, please, pretty please.
Or the Mary Poppins routine: "A spoonfull of sugar makes the medicine go down, medicine go down,..."

IO Storm

Wow...your post brought back some powerful memories...my last time "out"...I drove and drove and parked in parks, and parking lots! A lot of black out driving, too. I would get in my car and realize i had put many miles on it the night before, with no remembrance of leaving the house..or where I had been. My take on it, from experience relapsing 6 times
is that once your body becomes "alcoholic"...the disease grows whether you drink, or not.
Each relapse was worse than before...I developed cirrhosis after a few months one of the times, but by God's grace am healthy now. I stopped in time. I am an AA'er...don't think I could last almost 5 years without them. And, my faith...for me, God is my only defense against the first drink. That's the one that gets you, not the last. All blessings and prayers for your success!

LaFemme

The reality that it will be 100x worse should I drink again is a nice tool to have in your tool box.

FrothyJay

The AA way to treat alcoholism is to have a psychic change (also called a spiritual awakening or personality change) that relieves us of the obsession to drink or do drugs. This psychic change comes through working the 12 steps, which are a set of actions that, if followed properly, allow for this change to occur. This change involves the acceptance that only a power greater than ourselves (of our own conception) can solve our problem. For many that means God, for others, like myself, it means something completely new and different, a presence and consciousness that we did not have prior to doing the work (the steps) that becomes the guiding influence in our lives. I stayed very close to the concept of "goodness" as a power that I could believe in-- I truly believed in it because I saw it in people and knew that when I practiced it myself I felt elation and peace-- and it turned out to be sufficient to get me started.

You see, AA believes that drinking is just a symptom of a much greater problem-- a spiritual malady that torments us. This is why we're often times raging ogres when we're sober--- alcohol treats, or soothes, that spiritual malady (which is why we become hooked on it).

As for my 11 years, you ask a great question. I do not fit the bill as the dry drunk who took prisoners and white knuckled it for 11 years. I was generally OK, and even enjoyed what I thought was peace. I had my career take off, I met my wife, got married, started a family. And I dabbled in AA, but I was not exposed to the real program of AA, so the only thing I felt I had to get right was not drinking.

But in looking back, and comparing it to where I am now, I realize that I had never conceded powerlessness. I thought that as long as I stayed away from a drink I would be fine. I was not recovering, I was abstaining. And while the story would be far much more interesting if I was a raving lunatic and dry drunk, I think that there's no hard and fast rule for how this disease works. What does matter is that a) I picked up again and b) I was worse than ever.

FrothyJay

Well said. This is not about strength, it's about the absence of strength. It's about surrender. Giving up. Pick whatever words work for you. The lure of willpower needs to be squashed. It not only fails, it makes it worse.

Think of the 1st step this way: it's not that I just can't drink. It's that I can't help but drink.