Gordo19721986

Well hello to everyone on this website. I am here to vent about my alcoholism, its consequences and my plan of action for sobriety.

I'm here because alcohol has destroyed the better part of my life and I now am finally ready to stop. I don't want to drink anymore. I have hurt myself, friends and my family. Currently, I'm coming to grips with my last marriage being over because of my addiction. I still am in love with my ex but she does not believe me anymore when I say ill quit. She gave us a second chance and I destroyed it in just seven short weeks. This is all hard for me to say but I'm just trying to come clean. I met my wife Feb of 2010 at a bar for a bday party. I was pretty drunk at the time. We started dating and things were great for quite sometime. She drank also, sometimes too much, but there was never any negative consequences until Nov 2010, one month after we were married. That's when the blackouts started. I drank on about three occasions where I have little to no recollection of what happened. She left me in Jan 2011. She gave us a second shot in June and everything again was great. My drinking was controlled and minimal but I fell back into full on binge drinking. Four blowouts later, she kicked me out. I now sit here alone once again longing for a third chance. I am not contacting her until I am sober 90 days. I start therapy this Friday and will be going to AA asap. To be honest, I know my motivation needs to be for me but I really want to get her back. I can't eat or sleep without her. Whether or not I get her back I know being sober has to be a better life. I'm just praying for another chance to make things right with her. Any input or suggestions would be great. Thank you.

TheTinMan

Key point. If your motivation is to get your wife back, then she is your higher power. So you stay sober for 90 days and then contact her and she refuses to let you back into her life. Then what?

Last year this time my wife was on the way out the door and never coming back. I did not know that until she told me so three months into sobriety.

I quit because I knew I needed to quit. For me, for my sanity, for a better life.

I suggest you focus totally on staying sober. Start your AA meetings asap, like you said and commit to working on you.

Work on you, work on you and work on you. Do it for you.

least

Welcome to the family. I agree with doing this for you. You'll find a lot of support here. Use it.

Dee74

Hi and Welcome Gordo

I'm sorry for your situation - I've lost loved ones in my life over my drinking too.

I know it's hard - it may even seem counterintuituve but I absolutely agree with the others here that you have to do this for you - changing your life, and sorting yourself out has to be your priority - because without your recovery, all else is lost anyway.

It's an old cliche but it's either meant to be or not with your ex - only she can decide whether she still loves you and can trust you again - it's her call - not yours.

D

Opivotal

Welcome Gordo, I know I always resolved to quit drinking when something awful happened. Blackouts, bad behavior, saying things I didn't mean. It never lasted and it never worked, until I made the commitment, to stop drinking and change my life. I know you feel bad and your heart is broken. The good news is you have a chance TODAY to start over and get control of your life. You have to want to be sober more than you want to drink....that's the bottom line. I know you can do this....a better life is around the corner. Give it all you have and the rest will fall into place.





Best Wishes To You!

Sparkydog

When your sober, you have zero chance of blacking out or getting a DUI, your in complete control all the time. You control you. You will feel better everyday. You do it for yourself, first and foremost. Good things will follow.

SomethingBetter

Do this for you but this can be your turnng point, my wife walked out on me 8 months ago, I am 8 months sober, life is so much better!

In my case she came back but I am sober for me, you can live a sober life too, it is possible.

mpdinmd

My wife has given me many chances and if we did not have 2 boys she would have left already. but she loves me and wants our kids to live in a family that is not seperated. on Oct 3 2011 i had a really bad bender and got kicked out of the house for 1 night and felt what it is like to be trully alone. that has been my rock bottom so far the kids did not ask for me to say good night to them and my wife wanted nothing to do with me i have been spending the last 29day sober and slowly earning back my trust and respect. But the bigest thing for me is that i am doing this for myself bc this was the first time i experanced withdraw symtoms. I want to live long and see my kids grow up so i am doing this for myself and my health. and if i do that then i think i will also get my wife and i back to where we were before i started abuseing alcohol. all of this will take time.

Gordo19721986

Thank you all of your responses. My one question is that I do love my ex very much. I caused the break up this time around and know, at this point, there isn't much I can do to patch this up. We are not communicating other than by text. We said goodbye for now on Sunday and I told her I was just going to try to make the right decisions from here on out and that I loved her and wanted her back. She seems done. I asked her if she thought I was crazy to think wed be together again and she responded "I don't know". We live 120with miles apart right now so it makes it that much harder for me. I know she is very angry and hurt right now so as I move towards sobriety how can I not think of her? I know the main reason for this should be me because there is no guarantee she will even talk to me again. I plan to stay strong and not contact her as I promised. If I reach 60-90 days sobriety do I just put her behind me and move on? Or do I reach out to her to tell her what I've accomplished? I'm really confuse right now and very much hurt and scared she's done for good.

lavida

Worry about reaching out to her later, now your main concern should be you!!! and getting well, one day at a time.........

camedown

My sponsor tells me that if I don't put my sobriety first, I must be prepared to lose everything. Life is going to happen whether you're sober or not, but you do have a choice as to what terms you deal with that life. After a broken marriage, alienation of my daughter, and almost losing my life, I am thoroughly pleased with the sober option. AA does do wonders, all you have to do is keep showing up. Good luck, and welcome to SR, there's a lot of good people here.


camedown

TheTinMan

You are in a tough spot and I feel for you man. I've destroyed relationships with the drink.

She obviously cares about you or she wouldn't have given you a second chance. No one can say for sure if a third chance is coming, but worrying about that third chance is a lot to have hanging over your head. Thinking about it will drive you crazy.

So you have decided not to contact her and embarq on a program of recovery. Throw yourself into that. Work on making yourself better. You may find in the future that you and her can work things out and you can go into that relationship sober. If that third chance doesn't come you still have sobriety and you will be better equipped to handle a broken relationship.

If you get clean and stay sober for a good bit you will grow and your focus will change.

I have a friend that got sober about a week before I did. His M.O. was to put everything in a relationship and when something went wrong he would turn to drugs and alcohol. He stayed sober 10 months and got into another relationship and forgot all about his recovery. He forgot he was powerless over alcohol. His higher power changed from something that could keep him sober to a person that could walk away from him. And that person walked away and he relapsed.

There is no person on earth that can keep me sober. I have to want it, and I have to have help to stay sober. No one person can help me do that. If someone walks out of my life tomorrow, if I lose my job, if I lose something that is important to me, it's reassuring that I have the tools necessary to keep me sober.

You have an opportunity to get those tools that will help you stand up to any situation. The tools that will help you understand things that in the past have confused you.

Please take this opportunity and focus on staying sober.

Big love.

Peter G

Gordo, in your 2 posts I've read much more about your situation with your wife than I have about your situation with booze and a plan to quit drinking.

Here's why that is relevant: There's been so many things I've wanted back that I was constantly killing with booze. So, off I would go to sober up long enough to get them back, in the end destroying them all over again. It was a cycle that always ended with my losing what I had most wanted to save from getting sober. My desires always had the exact reverse of their intended effect when I tried to "get it right for them". Jobs, wives, girlfriends, careers, possessions, hell, I've been given so many second and third chances and tanked them all because my motivation for being sober was them, not me.

Only when I came to the bleak end of being utterly alone in my disease and almost dying (literally) did I get shaken up enough to decide I needed sobriety for me. Only when everything and everyone else was already long gone from my life, so much so that even life itself was leaving me that I came to grips with the one person I needed to get sober for. Came to find out then that it was me all along. That is when I got serious and got sober.

Like most here have said (and TinMan put eloquently), you need to set aside thoughts about fixing other people, places and things - and simply work on the damage it has caused YOU emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Work on that and I'll guarantee you things will stop looking bleak and your heart can finally stop breaking. I've said it before; you can only worry about the collateral damage from the years of alcoholic explosions once the bombs stop dropping. The motivation for stopping the bombs has to be about you getting right for yourself, not for a relationship, not for a savings account, not for job security, not even for your children (if you have any). There's literally nothing external that can cause you to quit if deep down you're not ready to do it first for yourself. At least that's been my experience, as it has been for many I've met who have lived the same hell.

Put it to you this way. Your wife may have had enough, and as such she might end up making her way in life without you. If that is the case then guess what? She will survive your alcoholism. If you ever lose your job from drinking, someone else will always be there to replace you. Hence, your job will survive your alcoholism. If your antics during some blackout cause custody of your kids to be taken from you... the children will survive your alcoholism. You, on the other hand? Eventually, inevitably, you will not survive active alcoholism because only your liver is getting destroyed, only your pancreas, kidneys, e.t.c... suffer and waste. Only you will end up dead because you've trampled your spirit and soul too far into the ground. That is the person that needs the effort now Gordo. YOU. Think about fixing other stuff later.

This bloody rotten illness is so insidious because the most important reason for us boozers to quit is almost always the last thing we can see.

CaiHong

Very powerful replies to your thread,

I was quite blown out by Binder's post, what more can one say. I wish you the best on this journey, it certainly needs strong commitment. It made me think, I would find it difficult to give up alcohol because someone else wanted me to.

All the best.
CaiHong

cuyootoo

alcohol really really damages those we love, and it damages us even more, maybe in 90 days you will have your life back and your wife back too? i hope you regain your confidence and your drive and all those things that attracted her to you in the first place, then you will be okay with or without her, not to sound too callous but i don't know her, i only know you and so maybe you will be better off without her? it's so easy for normals to blame us alcoholics for everything just because our problems are so obvious, when really our wives have problems too.

sissy07

Gosh, I am glad I stopped working for awhile to read this forum today! The responses to your post are incredible. Tin Man and binder, well done.

They are all correct. You gotta do it for you. Please take care of yourself.

bellakeller

If you love someone, set them free...you probably know the rest, and I have found it to be true in recovery. In the meantime, focus on getting better. The only way she will ever give you a chance is if you can get and stay sober without her.

Terminally Unique

Judging from what you wrote, you probably won't even have the option to reach out to her if you don't quit. Something to ponder.

Gordo19721986

Once again, thank you for all of the responses. I'm scheduled to see a therapist on Friday morning. I'm hoping its helpful to open my eyes to seeing that my sobriety is most important for me. I KNOW it needs to be for me and my future survival but all I FEEL at the present time is her. Morning noon and night she consumes my thought. Maybe in time she won't really matter anymore. That's just not the case today. This is excruciating in my heart. I just want the pain and guilt to go away.

bellakeller

Maybe she is also a component of your addiction. Let go for awhile.