NYR

Had a rough couple of years and realize its time for me to quit. Usually drink anywhere from 8-10 beers on average, sometimes to half a box of sangria a night. This past year has been hell. I'd start my morning with a bout of diarrhea, have some shakes during the day - numbness in my feet sometimes, was smoking - felt like **** and sometimes locked myself up in my office during my breaks to lie on the floor. My right arm hurt. Then I had stomach pains so bad that I thought I was going to die a few times. Panic attacks - couldn't drive anywhere including into work. Missed 15 days of work - lucky I didn't get fired. Saw a Dr who did some blood work and found elevated enzymes with my liver.

Road to recovery in the past couple of months - stopped smoking completely in June. Had a few days (up to three) where I took a break and didn't drink and felt great but went back to drinking. Started exercising and running and taking vitamins - lost 20+ pounds, and look good and am running sometimes 7-9 miles a stretch. To be honest, I feel like I am sweating out the toxins when I run and by my 3rd mile I usually feel pretty good. However there are things I just don't want to experience anymore with drinking. I know I'm a drinker who can't really stop at just one. I've been known to buy a six pack with good intensions just to share that with my wife only to go back out at 8pm. I've actually had the shakes going out sometimes. Tonight my wife and I had two beers left from my binge the previous day and at 8:30pm I started to head out to get some alcohol and I caught myself halfway down the road telling myself "How do you feel right now?" I didn't feel 100 percent (I wasn't feeling particularly low either) but I am SO tired of not feeling like me anymore. The days I don't drink I find myself enjoying the next day so much more, with more energy - but it's been hard for me to get through 3 days without one - and when I do drink its to get passed out drunk or drunk enough that I go to be early like around 8:30 (I'll consume a good 9 beers between 5 and that time easy). My wife drinks too - and she can't stop unless I do. I read a lot of posts - saw Liz45 and the fact they are both a couple inspired me to post. I don't think this is going to be easy. We have a certain reputation for drinking all my friends under the table - and now I just don't want to be that person anymore. I'm lucky in that it hasn't killed me or destroyed my career - but it will if I go on. I'll post a bit every day - this is going to be weird for me going without alcohol. I can't imagine what two weeks is going to feel like, never mind a month, six months, or a year. I echo some of the comments that they feel life will be boring without alcohol - but at this point, I'd rather be bored.

See you tomorrow

Dee74

Welcome NYR

Posting daily is a good start - but don't hesitate to really involve yourself here - it really helped me.

It's tough - but support makes it easier
You'll find a lot of ideas here about other support too.

good to have you with us

D

Itchy

I second that NYR! You sound like me. I made it once I felt as you describe your feelings now. Never again will I give up my freedom and self respect.
Welcone aboard. Read a lot, post a lot. It helped me.

driftapart

Good for you! Keep us updated on how it goes!

Question: What were your smoking habits and what technique did you use to quit?

MrsKing

Welcome to SR you've found a fantastic place full of lots of great people who are always willing to support and share.

Being sober is not boring, I promise. When you've been sober for a good period of time, you'll realise that it's the opposite. I also thought that I'd be boring if I quit drinking, that I'd lose all my friends and have no social life, but alcohol made me boring, the friends I had were drinking buddies, and my social life has really taken off. Trust me - there's nothing more wonderful than waking up every day sober and looking forward to the day ahead. Try to get the 'boring' notion out of your head - your life may not be full of highs and lows any more when you're sober, but it's all about changing our perspective on what is boring and what is fun. Fun is doing all the things we love doing (and things we never knew we loved doing) with a clear head. Or at least it is for me, anyway.

Wishing you all the best.

MrsKing

I know this isn't directed at me, but I recently quit (1st August) and I thought I'd let you know how I did it... sorry if I'm butting in! I was smoking 20 + a day - it was the first thing I did in the morning and the last thing I did at night... I quit using patches and use e-cigs on occasion. It's been relatively easy but I think it's because I was in the right mindset and really, absolutely wanted to be a non-smoker. If you're asking because you want to quit - DO IT! I feel so healthy since quitting.

driftapart

Haha butt-in anytime!

I'm smoking more than I've ever smoked now that I'm not drinking + the legal troubles going on + the idle time I have since I was fired and can't drive.

I went from 5 a day to damn near 20.

Maybe I need to let myself indulge on cigs for now until I am totally in the clear with my anxiety over everything surrounding me right now.

But I'm sad I can't use your method when I do decide to quit, because e-cigs do nothing for me.

IndaMiricale

Welcome aboard

I thought life just would stop with a drink in my hand. Little did I know , that all that you dont need to drink to have fun is true. I didnt believe it !!!

You can find you and love it..

MrsKing

It was the patches that really helped, I think - because of the constant stream of nicotine I never really had any " I need a cigarette" moments... I use e-cigs when I'm around people who smoke because it's habit to 'smoke' with them. To be honest, I wish I'd never started using the e-cigs because I was doing absolutely fine without them (didn't start using them until I'd quit for a few weeks) - time to quit those now, as well - haha!

least

Welcome to SR! You'll find a lot of support and good advice here.

Liz45

Welcome NYR, Thank you for your nice comment that you made on my other post. I found this one after I read that and thought I'd post to you here. To be honest, I thought about giving up with coming here because I had a fail yesterday evening and with all my talk of telling everyone else they can do it..well, I feel like a hypocrite that I didn't follow through with my own advice yesterday. Anyway, I popped on here and saw your nice message and want to thank you because you have inspired me to stay. NYR, I hope you'll stick around here, too, even if you have a "fail" now and then. There really is a ton of support here!

I am also a former smoker (3 packs a day for many years, chain smoker), too and I think to be honest, quitting smoking was easier than quitting the drinking. Driftapart asked for tips on quitting, so I'd like to chime in on that for a minute: I made smoking inconvenient and would no longer smoke in the house. Standing outside in 20 degree weather in the winter is no fun. Everything inside the house smells better, too and I mean down to our clothes.) I also constantly "pictured" myself a non-smoker in my mind and I liked that image. I need to use this strategy with the alcohol, too. I quit smoking in the car and it was awesome to turn the heat or air on in the car and not have to crack the window to keep from smothering in a cloud of smoke. I'd feel sorry for those poor souls passing me on the road with their cigarettes between their fingers and their windows cracked open. Silly, yes, but it helped. lol I didn't know about e-cigarettes at the time, but had a "fake" cigarette and would imitate smoking. That really helped to relax me, the breathing was the key to that I guess. All the while, I was smoking when I had a really unbearable desire for a cigarette, but eventually I was able to put them away for good. :-)

NYR, I understand about waking up sick on your stomach. Been there many time, especially on weekends, our favorite time of the week for drinking to excess! My husband has been having a lot of stomach problems, too. That's one reason he wants to stop drinking because the drink aggravates it and probably is what caused it to begin with. Did your doctor tell you about a supplement called Milk Thistle? I read that it's supposed to promote new cell growth in your liver. We started taking that recently.

I know exactly what you mean about not feeling like you anymore. I want to get back to me, too. I don't even know who that is really, because I started drinking at such a young age. I'm not sure I ever knew me to begin with. Maybe I'd like to get to know "me" sober! ;-)

But bored? I don't think you'll be as bored as you think. This past weekend was my first "sober" weekend sine I honestly don't remember, and it's the first time in a long time I really wanted to get out and do something different. Everything truly seemed more beautiful (greener) than usual, too. It's indescribable how good I felt inside, just having a weekend with no hangover. It was incredible, seriously! The yearning for the alcohol was there, but it didn't take away from the experience of seeing everything with clear eyes.

It is hard to imagine being sober for a week or a month. Just take it one day, hour or minute at a time. I'm so happy you and your wife made the decision to quit. Together we can do this! I'm looking forward to keeping up with your progress and successes! Please feel free to message any time.

(Sorry for such a long post.)

NYR

Thank you for all the kind words. I'll try to respond to everyone as the day goes. Just woke up (10:15 am) - it was a very long night as I couldn't sleep till around 3am. Used to just passing out. Glad I have the day off. Wife was sweating her butt off last night and was soaked. Feel clear headed though.

Giving up smoking when I did was easy. I went cold-turkey. At that time I was having health problems and something had to go. I remember coughing up a lung every morning, choking when I brushed my teeth and the nasty way I smelled. I hated smoking more than I hated drinking and never quite understood why the hell I did it in the first place. I mean honestly it does nothing for you, and its a nasty disgusting habit. Pot smoking I understand (though I don't do that - pot never really agreed with me) - cigs I never understood.

Alcohol will be difficult to give up. It's been my friend for a long time, though it hasn't been a very good friend to me lately. I've given up friends before - like to know how my life will be without that sort of friend now. Waking up clear after waking up day after day in hell - not being able to function, afraid to leave the house sometimes, not eating right cause you feel sick, laying in bed just to feel better...

Liz - All I can say is that I made a decision that I am at at war with my alcoholism, and I know that history is full of battles being won and battles being lost in any war - but my side is right in this war - so as long as it takes, I will fight - for the good of my daughter, for the good of my wife, and for my own damn wellbeing. I hate waking up sick.

NYR

Just got done with a 3 mile run. Feel so much better. Running and Exercise has been a large part of what is getting me through this - and I found the more I exercise, the better I feel. I usually do 40 minutes minimum a day - but go as long as two hours a day. Helps a lot with my symptoms and lost a lot of weight.

NYR

Smoking habits was about 1 pack every two days - usually just at work though. I didn't smoke when I was home for the most part. Had 3 cigs in the morning from 6:30 - 8:30, then two during my break, two during lunch, and two after work.

Itchy

OK I'll chime in too about boredom and smoking. I was a 30 units a day drinker. (a unit is one shot of hard liquor, one six ounce wine, one 12 oz beer) I drank for the last two years from waking and shaking to passing out, but my tolerance was so high I was drinking to function at all and did not appear drunk to others.

I smoked a pack a day from age 12. By my 30s it was 2 or more packs, and my 50s saw me smoking three packs a day. I am 60 now and could not quit smoking except once with nicorette for 18 months when I was 40. I decided to try one to feel the "high" which smokers don't feel. As if I didn't know what they were like after smoking tens of thousands of them. Within a week I was smoking more than before, and until I was 58 could not seem to quit again. I wore out many pairs of kneecaps kicking myself in the axe over my stupidity in trying that one. But it was a valuable lesson, albeit an expensive one. I learned that an addict can't ever handle just one or control the addiction if they are lucky enough to finally break free the only way is to stay free of even one. I swore if I could ever detox off smokes again I would never play the fool again.

When my drinking got very bad and I couldnot quit it either, I realized my health was almost gone from them both, and I knew I had to quit both or die very sokn by my own hand with slow suicide, and I didn't want to die!

I found a seven day detox in hospital I qualified foe with the VA, and knew it was my only chance because I could not make it past one morning sober. I also knew that if I smoked one cigarette, or had one drink, regaeprdless of the excuse, self delusion, or external stressor, I would be lost, and for good.

I figured why waste a perfectly good in hospital safe and comfortable detox one only one of the two slowly lethal drugs I was hooked on? I went on patches in the detox and came out and did a couple of days of rehab, joined AA, and here on SR.

I had no idea how bad my PAWS would be and having my docs and here as well as AA friends letting me know it should all heal since my liver and lungs were OK helped me get through it all. I had a rough three months, and three more until I really believed I was going to heal, even if it was slower than I liked.

I already knew that life cansuck sober or drunk, but only sober can I change the things I could, and slowly dig my way out of all the things I half assed, and outright procrastinated because drinking made the "hard to do drinking" things be put off for the 'morrow that never comes. I was so grateful to have my life saved by the VA, my counselors, AA for my first three months only, which I recommend to everybody as a start, and then as now I credit my friends here on SR with being my touchstone.

I agree that if you fail, at that point you need to press on and get back to a new program that keeps you from that circle of death. But I believe that to succeed we have to be hard on ourselves when the going gets tough.

Boredom because alcohol was exciting? I have been the DJ doing last call and then turning all the lights all the way up bright ten minutes later. I only saw boredom and drunks. Oh they might be loud, and hooking up, but I knew in the morning their excitement would turn to shock.

Boredom is wanting to do anything at all, as long as you don't have to actually do anything.

I drank as a teen, in the 60s, and found all the exciting forbidden fruit too. It was all false and once I was sober all of that really sunk in. See I believed all that until two years ago when I quit smoking three packs a day, and drinking 30 plus alcohol units a day.

The savings from not drinking too much daily can give you the freedom to have some real fun. Take classes and learn to be an expert skier, diver, sky diver, mountain climber, para sailer, pilot, surfer, race car driver, urban or rural farmer, or a million other things that are not only fun and exciting, but cannot be done safely under the influence, or training drunk.

I do agree with all who claim that it is boring "going out" sober with drinkers who are drunks or normal. Sitting around in the dark watching average people who no longer through alcohol goggles look beautiful, hip, smart, attractive, into the latest etc. I agree that is only fun drunk.

What active drinkers mix up is that it was boring before too. We tend to make excuses not to go out and do new things, healthy things because, at least for me, it took almost a year until I realized I was free. Remember the guy in Shawshank Redemption who had been in jail so long he could not live free anymore. We all wanted him to just see, but he couldn't. Relapsing is the exact same thing so I break ranks in talking about it as OK before the fact, but do agree that we don't, and shouldn't shoot our wounded after the fact of a relapse. Planning relapses as OK is not being recovered. Just taking a break. I learned that lesson when I relapsed once with that one cigarette. Then read about how awful it is with the one drink and self deluding excuse to ourselves that we can now control it.

I am like the character in Shawshank in Mexico, waiting for my buddy who didn't escape with me. Iphe had to break with everything from his old life to stay free. So did I. He left the map and directions to freedom for his buddy in a stone wall. I leave my directions to freedom for my buddies who were imprisoned by themselves with alcohol here.

NYR

Thanks for the reply Itchy. Thought I'd update. This is about the time that I start to drink. I can feel it right now - though the temptation is not as strong as my will right now. Feel some tension in my shoulders and down my right arm throughout the day, and as I write this. Wonder if this is my body craving a drink right now. Been a busy day - trying to keep my mind off these symptoms and ignore it (which does work). I've noticed that the hot tub also alleviates my symptoms for a bit as does lying down. I guess technically this is day two since I just had the one beer yesterday. What I don't feel is an upset stomach, nor is there any trembling, nor do I feel like my skin is burning (anyone ever have that symptom - feels like you got a sunburn from the inside)? Three days is the longest I've gone before remember. My wife and I are going to eat soon - and then watch some Chuck. Tomorrow will be more of a challenge - going out to dinner with my family.

NYR

I wil try to help other people through this as well - but for the next few days I'm going to be selfish cause I'm going to need help getting through even just a week. Feel a slight panic attack right now - so going to relax a bit in the hot tub.

Itchy

Great nyr,
Hey read a lot here and keep posting! My early posts here are like a journal that have helped others. Congrats on your decision. Are you doing any AA or counseling? Got your doc in the know about what is going on honestly? I found all of that critical to my early recovery.

Hey I had to get help here before I could help anybody else. Keep posting and join the Sept 2012 group to be around others at the same point too.

BTW! I am from Stamford originally years ago. There are more than a few folks from CT on SR.

NYR

Ugh - can't sleep... 2nd day in a row. Not really craving alcohol, but feel slightly uncomfortable in my stomach (feels a bit acidic), and probably just so used to crashing to sleep with alcohol all the time. Arm has been sore off and on - more not than on, so that's a good sign. Had a good meal earlier. Probably should stay way from coke though for the time being. Don't know how to drift off. Gonna go back to bed and hopefully just let it happen.

artsoul

Most of us had insomnia for a few days when we first quit drinking. It's very annoying, but it gets better fairly quickly. I just tried to closed my eyes and rest as much as possible. Even feeling tired the next morning wasn't nearly as bad as waking up hungover.