DesertEyes

If I may put in my .02 worth

I have 32 yrs since I last had a drink. I understand the newcomers just fine. They quit drinking and drugging and OMG now there is _life_ to deal with. I don't know anything about drinking and drugging succesfuly, all I acomplished was to end up living in a dumpster. I do know about living succesfuly, because I am still alive and have not ended up back in the dumpster.

I have nothing else to loose. I have lost it all. Wife, family, business, homes. I have a cyst growing in my brain, a terminal disease called autonomic neuropathy, an aneurysm behind my frontal lobe and I am diabetic. I don't even have my health. Every morning I wake up in deep, blinding pain. I drag myself to the meds, scramble for some steroids, some glucose, then lie back down again and wait for the pain to go away enough to see what time it is. Sometimes it's the middle of the night, so maybe I can go back to sleep. Sometimes it's close enough that I might as well get up and go to work.

I decided I am not going to wait until my last day for a hell of a going away party. I am having one _today_, and am going to celebrate that yesterday has gone away. Today I talked to a new guy, we're going to meet tomorrow for lunch and see if we can help each other deal with life on life's terms. Tonight I am going to a meeting and hang out with peeps who enjoy life the way I do.

Drugs and booze are not in my plan. What for? To die in a trash dumpster tomorrow?

There's a young lady who brings her newborn to one of my meets. Some years ago she was crazy, insane, bouncing off the walls newbie. We all took turns baby-sitting her 'till she was able to make it thru one day on her own. She bounces the baby in her lap and tells her to smile at all the people in the room cuz they are the reason she has a mommy.

What kind of drugs could ever make me feel the way I do when I hear those words?

There's another young woman who was 14 when I married her Mom. 10 years later that 14 year old had grown up, had a child of her own and was struggling with life after divorce. She came to me one day after a bad date and said "All I need to find is a man that treats me the way you treat my mother".

Is there enough booze in the world to make me feel the way my step-daugher made me feel that day?

When I go out in the world and work the steps, when I sit down and listen to some new guy who can't figure out how to live on life's terms, when I show up and help set up chairs or hand out phone lists, my world just magically changes into a dream filled with people who care, friends who call me, and nights when I go to bed wondering whatever I did to deserve such a fantastic life.

I have learned the the only things in life worth holding on to are the thing I can not hold with my hands. A life clean and sober is worth holding on to, until the very last breath.

Mike

nogard

61 and 7.5 years clean, love being with Newcomers. Come and join the Young thread you inspired

wpainterw

Desert Eyes:
The account you have given us is truly heroic. It was a great privilege to have read it. As to fantasies about death bed scenarios, my only response is who am I to judge the dying? Who can say to these departing travelers how each should say good bye? All I wish is that when my time comes I leave in dignity and hopefully find peace. May it be so with you, whom I admire from the things you have told us.

W.

TrixMixer

Heavily edited by me for space:...AND definately at odds!

I hear you R Robot----I guess it was the NEEDLESS part that put you at odds. "Sorry" may have been a better way of relating how at odds that feeling SHOULD be with so many years of sobriety.

Can not explain it, and wonder why that is something I would actually do. You know it was the way I answered people when they asked me if it was really hard to stay sober. The answer was not after 25 years, but I loved it and if I knew I was going die in a few days die I would like to go out with a case of Scotch and a carton of cigs.

I am so happy to have found this group and realized how "freaked up" that kind of thinking is......but it is what it is--for me anyway.

Sorry! ....but it in no way interferes with my resolve to live a sober life. I have been tested many times, when I lost my mother I wanted to go with her, and every part of my brain wanted to go out of this life drunk. Messed up huh!

I know myself so well, the good and the bad, and that is one area I can't figure out. I will though, it is just taking a looooooong time. LOL

Thanks for the advice RR--and for clearing things up a bit.
Congrats on your resolve!

TrixMixer

Desert Eyes! ..A Reminder worth reading when I am feeling sorry for myself!!!!

Your post just broke my heart, and I realize just how much I have been given. Your courageous fight has not fallen on deaf ears. It will be one I retell often when someone tells me how hard they have it----including me.

I wish we could wrap you in our arms and make it less painful.
May you continue to be an inspiration to us all--I know I would not have your strength.
Everyone in your life should be honored to say they know you.

I am speechless!!!!
Trix

RobbyRobot

Actually, it was more this declarative statement, mixed in with your others from your earlier post which caught my attention:

"Alcohol plays no part in my thinking anymore, and it is hard to remember how much it meant to me."

Thanks for the congrats, Trix.

I'm not going to say its messed up to "want to be drunk" when we are suffering from extreme despair and painful unrelenting experiences. Pain is what it is, and I've known pain in my day. I'll not judge any one else about what is pain for them, and where it takes them good or bad. I do know pain can be "somehow managed" and therefor survived.

Certainly, DesertEyes is a excellent example of not only surviving his intense pains, but also happily and gracefully surpassing his physical challenges and trials. His sober life exists on a higher plane, untouched by his physical chains or past drinking/drugging. DesertEyes is truly free. Dee is as well an excellent example of a man living with true freedoms well in hand, well beyond any physical limitations and past drinking/drugging experiences. Both these men are accomplished and seasoned heroes in mine own eyes. They inspire me no end to joyfully continue with my own freedoms as well.

Good to hear you know yourself, Trix. Good to hear your pains did not bring you back to drinking.
Awesome. Well done!

I hope one day soon TrixMixer, you get yourself to a place where/when you let go of your future drinking plans, and live your life as if today might very well be the last day of your life. Me, I make every attempt to do so in my own life. We just never know when that day will arrive, you know? All we do know, is that day shall arrive for all of us.

It seems trite, yet I like to think I'm not only dancing as well/fast as I can, but I'm also dancing like nobody is looking all that closely either, lol.

Live long and prosper, TrixMixer.

nogard

Thanks Mike I needed to hear that today.

wpainterw

Although I have no desire or plans to drink when the time comes for me, pain is quite another matter, particularly in the case of cancer. I have no problem with requesting in a "Living Will" that I be kept as free from pain as possible, even if this might result in my becoming addicted, if my condition is terminal and irreversible and if there is a substantial probability that I might die within three months or so. I have spiritual problems with euthanasia but I have no moral or other problems with pain relieving medication where the patient is terminal and where addiction has become merely an academic issue.

W.