I don't want to be an alcoholic!
 

I need help!!! I have been drunk or addicted to something since I was 11. I have been trying to get sober from alcohol for almost three years (clean from everything else for 8 years). I am mad. I'm so pissed because I LOVE TO DRINK! I don't want this physical addiction and the withdrawals and the need to compulsively drink, but I am that camping, BBQ, football game girl. How do I quit drinking when it is my identity. I have to quit and I've admitted that I'm powerless, but don't want to accept it!! PLEASE HELP ME ACCEPT THIS, or I will die!

Thank u and lots of love:a108:

Welcome to SR.

I'm pretty sure it's possible to camp, BBQ, and enjoy football without drinking alcohol.

Welcome to SR LeLe. :)

I can certainly relate to how you're feeling. I never wanted to admit it or deal with it - so I ignored what it was doing to me. 30 yrs. I played with it, trying to manage the amounts I drank or control it in some way. It never worked - and when they say it's a 'progressive disease' they are not kidding. In the end, I was drinking all day, every day. I was completely dependent on it. I started out just having fun with it too - but it took over my life.

I promise you there's life after alcohol. You are thinking you'll be missing something, but that's not true. It takes some adjusting to the new way of life - but it's wonderful to be free. Glad you joined us and are looking at what drinking is doing to you.

Welcome to SR LELE.

Nobody wants to be an alcoholic. I certainly didn't. At 20 yrs old I was trying to convince the authorities that I was nuts. I figured as a certified lunatic I could still drink and they would cut me some slack as far as my behaviour went.
When they didn't buy that, I set my heart on becomeing a "pisshead" (read hard drinker), but when I kept getting into problems I changed that goal to being a "plateau drinker", which worked for about 5 minutes.

My problem was that whenever I took alcohol into my system, I could not control what happened next. Usually a 3 or 4 day bender. Eventually I got help through AA and now I am very glad I did.

The hard drinking buddies that I wanted to be like, though not alcoholic, paid a price for their drinking. They all died in their fifties.

Welcome to SR!

I LOVE TO DRINK!

Alcoholism is progressive and it's just a matter of time before you HATE TO DRINK. By the time you get there you might be drinking all day, everyday needing some level of alcohol in you system just to feel ok and function. However, it won't really matter if you love it or hate it, you will NEED to drink. That sucks.

I think you made your first admission that drinking is not working for you by opening with I Need Help! Admitting you are not in control is a good start.

Take it one day at a time and read/memorize what Zebra1275 posted above.

Good Luck.

You are a very wise zebra.

glad yer here and se alcohol is the problem.
how to help you accept it....when i got into recovery i had no problem admitting i was powerless over alcohol. that was simple, but for some reason accepting did something to me, something very positive: i was ok with being powrless and made the work to not drink and the work to stay sobr easier. i really dont know what it was that got me to the point. it coud have been that i realized there was nothing wrong with being powerless when i started doing something about it. i also had to want to stop drinking.

to get there, i had to get to the point when the pain of getting drunk exceeded the pain of reality.desperation. i wanted to stop drinking and was willing to go to any lengths to do it.
when i was drinking, i camped, fished, went to fotball games....heck, there wasnt anything i did unless it involved alcohol!! in recovery i have done those and countless other things, all without alcohol and with others that dont drink. i cant believe what i missed out on!!!


in all honesty, i dont think you love to drink. i think you hate it already.i think yer foolin yerself.
maybe explain why you feel you love to drink,eh? it would help us help you.

Hi! Hey, I used to love to drink too! But then I didn't, I had to, not for physical, but emotional reasons. I hated it. It was such a relief to realize I wasn't alone. So glad I really found out about alcoholism. No more monkey on my back. I can BBQ, watch football, and camp, and it's pretty cool to remember it all. Not be the drunk one, sleeping, ahem, passed out through the fun stuff.

Realizing you have a disease, physical or emotional condition, is kinda cool, when you realize there are plans in place to help you live with those conditions. Drinking would/will kill me if I still did it. I would rather chance being the responsible adult, rather than the guest if honor at my own funeral.

I'm glad I found out I was an alcoholic, I'm grateful for another chance today.

Thank you all for support. Here's my big issue.....my husband is a drinker. He is not an alcoholic but drinks on his weekends. He works hard all week and that's who he is. That's who I was before the progression made my symptoms physically dependent. The family I have built for myself are close, loving, active people but alcohol is a big part. I love the times we all have together and I'm finding it very hard to quit the alcohol and still keep the life I love. I suffer with this within myself seeking away to take shots and always making sure I get enough. It's a horrible way to live when u love ur life so much. I'm torn torn torn and don't know how to handle this

You seem to be confusing what you do, with who you are. You are not what you do. However, it is a reflection of you, at least until you decide to change it.

Lele, I know a lot of people can't be around booze when they quit, but in my situation I am... roommates and friends still drink. Some reasonably, sometimes not, but it's around.

Thing is I thought I would spend all my social events just feeling conflicted and stressed about not drinking. Turns out yeah, sometimes it's hard (like that moment at a party when you realize the person you're talking to is not being clever, they're being drunk)... but if you compare it to the stress I went through during those same events while drinking, it's way easier. I would be drinking and loving it, yeah, but I would also be putting a huge amount of effort into simultaneously drinking as much as possible and seeming as sober as I could manage. And that doesn't even get into the next day stress.

I recognize it's a lot different within a marriage. But basically I find it way easier to be sober around temptation than I found it to be drunk around temptation, if that makes sense.

Dear SR, I agree with with these folks. It is so true that all of the activities you love while drinking will eventually become horrible. That is what happened to me, finally, and it is great that it happened. I was a happy hour, hang with the guys, have friends over, BBQ guy, and loved it. Until I started to hate it. Drinking started to become misery. Something else also changed, the happy drunk became the unpredictable and often times, psycho drunk. I was Scarface in the 'You need people like me, so you can point your bleeping finger and say he's da bad guy!' scene. Which is dangerous when you don't have a bodyguard.

I'd clean up for a couple of weeks and be like, why would I choose to live in so much pain? And waking up in the mornings not sure if I could show my face in the city I live. That is incredibly nerve wracking. Drinking off the guilt of the night before. Even after it got very unpleasant to drink it took me years of trying to make it pleasant again and NEVER succeeding. -You realize something is up. It is the first step. It never, ever, gets better. It gets worse.

Paul, is AVRT like an AA type thing? I don't think we have it in Connecticut.

"Talking" to you all is really helping me. It was said, "I am confusing who I am, with what I do." That's going to be a tough one but I guess it's time to figure out who I am. I've always been "what I'm doing" if that makes sense. Been drinking since I was 11. I turn 30 this year and it is time to get off this progressive track. I know it's real because I'm in the cycle now! Have two shooters in my pocket for mid night or morning when I need to get up and go to work after this three day binge. Man, the truth hurts.

I hear you LeLe, I honestly wish that I could handle liquor moderately like most people, but that's not how the stars aligned for me unfortunately. It's best to find some beneficial hobby to find joy in instead, we're really not missing anything special that we can't find in some other avenue of life.

Sorry I meant Lele in my last post. Lele, you can see it. But the truth does not have to hurt. You're not a bad person, you probably just can't drink. If you can get up and go to work tomorrow, especially after 2 shooters in the a.m., you can do this. Do you know how much strength and effort it takes for you to do that? Addicts have a tremendous amount of strength, and usually intelligence, and talent. No offense but, are you holding yourself back? Any dreams?

If my plane crashed on a desert island, I'd want my fellow survivors to be addicts. Because they would figure out a way off that island in no time. "Ok I think we are 300 miles from the nearest island with a liquor store. So it looks like we are going to have to build a crude ship out of jet parts and jungle plants. We'll need some vines, coconuts, that piece of a wing, 30 floatation devices, etc. We set sail in 48 hours. The journey will be fraught with danger, sharks, monsoons, dehydration, but as god is my witness...we will make it to that liquor store!!!"

lele, the truth wont hurt...it will set you free...if you get into the solution. but yer gonna want to stop drinking 1st.

LeLe, read ' diary of an alcoholic Housewife' you may not agree with all but I feel you may find resonances. You can be who you want to be, and if you are seeking sobriety, are there other things you want to try, going back to school, looking for a new job? Changing other aspects of your life will make the stoping drinking seem less of a deal to those around you.
I too loved drinking, until loathing myself for my addiction became a bigger thing.

AVRT can be accessed from links here, and is well worth a look as a tool towards sobriety.

Good luck

Maybe I can help Johnny.

AVRT (google: 'AVRT In A Nutshell" for a quick overview of the AVRT program) and AA are dissimilar in many aspects. It is a good practice to avail yourself with some of the options that have been effective in keeping a person, like yourself, as a great many others, happy, joyous and free to use AA parlance.

AA and a recovery tool box (CBT and DBT for instance) has made a word of gracious difference in my life.


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