afraidinwi

Hello all, I just signed up for this site within the past few hours. I am trying to stop drinking entirely and I think this site is a godsend to help me stay on the correct path.

Just as a history, I considered myself more of a social drinker, weekends, no weekday drinking. My vice is mainly beer only, I have bottles of alcohol in my pantry that have been there unopened for years, mainly Christmas presents from fellow employees. I have been into craft beer drinking and I thought I could control my habit, but lately it seems more and more that things have been spinning out of control.

I am married, in my 40's, with three kids who are fantastic. I thought I had the ability to say "when" but within the past year that has not been happening. I know my wife is frustrated and I am concerned how this is affecting my kids and my marriage. I desperately want to keep my marriage intact and need to prove to my family of my desire to stay clean and be the husband and father I need to be. I decided a few days ago that I need to commit to a sober path and regain the faith and trust of my wife and kids.

I am excited and scared at the same time, excited to prove to myself and family that I can overcome this hurdle, but scared that I may fall into the pit of drinking again. The past few days the biggest thing weighing me down is how my kids view me a person and father due to how I have been in the past. I spoke with my wife and 12 year old daughter over the weekend and informed them that I am making a change in my life, I going to stop and commit to my family. I promised I will do all I can to change and show them I can change.

I am a terrible communicator, I am afraid to throw my feelings "out on the floor", I am not sure why, maybe because I view it as a weakness. Nonetheless, last night I was reading a website where someone recommended starting a journal, so I recently started one which gives me the outlet to communicating without the actual dialogue. But I need to improve my communication with my wife and kids, the discussions I had this weekend were a bit out of the norm and were refreshing. Also, I reached out to a friend and we committed to trying to get together occasionally just to talk as friends, kind of a support network for each other.

I am not looking for anything in particular from the group outside of support, but how do each of you move on from the guilt, embarassment and negative feelings from the damage you may have inflicted on your family due to your drinking or non-sober activities?

I appreciate the input. I wish all of you the best of luck in your continued sobriety and maybe 85 days from now I can say I am 90 days sober, then onto 120 days and so forth.

Thanks for reading.

KateL

Hi. Glad you joined. The guilt thing is so familiar and I refused to be ruled by it a long time ago, because it only took me back to drink. Move on and forgive yourself. You didn't ask to end up drinking too much, it just happens. Don't feel bad. Get well and everything will fall into place. It's great here.

Luckyv2

Welcome Afraidiniw!

First thing is you have to want to do it for you! I lost my family due to the disease of Alcoholism, yet it was the best thing that happened to me at the time. I had promised many times I wouldn't pick up again, yet, there I was.

I have lost a lot of my health so most of the Recovery I get is Online which is just as good. I used AA and had never heard of it until this 17 year old boy told me in Church about it. He took me to a few meetings. They told me to keep coming back, actually that is all I heard from the whole meeting.

Having a support group is very vital in staying sober. We can't do it alone, but we can do it together! Hope you keep coming here. I just started coming back because I need interaction with others like myself and this place has saved me many times. I have a lot of 24hrs Sober And Clean but my attitude was quite crappy. And now it is getting a little bit better.

We don't do this deal for the future cause all we have is today. One day at a time. It isn't easy but it is doable.

Welcome again!

PurpleKnight

Welcome to the Forum!! your in the right place for support!

hayley86

Welcome afraidinwi, when i quit drinking i had to learn to let go of feeling guilty in order to move forward and focus on my recovery. Getting sober has allowed me to repair many of the relationships in my life and people know that I'm a very different person now to the one i was when i was drinking. SR is a great place for support. Glad you have joined us.

Spinach

Keep those days going , counting really helps whilst you wait for sobriety to catch you up and make happiness in all sorts of things you might never imagine.
This place is a gold mine keep here.
Oh you communicate just fine!
John.

firstymer

Welcome, afraidinwi. I am glad you are here with us.

Dee74

Welcome afraidinwi
There's tons of support here - dive right in.

D

Thepatman

I second lucky. This is for you. If you do it for someone else or to maintain your family quality of life, as soon as things get stressful it might trigger you. Time to spend time on you and you, work on you, learn who you are, learn to live a sober life.

afraidinwi

Thanks all for the insight, I greatly appreciate the input and support. I agree with all of you, I do need to do this for myself and I think I forgot to include that in my message.

One of the things I greatly struggle with is being comfortable with who I am, when I make a mistake (work, family, home life in general like fix something incorrectly) I am very hard on myself for all my mistakes. I am my toughest critic and it is not a good feeling walking around all day not allowing yourself to make a mistake. Not sure if it was how I grew up, always wanting to make everyone happy or make every situation perfect. I don't allow myself to get angry, I internalize, put a smile on my face and say everything is ok. Unfortunately it may not be ok and I struggle internally without finding resolution.

Thanks again all.

least

to SR! Learning to forgive yourself can be difficult, especially if you tend to be hard on yourself. But what would you say to someone else if they were struggling with guilt and remorse? You'd go easy on them, right? Well just treat yourself as well as you would treat others.

Tiptree

You are not alone in the struggles you describe. I can relate to everything you are saying. Every day is a struggle when you are your worst critic and drinking, feeling like crap all the time , just makes it worse. It's ok to love yourself and be a little selfish if it helps you stay sober. And it does get easier, you will be surprised.

GotGrace

Hi, afraid, from one Sconnie to another!

You are in a good place and it sounds like you are really ready for change. Yes, it is scary, but it gets easier almost by the day. Sure, some days will test you, but your self confidence will begin to increase very soon after your experience some consistent sobriety.

I am impressed that you opened up to your wife and daughter about wanting to change. If they are like most women, they absolutely loved having you talk to them about this. Keep it up so they can support you. Make sure to tell them how they can help you. They will likely not know what you are going through and what you need unless you continue to talk to them.

Good luck to you. You can do it. We all know you can!

afraidinwi

Thanks again everyone for your kind words. As selfish as this may sound sometimes in life I think I am the only one experiencing my struggles, but it is refreshing to hear there are others in this world going through the same struggles.

Can anyone recommend a book or some website to visit that helps a person come to terms with mistakes made in life and allow you to forgive yourself?

Thanks again for the support and kind words.

LiaAc

Welcome Afraidinwi! You are definitely not alone here. Starting a journal is an excellent idea, one I took up myself on the first day of my sobriety. I will hit day 8 in 45 minutes.

I long time ago I read a book called 'The Secret of Letting Go' by Guy Finley. It's the only book I have kept with me all these years, other than my old Choose Your Own Adventure and Sweet Valley High. Anyway, this book isn't so much about forgiving yourself as it is just learning to let go of past hurts and other such things. Is there something that happened to you in your past that drives you to be hard on yourself?

Sometimes you just have to do it. That is, just let go and begin forgiving yourself as you are right now, this second.

You have certainly come to the right place for support. Please stay and let us all know how you are doing.

erfra7

welcome I think being selfish is part of our disease, I to tough that I was the only one but I found out soon enough it wasn't true and I can used that for my recovery. good luck in your new journey.

afraidinwi

Lia, thanks for the book recommendation. I wish I could pinpoint why I am so tough on myself, as kid I always wanted to make sure everone is in a good mood. To this day situations where people are angry make me uncomfortable. As I have grown up more and more responsibilties have been added through job or home life. This allows me to nitpick every decision I make as correct or incorrect and then constantly reflect on the incorrect decisions. Ultimately, the constant thinking about my incorrect decisions weighs on me so hard to the point that I need a release and I think that release is drinking. If I'm not feeling too contricted I can have a beer or two and know to stop, but if I am not in a mentally good spot I find myself drinking more and more in a night, without telling myself to stop.

I will have to be on the lookout for the book you described.

Dee74

I think a lot of us self appointed peacemakers are hard on ourselves. We have this innate drive to be there for everyone, and solve every problem or conflict, always.

Impossible expectations.

I haven;t read Lias's suggested book, but I recommend Beyond Codependency by Melody Beattie.

it was shocking for me to realise how much of me was in that book.

LiaAc

Oh my yes. The Perfectionist Disease. I know it well. It makes every decision into a major production. I understand what you mean about release as well.

It's never easy at all to let go of our habits and change out disposition. Coming here is a start and I encourage you to continue to share here, as well as in your journal.

I am not an attendee of NA (yet...) so I'm not an expert on NA/AA meetings. Many others here are and can offer much guidance.

One great thing about this forum is that you can come here for anything you need, should it be to vent or talk about a great thing that happened to you. Most people tend to check in frequently.

Another book I will recommend is Reality Therapy by William Glasser. It has completely changed my view on my own addictive behavior. For a long time I figured that my problems and issues were permanent and that I had to learn to live around them. Reality Therapy has shown me that I actually have had it backwards- If I take care of certain voids in my life, those issues actually can diminish. I don't mean to get off on a tangent, but I feel that I have more control over my issues than I did before.

This is my opinion of course. I hope I don't offend anyone with my book suggestions. I know not every treatment and every therapy works for everyone.

Leana

How do you move on past the shame, guilt and embarrassment? One step at a time.