CaliButterfly

Bigsombrero, for me, "high-functioning" meant being very responsible, never having legal, financial, or work trouble, not letting it interfere with friendships or relationships, never drinking during the day, always meeting my obligations, not having health problems, and never drinking in public. No embarrassments, and I did this for 7 years. Nobody even knew I was an alcoholic except for my family and people I told. My friends didn't believe I had a problem, but I knew because I could't stop. I have set limits and been able to adhere to them for years at a time. My dad has been the same way for 20+ years. I have to keep reminding myself that it's progressive, that I don't want the shakes or the fogginess in the morning and I don't want to have to hide it from my kids. I'm starting to realize I'm a control freak… ugh… and I'm also starting to realize that I've still got a part of that "not like them" mentality that I'm clinging to (my ego at its finest) because my struggle hasn't been as long as others. I just don't want a catastrophe to be the thing that has to tip the scales.

awuh1

Well you sound like you are ready for a solution. I'm going to suggest something you may not have tried. It has had a great deal of success. You did not mention it in the things you have tried. Perhaps you are ready. Perhaps you need to a few other things first, but if I were you …. I would consider doing the steps. All 12 of them. Let us know if you find a better alternative.

LadyBlue0527

CaliButterfly no hypocrisy there at all! This is one of my top ten things that I love about this board. We all understand each other. For the most part, and those who don't follow are quickly corrected, there is NO judgement. We have our good days, our bad days. We slip, relapse, and start again. We revel in our achievements.

Still, the same truth remains. We are all people that have problems with addictions to drugs and/or alcohol and who could understand us better than the people that we share with on this board?

For all the insanity that there is with all of this SR is the one place that we can come to and find balance, friendship and understanding. It's priceless.

As far as what you're currently going through, as logical as it is what one must to do quit, addiction itself is about the least logical thing that we can ever deal with. The important thing is to always be trying!

CaliButterfly

Thank you so much LadyBlue. It's hard to be addicted to something as devastating as alcohol. Trying to understand it has become an effort in futility. So as you say, we keep trying, and having the acceptance and understanding of everyone on this site is priceless. I cannot express how grateful I am that people I don't even know can be so kind, inspirational, and helpful. I am making it another day.

EverySngleNight

This sounds incredibly exhausting. And I know very well that it is.

Sending you my best Cali!

justinJustQuit

I went to my doctor and got blood work done. At her request, I left there for a doctor who specializes in addiction. I walked out spending Hundreds of dollars WITH insurance (over the course of a week or two). After spending all the money on the meds for detox drugs, blood pressure medicine, crap like that, I went home that night and I cried.

I sat on my toilet seat and just cried like my five month old was an hour ago because he was hungry. I stood up and looked in the mirror. I have gained nearly 100 pounds in 5 short years.

The night I cried turned out to be one of the best days in my life so far. It was my bottom.
Was it catastrophic? No. Maybe I drank harder that night to numb it up a little more, but that was probably it.

This was last friday. Since Saturday night I've been sober. It's been only two days I know, but I remember looking in that mirror and seeing someone who wasn't myself.

I know this was a long post, but that night was my change for the better. And it wasn't catastrophic. I haven't lost anything significant as far as family goes. But we were / are close...

Aellyce

Cali - I agree with others who said you may be too hard on yourself, and I suspect this is not only the case in the context of your drinking problem. Being highly introspective and a perfectionist can be useful, but like most things in life, better with moderation (note to self as well!). Do you think that you drink / relapse to momentarily ease the stress your own standards and trying to meet them everyday cause to you? Stress is a major trigger for most people, and in my opinion and experience, sometimes the stress caused by never being content and satisfied with ourselves can be worse than any external challenges. And guilt about not "standing up" to our own expectations can make it a vicious cycle that never ends...

CaliButterfly

Yes, my analytical, logical, introspective personality feeds my monster within. Besides sobriety, I don't want to fail as a parent or friend, in my job, or just generally as a contributing member of society. My ego holds onto pride with a death grip, but as I become more awake and aware, I am learning to reconcile that with the goal of true happiness from egolessness. My trigger is not so much on stress from perfectionism or daily struggles anymore, I can thank Tolle and a little bit of Buddhist wisdom for that. No, now it's all about loneliness, seemingly endless dating frustration, and lack of friends & companionship. My bff of nine years and I no longer have a friendship (nor do I want it), my other friends are all heavy drinkers (go figure! lol), and at 47, I'm not getting any younger when it comes to being single. The kicker? I'm not a loner, but I'm definitely an introvert. I know that part of the success in sobriety comes from changing your habits, your lifestyle, your destructive or unhealthy friendships and relationships. Replacing them with positive changes. So I cleaned house and found myself wrapped in apathy & self-pity. Now it's a matter of being conscious of those thoughts, acknowledging them, and letting them go. Appreciating the moment, stop projecting so much into the future and worrying about tomorrow. And then listening to the silence...

JackieC

I know we are supposed to do this for ourselves and I did start the path to sobriety for myself.

But.

It's my kids that keep me here. Not just because I don't want them to be kids who have a drunk as a mother (so awful) but also because I think if I am sober then hopefully it helps them avoid being alcoholics as well. It runs in families, has run in my family -- this is a chance to stop this disease with me and not pass it to them.I want them to learn what a life without alcohol is so they don't have to go through all these things that I and those who came before me went through to fight this wretched disease. Making that kind of difference in their lives and in the lives of their children, and their children's children -- that helps me so immensely in my struggle.

Hang in there Cali. We can do this.
Jackie

Aellyce

I really relate to a lot of what you've said. And I think at least in my case, one of the main culprits is my very high tendency for social isolation and living in my head, focusing far too much on my intellectual interests and too little on the physical world... I don;t think I could ever turn this around completely because I believe introversion / extraversion has strong biological causes - why it's so hard to change consciously. It's a tricky thing, don't know your side, but for me I usually don't feel "lonely" in an acute sense, and when I was younger I never perceived this problematic. I was happy in my own world exploring my own interests with a very few close friends whom I actually kept at a "safe" distance most of the time and interacted with them intellectually rather than sharing my emotions and the whole palette. I actually started to realize that my isolating tendencies cause problems through my experience with alcoholism... Isolation leads to self-absorption, which is probably what you describe as having a big ego.

And yes I also have a strong natural focus on the future and thinking about every possible ways it might turn out and then worry a lot... I think this is anxiety, which I'm trying to work on a lot but it's not easy. Yes I also think one key element is to learn to live in the present, and in our bodies, the physical reality, instead of our heads all the time. I do find this incredibly difficult even though looking back at my life (I'm 39) the most rewarding experiences have always been when they involved something physical, and real life interaction with people I relate to and am close to. This may be one thing to seriously work on, for me at least.

CaliButterfly

You and I sound very much alike Haennie. I have always had a high tendency for social isolation as well, concentrating on intellectual interests, and had very, very few close friends in my lifetime. I can count them on one hand. My ex-bff was quite the extrovert, a social-butterfly type that was exhausting to just watch. Her undaunting interaction with other people was baffling to me, and pushing myself to be like her in that respect was an impossible task. I also believe it is biological, not sociological, at least from my personal experience and experimentation. IMHO, people can change and grow, but there are certain inherent traits that just cannot be altered. My only difference seems to be that I have always been emotionally open, maybe too much so. But self-absorption sounds about right.

I know what you mean about focusing so much on the future that it creates anxiety and I struggle a lot with that because I'm a planner. It's just a matter of identifying when I'm doing it and force myself to remember to go with the flow and deal with whatever happens, when it happens. As far as the physical reality, I really think that is subjective based on perception. I have also found it is substantially more rewarding to share experiences with people close to me rather than by myself and I sometimes wonder, why is that? What compels us to find fulfillment in a shared reality? I mean, beyond the basic instinct for seeking companionship to perpetuate the human race... And for me, why do I feel like something is fundamentally missing if I don't have that?

Aellyce

I think we find sharing experiences and socializing (in our personal chosen way) rewarding because the human species is a social kind of animal, not solitary. Our brains are wired this way. As individuals, we want and need different amount of social interaction, but on a basal level we are social beings. As we said, I think introversion has inherent biological causes, but when it's too much (i.e. isolation), often it's associated with some sort of negative early life experience. In my case I know this very well: I was an overweight child and also very shy and hypersensitive, so was teased by the other kids all the time. This eventually led me to just avoid my peers altogether, this is also how I developed my socializing pattern, I think (seeking deep connections with a very select few others), since like all of us, I still craved interaction.

On being a planner: absolutely, me too. Ironically, and sadly, my abilities to plan, make good decisions and work towards goals systematically were one of the things that got harmed by alcohol abuse, one of the most disturbing for me. This was exactly how alcohol affected my career in the recent years (although it seems like others don't notice this but I know it because I can compare with previous times), and one of the major reasons why I'm really serious about trying to quit now. I used to fool myself that I was strong and highly functional as an alcoholic, but for me this is simply not true (although can fool the external world seemingly quite efficiently).

Right now I'm actually trying to force myself to seek real life social interactions more and am starting to get a little worried that I'm falling into a trap of using SR as a replacement... but yet again it's so hard to resist because some of the interactions I've had here only since early last week has been more honest and high quality than what I can find in my everyday reality. But I now I will need to get out more and find new friends.

CaliButterfly

I agree completely. Thinking back, I remember an early childhood memory of kindergarten. I was social & well-liked. My parents got divorced shortly thereafter, I became overweight, and we moved around a lot. In turn, I developed social anxiety and also was shy and withdrawn. Always being the outsider, I learned to trust few and developed a coping mechanism through intellectual instead of social endeavors. I'm guessing you can relate well.

It's unfortunate that some skills you relied on were affected by the alcohol. Mine were as well, mostly my attention to detail and level of accuracy. (I'm an accountant, so it has forced my hand to be extra careful, instead of it coming naturally). I'm sure my superiors have noticed in recent years, but they don't hold me to the same standards (haha) so I'm doing ok for myself regardless. It's funny how you mention fooling the outside world quite efficiently, we can be quite good at that when we want to...

It is easy to become entrenched in the social aspect of the online community. Less risk for rejection, and words can be carefully crafted as opposed to face-to-face interaction. Not to mention it's readily available 24/7 from the privacy and comfort of your own home. And I have also found more meaningful and insightful conversations here recently than from the people around me as of late.... But like you, I must make an effort to find physical friends in addition to virtual ones.

Aellyce

Yes I relate to most of this.

For me the effects of alcohol on professional life have mainly manifested in my motivational pattern. I am naturally a very self-motivated, independent person who has a tendency to initiate lots of new projects, find the appropriate approaches to explore them, and good colleagues who have the necessary expertise - interesting because despite of being so selective and often isolating in my personal life, I normally really enjoy team work and seeing the result of collective effort in progress of projects. I used to be very highly driven, and alcohol has affected my motivation to be of top of things, manage collaborations, lead teams ... and I started turning down even my own ideas and theoretical interests just to be able to escape (and use drinking as a substitute). I could get away with skipping days of work and procrastinating because I have a high level of independence and flexibility in my work and the "alcoholic self" took advantage of that. Then I constantly felt extremely guilty for this especially because my "normal self" absolutely loves my job, so it's not really that I was deceiving others so much (like you, I also feel others do not hold me to the same standards so they are fine), but myself... This is another area I'm trying to work on now, to be a bit more relaxed about my responsibilities, performance, and contribution. It's hard because I feel one of the major motivations of my personality is that I want to be competent, good at what I do, productive. So I'm trying to accept better that it's a sinus curve... like life is a sinus curve in general. I'm trying to focus on developing balance and some sort of mental peace more than anytime before, because I think this will be essential for me to be if not even happy, but at least content.

Re social life: I am trying to make plans for this Eg. I've signed up for an evening class... I try to initiate outings with the 1-2 good friends I have and plan it, so I can't back out since I've started it... And I need to work a lot on being more spontaneous!