sprout50

Chilled, I am glad to hear that you are sticking around. You can tell from the responses, that you have a lot of caring support here. We have all been where you are right now. I am also glad that you opened up as well. Sometimes just letting it out helps.

Whatever you decide or when, we are still here.

Chilledice

Thank you, that's really appreciated

Jupiters

hey chilled, glad to see you changed your mind and have decided to hang around
I really hope that you can start to find some peace within yourself. You deserve it.

Chilledice

In all honesty im taking the easy way out by drinking, it doesn't solve anything! Yes it soothes me but then I have to pay the price after!

But at the moment I cant make promises I cant make assurances etc some days I have the strength to be sober, other days not so much.

Mairie

The day will come when you realise, it's just not worth the withdrawals I hope you reach that soon as you obviously want to quit, deep down

sprout50

Any sober day you can do is an accomplishment. Consider those sober days practice for when you can let it go for good. I appreciate your honesty. You will get there one day.

desypete

sadly for me i can not play games with drinking, the way i look at it is if i take one drink then i might not ever get another chance to quit again,

drink already took everything i had once away from me in life and i can not ever let that happen to me again
no matter what goes on in my life today i do not have to pick up that first drink, if it means i end up sleeping the day away in bed feeling crap then thats what i will do and have done in order to not drink

when i lost my son thats all i could do was shut myself off and just sleep not even aa could help me and certainly not a god, so i had to either give in and drink to try to cope with my pain or just shut myself down and try to sleep my pain away

i did this for a good few months as my whole world had collapsed when my boy died, i died with him
but i never picked up that first drink, i am not a super man the only difference is with how much the drink cost me last time compared to many who have not been there yet

today i am back living a sober life were i am not locking myself up on my own in pain anymore i am out and about again trying to help others again and my rewards are freedom from the pain for most of the day, i still have to put my head on the pillow at night and my visions of my son pull hard at me at those times but this is were i get hard on me

its life, it can happen to anyone and does happen to many others each day in this world so i better just accept it that i can not change it nothing can, and moaning about it or feeling sorry for myself will not change anything either

so get on with living and living without a drink is how i have to be on me.

pupkin

Thinking of you, Chilled. Wishing you more of the stronger days.

Soberwolf

A lot of death iI've seen from a young age sexual abuse extreme violence watching a parent attempt suicide watching your sisters decend into solvent abuse alcoholism And heroin

Father running out on us leaving me with to care for my mother during an alcoholic binge while my family was severely broken already

I know pain more than most and this is the tip of a very big iceberg I know you know pain

By drinking were killing ourselves you've tried and failed that don't mean stop trying

I know u think ur soothing it but ur keeping them wounds open and when I was drinking them wounds got infected and twisted because of my drinking


Pls don't get lost like I did just keep trying

anattaboy

Chill, I believe you. Alcohol worked for me until it didn't. Stay with us.

Nuudawn

^^^^^ my drinking took found it's TSN turning point when I reached for the bottle in pain I could not face alone...yet chose the bottle over therapy and support. It is only in hindsight that I was able to see how that decision to find answer in a bottle kept me stuck in the wound for years...so stuck it was like I was drinking over ghost pain, like an amputee feels pain in a leg no longer there. I had allowed the pain itself to become a habit long past its expiry.

Glad to here you have help on the horizon and glad you've decided to stick around. I like Tomsteve's suggestion about other internet resources in the meantime. Now seems like a good time to apply some real peroxide and oxygen.

PurpleKnight

Great to hear you're sticking around, as you can see a lot people here care!!

VikingGF

Hi, Chilled- I wasn't around much yesterday, but I did read this whole thread and am glad you are staying around. I am sorry for the pain you are in, and hope you can find relief in therapy and through your own strength. Your strength is evident, you have survived your past, and you are still here fighting for your future. I'm pulling for you- one day you will leave all your demons in the dust. Don't give up, don't drink.

Lisa.

DoubleDragons

Chilled, I hope you will see this outpouring as proof of how much you matter. When you start taking care of yourself the way you deserve to be nurtured, no problem will seem insurmountable. I promise. Love and prayers and peace.

MythOfSisyphus

Chilledice, sometimes you have to "roll the tape forward" in your mind. For a moment allow yourself to think it through to the conclusion. You have tried to stop repeatedly and have always drank again, and each time it sucks a little more. You feel great but eventually cave to the yearning for the release and numbness you get from alcohol. So you drink. But it's never satisfying and everything just keeps getting worse.

What you have to remember is that you've logged a lot of success.

Not to trivialize it but quitting drinking is a lot like doing the dishes, going back to school or building a house. There's a bit of time, some discomfort and a certain level of commitment required to get it done. Depending on which project you're doing there's a lot of boredom, some setbacks, and times when you feel like giving up on it and just playing Xbox.

But when the project is done there's a sense of satisfaction and an understanding that it had to be done, that it was worth it. You just have to see it through to the end.

With sobriety there isn't an "end" exactly. Each sober day is an end in and of itself. But I hope that you will believe me when I say you eventually reach a point in sobriety where you start to "get it". Settling our war with alcohol allows us to reach the peace dividend- it allows you to begin to cash in the account balance of opportunity costs of not drinking.

Eventually you'll begin to feel better and emerge from the haze that living your life drunk puts you in. It's like being turned around in a patch of dense forest and getting lost. Once you get through the treeline and to the top of a clearing you suddenly can see where you are in a way you couldn't while you were stuck in the woods.

Roll that tape forward to the end, Chilledice. How do you see it ending? Can you drink your way through to the other side of your problems? Will booze fix the mental and emotional issues you're dealing with. How about the health stuff- will your liver get better while you're still drinking? In a year from now will any of your current problems improve from another 12 months of being drunk? Or will you have the same life problems but be burdened with physical symptoms, too?

You only have one liver. If you drink it to death you won't be able to do much else with your life. I have been told that drinking through liver failure is an agonizing death. Why even consider that?

This is getting long so I'll just add one more thing. Imagine the doctor told you that you had a disease that will cause you do die in agony within a month. Now imagine he told you there was a cure for it. What would that cure be worth? What sacrifice would be too much to save your life? Remember, the game is over when you die- no more chances. Think of all the good things in your life, all the people you love (and the ones you'd like to love). Imagine the things you still want to do and the places you want to go. Now imagine never doing any of that. You do have that cure in your hands, Chilledice.

Glad you're sticking around to read this!

TitansFreak

We all have experienced some sort of trauma in our lives. My ol lady experienced some very severe trauma as a young girl and that was her fuel to drink for a long time also I think she just liked to drink I won't discuss the details of her experience but I will tell you mine..molested from 6 to 13 and never once used that as a excuse of even mentioned to anyone until I met a girl before my future wife and I told her and when it was time for me to move on she threatened to tell my whole family and friends..well you know what they say about a womans scorn. So that being said everyone has had a tough life push on man and don't be a statistic

SoberHoopsFan

The greatest con that alcohol pulls on us (and there are many) is convincing us that returning to drinking and continuing our drinking is the only possible way, that it is inevitable so why even bother. The reality is, those thoughts are 100% created by the addiction. Think back before you took your first drink... did you ever sit around wondering how you would live your life without alcohol? Did you ever sit and think that life was unimaginable without alcohol? No. What changed? You brought alcohol into your life, it is very addictive, and it has created these feelings within you. They are brought on 100% by the drug and will continue on and on as long as you choose to consume it.

You say alcohol provides you relief from trauma, but it is alcohol that is causing you the trauma. It will never change either. It will always be harmful for you and always try to convince you that it isn't.

I hope you decide to give sobriety another go, it's freedom.

Meraviglioso

Me too. I have also had my fair share of trauma and was diagnosed with PTSD (though I disagree with that, I don't feel that I have that)
In any case, after months of going in circles- and paying a pretty penny that certainly made my visit worth her time- she flat out told me that she cannot work with me if I continue to drink. She said she could help me maintain the status quo but there was no way we would be able to work on my past traumas if I was drinking any amount, at all. We agreed to take a break and I will return to her once I have 2 full months of alcohol free days. Then we will start working on healing things from the past.