Jack16

Hey folks, I've been away from the forums for a bit.

I can never seem to get beyond 7 days, and I'm sick of the endless cycle of kicking it, feeling great for a week, drinking again, feeling terrible, kicking it again........

The weird thing is when I do relapse, it's hardly ever after a massive mental struggle, it just happens casually, without much thought.

I feel, more and more, that I haven't gone far enough down to make the necessary commitment, but then, obviously, I don't want that to happen, and I'm sick of being ground down by alcohol, my life never going anywhere. Maybe I should hit AA, but then the 5 or 6 times I did go, there wasn't really anyone I connected with, and it mostly brought me down. I love the SR forums, I just wish even a couple of my friends were sober.

So, I don't know what I'm saying. What do people think - do you have to hit bottom to really do this?

Here ends the moan. Hope you're doing good out there.

Soberwolf

You can jack i kept trying & trying & trying ....it took 3 months but one day i woke up and decided enough is enough i became seriously aware of what i had become and no matter what i would do what it took to be sober

in short i think you have to go there (rock bottom) to get here (sobriety)

You dont have to hit rock bottom if you pick up on it early enough but then after a time i have seen ppl question was there ever a problem in the first place ?

The reason we fall is so we learn to pick ourselves up

you can pm me anytime

least

Your bottom can be wherever you stop digging. Doesn't have to be an event or a catastrophe. My bottom was emotional. I was sick to death of hating myself and my life. Something had to change.

Try harder at sobriety. Try something besides AA. I am told that AVRT is a helpful tool in recovery.

I got sober for good with the help of an addiction counselor and daily visits to this site.

When you get to the point of wanting to be sober more than you want to drink, then you'll be able to stay sober.

Jack16

Thanks soberwolf, your support means a lot.

Hevyn

Glad you are here Jack. Never give up and keep talking to us.

(I was close to 'bottom', but not homeless or jobless - just feeling miserable & dead inside. I wanted my life back.)

Anna

You have a choice to make this your bottom now. Alcoholism is a progressive disease and it will get worse unless you stop.

Many of us here do not use AA, and there are other ways to get and stay sober. SR is always a source of inspiration, so keep reading and posting.

Jack16

Yeah, gonna look more into AVRT, I know the basics and I've used it to tackle cravings. Think you're right, think it's all about a tipping point. The one positive is that, I get more and more sick of alcohol with every month that passes, I want to out of my life like I never have before.

It's funny, a good friend who's always given me grief when I've tried to quit doesn't anymore. He's a heavy drinker, basically an alcoholic, and for the first time, the other day, he looked me in the eye, and said how much he hated drinking. I could see that he really meant it. He'd never said that before. I wish he'd quit with me.

Anyway, thanks

EndGameNYC

For many of us who lost everything, who, as you put it, "hit bottom," for those among us who were granted the mixed blessing of desperation...there is occasionally a subtle indication that we've gone through a kind of immeasurable suffering that can never quite be completely set right. Tone of voice, facial expression, something vague observed in our eyes. It's there.

The desperation we lived may be the very same thing that motivates us to help others, but I'm not sure how many of us would be willing to pay the price had we been able to do it all over again. There are no heroes here, and no one gives out a badge of courage for enduring a completely unlivable life long enough to rejoin the living. For many, the motivation to help never comes, and I wouldn't even want to speculate about what life is for them.

The first time I got sober, I made a decision to stop when things were always getting worse in my life, my heart was broken, and when my emotional life was limited to despair and foreboding.

When I relapsed after twenty five years, I made no conscious decision to get sober following my relapse. I was resigned to die as an active alcoholic. I was taken to the ER on several occasions and, when I was conscious, against my will. Each time I was told I would soon die if I continued the way I was. On a couple of occasions, extreme measures were required to revive me. And I kept on drinking. I lost everything and everyone dear to me in life, and then I could no longer even care for myself, beyond getting my daily supply of vodka. I all but collapsed in the waiting area at the detox, and they admitted me immediately with my BP at 220/160, my heart and liver compromised, with what I believed was pancreatitis, a head filled with crazy thoughts and a soul empty even of emptiness.

I can't think of a single reason to wait, and your rationalization that you haven't suffered enough is the product of self-destructive thinking. I don't imagine that you're wondering how I know this.

JanieJ

Welcome, Jack

Some wise words here already.

I decided I would give up now before it got really bad. I'm 52, and had developed pains in my stomach and could see that my future was probably going to be really bad health-wise if I carried on drinking, if there was much of future left for me at all.

I guess that's a bottom.

Don't wait until you've lost everything Jack, get some good techniques and support under you belt and do this.

We're all here to support you.

Hawks

Sounds like a cycle I understand.

Build it up, tear it down.

It's nothing big that gets us, more like accumulated damage over a period of days or weeks.

I had to get help from people who understand the situation and put myself in a position to be taught.

If I could have fixed it up myself.... I would have.

Good luck with your decisions on sobriety

Jack16

Thanks for your words, EndGame, I found them very powerful.

Soberwolf

You can do this jack

Well done & anytime my friend

luvmygirls

Jack16, I'm not sure if you have to hit bottom, but I really hope not. Keep trying. I'm right there with you.

growpath

First point you have to WANT to be sober MORE than you want to drink. Cravings do not just go away. You have two choices when a craving hits; drink and give in or don't drink and wait for the craving to pass. You decide.

You do not have to hit bottom to change either. People are raising the bottom all the time. Whenever you CHOOSE you want a better life (since you said alcohol is causing you trouble) is the time you decide to not drink anymore.

Not drinking was essential for me to live a better life since nothing else matters when I drank. To get any happiness I had to remove it from the equation completely. You can too!

I wish ya well Jack. If you are coming to a recovery website about your drinking you might wanna reevaluate your relationship with alcohol. If it isn't bringing you any good then you have every right AT ANY TIME or ANY LEVEL to say enough is enough

Aellyce

Hi Jack,

This was an interesting thread about the topic a while ago:
http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...r-stories.html

I'm always a little confused about these "bottom" discussions as I think it's highly personal. I totally believe that one person can reach the level (or depth) of emotional trauma, despair and terror not so visibly losing material things, sometimes stuck in this state for a long time... while the other person will get there internally "losing everything" as we tend to say. I'm not sure it's easy to tell this by simply looking at someone's life from the outside, from a distance. Also, sometimes, I believe, it takes more toll on a person to superficially hold it together for a long time in front of the world and get on with every *** day as if things were relatively alright, than sliding all the way down on that slope not caring about grasping onto anything of value anymore. I really don't know. We are different as individuals and so the nature of our suffering can also be experienced at least somewhat differently. One can nearly die after losing everything including their health and then come back, and one can be walking dead for long years maintaining minimal practical reality living on autopilot operated by some weird very basic survival engine, and recover from there... not sure which one gets "lower". We are also different in terms of vulnerability and resilience, and how we experience these things.

In any case, you can stop. Do it now no matter where everyone else is.

growpath

..and I will add everyone's bottom is different...some may say a bottom is a hangover and not being able to make it through their day productively or others may say losing everything; job, money, family etc is their bottom.

You get to also choose what your bottom is, Jack And even better you can decide not to find out!

b086

i've heard that a bottom is when your circumstances worsen faster than you can lower your expectations.

low expectations = a low bottom

one of the incredible and inspiring aspects of humanity is that we can adapt to situations of terrible hardship. the downside to this quality is that we drunks can lower our expectations almost infinitely -- to the point where a good day is a day spent drunk/stoned/high. life offers infinitely more than that -- because, in my experience, the result of a string of intoxicated days is invariably pitiful, incomprehensible demoralization.

it can be very hard to believe, before getting sober, that life can be as good in sobriety as it actually is. thats why in AA they recommend that you have a sponsor who has something you want -- for me that was someone confident, serene, and solid in sobriety. in time, i learned to do what he did, and the result now is a life for which i am extremely grateful.

sobriety is so, so, so good. it is worth it. i thought it would be impossible for me to give up drinking, but now i have no interest in a drink. don't give up before the miracle happens!

LexieCat

When I quit drinking, I still had my house, my car, my nice job, my family (divorced but on good terms). My own big, dramatic "bottom" was that I was so sick from withdrawals at work (which I was getting on a daily basis) that someone had to drive me home from work.

It was one of those "yets" that hadn't happened--where it was leaking into my professional life. And I was having some scary physical symptoms and had the VISION of the rest of my life--that this was the best it would ever be and I would wind up a lonely recluse drinking in my house. I almost literally heard a voice say, "You KNOW what works--what are you waiting for?" (First husband had been sober almost 30 years at that point, in AA)

I detoxed at home, went to my first AA meeting for ME, and have not picked up a drink in the six years since.

So I'm not sure one has to hit "rock bottom" (my late sponsor was fond of saying "every bottom has a trap door"), but I think most of us need a certain gift of desperation and a moment of clarity that we act quickly on.

freshstart57

No, you can quit anytime you choose to. Lots of folks quit drinking and still have their families, marriages, jobs, most of their health. They quit drinking and got on with their lives. There are others who don't do that, and they get most of the press.

I think you said a mouthful when you said you pick up drinking again after a period of sobriety 'casually, without much thought'.

The answer for me was to become aware of this, to become mindful. This stopped the autopilot phenomenon that we read about, 'I don't know how it happened, I just got plastered again'. I started becoming aware and mindful of thoughts too, and this is what kept me sober. Check out AVRT if this sounds interesting to you.

When you think about it, if you do, it is pretty silly to think that we can obtain alcohol, pay for it, put it in our mouths and swallow it, all without sufficient awareness to stop if we have made a solemn decision to quit. If we haven't made that solemn decision and say instead 'I'm going to give this sobriety thing a try and see how it goes', it's a guarantee that the future is not going to change.

Jack, you can quit drinking (and you will) once you decide that your life will be better when you do, and that you deserve to have this better life, the one without alcohol. Are you ready to make your plan about continuing to use alcohol?

fini

Jack,
i had to hit MINE.

and my bottom wasn't one that was really visible from the outside. had a job, decent relationship with grown-up kids, no DUI, no big absenteeism....in fact, i hid it all rather successfully...but on the inside, extreme desperation about my repeated returns to drinking which were against my intention and in spite of decisions to the contrary. i had no control and was not in charge but couldn't accept that and so kept trying.

truly awful. for me.
that this would not be "bottom enough" for everyone is so.
but i hit it when i understood and accepted i was a drunk.
that moment set me free.