When were you "ready"?
 

I keep thinking I want to quit...then I think "one more time, after this ___ special drink (imported beer, rare wine, etc.)..." I keep thinking "After this one special case, I'll stop." And my SO seems to think I can just lay off for awhile, then drink like a normal person. I'm a bottle of wine deep and want more, but we're all out. I absolutely won't drive to get more, but I know I'll be itching for the rest of the night. I just can't understand how people can stop comfortably after a few...

I think realizing that you will always want more after a bottle of wine shows that you know you have a problem? I am on my 3rd day with the mindset that I've giving up alcohol completely so I don't know if I have any wise words for you, other than that I know EXACTLY how you feel and I don't want it getting worse! Plus think how great it will be to be free from the chains of addiction!

I quit when I finally accepted that I won't be able to have "just a few". I tried every form of moderation I could come up with but always failed.

Thank you, leharris111 and ScottfromWI. It sucks doesn't it??? I know I have a problem, but so many of my friends are "normal" and laugh it off...which part of me appreciates, but the only friends I have who are really "in trouble" are heroin addicts with lots of money who will never really get better, so I can't really relate to them, but I'll keep trying...anyway, thanks for your help. I'll be around.

I actually should have quit long before I was ready.

It does suck! I want SO badly to be normal and be able to be a moderation drinker, but deep
Down I know that's not possible for me so giving it up completely is my only option. Have you checked out the rational recovery site? I liked it and it was relieving to hear that we can choose to be recovered right now...

I relapsed after having ten and a half months sober. While I was drinking I kept thinking "I'll just have one last (fill in the blank) before I quit again. But I started back to being as bad as I was before I quit the first time so I stopped again. And I never completed drinking through my list of "one last times". And I don't miss it. I never could stop after one. I would drink until it was gone and want more. I've never been able to moderate. So if you want support to quit, we are here.

I was ready when the pain of drinking outweighed the pleasure derived. By the end I was drinking only to keep withdrawal at bay. It wasn't fun anymore and was seriously impacting my life.

Ruby2, question for you- I AM ready, I decided that last night! But I read a post that someone else wrote about a sponsee in AA and the person thought the sponsee wasn't "truly" ready to give it up bc he thought about drinking in the future. I am not thinking about it like I am planning on drinking...I'm planning on not drinking but there is still some doubt that I can do it and some fear that I'm going to give in (terrified actually). This doesn't mean I'm not ready does it? I mean my desire is to live normally and not have an alcohol problem and that will never happen so that means my desire is to give up alcohol right? People are making me question my decision now and that scares me that I'm going to give in. Oh man....

Bc everyone says that if you aren't 100% ready you will fail. But that isn't helpful!!!!

Sorry if that isn't allowed here and not to freak anyone else out....I think I'm getting into my head too much...

Ruby2 and @leharis111, I'm probably not fit to comment, but who WOULD'NT be fit to comment here? The fact that that someone who "thought" about drinking isn't fit to comment upsets me...because I think about drinking all the time. Who doesn't?? We could all just walk or drive off and go to a bar right now..but the better of us don't.

I tried so many times like you leharris. Telling myself , ok I'll only drink on weekends or I'll only drink 4 days a week.... None of it worked and I continued to drink wine mostly every night ( a bottle) and every morning hate myself and say ...this is it, I'm done. It's not healthy! (What kind of role model am I to my kids?)
But by late afternoon I had already justified I can have wine again that night. I finally admitted to myself, I can't control my drinking and I'm an alcoholic. I wish I was one of the occasional normal drinkers, but I'm not. So, day 4 here i come! Happy to have you all to talk with.

One way to find out if you're ready is to give it a try.

I was at the point where trying to quit started looking like a possible solution. But I was addicted to alcohol--I needed to go to an in-patient (no-cost) detox. It's a good idea to see a doctor about quitting, but I would recommend that you go to the hospital if you feel illness or a physical need to drink.

Don't listen to those friends!!! You are making them uncomfortable. True friends should respect your decision and want to help you.
My best friend became sober last spring. ... She hit rock bottom( we tried drinking young-13so stupid) anyway she ended up in hospital with pancreatitis and in rehab for almost a year. I supported her and would never talk her back into drinking nor when I was still drinking do it in front of her.
My point is true friends support you and want you to succeed in what's best for you. You already said you know you can't control your drinking, right?

I'm proud of you, @Anewyear :)

LH111....welcome to the site and happy new year.

Alcoholism is a nasty, progressive disease that will kill you if you let it. It always gets worse with time and never better. The notion that you need to reach a bottom that involves you lying in the gutter having lost everything to be ready is rubbish. You are ready when you say you are ready and when you are ready to give 100% to quit.

Most people make half hearted promises to quit and mean it at the time. But being ready means doing whatever it takes to quit FOREVER. Would you move to another country to quit? Change your friends? Break up with your partner? Quit your job? Of course its most likely that you won't have to do this but you will need to rebuild a sober life at almost any cost and you will have to do what you need to do to accomplish this. This is what people mean by being ready. You ready for that? Is so, I recommend you spend a week reading this site back to front and learn as much as you can and stop drinking immediately and don't drink while you do that. Good luck.

I'm proud of both of you! You're right, admitting you have a problem and can't control it is the first step! And the desire to be sober is soon after...and I want to be sober, don't you guys? You are right saudades...everything thinks of drinking but it's the fact that we don't actually do it. Like the RR says...."The beast doesn't control our fingertips" I just keep saying that to myself!

Like others, I tired moderation over the years. It didn't work, although I wanted desperately for it to work. For me, what has worked so far (and I'm new at this, a bit over three months) is to 1) commit to never picking up a drink again, no matter what ;2) make an action plan as to what I'm going to do when I feel like picking up a drink (stress and anger are my two big triggers); 3) plan ways, big and small, to take care of myself, so I'm not tempted to drink to numb or check out.

I'm not sure if I was ready in any kind of existential way when I quit: I have had for years an embryonic awareness that my drinking was a problem. I was tired of sleeping poorly and feeling anxious (the latter was caused primarily by my drinking, although I was drinking to try to ameliorate anxiety too). I see it as one of those fake it until we make it moments.Kind of like what we do when we have to do other things that maybe we're anxious about starting. The beauty of sobriety is that it feels so good after awhile and sticking with it is its own reward.

Sending you positive thoughts.

I had to reach some serious health problems before I was ready to actually stop. Makes me think of a car driving on flat tires. Then the tires shred off and you're driving on the rims with sparks flying. Then the rims fall off and you come to a stop.

Well I guess that was a little dramatic but I passed several very serious warning signs/occasions that should have made me stop, even a diagnosis from a dr. I drank a week later.

I actually stopped and stayed stopped when I simply could not take the daily hangovers anymore. And the diagnosis was always in the back of my mind. My health should return to 100% with complete abstinence.

I did not know when I was "ready" until after I stopped drinking.

No one needs to be "100% ready" for anything in order to succeed.

Thanks again, all. I was kind of using last night as an experiment (or I told myself I was, I really just wanted to drink). I said, OK, here I am, sitting around bored and grouchy because I want a drink and can't have one. I know nothing good ever comes out of drinking, but what if I just go ahead and do it...then if I prove myself right I'll stop (yeah, just an excuse to drink). But I was right! Drank all I wanted (well, all I had) and all I got in return was annoying my fiance and a crappy night's sleep. I suppose I'm as "ready" as I'll ever be.

My situation is very much linked to certain events, environments and people. A lot of my close friends consider a normal night of fun drinking till 6am in the morning and taking drugs. And if I hang out with those people, I never seem to just go home at a reasonable hour and hence have these awful hangovers and regret.

I think I have been thinking about quitting alcohol for good in summer 2014. I did one month off, and came back to drinking. I keep on having these events, ie a date, a friends birthday, a holiday, and its just another excuse to keep going. I start work tomorrow. And, I think I will be in a much better place to quit drinking then. When I am working Mon to Fri, I don't drink during the week often, so its just Fri night and Sat night that I need to have the willpower, and I think in effect it becomes a lot easier to stop drinking when you have an established routine. Being careful about two days/two nights of the week will be much easier then being careful about everyday of the week.

So for me, my date of sobriety is today, because from today is Sunday, and tomorrow I start work and my routine starts again. I think then it just comes down to planning weekends in advance so as to avoid drinking.

This coming weekend, I will get my car M.O.T. (annual vehicle inspection) on Saturday morning, saturday afternoon hopefully see a friend.

My new life starts today :)

I kept blacking out and it was every time in the end i threw my hands up and said im alcoholic i cant do this no more ...

Took 3 months of trying

Here i am at near 18 months believe me its possible my friend

I have some experience in this... 10.5 months sober after daily 12-step meetings since mid 2011. Prior to these 10.5 months, I once made it 11 days...2nd place was 4 days, 3rd place was 2 days, etc. It was ugly and hard getting to this point.

I had to "get done getting done" with drinking. It wasn't planned and it wasn't a controlled process, and my drinking progressed, significantly. I became routinely suicidal, and had I followed through on it, nobody that knew my drinking would've been surprised. Still, I had attained and not yet lost the tangible things that most people strive for.

My last drinking days were as follows, and I share it because I think the story is relevant for perspective: on and Friday morning was going to commit suicide or go to a detox (for excessive vodka withdrawal); I opted by a thin margin for the detox but had what I thought to be my last drink (1 pt of vodka) in a coffee shop bathroom. I completed the detox on Sunday; en route to a 12-step meeting, minutes after my discharge from detox, I purchased alcohol and was quite drunk at the 12-step meeting; I was hospitalized that very night for drunkenness, at the prompting of my significant other and told that my case was probably hopeless.

I was defiant to follow my health care providers suggestion to enroll in rehab, but in that instant, I'd had enough. I was done and thoroughly beaten.

I dove head first into 12-step recovering and did anything and everything the people in those meetings suggested of me. However, That unflinching commitment to never drinking again lasted about 1 week until I knew that my next drink was imminent. That drink never came. I talked about my feelings of impending relapse and someone explained "of course you want to drink, you're an alcoholic!". That made sense to me. I didn't drink and that urge was suppressed but was destined to return over and over again, albeit with diminished frequency over time. Unfortunately for my alcholism, I'd proven that i didn't have to drink, even if I wanted to drink. I have never once regretted not drinking.

My point is this: I could today pick up a drink and hindsight and alcoholic logic would say that I hadn't hit a low or a bottom sufficient to motivate and inspire permanent abstinence. Conversely, if I stay sober, then that bottom was sufficient. My theory is that all I've ever needed to quit permanently is a moment wherein I could say "I'm done". Any of those moments could've inspired the actions I've taken these past 10.5 months sober. I fear relaper because I don't know if those moments will reoccur and whether I have another quit in me.

What I learned is that I don't have to drink, even when I want to. I also have an action plan that a follow through on in those moments when I do want to drink.

You can be "done getting done" when you choose. I needed pain and anguish to get to that moment. You might not yet need that same pain and anguish. You might be able to choose your own bottom, and that time could be now or the day of your last drink.

All that said, I don't know many people who've stayed sober and had a pleasant experience with their last drink. You don't have to chase agony and despair to motivate your efforts to get and stay sober.

My life today is really good. Most days, I don't want to drink and don't think about drinking. Those other days, I call them "Don't drink days".

I sure hope that thinking about drinking doesn't mean I'm not ready.

Last night I was washing the dishes and my lady was talking about her brothers wedding coming next summer and for a brief moment the thought of having just one glass of champagne to toast with at the wedding popped into my head.

I recognize that image was partly my still struggling AV trying to plant a seed, partly my sense of 'geeze I'm not good enough if I don't drink at a wedding like everyone else', partly an unconscious and long-standing response and partly just addiction.

A friend in AA tells of suddenly thinking about drinking and having to desperately fight the urge - at 20 years sober.

A friend with 26 years sobriety tells of the insanity of sometimes thinking about a drink....

I hope that we are not all doomed to relapse.

What I think is that it's not the thinking about drinking that we need to be concerned about - its the how we respond to those thoughts.

MrLofg- that was really good stuff, thank you!

For perspective, one of the last times I thought about drinking occurred while I was making the coffee for my AA meeting... To my knowledge, there's nothing wrong with that. I didn't pick up a drink and the feeling passed.

As far as I'm concerned, if I can make it 1 day without 1 drink, I'm a roaring bleeping success! The next day, I repeat.

I think when I pushed my wife around in an argument. In front of my son. I woke up and knew I couldn't do it anymore. I'm not a piece of **** who would ever lay a finger on my wife and even that push out of the way was too much. That poison allowed me to do that. I'm in control of myself. Not some chemical.

A lot of the comments on this thread had me wanting to quote and post. This seems to sum it all up. I began reading posts here 50 days ago, thinking, 'not me, not ready yet, how do they think you can stop just like that' and then, 49 days ago, I decided to do it, ready or not. Anyone who 'advises' you not to quit now because you're not ready doesn't understand the problem or the solution. Like you, I didn't know if I'd make it - still don't, but reading about people's experiences here has given me a set of mantras that, at various times, have helped. But basically, once I quit, and got a few days under my belt, I thought, why would I toss all that time/work down the drain? will I even enjoy this glass of wine enough to make it worthwhile - mantra no. 1 'no-one ever regretted NOT drinking alcohol'. I also read not to think of it as 'forever' (although, you know it is) but as 'just a lot of days'. The longer I go on, the more 'normal' it feels to me to be a non-drinker. I don't really want to be the kind of 'normal' that can moderate any more. That's just me. You'll find your way but stick with this site. Don't give up on giving up.

Px

!st blackout = last time drinking.