PurpleKnight

You can turn this around Scram!!

There are no inevitabilities here, we all have it within ourselves to make positive changes in our lives and say goodbye to alcohol and all the misery that it's caused in our lives!!

Scram

Thank every one of you for your responses. I must've read them each 3-4 times.

I can't believe I did this, but this morning I spoke to my boss and my best friend about it. Both were incredibly, incredibly supportive.

I have started researching local rehab programs, and have contacted one. One has an out patient program I found particularly good, and it seems to have a strong record. But I know a number of you mentioned in-patient. I suppose I could speak to them and get their thoughts on what might be the best match for me.

JerryFish

Great! There IS a best match for you. Best of luck to you and be dedicated to sobriety!

BlueFairy

I'd say this is your bottom. I felt the same way as you. I don't know how many others have felt this way after their drinking has gone too far but I'm pretty sure we're not alone. Whatever is wrong with your life is sure to not improve if you keep drinking, I know that much. In 2 months I'd say my life has at least started to even out a bit, I can't say everything's perfect or anywhere near but I'm trusting others who say it gets better. Please join us here.

nyala

Hello Scram,

My judgement is you will get through this. You are rational and honest and ready to get help, so you are set to get better.

You are here.

Beyond that I can't offer advice, but we would love you to hang out again in the class of June. Re-read some of those posts and know this time around you are going to have an even stronger wind on your back.

Go well,

Fradley

sva777

It gets better Blue Fairy, I am a few months ahead of you and every month away from booze is a better one. Not to say I don't have some bad times here and there but way better over all.

EndGameNYC

Hi Scram.

This may be long, and many people here already know my story, several times over, but you’re worth it.

Your day of reckoning has arrived. This is not the time to despair. Trauma always offers us an opportunity to rebuild ourselves and our lives, and now is that time for you. Too many people throw away this Golden Ticket, convincing themselves that the effects of the trauma and the trauma itself will find resolution on their own, and what always happens is that things just get worse, and not by just a little bit. I’ve worked among the distressed, the troubled, the mentally ill, those without hope, and those with active and remitted addictions in both clinical and research settings for many years...literally thousands of people, so I’ve seen a lot.

I’ll start with at least two things that I’ve learned in sobriety and from my personal and professional experiences. One is that I tend to think in extremes while I’m drinking, and that other alcoholics tend to do the same. One specific instance of this is that, after everything fell apart for me -- and I do mean everything -- I concluded with conviction that everything would be this way for me forever, for the rest of my life, that I’d crossed yet another line on the way to my inevitable demise, that I’d lost myself and my life irrevocably, and that there would be no reconciliation. What else was I to think? Towards the end, I drank, not in spite of my shame, but because of it. And because I didn't want to do anything else.

I hadn’t had a drink in twenty five years when I decided, without much fanfare, no real cravings and with very little thought that, since I’d changed around so much in my life, that there was a good chance that I could handle drinking in a “different way.” The short version is that I couldn’t, and I continued drinking for three years, during which I lost everyone and everything dear to me and, in some cases, things that were necessary for me just to continue living, including my health. I’d built a life beyond my imagination during my sober time, and came to essentially take it all for granted. My XGF threw me out and changed the locks. I was also asked to leave the premises at work in at least three instances, among the most humiliating experiences in my life, and all around the same time. My family stopped taking my calls. I was blocked from email accounts. The friends that remained had long since moved on in their lives and had neither the time nor the inclination to deal with me as an active alcoholic. I ruined my professional reputation, and I became unemployed and virtually unemployable, even for menial jobs. I could no longer live the way I was accustomed to living, and I often had to decide between drinking and eating due to my financial ruin, and drinking always won. I was virtually homeless and penniless, and I had nowhere else to go.

I only stopped drinking when I could no longer function without assistance, when my physical and mental condition had deteriorated to the extent that my longevity had become measured in days rather than years. This after several visits to the ER following my falling unconscious at home and at work due to my physical degradation, but mostly at the menial job that I was happy to have because it was a very easy thing for me to drink while on the clock, my singular priority at that time. By the time I inexplicably dragged myself to detox, they were obligated to admit me because my BP was something like 240/180, and my five days there turned out to be the best five days I’d had during the three years prior to my admission. Completely knocked out, eating and sleeping. Bliss.

I transferred to 28-day rehab. My plan was to get back on my feet and resume my drinking. I’d need a job and a place to live in order to do that, but I was determined. I had intense and daily cravings for at least my first ten months of sobriety, yet I didn’t have all that I needed to drink the way I wanted to and live the way I wanted to, in particular, the money to resume my drinking life. So I applied for public assistance, got into IOP treatment, attended AA every day/night (which I technically didn’t qualify for since I had no desire to stop drinking), and had individual counseling for my alcoholism. I had to make a name for myself in the recovery community, to show them that I was serious about getting sober, in order for them to help me get back on my feet, and I had nothing better to do while I was executing my delusional plan. So I concluded that going through the motions of treatment would be the quickest way to find work, a serviceable place to live and then to start drinking again. Play by the rules, and people will be willing to help.

After about four months of battling my daily and constant cravings, I was among the most miserable of creatures on the planet. I needed help, not because I wanted to get sober, but because if I buckled and drank at that time, then I’d be back where I started in terms of getting a job and finding a place to live so that I could start drinking again. There was also a very small part of me that thought that, were I to do whatever I needed to do, what other people told me I needed to do, in order to get sober, then the worst thing that could happen is I’d never need to drink again and that I might save my life, such as it was. But I wasn’t betting on it. Remember, I’d been sober before. And though I knew the ropes for getting sober, I’d lost the determination and the vigor to get sober all over again. And that’s the way it is for so many people who attempt to get sober after surrendering long-term sobriety. It takes twenty five years to get twenty five years. Take heed.

I got a sponsor, a man I didn’t particularly care for, but who was recommended to me by people I trusted. The fact is, I learned to trust almost everyone who’d gotten sober along the way since I no longer trusted myself. I dreaded our weekly meetings during which he took me through the AA Big Book and taught me things about getting sober that I was convinced I already knew, and certainly didn’t need to hear from a person who I didn’t like. Yet he was very proficient in AA’s program of recovery, and things were slowly changing for me. I still didn’t enjoy meeting with him, but now I had some semblance of hope, and was even willing to adjust my master plan of resuming my drinking at the appropriate time. Cutting to the chase, I went through all the Steps with my sponsor, and started feeling better, more optimistic, even though my cravings remained persistent.

I found a suitable place to live, and had enough money to start drinking again at about ten months in. What I did, instead, was to continue doing what I’d been doing to get where I was at the time. Why not play it all the way through? It took me about two years to find work in my field after I put down the drink, and now sober living was in full swing for me. I had no desire to throw away all that my hard work had brought me. Hope often kills, but it can invigorate too, and the only way to get there, in my experience, is to work for it, no matter what that means for any one person.

Back to my first point...My extreme way of thinking had moderated. Reality is persistent no mater how florid our delusions. Everyday life happens in smaller moments and in more modest ways than extreme thinking and behaving requires, the latter two only guaranteeing destruction. I needed to get used to that all over again. I was humbled enough in order to make myself a competent educator once again, as I managed to repair my professional reputation, pieced by piece, although not on all fronts. The compliments I received for my work were nice, but it was all about my being able to work again, to do what I enjoy, what gives my life meaning, that got the majority of my attention. I was then very much in a place where I never thought I’d be again. When, one day after I’d been working for a time, I realized that I no longer wanted to drink, I could have sobbed until Eternity, but instead was able to appreciate just how difficult it had been for me to get there, and what it would take to both stay there and eventually make improvements, not only in my work, but in the rest of my life.

And so is life for me today. Pretty much everything I need and want is everything I have. I appreciate my work in ways that I couldn’t know when I was at the height of my success. I have a supportive family and supportive friends. My health has rarely been better, and I train regularly to keep myself in shape. I sometimes grow impatient with people on SR and IRL as they wait for the “right moment” to get serious about getting sober, about taking care of the emotional and psychological chains that they use to keep them protected from the rest of the world, from their greatest fears, but that only keep them imprisoned, only building bigger and more frightening monsters. When my schedule allowed for it, I used to frequent SR late at night, when people who were desperate were at their worst, in order to provide some sort of comfort in a very real and a very frightening wasteland. I’m no saint, and this wasn’t my intent. I only found myself doing this, upon reflection, because I’d been in the same place, and I most certainly don’t ever want to go back. It’s said in AA that prayer is not for people who don’t want to go to Hell, but for people who don’t want to go back.

. . .

The second thing I wanted to comment on and that I also learned in sobriety, is that, when we’re at our worst, when continuing to drink seems like the only solution, even when it’s killing us, whatever the people who’ve achieved sobriety did to get there seems utterly inaccessible for us. There must be something different about them. They must be special, or at least lucky. There’s no way I can do what they did. They have advantages in life that I don’t have or, conversely, I have disadvantages in life they could not possibly imagine. I’m not good enough. I’m not strong enough. I hate myself too much. Nobody likes me. I’m poor, unlikeable or mentally ill. I have physical or emotional restrictions. They must have really wanted to stop drinking, whereas I can’t. Or won’t. No one wants to help me. Nobody cares. Nothing I do will make a difference. I’ve tried and failed so many times, what’s the use? I can never get over the shame of what I’ve said and done while drinking. Real change is only for good people.

Recall that I had no interest in getting sober when I first reached out for help. No one has to want to get sober more than they want to continue drinking, or want to get sober at all to actually get sober. It didn’t take any special skills to get the help I needed. Again, recall that I was persistent in finding help, not because I wanted to get sober, or because I wanted to live a sober life, but because I wanted to get back on my feet so that I could resume drinking. Or so I thought. I used computers in the library to find out how to go about getting help, spending much of my considerable surplus time there. Even with a longstanding professional career and a life in which I’d worked for decades, I found a way to get public assistance...for housing, enough cash to pay for necessities and Medicaid. And then I found treatment facilities that accepted the insurance that I qualified for. There was nothing perfect about the facilities where I got the help I needed, except for the fact that I got the help I needed.

In all the years I’ve been sober, and through the years of working in my profession, I’ve met hundreds of people with the very same conditions, the same negative predictions, the same (melo)dramatic resignations that I’ve listed above (to be sure, only a partial list) who’ve lived richer and fuller lives. You don’t need to take in recovery all at once; you only need to open the door a little bit. Same goes with anxiety of all kinds, bipolar and major depression, even psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia. If mental illness or a psychiatric condition is one of your challenges, then putting off getting the help you need guarantees that you’ll grow old with a life unlived or, at best, a life lived in constant fear and pain. We don’t often give guarantees in my profession, but this is one of them. I’ve witnessed many people here on SR alone who've overcome severe medical conditions, physical disabilities and psychiatric conditions, sometimes all three, in order to live a better life, and many more in my personal and professional life. For me, unless and until you get help, everything else amounts to nothing but excuses, excuses that eventually attach ourselves to and, as a result, we find increasingly difficult to abandon. This may sound harsh or exacting, but I’m not talking here about the common cold. I’m talking about something that will take your life, one way or another, and sooner rather than later.

Take action. Get help. There have been some very fine minds here who’ve spent their lives talking and thinking themselves out of getting sober, out of getting professional help for psychiatric conditions...Who toil tirelessly to convince themselves that their suffering is their lot or, worse, their choice. In the end, everyone dies of something. And I believe that the worst possible way to die is from a broken heart, from not having lived a meaningful life, to have surrendered to the language and then the lifestyle of helplessness and hopelessness, to have walked the Earth without contributing anything worthwhile, or very little of the same.

Nothing is worth that much to risk losing your life, from either lack of freedom and participation, or death itself. I essentially put my life on hold for the better part of two years to get to a place which was not among my plans. For those who don’t seek help, this moment, this time when you’re at your very worst...this moment will repeat itself over and over again in life until there are no more moments to spare. What are you waiting for?

MythOfSisyphus

Awesome post, EndGameNYC. One of the best I've read here! It should be stickied, IMO. To the OP, everything EndGameNYC is right. I can't claim to be an expert nor can I guarantee I'll never fail, but so far I am sober and have been for almost three years. I'm not special nor have I found a secret you lack. You can do it, too.

sva777

Hey Endgame, nice post ever thought about publishing your story? Are you still in NYC I lived there for 14 years when I was at my drinking worst.

Hevyn

Hi Scram. So many great responses already - I have little to add. Would like to send you some love. We're so glad you're here with us. You can have a brand new life.

Soberwolf

Excellent post EndGame thank you

Verte

+1

saoutchik

One of the best posts I have ever read (and not just on SR)

Thank you EndGame

EndGameNYC

You still in the building, Scram?

Confuzd

Wow some really great posts here. Scram I don't have much to add but I wanted to say there is an injectable form of naltrexone called Vivitrol, the way it works is you get a shot once a month so you don't have issues taking it correctly. Best of luck to you!

Scram

Wow, just catching up to all of this now. And I can't thank you all enough for the responses. EndGame - I really don't know what to say. There is so much in that post that I'm not even going to try to give a response. I just want to let you know how much I appreciate it. The fact that a stranger would care enough to write something like that out is just... it's incredible. Thank you.

I have my initial evaluation with an intensive outpatient rehab program on Monday morning. As mentioned, I have spoken with my boss and a few close friends. That was very hard. But I know myself, and I know this disease, and I know that if I continue to try to battle this on my own I won't make it. One of the key reasons for telling these people was to establish some initial accountability.

You guys... I'm so scared. I mean, I'm ready and there's this very small piece of hope somewhere in there but mostly I'm just terrified. I have a serious disease and it will kill me. In order to keep that from happening I am going to need to completely reinvent my life. I have no idea how to do that, and the thought of it is overwhelming.

So I guess that's all for now. Thank you to everyone here.

Dee74

It's ok to be scared - but fan that little spark of hope,S cram.

You can do this

D

Scram

Wow....

I went back to read this post from last month. Sorta tough reading for me as I can feel what I was feeling then. I suppose it's been about out 21 days since then?

Well, the basic update is this: The morning after my most recent alcohol induced failure - and there had been many - I logged on here for feedback. As always, you all provided valuable insight. Basically you told me that this was a time where I could wallow in my familiar failures or take the very necessary - but very scary -action. I took action, by Monday morning I was admitted to an Intensive Outpatient Program here in San Francisco. I typically do the evenings (5:30-9) with a few other professionals dealing with alcoholism/addiction. This, plus counseling sessions, massage/holistic treatment and the ever pleasant Urine Analysis Testing makes it a full day.

For me - Well I'm certainly not cured, lol. But I am much, much improved. I feel more stable. I feel more emotionally in control. I have so much more energy. My work performance has significantly improved. Much better shape. It's hard to explain, but for me , my drinking didn't allow me to really live or experience anything. I just drank and coped with the outcomes, you know. That was my life - drink and cope. So, very slowly, we're getting to a see a new person emerge and I'm looking forward to seeing that . I have been drinking like this since 17 years old - there is little question that I haven't reach my full adult understanding of myself. I'm nervous, but looking forward to it. That's ultimately what keeps me going down this path - the hope that what the long time sober people is true. It really does get much better.

sg1970

Hey Scram that's awesome! Keep at it because it will only get better and better!

D122y

Congrats!