SHAME shame. Double shame.
Its a cold and its a broken hallelujah.
Thread Starter
Join Date: Aug 2011
Posts: 2,887
SHAME shame. Double shame.
I used to hate myself. Literally. I disgusted myself. While drinking, I had an inferiority complex that made me feel lower than a pregnant ant.
While I was drinking I was so bound by shame, every interaction I had with anyone at all, was just a load of false nonsense. I would either be judging myself as a fake and a coward, or when the self loathing was really intense, I would turn it on whomever I was interacting with and make them out to be worthless.
Ego's do strange things as coping mechanisms.
It was the most awful way to exist. I couldn't be happy for anyones successes because I hated my failures.
I don't feel that way anymore. And there is only one single thing that has changed, I quit drinking.
Slowly, with every overcoming of each craving, as days began to pile up, I realized that I was, in fact, worthy. I deserved happiness just as much as anyone else. Alcohol robbed me of more than days spent sick in bed that I will never get back. It took away my very life essence and stole my soul.
After it took possession of my soul, it took it to the pawn shop and left it there to rot. There it sat, on a shelf, waiting for someone to come and retrieve it. Someone had to be able to help me. Right ?
I had forgotten that I was the one who held the key to my freedom. No one was keeping me in that misery but myself. I could walk out at any time. But even squalor and prison can start to feel comfortable and familiar after enough time spent wallowing in it.
It had become "good enough".
I am learning how to love myself for the first time in my life. The thing that keeps me away from the bottle now is that I can't imagine ever going back to that life.
It wasn't a life at all , it was a living hell.
Thanks for letting me share.
XO AO
While I was drinking I was so bound by shame, every interaction I had with anyone at all, was just a load of false nonsense. I would either be judging myself as a fake and a coward, or when the self loathing was really intense, I would turn it on whomever I was interacting with and make them out to be worthless.
Ego's do strange things as coping mechanisms.
It was the most awful way to exist. I couldn't be happy for anyones successes because I hated my failures.
I don't feel that way anymore. And there is only one single thing that has changed, I quit drinking.
Slowly, with every overcoming of each craving, as days began to pile up, I realized that I was, in fact, worthy. I deserved happiness just as much as anyone else. Alcohol robbed me of more than days spent sick in bed that I will never get back. It took away my very life essence and stole my soul.
After it took possession of my soul, it took it to the pawn shop and left it there to rot. There it sat, on a shelf, waiting for someone to come and retrieve it. Someone had to be able to help me. Right ?
I had forgotten that I was the one who held the key to my freedom. No one was keeping me in that misery but myself. I could walk out at any time. But even squalor and prison can start to feel comfortable and familiar after enough time spent wallowing in it.
It had become "good enough".
I am learning how to love myself for the first time in my life. The thing that keeps me away from the bottle now is that I can't imagine ever going back to that life.
It wasn't a life at all , it was a living hell.
Thanks for letting me share.
XO AO
Member
Join Date: Aug 2015
Location: Newtown, CT USA
Posts: 58
Alphomega, this is a wonderful post- so beautifully-stated, and it gets to the core of drinking and the shame that comes with it. What a fantastic reminder that it all comes down to one thing - to quit drinking. I'll keep that thought with me for a long time.
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Join Date: Jul 2015
Location: Auckland
Posts: 2,548
AO - thanks for this post :-) I have been so bound by shame due to my drinking. Occasionally my thoughts would bubble over and I would say out loud "I hate myself". I was painfully aware that the persona I presented to others was largely BS. Always hiding this big shameful secret. A secret to those who didn't know me well, anyway. I'm looking forward to gradually feeling better about myself the more sober time I accrue. It's not easy but it's a whole lot better than that hell, as you say.
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Join Date: Nov 2012
Location: Nutmegger
Posts: 1,799
Beautiful post AO. I mentioned on another thread that to me this journey has been like going shopping in my own closet. There are a lot of things that got tucked away when I was drinking that I am rediscovering and liking about myself. I didn't even realize how much shame and self loathing I was dragging around when I was trying to justify my drinking. It is a liberating experience this journey of ours! 
Its a cold and its a broken hallelujah.
Thread Starter
Join Date: Aug 2011
Posts: 2,887
Originally Posted by SportsFan15 
This is such a meaningful post, alpha omega. Thank you for sharing with us.
Do you mind if I ask how long you've been sober?
Do you mind if I ask how long you've been sober?
Member
Join Date: Jul 2010
Posts: 10,912
Awesome, AO! It's such a delight to follow your progress here
With regard to the shame, I usually wonder about it in a similar way we often do about depression (which is no surprise as depression typically involves strong elements of shame). The chicken and the egg. Which was first, the shame or the drinking? In other words, are our shameful feelings the consequences of our drinking behaviors, reaction to them -- or did they pre-exist so that it's one of the features we tend to self-medicate? My opinion is that it depends on the person perhaps.
I am personally not so prone to shame and definitely don't recall being that way before drinking became a problem. For me it's more guilt that tends to color everything, and that became enormous when I was drinking, so much so by the end that I believe it was probably the strongest driving force for me to get sober finally: I could just no longer face and live with the consequences of my actions and what I perceived as a gigantic dissonance between my values and my actions. It keeps coming back now again when I think about what I may have done to myself with all the self-destructive behaviors in my life and how it still affects me, and more than just me. In my case, these feelings are the ones that I am very prone to, that relate to consequences. That I deliberately corrupted what was originally good about me. I never thought or felt strongly that something was probably wrong about me a priori, even though when I think about it more deeply, there probably was... like genetic predispositions. But I don't tend to find that disturbing, actually more like stuff I can potentially build strategies upon if I am aware of them. But the guilt coming from the consequences of my deliberate actions can drive me nuts at times and for me this is what I need to work on in sobriety.
Just writing this as an example for how diverse we may be... There have been a few great discussions on shame vs guilt here on SR also previously.
Wonderful post and very thought provoking, thank you
With regard to the shame, I usually wonder about it in a similar way we often do about depression (which is no surprise as depression typically involves strong elements of shame). The chicken and the egg. Which was first, the shame or the drinking? In other words, are our shameful feelings the consequences of our drinking behaviors, reaction to them -- or did they pre-exist so that it's one of the features we tend to self-medicate? My opinion is that it depends on the person perhaps.
I am personally not so prone to shame and definitely don't recall being that way before drinking became a problem. For me it's more guilt that tends to color everything, and that became enormous when I was drinking, so much so by the end that I believe it was probably the strongest driving force for me to get sober finally: I could just no longer face and live with the consequences of my actions and what I perceived as a gigantic dissonance between my values and my actions. It keeps coming back now again when I think about what I may have done to myself with all the self-destructive behaviors in my life and how it still affects me, and more than just me. In my case, these feelings are the ones that I am very prone to, that relate to consequences. That I deliberately corrupted what was originally good about me. I never thought or felt strongly that something was probably wrong about me a priori, even though when I think about it more deeply, there probably was... like genetic predispositions. But I don't tend to find that disturbing, actually more like stuff I can potentially build strategies upon if I am aware of them. But the guilt coming from the consequences of my deliberate actions can drive me nuts at times and for me this is what I need to work on in sobriety.
Just writing this as an example for how diverse we may be... There have been a few great discussions on shame vs guilt here on SR also previously.
Wonderful post and very thought provoking, thank you
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