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Join Date: Dec 2015
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Ok so I'm going to give this another shot. I should have saved it last time. I have been struggling with binge drinking for about 3 years. Been in AA and just haven't been able to make it stick. Still coming back occasionally though. I have made it a year sober in that time which i am proud of. I am pretty shy when it comes to sharing in AA so I thought joining SR would help me get some extra support and I can maybe help others and myself. I am just getting over another alcohol withdraw. It was bad but not as bad as my first one. Since I am new I thought Id share my story. It all started back in 2012 when my girlfriend was going to graduate. I had never met her family yet and I do get anxiety about things like that. At this time I was drinking pretty much every day I was not working. That proved to be a major problem though because i travel for work and would sometimes have a month off at a time. So anyway I decided to drink a little before I met them to help me stay calm and anxious free. Well knowing the way i drink I can't just have a little, you know the whole powerless thing. Im pretty sure I was still a little drunk from the night before when I decided to drink again. So I showed up wasted and was doing a bunch of out of character things like playing with her aunts hair, making fun of her uncles religion, just inappropriate things. Then I was falling down and I think i even cried a little. The crying happens when I have completely thrown off my chemical balance with alcohol. It was all really bad and sloppy and despicable. So she grabbed me and brought me back to my apartment all the while missing out on her graduation dinner/night out. Once I came to I was so disappointed in myself but also feeling so sick basically from withdraw or alcohol poisoning. Normally at this point I'd make a point to stop drinking and get it together. I was so disappointed though I kept it going taking swigs of alcohol and vomiting them up at times alone in my appartment. I ended up missing her graduation and gave her some excuse that my friend died. I then just continued this for another two days in a sort of blacked out state the whole time. I vaguely remember being in a store with a bag of spare change trying to buy alcohol and being turned down and just going to the next place. I lived downtown so I could walk. Somewhere along the line i lost my wallet, which i found weeks later inside my couch. So this went on for a few days until my two siblings came to find me. Apparently they had been calling along with my parents but my phone died and i was way to drunk to plug it in. When they arrived I did not even recognize them and they found me face down in a puddle of my own pee naked. They were able to wake me up and drive me three hours away to my parents house. Somewhere along the line I remember drinking a red bull which is the absolute last thing you need when your heart feels like its going to blow out of your chest. So we make it to my parents house were the 5 or 6 day heavy heavy bender finally ends. Drinking like that for me means i probably didn't eat that whole time. Once at my parents house the withdraw symptoms started kicking in. I had extreme shakes, no appetite, couldn't sleep, extreme confusions, incoherent, racing pounding heart. The only thing i could do was pace back and forth to keep from shaking in the mist of having nausea and needing to vomit every hour or thirty minutes. I thought I saw bugs on the floor and on my arms and I saw strings of light out of the corner of my eyes. I was acting completely out of it and also extremely depressed at the same time somehow. I couldn't explain to my parents what was really happening and we all thought it was just a really hard hangover. I didn't know about withdraws at the time. I was hurting , shaking, sweating and vomiting so bad. I went to try and steal my parents car so i could get my hands on more alcohol to make the pain stop. Luckily I was unsuccessful. Every inch of my body was sore but I had to keep moving to stop from shaking. After days of not sleeping if I sat down to close my eyes I'd see crazy images that would startle me awake again. I had a stench coming off of me that i couldn't describe, I think it was the alcohol coming out of me pores or maybe it was just in my head or from my nose. Every time I sat down my heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest and id be shaking and sweating. The inside of my mouth even felt weird like my tongue was swollen or something. And I remember my left pinky toe feeling swollen, I think due to lactic acid buildup. After two days of not being able to sit down, eat, sleep, or any other functions your body needs I convinced them to let me have a tylenol PM to see if I could sleep. I ended up taking two and the last thing i remember was laying on the floor staring at the dog after my sister tried to feed me some pizza. I came to in what looked like a spaceship with aliens trying to do stuff to me. I know it sounds like I was losing it, it was actually me in the ambulance. I passed out again and woke up in the hospital. I would fade in and out for the five days I was there. What happened was a seizure and it could have killed me like seizures tend to do. I was completely malnourished and all of my chemical balances in my body were completely off. They say they think the tylenol put me over the edge. And when the put me in the hospital I was chained to the bed so i couldn't get up to pee. They wouldn't unlock me (i guess because they thought i was crazy due to fighting the paramedics) so i needed a catheter which isn't ideal. So after being in the hospital for about 5 days they released me. I remember having bowel movements in the hospital that were completely black. They unchained me a few days into my stay. I completely scared the daylights out of my parents and my girlfriend not to mention ruined her college graduation. It made for a lot of depressed feelings. Lastly I had a pretty high insurance copay. Most importantly I survived and i am here to tell my story which feels really good because i haven't really ever shared the whole story with anyone. So today I am not perfect, I have had a few slip up benders and i am just coming off of one a 3 day probably 50 drink bender three days ago which is why I am here. I think I have it licked then when I quit working at my sobriety I fall back into that dismal place. I am hoping sharing this story and my experience with all that horrible stuff will be a reminder for me and possibly help others to stay sober. I never want to feel that way again and I feel like I have so much to live for and people to make proud of me that I cannot drink. I would love for that little bird that says "maybe this time it will be different" to fly far away from me, but I know he's always right behind me whispering it. Thats why i need this story told and I need the AA and SR community.
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Join Date: Apr 2013
Location: Lakeside, Ca
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Originally Posted by Boudin 
I have had a few slip up benders and i am just coming off of one a 3 day probably 50 drink bender three days ago which is why I am here.
Welcome to the site SoberRecovery.
M-Bob
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