Day 1
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Thanks lynnmarie, she always said I was a good loving mother when she was a kid, but I know I could have done better. Or maybe every mother feels their children have grown up and moved into adulthood too soon? I would have them all kids forever if I had my way haha
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I have almost finished this thread. I have almost everything I need for my recovery plan set down here. And that's all I wanted to do. Get all the tools I will be using to keep sober in the future in one place. I have one more extremely important (for me) thing to put down here. But its taking time to organize my thoughts so I can set down exactly what I need to, in a way I can use.
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Sorry you're sad about your daughter. We raise them to be adults and then fight it all the way. Great job on day 20.
It will be sad when you finish your thread. It's a lot of fun to read.
Hope your day gets better. Thinking about you across the pond.
It will be sad when you finish your thread. It's a lot of fun to read.
Hope your day gets better. Thinking about you across the pond.
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Originally Posted by Bobbieka 
Sorry you're sad about your daughter. We raise them to be adults and then fight it all the way. Great job on day 20.
It will be sad when you finish your thread. It's a lot of fun to read.
Hope your day gets better. Thinking about you across the pond.
It will be sad when you finish your thread. It's a lot of fun to read.
Hope your day gets better. Thinking about you across the pond.
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Location: BC Canada
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Originally Posted by lein
Yey, my daughter is coming up at the weekend, she just rang.
I miss that girl so much, it has been the hardest thing in my life, letting her go. She moved away almost two years ago for work, I was hoping she would move back here to the NE again one day, but she is making a good life for herself down there.
She is only 23 but has just had a promotion from staff nurse to clinical lead of the mental health unit she works in.
I think I have such a hard time letting her go, because I wasted so much of her childhood drinking.
She is a bossy little thing though, she looks like I did when I was 23..the spitting image, but she couldn't be more different personality wise (which is a good thing )
She does talk to me like I'm one of her patients at times though haha
If we are in a supermarket and I talk too loudly for her, she'll hiss "Indoor voice, mother, indoor voice"
Or when we leave a place she'll say "Have you got your bag? Have you got your gloves?"
Or when we were at a carvery "You have enough on your plate, you cannot get anymore on" before Ive even finished balancing everything I want into a 3ft pyramid on the plate!
She says I am "eccentric" My psychotherapist said to me years ago "There is nothing wrong with you, you are just eccentric"
I was in a bad mood about that for 3 weeks..I used to go to the sessions just to sit and give him evils.
This was after he had diagnosed and treated me for PTSD which I had taken for depression, and years before a psychatrist had said was manic depression and tried to give me lithium, which I wouldn't take.
Anyway, the psychotherapist must have been right because I haven't had a single episode of depression in the years since I saw him.
Feel perfectly fine mentally when Im not drinking. Good job I wouldn't take the bloody lithium that mad psychatrist tried to give me.
I miss that girl so much, it has been the hardest thing in my life, letting her go. She moved away almost two years ago for work, I was hoping she would move back here to the NE again one day, but she is making a good life for herself down there.
She is only 23 but has just had a promotion from staff nurse to clinical lead of the mental health unit she works in.
I think I have such a hard time letting her go, because I wasted so much of her childhood drinking.
She is a bossy little thing though, she looks like I did when I was 23..the spitting image, but she couldn't be more different personality wise (which is a good thing )
She does talk to me like I'm one of her patients at times though haha
If we are in a supermarket and I talk too loudly for her, she'll hiss "Indoor voice, mother, indoor voice"
Or when we leave a place she'll say "Have you got your bag? Have you got your gloves?"
Or when we were at a carvery "You have enough on your plate, you cannot get anymore on" before Ive even finished balancing everything I want into a 3ft pyramid on the plate!
She says I am "eccentric" My psychotherapist said to me years ago "There is nothing wrong with you, you are just eccentric"
I was in a bad mood about that for 3 weeks..I used to go to the sessions just to sit and give him evils.
This was after he had diagnosed and treated me for PTSD which I had taken for depression, and years before a psychatrist had said was manic depression and tried to give me lithium, which I wouldn't take.
Anyway, the psychotherapist must have been right because I haven't had a single episode of depression in the years since I saw him.
Feel perfectly fine mentally when Im not drinking. Good job I wouldn't take the bloody lithium that mad psychatrist tried to give me.
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Too true.Luckily my psychotherapist didn't believe in medication either, it was the psychiatrist who misdiagnosed and tried to medicate something I didn't have! He was madder than me!
Funny story about my lovely psychotherapist the one who said there wasn't anything wrong with me I was just eccentric... This was at the end of therapy mind. My daughter works in mental health for the NHS too and she worked with people who knew him. And said he had a reputation for being eccentric himself hahaha. Probably why we got on so well...most of the time haha
Funny story about my lovely psychotherapist the one who said there wasn't anything wrong with me I was just eccentric... This was at the end of therapy mind. My daughter works in mental health for the NHS too and she worked with people who knew him. And said he had a reputation for being eccentric himself hahaha. Probably why we got on so well...most of the time haha
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Location: Washington state
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Lein, you may feel done with this thread; you accomplished what you set out to do. But, there is so much useful information in it, it would be a shame for this thread to get shuffled off into history when so many could benefit from it. Perhaps you could post on this thread semi-regularly, give an update for all us Lein fans, and bump the thread to the top for the benefit of new comers. Just an idea...
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Good idea! Because I will miss writing on here too. Its just that after I write the last bit, I won't have anything else to put in my toolbox that I'll need, thus nothing to write about. But thinking on what you say...I could post once a week, to count my weeks ...thankyou for the idea x😀
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Good idea! Because I will miss writing on here too. Its just that after I write the last bit, I won't have anything else to put in my toolbox that I'll need, thus nothing to write about. But thinking on what you say...I could post once a week, to count my weeks ...thankyou for the idea x😀
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Originally Posted by sleepie
What's the recovery plan lein? Are you doing AA or something?
No I won't be going to AA. I don't believe in its philosophies, I don't like going it frustrates me.And it doesn't work for me. I have my own spiritual beliefs, I've had my own therapy. I don't like other people telling me how I should feel, why I am an 'alcoholic" and saying I have character defects and what they are when they don't know me from Adam. Plus pure and simple it doesn't work for me because I don't believe what they preach is true
But that's my personal opinion.
I will be relying on my own rational thinking. 😀
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Ok. Maybe try and find a group with what you are doing though. Winging it alone isn't usually wise. Have you heard of SMART Recovery? It is self guided and they have a website as well, there is no AA stuff. I just want you to succeed, having a support of some kind is crucial.
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How It Started
When I was in my early 30s I met a man called Andy. I worked in a rock pub and he used to pop into for a pint after work.
At the time, I had on and off been suffering from depression and anxiety and a lot of other strange "nerves" related things since I was 14
But I never drank excessively, I was more interested in trying to heal myself.
I had never seen anyone as beautiful in my life as Andy. He looked like Kurt Cobain, but he was 6ft tall with broad shoulders, thick hair down to his waist and a blonde beard..beautiful eyes, big and sometimes bright blue, sometimes green or sometimes clear grey. Strangest eyes colour wise. He looked like a viking to me, I think my mouth may have been hanging open.
I was completely mesmerised by him as soon as I saw him and the first thought that popped into my head was "He's back"
That was a wierd thing to think!
He came up to the bar to be served and said "You are perfect"
We started going out together, and after a year he moved in with me and the kids.
He drank a lot, but always in pubs, he would drink after work every night for weeks, have a couple of weeks rest then start again.
When I met him I didn't think he was much of a big drinker, as he would have a pint, take his time then leave.
I learnt later, that to impress me, he didn't want me to see how much he drank and when he left he would go to another pub for the rest of the night and get hammered.
A few months after he moved in, I noticed a change in his drinking, he started to drink at home. By this time I had left the pub, and was working full time in a call centre, I was out of the house from 7 on a morning until 6 in the evening.
I had my sister and mother help with the kids, dropping them to school making their teas etc.
Every night when I finished work he would have wine for me. I don’t think he liked drinking alone. I never drank more than a glass, I wasn’t keen on wine, when I drank I drank lager and I never had drank at home before.
Gradually his drinking got worse, and he was at home all day, because he was a bricklayer and work on the sites got scarce.
In the end he was drinking a litre of whiskey a day. I told him to leave because it wasn’t good for the kids to be seeing him drinking. He never once appeared drunk, never had a hangover. Looking back it was probably because he never stopped drinking long enough to develop a hangover.
Instead of leaving, he said he would stop drinking at home.
He still drank in the pubs. Then one morning he had a job on, kissed me goodbye, said “See you at teatime” ..and disappeared for 3 days.
I tracked down his best mate, and he said last time he saw him, he was heading down to the chapter house of the Hells Angels to have a fight with one of them! So I was worried sick.
Anyway, next day, I got a phone call. He was staying at a friends house, house sitting while they were away. Saying he was depressed and needed to be alone to sort his head out. Said he would be back in a day or two.
I said ok. It was around the time of the anniversary of the death of his brother. His brother had committed suicide when he was 21 and Andy was 19. Andy had missed a call from him the night he died and still thought if he had gotton that call he could have talked his brother out of it.
After his brothers death he had started snorting, then injecting speed. He ended up in jail after a few years, because he did an armed robbery for money for drugs. He got released early for good behaviour. And he had a good record before the drugs..he had been a rock climbing instructor and saved someones life. When he came out of jail, he had started drinking instead of speed.
He came back home after 2 days. Same time the next week, he disappeared again for a few days. Same phone call, depressed blah blah.
I did some digging this time, and found he was living at some womans house. Some woman who was as bad on the drink as he was. The two of them drank day and night.
I was gutted to say the least. I took all his clothes to his parents house, had his car towed away from outside my house and sold his dog.
To be continued…
When I was in my early 30s I met a man called Andy. I worked in a rock pub and he used to pop into for a pint after work.
At the time, I had on and off been suffering from depression and anxiety and a lot of other strange "nerves" related things since I was 14
But I never drank excessively, I was more interested in trying to heal myself.
I had never seen anyone as beautiful in my life as Andy. He looked like Kurt Cobain, but he was 6ft tall with broad shoulders, thick hair down to his waist and a blonde beard..beautiful eyes, big and sometimes bright blue, sometimes green or sometimes clear grey. Strangest eyes colour wise. He looked like a viking to me, I think my mouth may have been hanging open.
I was completely mesmerised by him as soon as I saw him and the first thought that popped into my head was "He's back"
That was a wierd thing to think!
He came up to the bar to be served and said "You are perfect"
We started going out together, and after a year he moved in with me and the kids.
He drank a lot, but always in pubs, he would drink after work every night for weeks, have a couple of weeks rest then start again.
When I met him I didn't think he was much of a big drinker, as he would have a pint, take his time then leave.
I learnt later, that to impress me, he didn't want me to see how much he drank and when he left he would go to another pub for the rest of the night and get hammered.
A few months after he moved in, I noticed a change in his drinking, he started to drink at home. By this time I had left the pub, and was working full time in a call centre, I was out of the house from 7 on a morning until 6 in the evening.
I had my sister and mother help with the kids, dropping them to school making their teas etc.
Every night when I finished work he would have wine for me. I don’t think he liked drinking alone. I never drank more than a glass, I wasn’t keen on wine, when I drank I drank lager and I never had drank at home before.
Gradually his drinking got worse, and he was at home all day, because he was a bricklayer and work on the sites got scarce.
In the end he was drinking a litre of whiskey a day. I told him to leave because it wasn’t good for the kids to be seeing him drinking. He never once appeared drunk, never had a hangover. Looking back it was probably because he never stopped drinking long enough to develop a hangover.
Instead of leaving, he said he would stop drinking at home.
He still drank in the pubs. Then one morning he had a job on, kissed me goodbye, said “See you at teatime” ..and disappeared for 3 days.
I tracked down his best mate, and he said last time he saw him, he was heading down to the chapter house of the Hells Angels to have a fight with one of them! So I was worried sick.
Anyway, next day, I got a phone call. He was staying at a friends house, house sitting while they were away. Saying he was depressed and needed to be alone to sort his head out. Said he would be back in a day or two.
I said ok. It was around the time of the anniversary of the death of his brother. His brother had committed suicide when he was 21 and Andy was 19. Andy had missed a call from him the night he died and still thought if he had gotton that call he could have talked his brother out of it.
After his brothers death he had started snorting, then injecting speed. He ended up in jail after a few years, because he did an armed robbery for money for drugs. He got released early for good behaviour. And he had a good record before the drugs..he had been a rock climbing instructor and saved someones life. When he came out of jail, he had started drinking instead of speed.
He came back home after 2 days. Same time the next week, he disappeared again for a few days. Same phone call, depressed blah blah.
I did some digging this time, and found he was living at some womans house. Some woman who was as bad on the drink as he was. The two of them drank day and night.
I was gutted to say the least. I took all his clothes to his parents house, had his car towed away from outside my house and sold his dog.
To be continued…
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Originally Posted by sleepie
Ok. Maybe try and find a group with what you are doing though. Winging it alone isn't usually wise. Have you heard of SMART Recovery? It is self guided and they have a website as well, there is no AA stuff. I just want you to succeed, having a support of some kind is crucial.
The point of Smart and REBT is to manage your own recovery independently..although company is nice I agree..thanks for youe concern sleepie
I used to be a message board volunteer on Smart online ..then I got banned for life...I wrote about it earlier in the thread..I know what Im doing this time
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He kept turning up at mine, to moan about the new girlfriend because I was “his best mate” ??? WTF??
Weeks later, he was begging to come back. Promised to get his drinking sorted. Said he really did have depression. Then came out with that he was sexually abused as a kid and needed help and would go to the doctors. I took him back.
The drinking didn’t stop, he didn’t try to get help, sometimes I would drink with him when I came home from work. I had crossed a dangerous line and didn’t even realise it.
He was up to 2 bottles of whisky a day.
Then he had a drunken rage about something stupid and beat me up. That was it for me. The end.
I had already been a punch bag for enough years with my boys dad that wasn’t going to happen again.
After I threw him out, I would sometimes drink a glass of wine after work alone at home.
I went into a mega depression, just couldn’t pull myself out of it.
After some months, I was referred to a psychotherapist…Im going to write about that later.
He wrote about 3 letters a week (before the days of texting and emails)
I ignored them.
A year later, he turned up on the doorstep. His sister had committed suicide. Left 4 children, at 32 years old. She had had a speed addiction
I let him in, tried to sympathise, then he produced a litre of whisky from his back pack and I asked him to leave.
He continued to write a few times a week.
Then they stopped for a few months.
Then he wrote a letter and the writing was all over the place, missing the lines and looked like he had continued to write off the edge of the paper. His drinking never usually showed up that badly in his writing.
He said he had had a seizure (he wouldn’t blame the drink though). It had left him with a broken back, a broken hip and some slight brain damage, as he had been on some scaffolding when it happened and fallen quite a height.
He was out of hospital but in a back brace, would I meet him in town?
I met him 10am in the morning and when he bent his head to kiss me on the cheek, his breath stank of whisky.
He said he had been to the pub first..but this was before 24 hour licensing laws and there were no pubs open. I had a coffee with him and left.
I still loved him, but he wouldn’t stop drinking, even after breaking his back and brain damage, he wouldn’t admit it was the drink.
By this time, my 2 years of therapy was over. I was a lot stronger than when I had started and the depression hadn’t raised it’s ugly head in years. The PTSD I had apparently been suffering from went, and so did all the odd neurotic symptoms that came with it. But my drinking was taking off. The better I felt, in my own self, the more I liked a couple of glasses of wine after work.
I saw him again, a few months later. He found out I was going to Australia and didn’t want me to. I went anyway. That didn’t work out…for reasons I explained earlier in the thread.
When I came back I didn’t hear from him at all.
A year later, my younger son, said he had a strange dream about Andy. He said he had appeared in this dream and said
“Your mam and I were meant for each other, we would have been happy if it wasn’t for the drink”
I laughed and told him, that would be the only time he would hear Andy admit that the drink was to blame for anything, in a dream.
He went down the town to hunt down Ernie Andys friend. He didn’t find him but he found another friend who said
“Andy died a year ago, he drank himself to death over your mother” …he drank before I knew him!!
What had happened was, he had cut himself drunk on some job with a saw. He was suffering from malnutrition with the drink, and his liver wasn’t working right so wasn’t producing any protein, the wound wouldn’t heal, got infected, he couldn’t fight off the infection he got septicaemia (blood poisoning) and died. He was 39 when he died.
Weeks later, he was begging to come back. Promised to get his drinking sorted. Said he really did have depression. Then came out with that he was sexually abused as a kid and needed help and would go to the doctors. I took him back.
The drinking didn’t stop, he didn’t try to get help, sometimes I would drink with him when I came home from work. I had crossed a dangerous line and didn’t even realise it.
He was up to 2 bottles of whisky a day.
Then he had a drunken rage about something stupid and beat me up. That was it for me. The end.
I had already been a punch bag for enough years with my boys dad that wasn’t going to happen again.
After I threw him out, I would sometimes drink a glass of wine after work alone at home.
I went into a mega depression, just couldn’t pull myself out of it.
After some months, I was referred to a psychotherapist…Im going to write about that later.
He wrote about 3 letters a week (before the days of texting and emails)
I ignored them.
A year later, he turned up on the doorstep. His sister had committed suicide. Left 4 children, at 32 years old. She had had a speed addiction
I let him in, tried to sympathise, then he produced a litre of whisky from his back pack and I asked him to leave.
He continued to write a few times a week.
Then they stopped for a few months.
Then he wrote a letter and the writing was all over the place, missing the lines and looked like he had continued to write off the edge of the paper. His drinking never usually showed up that badly in his writing.
He said he had had a seizure (he wouldn’t blame the drink though). It had left him with a broken back, a broken hip and some slight brain damage, as he had been on some scaffolding when it happened and fallen quite a height.
He was out of hospital but in a back brace, would I meet him in town?
I met him 10am in the morning and when he bent his head to kiss me on the cheek, his breath stank of whisky.
He said he had been to the pub first..but this was before 24 hour licensing laws and there were no pubs open. I had a coffee with him and left.
I still loved him, but he wouldn’t stop drinking, even after breaking his back and brain damage, he wouldn’t admit it was the drink.
By this time, my 2 years of therapy was over. I was a lot stronger than when I had started and the depression hadn’t raised it’s ugly head in years. The PTSD I had apparently been suffering from went, and so did all the odd neurotic symptoms that came with it. But my drinking was taking off. The better I felt, in my own self, the more I liked a couple of glasses of wine after work.
I saw him again, a few months later. He found out I was going to Australia and didn’t want me to. I went anyway. That didn’t work out…for reasons I explained earlier in the thread.
When I came back I didn’t hear from him at all.
A year later, my younger son, said he had a strange dream about Andy. He said he had appeared in this dream and said
“Your mam and I were meant for each other, we would have been happy if it wasn’t for the drink”
I laughed and told him, that would be the only time he would hear Andy admit that the drink was to blame for anything, in a dream.
He went down the town to hunt down Ernie Andys friend. He didn’t find him but he found another friend who said
“Andy died a year ago, he drank himself to death over your mother” …he drank before I knew him!!
What had happened was, he had cut himself drunk on some job with a saw. He was suffering from malnutrition with the drink, and his liver wasn’t working right so wasn’t producing any protein, the wound wouldn’t heal, got infected, he couldn’t fight off the infection he got septicaemia (blood poisoning) and died. He was 39 when he died.
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