What did rock bottom look like for you?
 

I realise that having to hit rock bottom in order to change doesn't have to be a truth. We can choose to stop before then. I don't know if it's a choice for me though. That being said what counts as rock bottom is different for everyone. For some it might just be passing out one night and realising things are bad. For others it might be living on the streets. I wish I could say I could stop but that feels like a lie. I haven't hit any rock bottom and I don't drink as much as some. But things have been progressively getting worse and worse :-( I now drink more days than I don't and it was simply weekend binge drinking before. Many days now I wake up and just look forward to getting to the end of the day so that I can drink. Like I said I don't drink like some. A bottle of wine and a tall beer or two most days. Some days more than that. I know I need to make some changes to my life. My drinking comes from extreme dissatisfaction with life. Depression and anxiety. I realise that drinking makes this worse. Anyway like I was saying. For those who have turned things around but had to hit some kind of bottom what was your personal rock bottom?

Sitting in my dark house, forcing down a beer to keep the withdrawal away and throwing up anyway, just to be able to drink some more. Finally calling it quits and throwing up for hours, shaking uncontrollably for a couple days and trying to remember what I've done after calling into work for a week.

It only gets worse, I can promise that much. When you quit, really quit, it only gets better. There are bad times, but nothing like the worst of drinking.

The bottom for most alcoholics is death. The time to quit is now because there always is a a lowerbottom

No special reason. Just wanted and needed to be done.

Hi, Smilax,

I'll be honest: I'm not a fan of the "tell me your rock bottom" threads that appear rather regularly here on SR.

Why?

Because they can leave the original poster with a sense that he/she has emerged favorably by comparison. A "oh, whew!" response because: a) not in legal/criminal trouble; b) not in an ICU or once again in the ER; c) not facing a divorce; d) not hovering on the edge of joblessness; or e) whatever rock bottom you'll get in response.

If, by the time I got sober, I could have traveled back in time -- say 10 or 15 years -- and looked at my future, I'd have been horrified by how my drinking increased in both frequency and volume. When I got sober, I realized I would only keep following the ball downhill unless I stopped. I hadn't "achieved" legal/criminal problems, joblessness, diagnosis of organ damage or the like.

Yet.

Sound familiar?

I hit many bottoms. The last one was when I lost everything, mostly me. My insides were basically dead. Making it through a day and looking forward to drinking is not living. I thought it was at one point.

5+ years sober now....Life is so much better sober!

Thank you Venecia, yes I apologise for that I am sure subconsciously that had a role to play in why I posted this. I suppose I just need to talk and vent as I keep this issue so much to myself I hide my drinking and few know about it. But then I have few friends to begin with. I isolate and keep very much to myself. Being able to share my struggles on here at least gives me a sense that I'm not so alone. But you are right I seem to just seek more excuses to continue.

No reason whatsoever to apologize, Smilax.

Hang out here. You'll find that there's a world of support here, as well as strong counsel from people to help you.

We've all walked a mile in the same shoes. There's nothing good in the bottle for folks like us and unless we stop, it gets progressively worse.

Direct those shoes on the sober path. I assure you, you'll never regret it.

I blew through a bunch of bottoms and kept on dropping to new ones. Many of them SHOULD have been a bottom- or what I prefer to call, just plain enough.

The stories I could tell you would horrify and scare you.

But I will just say that my "just plain enough"? When I got the sh*t talking of my life by my brand new liver doctor: stop drinking or die. Why I listened this time, I don't exactly know- because I had been told this before- but I heard it.

I quit cold turkey because of Dr Sunshine- and because I knew it was over.

my rock bottom was death of 2 possible ways.
1) suicide. I hated everything about me.
2) death by alcohol - slow, painful, and miserable.

very greatful I stepped off the elevator.

2 dui's, everyone disgusted & disappointed in me, drinking 'round the clock. Next step most likely death. Good times.

I am careful not to compare myself, my addiction/it's severity, my consequences/their severity, or how much I drank with other alcohilics. I am no better and no worse. When I compare, I am rationalizing.

ROCK BOTTOM IS DARK MAN, ITS DEEP,DARK,LONELINESS, LOOKIN AT DEATHS DOOR, SOME PEOPLE DONT GET IT, SOME PEOPLE ROCK BOTTEM IS DEATH. THATS THE TRUTH. i thought i hit rock bottom more then 5 times, but with me there is no rock bottom, rock bottem is death , basically suicidal tendencies. its sick.

you got a wife maybe you wil think of her more then yourself. what i learned with addiction= we are some selfish mofosss. wwe dont care bout no one, but ourselfs. we are our own worse enemy. its sickneesss man.

Yeah I understand. No, not only do I not have a wife but I'm 34 and have never been in any kind of relationship and have had few friends my entire life. I've been desperately lonely a good part of my life and yet somehow too scared to change that in any meaningful way.

Forget tales of woe. For me, I've come to realize that my rock bottom was with me for years. It was that nagging voice I heard in my head the second I'd wake up: "isn't it time for a drink yet? Maybe not now, but soon, right?"

Been sober for 1 1/2 years and I don't obsess about my next drink any more.

So I guess I would encourage you to think about the reason you're asking for our advice. Maybe you already know the answer to your question? And if that's the case, you're closer to recovery than you might think.

A lot of vomiting in the weeks, even months before. But it was controlled and happened at certain times of the day (morning, etc.). Last day before the hospital, it meant throwing up constantly, even water, severe hydration, malnourishment, tachycardia, and shortened breath. Symptoms could no longer be ignored and I had to ask my not-so-sympathetic husband to take me to the hospital. He was demanding just that at 3 a.m., but I knew it would explode in my face (the relationship). At 7 a.m., I knew we had to go. It was either that or death. My symptoms were so bad, they had to sedate me. They couldn't figure out if it was sepsis or alcohol-related. I tried to lie about it all. I was a secret drinker. Hours later, I was in critical condition, intubated, placed on a ventilator, and had d.t.s, etc. Relatively speaking (and it doesn't matter), I haven't been drinking *that long* (8 years--before that, I drank nothing).

Nearly died. Have 147 pages in paperwork to show for it and some problems that need to be looked at. I was released after 7 days. 3 were in ICU or critical care. I don't know or care if those are the same thing. So, that was my rock bottom.

IOP/rehab is next for me.

Rock bottom for me was sort of a gift in disguise. I wouldn't have stopped otherwise. I ignored the side pain, the throwing up, the 25 pounds lost over a short period. I kept setting dates to stop, but I was afraid of withdrawal. I've stopped before and had no effects (earlier). If you can still stop at that point, I encourage it. At the end, even alcohol wasn't "helping".

Please don't compare yourself (I say this in a friendly way). I did it all the time ("oh, people on SR drank for 30 years before anything happened" and "Uncle F is 88 and has drunk whiskey his whole life at the country club and is still going strong". Everyone knows that old grandpa that reeks of whiskey, etc., I held tight to the fact that I wasn't *that bad*; after all, I was drinking in small quantities (at the end), but almost around the clock. At night, I started timing it. I was up every 45 minutes for a nip. That would give me 45 more minutes of sleep. What an ef-ing mess.

I agree with others in terms of comparing ourselves to others drinking habits. I am guilty of it myself. Early on when I joined the site, I saw how much worse it was for others...free pass to push it further right? Wrong. The journey to sobriety is about you and only you.

Lots of rock bottoms and horror stories, stopped drinking for week to months after each one. Always went back to alcohol when the rock bottom faded and I felt on top of the world again. Never dawned on me that I drank because I was out of balance emotionally and had no blueprint on how to live life as the only one I got was about how to live it in chaos and emotional pain. I always looked to change externals, never worke for me. Always looked for the next great thing to fix me, tried all my life to do the fix myself. Surrounded myself by people either drinking or not, no middle ground either fanatically drinking or fanatically not. Always been in the midst of the inmates running the asylum. Trying to find the middle ground now.