Kelly12390

Please pray for me. I'm sorry for depending on this site like I do. I feel it's the different between giving up and buying more booze when I can before work. I drank last night. I do think it's triggered by a massive eating disorder. I ordered pizza and the only way I could cope was by having wine. Wasn't even massively drunk, wine wasn't enjoyed, felt sick and even now at 4 am I am full of anxiety thinking how can i mitigate the calories and the obvious drunk messages from last night. I have tried vomiting and I know that's not the answer. Slippery slope. I'm left with me. I'm not a bad person by a long shot and will go to AA at lunch and after work meeting as I'm not going to get sucked back in, but I'm still left with me. Someone please pray for me with my struggle today in pretending life is okay when really it's not.

And on a total side note.. I've been going to AA three times a week the past month and I'm waiting for this 'urge' to lift. It hasn't. It's not getting easier. I'm haunted every day. Maybe because I'm not eating. I have a banana and an apple the last month from 6:30 am through until 4:30 pm. The last hour of work I seem to fantasise about drink and food. I'm sorry and I will do what I need to today. I can let go of the the drink, but the food? I'm absolutely petrified and not willing right now. It's my only comfort, eating 500 calories a day with the occasional binge. But those binges are so interlinked with drink. I'm so sorry for being a loser on here.


I'm sorry for my rant, I just can't sleep and I'm planning on help to get better for my day here. 4:30 Dublin time and desperate.

ZenLifter

I hear you and will pray for you :group hug: As others will tell you, it's not going to meetings, but doing the steps that gets you sober. Try finding a sponsor that will help you through the process. It sounds like you may need additional help with the eating disorder too, but the two things are definitely linked.

lynnmarie123

Do not deny yourself food.
Drinking has robbed your body of vitamins and mineral and they need to be replaced. Start your morning off with a large glass of water with the juice of half a lemon in it. Before anything else. Eat breakfast. Don't skip meals. Craving food leads to other cravings and that is the slippery slope. Healthy food choices and lots of water.
Don't apologize for the "rant". We are hear to listen.

HopeandFaith1

I am newly sober so I am no expert, but I wish you wouldn't be so hard on yourself. You don't have to be sorry and you're not a loser. The fact that you are here asking for help is a huge step in the right direction. You have come to the right place for suggestions and support so stay close. Help is on the way.

Check

Sometimes it's darkest before dawn. Sending prayers your way Kelly.

Don't give up

Bekindalways

Hey Kelly, have you sought any help for the eating disorder? This is a super tough thing to deal with. Please seek out all the help you can find. I'm so happy you are going to AA. I hope you have found a good group who can give you tons of support.

May battalions of angels buzz you constantly!!

notgonnastoptry

Please try to eat. I was in your position over the last months, except I couldn't even put down a banana or applesauce on most days. I lost so much weight. It's a big part of the reason I was hospitalized. I know, easier said than done. My angry husband used to throw a plate of food in front of me and command that I eat. Nothing would pass my lips except vodka.

Berrybean

Sorry you're stuck in that vortex.

You've heard of the HALT triggers right? (HUNGER-ANGER-LONELY-TIRED ). Starving yourself is likely to have those obsessive urges raging (and 500 cals a day, is a starvation diet. No health professional would ever advocate that.)

Many of us cross addict. Have you considered going to OA (over eaters anon) as well as AA. Thing is, if you have issues around using food to make you feel better and the trying to grab back control with restricting calories to unhealthy levels, that sea-saw is going to leave you on a very wobbly platform. Often as we try to stop drinking our other obsessions kick off all the harder, whether that's food, sex, gambling or whatever.

It is always worth talking honestly to a doctor about these issues and seeing if they have some suggestions as well. It's hard to be honest though, so if you do make an appointment maybe write down what you've been doing as far as food and alcohol and if you're going to struggle, even to say it, you can just get them to read it to open the conversation up.

Please start eating properly on a regular basis to keep those HALT triggers at bay.

PS The urge starts to lift as we WORK the program. Meetings are not The Program. The steps with a sponsor is the program. Daily work on your own on the steps, praying, meditating, etc. That is the program. I sat in meetings for 6 months waiting for the urge to lift before realising that I needed to commit myself to working the program, and almost drove myself completely crazy. If you haven't got a sponsor yet, please get one soon. Let them help you.

Time2Rise

Sending good thoughts your way.

You mentioned attending AA and waiting for the cravings to lift. Are you working the Steps with a sponsor? Have been able to put together a string of sober days while you've been in AA?

Regarding you eating issues, I think that's something best addressed with a therapist. Are u currently seeing one?

Dee74

Some great advice here Kelly. Many of us have had to battle our alcoholism beside other things like depression, other addictions, and eating disorders.
Sometimes these things get intertwined.

I really hope you'll see your Dr or therapist and consider something like OA as well.

Starving yourself is likely to make you want food and alcohol even more. It's not a solution.

D

Lorax1981

Sober, I am able to work on the rest of my issues. Drunk or high, all bets are off. Sending you my thoughts and prayers.

Soberwolf

Thinking of you Kelly

Kelly12390

Thank you all. I don't know what to do. I'm sitting on the bathroom floor crying on my lunch break. I feel so impossibly hopeless. I don't know if I can stop drinking long term. I'm so frightened this will kill me. Why did I drink on Tuesday and yesterday, if I could only go back. If only.

I have burned bridges with my family, my job is at stake and I just feel like throwing the towel in. Really feeling like I can't do this anymore.

Thank you everybody.

Kelly12390

I was almost a month sober when I picked up Tuesday. I just can't seem to stay stopped, feel so hopeless. Have been going to AA but not working any steps. Other than AA, there is nothing there for me. Rehab isn't an option (have been twice) there is nothing left for me

Nonsensical

If I don't eat well, I feel horrible. A couple of months ago there was a bake sale at work to raise money. I ate some baked goods for breakfast and felt terrible for hours afterwards. I was moody as heck and got into a senseless argument with my boss. It's pretty hard to make him look like the smart guy in an argument, but I managed.

My point is - I think managing nutrition is very important to some of us. Seems like you're in that group. Pay attention to how you feel a few hours after you eat something. If you feel OK, eat more of it. If you feel bad, eliminate it from your food choices. For me - sure bagels and donuts are tasty, but do I really want to feel horrible the rest of the day?

You are not a loser. You are a learner.

You can do this.

Ariesagain

Eating only an apple and a banana all day is setting yourself for seriously low blood sugar, which in turn causes your body to crave calories in the most efficient form possible...meaning booze.

You're not crazy, you're starving. Can you at a minimum replace the fruit with something that contains protein and fiber? Half a peanut butter sandwich, a hard-boiled egg, a handful of almonds, some cottage cheese?

Eat better, even a little better. Fruit has some nutrients, but it's still mostly fructose, which is sugar. You need protein, sweetie. THEN see how you feel about alcohol.

Bunny211

Prayers for you. I also struggled with an eating disorder. I went from bulimic to anorexic to overweight to too thin .....yeah I am a total food addict and alcoholic. I sat in meetings waiting for things to get better as well. What really, really helped me was working the steps. I highly suggest you find yourself a sponsor and get started on Step 1.

As far as the food goes. I got sober and put on about 30 lbs in a year. I recently joined weight watchers and really love the program. I love the structure and I feel so much more IN CONTROL when I am counting points and managing my food intake. Before I would alternate between starving myself and gorging on high calorie, high fat foods. Now I feel in control and that helps my anxiety immensly!

So glad you were able to reach out. Sending lots of love. <3 <3

tomsteve

ok, so how about working the steps? do you have a big book?
I started working the steps real quick. I KNEW there was much more to getting sober than just not drinking and going to meetings.
it took T.I.M.E. for the craving, compulsion, and obsession to drink to leave, but as the program promises, it eventually did:
And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone - even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality - safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our experience. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.

there were a lot of one day at a times until then, even one minute ata times. MANY one minute at a times.
getting sober was the hardest thing I ever did, harder than fighting cancer, which I was diagnosed and fought sober.
staying sober has been easy.

PLEASE get to a meeting, get phone numbers( use them before you drink. the phones lighter than a bottle and better solution), and a big book if you don't have one and start reading the first 164 pages. even the stories in the back are great and you may find you in that book.

cairn

Hey there Kelly. You reminded me of a moment some years back when I was worrying over the calories in the wine i was refilling, and looked up to see my beloved toyota being launched over the side of a cliff. I was disappointed that it got wrapped around a tree and I had to continue to live. The fellow that drove me back to my shack was the same one I had run off the logging road earlier down below. I was a blender of emotion, confusion, frustration with life. Drink was my only reprieve. Not much earlier it had seemed i actually might be winning the game of life, and the increasing terror of the ensuing hard hard downfall that i scrambled to get a grip on was real hard to take, and only shut out with more drink.

I started trying AA ideas, hit and miss, but the battle raged on inside me until every single last notion that i could somehow manage, fix, correct, stabilize my life, was crushed out.

At that point of surrender and absolute defeat at depth, I discovered what AA points the way to, and have been magically sober and slowly coming out of the bog since then.

All of us have wrecked our own lives. We get to the end of the world and want to jump off, and then -crap! we discover the darned thing is round after all, and if we decide there and then to go on, AA seems to make it alllll ok. Concluding our minds are the problem, we become willing to have them changed, even a little at a time, to a way that we see working for others just like us.

There has been a huge distortion of values, and when we try to be willing to align ourselves with new better ones, those nightmare problems seem to iron themselves out.

I have been brought with help from AA back from the coffin i thought i might prefer, to an altered life full of promise and hope and fellowship and mystery, and love and purpose.

The insane urge to drink has evaporated by itself.

Another friend, in a basement corner buried in bottles and wrappers and chocolate and tears and screaming all over her face, has found the same release and freedom and health and laughter, as have thousands and thousands of others just like us. When we are able and ready these kind folks are always helpful with jobs and practical things too. The world has good people in it, you needn't suffer alone, and you will find you can be honest in those rooms, no image to pretend, nobody to impress, and we can finally put our heavy bags down.

Do read AA's book, if you can relate to it, I believe it contains a real answer, although you may find another. There *is* an escape, if you really want it. Many of the problems that won't yield to a headlong assault just readily get set straight of their own. There is much self examination to do, but it can be done when the courage comes.

Rampant alcoholism needn't be a death sentence. I know it sure do seem like it before the sun comes out, but if we become willing to submit to this, the light of reason, hope and surprise starts to shine.

I don't know what else i can say. Everyone makes up their own mind.

Berrybean

This is the stage I got to after being sober a while and just going to meetings. Gah. All those tears. The tsunami of feelings! On the way to and from work, in the bathroom, basically any time I was alone. Thankfully, when I started to do the steps it did lift, and luckily for me, fairly quickly.

I remember wondering what people meant when they said "it works if you WORK it". Work? What work? Now I know, because I DO work it. Every day. I needed to work those steps with a sponsor, and listen to her explain to me what it is that she does outside meetings to Live the programme, so that I could copy her. It took me a while to get willing to ask someone to sponsor me, and to trust the process. But in the end I wanted it enough to do so, and then i could learn how to grow past my old thinking and develop the tools to live life on life's terms. Now I go to two or three meetings a week, but my own AA recovery work is daily and works best when I apply those principles to all areas of my life. Every waking hour.

Please. Get a sponsor. If you do the work it will get better. At the next meeting you attend, listen real lovely to 'how it works'. Or, better still, reread it yourself. It doesn't say we'll get better by going to meetings. It says ' Half measures will avail you nothing. You stand at the turning point. Throw yourself under His protection and care with complete abandon.' And this would be my suggestion to you.

Wishing you well on your journey to sobriety and recovery. BB