Gabe1980

Hi Everyone,

I'm struggling just now. It's been 7 days and I'm feeling really overwhelmed with shame. I went to bed at 6.30pm as I was really worried I'd drink. I'm being flooded with horrible memories or more like guesses at what I've been doing during a blackout. After last Saturday (physical injury, police etc) I thought I handled things fairly well in making the decision to strop drinking but apparently I was telling people all kinds of secrets and now my mother in law wont speak to me. I don't even know what I said. Why would I do that?
Reading everyone's recovery stories has been really helpful. I'm also becoming more aware of my 'AV' and what it's telling me. Why would I want to drink to cure the chaos I created when drinking? How do you move past the shame and guilt about your behaviour? I have such a strong impluse to run away but I wont.
I know I need to face up to all this and take positive steps. I'm working on a plan and have a counsellor now. I'm just really struggling to feel like this about myself and to have hurt other people so much.
This forum is so helpful. Thankyou for reading.

Charli23

Hi gave ,
Welcome, great support and advice on this forum. All I can say is try and treat your sober self as a new person you just met. Forgive the drunk you , it wasn't you it was the drink that makes you do stupid sh##. I think how your feeling shows your a good person and if you own up to your mistakes, admit you have no control over alcohol people will respect that . It's wiping the slate clean and earning the respect back. It seems you have a lot of regret and shame. I definitely know how that feels and for weeks I felt like that but it got easier, those feelings subsided and relationships can be repaired. I had to grow a pair and own up to my own bull sh##. It gets better believe me and looking back I can't get over how distorted a drunk mind can be! Wishing you well!

Dee74

Hi Gabe

it's tough having to live with might have happened or what you might have said, but time really does heal all wounds, for you, and for your loved ones too.

The hard truth is there's nothing you can do about stuff thats happened, but there's a lot you can do with today...

your inner addict would love nothing more than to overwhelm you with shame and get you to drink again...you can't do that.

At the end of my drinking days I was that guy in the neighbourhood - unwashed, scruffy, smelling of booze fags and god knows what else - mums would shoo their kids away from me.

I rescued my reputation, eventually, with a lot of dedication to staying sober - people really do forget and forgive

You'll be ok so long as you stick with this

D

PhoenixJ

Gottalife

Hi Gabe, I was born in Scotland, and 1980 was the year I recovered from alcoholism. Bit of a coincidence there?

When you describe how you are feeling, it is much the same as I was. Full of shame, guilt and fear. I had made a real mess of things and did not think it would be possible for me to recover.

The experience of making the mess was really a series of stepping stones to recovery as it turned out. When I had a look at my experience it became clear that I was a chronic alcoholic. I didn't need the doctor to tell me I only had a few months to go, but he did anyway, and he told me I was a hopeless case that he had no answer for. That was just the truth by the way, there is no medical solution for alcoholism.

Going back to my experience there were two key issues. When I drank I couldn't guarantee when I would stop. I could sometimes, but not all the time. This is called the phenomenon of craving, it kicks I after the first drink. It is an overwhelming craving where drinking becomes paramount to all other interests. I have lost jobs when asked to chose between work and booze, when I was drinking. No contest. This does not happen to ordinary drinkers, and has never been eradicated to the extent taxation an alcoholic of my type could continue drinking.

The next thing was about the inability to stay away from the first drink. I admire you lasting a week. Most of the time I could t go more than a few days, and that was due to ill health and a lack of money. My main triggers were being awake and having enough money.

I often awoke feeling just as you do, full of remorse, and swearing I will never touch another drop. If you put a lie detector on me it would register true. Yet within a few hours I would find my self on the third drink, and then remember I wasn't supposed to be drinking today. The thoughts that should have saved me did not come. Instead each first drink was preceded by the idea that this time I will just have a couple and enjoy myself. We call this the obsession of the mind. In light of the evidence, it is not a sane way to go, but i had no defense.

If these things line up with your experience you could well be an alcoholic of my type. There is a solution, I found it in 1980 and haven't taken a drink since, so you could call it permanent. Happy to help,you of I can.

Gabe1980

Thanks Charli. I think you are exactly right about owning my own bull***t. I always that it was such a cop out to say 'drink made me do it' but it's not that. The cop out is to recognise I'm controlled by alcohol and do nothing about it. I think the shame is so crippling because my self-esteem is fragile so screw ups like this seem to cut right to my core. Can't change the past but can certainly change the future

PhoenixJ

AS IN YOU ARE BEING HONEST AND WANTING TO HEAL. mOVING PAST SHAME AND GUILT? i WILL MOST LIKELY lalways HAVE THIS. but- THE ENERGY IT TAKES TO ISOLATE, HIDE AND RUN AWAY- AVOID LIFE BECAUSE OF THE SHAME AND GUILT, CAN BE TURNED INTO SOMETHING POSITIVE. i SEE A COUNSELLOR AND A PSYCHOLOGIST AND MEETINGS. aT THE END OF THE DAY-

sorry caps lock.
at the end of the day- I cannot change the past- but I can make damned sure I own up to it, get help sorting the problems I made- and never repeat them by drinking again, and planning for tomorrow.

My sincere empathy and support to you.

Gabe1980

For Dee74. I think you are right. It's nurturing faith that everything can be repaired in time and I'm working on forgiveness cause I use these times to belittle myself so much that it feels impossible to move forward. I have a wee sneaking suspition that this was supposed to happen to show me the way foward without alcohol. Like a rebirth I think.

Charli23

Yes! You nailed it. You didn't get to this place overnight but hang on to how you feel now. Remember how bad you feel and it will make you strong when the little bas#### in the back of your head says "just have one or two" .
You don't ever have to feel like this again. Thank god we have a choice.

joandmelandhan

Gabe you're certainly not alone feeling this way. I think many of us carried a lot of shame and guilt in the early days. It's exactly that kind of thing that the addiction LOVES. It wants you in a nasty little place where you hate yourself and want to run away and blot it all out with a drink.
I realised that no amount of "sorries" or "I won't do it agains" couldn't change the past. I had to walk the walk and hope that time would indeed heal the wounds.
The best way you can put the past right is to keep doing what you are doing. And you ARE doing it! 7 days is great! Keep going!

Gabe1980

Gottalife I think you pretty much described me. It's that first drink. Sometimes I'm fine and I feel like 'yeah, I can do this. What's the big deal' but the same amount of alcohol on another night wakens the beast and I want to get so drunk I have no interest in who's there or what I'm supposed to be doing. It's all about the drink. I never know when this is going to happen either. It's Russion Roulette every time and that's terrifying. I have also been in denial that alcohol dicates alot of what I choose to do in life, where I go and how I view things. Thank you for posting, it's an amazing thing that you have been sober since the year I was born.

Gabe1980

My sincere thanks to everyone who has taken the time to reply. It has helped change my day and I'm heading off to work in the knowledge that I wont drink today.

Gottalife

Hi Gabe,

I think you made some pretty good progress there on what we in AA call step one, defining the problem. You certainly appear to have the phenomenon of craving.

The other aspect is the matter of choice,, and this might determine which solution you choose in the next step.

For me, I had lost the power of choice, I was drinking when I didn't intend to. I seemed to have no defence. I had lost the power of choice in alcohol. Not every problem drinker has that experience, in fact we are in the minority.

The AA solution is a spiritual experience through working a program. The result is a complete change of personality where drinking becomes unnecessary. I have been sober a while and faced a few tragedies and other life issues and never once has it occurred to me to drink. The problem was removed completely an I have never been even close to going back there. That is the power of AA.

But a lot of people don't like what has to be done so they look for alternatives. That is what I did. I came to believe a number of different things would fix me, and I had to give them a try. I felt that my problems were caused by the people in my life. I tried a new town, new job, new girlfriend, no luck. The I thought maybe a doctor or rehab could fix me, not luck there either. Counselling from a really good therapist ( a saint in my opinion) helped me in the long term to find a solution, but was not a solution in itself.

I had to work through the list of what doesn't work before trying AA. And that seems to have been a good way to go. When I got to AA at the end, I was out of options. I had a simple choice, learn to live life on a spiritual basis or face an alcoholic death.

There are alternatives to AA these days, that were not around then. Plenty of advocates on this board that can explain them, and maybe some of those ideas will appeal. They would have for me as I was reluctant to do what the AA program suggests. I would have liked an easier more comfortable path.

AA is really there for a small group of extreme cases for whom nothing else will work. Our book says "whether you can recover on a non spiritual basis will depend upon the extent that you have already lost the power to choose whether you will drink or not"

A lot of people here did not loose the power of choice, and you might be one of them. This would be the next thing to pin down. Can you just stop and stay stopped on your own power? Maybe try it and see.

theVman31

Hi Gabe. im 3 weeks sober. I get those moments too. But as several have said its the past and nothing we can do now so best concentrate on the present.

Well done for your 7 days.

Gabe1980

Hey Gottalife,
Thank you for your post. I've been thinking about these things for the last few days. It's difficult to answer if I have it within my own power to stop. I know that 10 years ago I had to drink every day. It would be getting close to the off license closing and I had to get wine. Things have steadily got better since then in that I have come to understand more about my alcohol use and what underlays it, mainly poor mental health, anxiety and chronically low self-worth. I would say now that I don't need to drink everyday though alcohol is still a major part of my life and I don't always have control when I do drink. I would say 8 out of 10 times I am relatively ok then the other 2 I lose control and am capable of exposing myself to considerable risk. I do have all the characteristics of someone who uses alcohol as a maladaptive way of coping. I use it to manage my emotions when they feel unmanagable. I know this will be key in my getting sober. I also realise that I have a fundamental part of me which still carries alot of self-lothing as I felt very rejected when I was in my early teens and used alcohol to cope with terrible feelings about myself.
I am a very spiritual person which I have nurtured over the last few years and which, I believe has been key to my cutting down.
I've also been thinking about AA. I'm not sure, it doesn't sit too well with me to be honest. I stuggle with the concept of powerlessness. I'm not sure if that's just denial. I also live on a small Scottish island with a population of a few thousand. There is only one AA meeting a day in the town and I work with families who also attend meetings. The cross over would make me really uncomfortable and I don't think I would be able to share with those people present. I think maybe a secular group might be better but I am restricted to online as there is nothing else available here.
Thank you for your post - it has really prompted me to think. On day 9 now and I'm feeling Ok though heading to the mainland this afternoon to see family and you know how us Scots like to drink. I am determined not to.

Gottalife

Hi Gabe,

I can relate to everything you wrote except for the getting better part. That is really good as alcoholism is a progressive illness that always gets worse. Our book, describing our collective experience, says "over any considerable period we get worse never better. We have tried every imaginable remedy. In some instances there has been brief success always followed by a still worse relapse"
If you are getting better, that has to be a good thing.

The concept of powerlessness in AA is something you mention. The word appears only once in the AA book, in the past tense referring only to alcohol. " we admitted we were powerless over alcohol..." the word power appears about sixty times including the statement that finding a power that will solve my problem is what AA is about. It is about empowerment. You might not hear that in the fellowship these days, but it is what the book says and that is our program of recovery.

For someone like me I was powerless over alcohol. Another way of looking at it was that alcohol had more power than me. Logically I would need a power greater than alcohol to fix that, and that is what I got. Today I have all the power I need to live successfully in this world without the need for alcohol.

Not everyone is powerless. If our own power is adequate to solve the problem, then we would have no need of a greater power. Probably the majority of problem drinkers are like that, they can just stop if they have a good enough reason .

The only way to find that out is to try and stop for a good spell, say one year. It is not often that the real alcoholic can do that.

For the AA program to work, we looked at our own experience and asked ourselves about what we call the abcs, three ideas:

a) that we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives
b) that probably no human power could relieve our alcoholism
c) that God could and would if He were sought.

If we find ourselves convinced in these points, we are ready to dive into the AA program. If not, our best course it to figure out what else we can try and give that a go.

Enjoy your visit to the mainland. Let us know how it goes.

Gabe1980

Thank you for what you have posted. It has really made me think. There are definately many times in the past I have been very aware of alcohol having more power than me. I had a sense of becoming more powerful in order to overcome it, or I should say needing to become more powerful. The last year or two I have grown more spiritually and feel rhat what has brought me to this point is part of a greater plan. I usually think of it in terms of the universe. It feels like there is something Im connected to that I have had little sense of before. What you have written makes a lot of sense to me. I did stop for several months and took antabuse. Sober but in no way in recovery though I didnt realise it at the time. I went straight back to drinking excessively when I started drinking again. Seems to be a familiar story on this forum. Thanks again

Gottalife

Hi Gabe. Seems we have quite a lot in common Try and keep that open mind of yours. It will be a lifesaver. When you settle on a solution, give it everything you got, and I am sure it will work out.

The solution I went for gave me an effective 24/7 defense against the fatal first drink that has never failed. And it gave me quite a lot more besides. If I didn't get a better life, what would be the point?

Anyway, all the best and if there is anything I can do please feel free to pm me. I would be glad to hear from you.

Gabe1980

Thanks very much. I have some good time to think and reflect this week. I plan on using it the best way I can and your posts have really prompted me to think a bit differently about what I believe to be true. I need that. It's much appreciated.