katiemac

Hello,

End of Day 2 sober. I have been extremely angry today. Yelling at my family over every little thing all day, and so very tired.

I know I'm an Alcoholic. I just love it. I love it sooo much!! A bottle of wine a night would be a small night for me, plus the few beers I'd have throughout the day. On a big night I'd have a bottle of wine and at least six beers. Or if beer was my only poison then I'd easily drink 12. The other night my husband ducked out to get milk and I quickly skulled a bottle of wine. Then filled it with water and put it back in the fridge. I did the same thing last week too. I'm often too over the limit to drive and I'm starting earlier each day.

I feel ashamed. I want to stop.
I have a family if huge drinkers who don't see a problem with it. I want to be told. .
That I'm an alcoholic.

Is the rages of anger withdrawal related?

Thank you

ReadyAtLast

Hi and welcome. It's not really for anyone else to tell us if we have a problem. I personally don't like labels.

The thing is if drinking is a problem for you and causing you problems only you can decide what to do . This is a great site hope you stick around ☺

soberandhonest

You're an alcoholic. You probably are incapable of safely drinking. You need to quit. It's okay though - a whole lot of us have done it and we are here to support you.

Rubaduck

I'll tell you the same thing I tell myself every day. I care about you, and I want you to stop hurting yourself.

I don't know if saying "alcoholic" will help you. But I certainly know that if you say "I want to quit this lifestyle" it's a great place to start.

Good luck.

FreeOwl

Don't need to tell you. You already told yourself.



Which means you're in the right place.

Congrats on 2 days sober.

DIVE INTO SOBRIETY - your life will be amazing.

Anna

I think you know you are an alcoholic. My suggestion would be to not discuss it with family members who are big drinkers. They will likely feel threatened and discourage you from stopping drinking. This is something you need to decide to do and to for yourself.

And, yes, anger is often a problem in early recovery.

MetalRose

I can relate to where you are. When you begin sneaking alcohol in order to hide from others just how much you're drinking, it's a problem. Especially when you come from a culture of drinking. If it weren't a problem, why would you be hiding it?

I used to do many of the same things. If I had a bottle of water in my hand, you bet there was vodka in it. I'd take from our bar and hide a stash of beers behind the leftovers in the kitchen fridge or fill up rarely used flasks stored in the cabinet just so I would have the "comfort" of knowing something would always be available for me to drink. I know how long a morning can be when you're watching the clock for the "acceptable" time to start drinking, even though you've already spiked your coffee with a shot of whiskey.

You're not alone.
It's tough to quit. I'm only on day 14, but reading through the posts on SR have proven that it can be done. There is hope. I find that reading through the forum "Recovery Stories" really helps as you begin to see pieces of yourself in those stories and those stories end in sobriety and recovery.

Make a short list of the top reasons you want to quit. Place your list where it will serve to remind you each day....a sticky note on the bathroom mirror, the kitchen fridge, the sun visor in your car, etc. I found that helpful.

Also, yes, irritability is a symptom of withdrawal..but it will pass with time.
Stay the course, you will find lots of support here.

biminiblue

My emotions were so raw in early sobriety. I don't think I was able to control my emotions at all for the first month or so. I kept saying I wanted to crawl out of my skin.

It gets better. It's just part of the physical healing.

I agree with Anna, leave your family out of your recovery. They don't want to understand, that would mean looking at themselves. I quit drinking even though my family were pretty good drinkers. It's not that hard. You just make light of their pokes and have a Pepsi.

beachbum8

"Is the rages of anger withdrawal related?" - oh heavens yes. But it goes away, and it happens faster than you'd think.
It helped me to Google how your body gets worse when you drink, and especially to Google all the good stuff that happens when you stop - after 24 hours, 48 hours, a week. I'd do a search, and then look for signs that those positive things were happening (clearer skin, better sleep, clearer mind, weight loss, etc.) I'd always find them.
Your drinking habits sound identical to mine - from amount, to drinking earlier, to the wine-bottle-with-water in the fridge trick.
And I promise you can do it. Avoid the big drinkers for a while and take care of yourself. My social life took a nose dive when I stopped, but it helped to continually put myself in situations where I didn't usually want to drink. (Granted, there weren't many of those - exercise / walking outside, showering, brushing teeth, etc.)
And do something nice for yourself. Splurge on an awesome coffee drink or a massage or something you wouldn't normally do. You're saving money and calories by not drinking, so it's easy to rationalize doing something great for yourself.
I hope this helps. You will do this - Just get through today. I promise it gets a little easier with every minute that passes by.

ScottFromWI

Welcome back Katie. As many have said, no one can "tell you " that you are an alcoholic. You have to accept it as a fact yourself, otherwise you'll never be able to make the necessary changes to quit.

Based on your post though, you have pretty much every red flag listed that would indicate that alcohol is a problem for you. You drink and drive repeatedly, you lie about your drinking, you drink more than you plan to more often than you plan to, and it causes problems for you and your family.

You don't even need to use the word "alcoholic" if you don't want to. But you do at some point need to accept that drinking even one drink is not an option anymore if you want to get better. Because it will keep getting worse - hard to imagine that I know, but you still have a family and i'm guessing a place to live, right? Alcoholism slowly takes all of that away too unfortunately.

Dee74

some great advice here Katie - welcome
you'll find a lot of support and understanding here

D

Obladi

For a long time, I messed around with drinking. I would stop and make a vow; some time later (a week, a couple of months, the next day) I found myself in the parking lot of the liquor store.

I wished for something to "happen" that would pull me up short and force me to deal with this thing. Well, that happened - work employee assistance program got involved and put me on leave with treatment. Thank God, right?But it didn't prevent me from picking up . So here I sit again, in limbo, off work with this feeling of enormous discomfort, ill at ease, sober but fuzzy. Because I'm doing what those treatment people are telling me to do. For me, that means really digging into my feelings. Difficult task because I often don't even know that I'm feeling something (aside from numb).

You know what the deal is with you. It's good and healthy to take care of yourself regardless of the drinking behavior all around you. It's HARD but it's not complicated and I truly believe it's worth the gargantuan effort of ridding myself of this insidious compulsion.

Stick around and keep posting.

O

Obladi

Pacing, tidying, cleaning, purging junk were all helpful for me. Kept me moving but "safe" in my house that now contains no alcohol.

soulcoughedream

You're an alcoholic. So am I and we are making it another day without a drink.

Zebra1275

Please tell me I'm an Alcoholic

You registered on this website back in April. I think deep down you know the answer to your question. Like most of us, you probably struggle with denial of the problem.

On another note, this is only your second post since you registered in April. Posting every 6 months is not going to help you much.

Gottalife

You asked a good question. You sound like an alcoholic, and the irritability certainly rings bells for me. It is important to knew what the problem is though, because without that knowledge, how are you going to fix it. No good taking a car with a flat tire to the garage and asking for an oil change.

Suggesting that it will al get better of you don’t drink is only partly true. It depends on what the problem is.

If alcohol is the problem, just stop drinking and in a few days everything will be good, though you may need a little medical help.

If alcoholism is the problem then not drinking will tend to bring it out. Life will become increasing unbearable until a drink, or worse, seems the only way out. Living with untreated alcoholism as I did, is awful drunk or sober. Not drinking is part of the remedy, but we also need a program to recover by.

Somehow we have to find a satisfying way of living in order to stay permanently sober. There are a variety of methods mentioned on this site which you could check out.

notgonnastoptry

I had to go a step farther. I couldn't have a bottle of water because family had busted me by asking for a sip. very embarrassing because it was obvious why I jerked it away. so, I had to have two, esp on car trips.

OP--yes, quit while you are ahead. when I say ahead, some of us here will tell you that the fact that you are able to still leave alcohol in plain sight is something. by the time most of us hit the bottom, we had it stuffed in shoes, trunks of the car, disguised in coffee mugs in the house, etc. I eventually appeared to have no alcohol anywhere (and, yet, it was everywhere else).

tealily

Yes.

I had (supposedly) "stopped drinking," so I devolved to hiding bottles in my car; going out to the garage to pour a giant, glugging cup of wine, then cover it with packages or laundry coming back in the house so no one could see; hiding it behind dishes and books in the kitchen or laundry room; using plastic juice glasses (no more pretty wine glasses); hiding empties in my suitcase on trips away from home; drinking at crazy late hours, when everyone else was asleep.

Pitiful. Shameful. Ridiculous. What a wasted life. How can anyone think that kind of behavior is normal. Yet I did it day after day after day.

Cuckoo

Me too, hiding bottles to the point of exhaustion, always trying to find different places. And the shame, its awful. I thought I was really smart once and hid a bottle under the rubbish in the kitchen waste bin so that I could happily dip in to it whilst 'doing kitchen chores'. I went to grab it one night for a quick glug and it was full of water. Husband had found it, tipped the wine out and filled it with water. He never mentioned a thing about it which made the shame I felt 100 times worse.
I used to go round the house in the morning checking all the places I may have hidden a drink in case it was found. Its totally bonkers, like watching someone elses life.
I am only nine days in so wouldnt and couldnt comment on your drinking but I can say, just give sobriety a go, thats all we can do at the beginning and keep reminding ourselves how much wasted time and energy we put in to drinking. Good luck.
C

Mac4711

Guys, thank you for this discussion! I’m closing in on day 100 and this is a reminder that I really, really don’t want to go back to this insanity!