Is there a single thing that was so huge for you
 

As I said on a previous thread my main focus for sobriety is my daughter.
Whilst I know that everyone gains so, so much once sober, I was wondering if there was one single thing that was so huge for your motivation to get and stay sober ?
C

My wife and kids. I was sobering up from a booze fuelled weekend and the 3 of them said they were concerned about my drinking and too make a long story short I'm on my 11th day of sobriety. I know 11 days isn't a lot in the entire picture, but it a start. And i don't ever want to go back to the dark place i was in

Hello!
 

Me personally i don't have kids, i like to think im still "young" i think (24). But for me my nephew was a game changer. Making me actively think "Maybe i should stick around and stop drinking so he has an uncle". I am with you, in the respect that family is just everything, My final say is this, if you can't personally say your child will be safe without you here, why drink more? get off the bottle for them, not you for them. I wish you the best.

it was the very real potential of losing my children that was the biggest external motivator for sobriety.

it was the shift in mentality from "I HAVE to quit drinking" to "I WANT to build a happy, abundant, SOBER life" that made the most difference in getting there.

:grouphug:

I know 11 days isn't a lot in the entire picture, but it a start. And i don't ever want to go back to the dark place i was in.]

11 days? That's amazing, we are cheering for you, keep it up.

No single thing for me. (I don't have kids).

I just got utterly fed up with the drinking lifestyle. The exhausting horrible cycle. I accepted I couldn't drink without horrible consequences.

I think it was only after I had been quit for quite a while that I could see just how awful it was.

My grandchildren and children -but lately I'm staying on the path for me. This way I can be present for them and myself. Will not return to that drooling, lump on the floor existence.

I am along the same lines as freeowl. I went from "I have to quit drinking" to "I WANT to quit drinking". That's when it all started to change.

I knew I needed to stop the vicious cycle my life had become. Living in ground hog day was driving me insane. I thought about taking my life at one point. Then I got a special present from a judge. Mandatory AA meetings. I'm not a religious person so,had never thought AA was for me and I don't really 'work' the steps nor attend that often anymore,but I let the steps guide the way I live my life now. It also opened up a spiritual side of my brain/thinking that had been hidden away for far too long.

I just got to the stage where:

1) I hated the person I had become so much that I didn't see how I could carry on.

2) I had lost all my integrity

3) I finally realised that I COULD NOT modify my drinking and that the only way to stop the cycle I was stuck in was to stop drinking.

4) Once I finally stopped, I realised that it was my only strategy and I'd need to learn how to do this living sober malarky, along with all the other alcoholics in recovery.

We stop digging when we find our own rock bottom. Our rock bottoms may well be different, but the journey to sober living has similarities for all of us.

Wishing you all the best for your sobriety and recovery.
BB

I think you have to be a little selfish so that you can be less selfish. For me my alcoholism was all about me being selfish, but, ironically, to get better I had to focus on myself. I got sober for my kids, my wife, and my grandson, but I really got sober for me. So I could be healthy, so I could be there in the future, so I could be happy.

I know that's a lot of I's, but if you don't take care of you there will be no I.

That's the way I see it anyway.

That is so true. I quit drinking when I couldn't take it anymore. I exercised every option to continue drinking. Cutting back, skipping days, you know the drill. Nothing worked, until I had only one option.

Loving mornings once again!

My young wife died of cancer. The alcohol was not helping me grieve. It was such a dead-end. The guilt and shame were oppressive to me. I knew I could not continue. Something had to change. Best thing I ever did-quit drinking.

No one defining moment/thing for me. More the accumulation of misery, realizing that I could no longer go even one day between drinking and that my favorite breakfast food was beer. Those things, and how I was so selfishly turning away from my family all combined to finally, finally, tip the scales!

BTW. I love and cherish sobriety now. It's not at all the sentence I once thought. My alcoholic perspective misled me for so long, but no longer. True freedom.

It's there for you as well Cuckoo. I'm no more deserving than you or anyone else. You can turn the page on this and change what the future holds. Guaranteed. :)

The moment hit me when I was having lunch with some people from work. A colleague was astounded that someone she knew from high school had just died from alcohol. They were Facebook friends, and she was following his declining situation for quite a while.

It really hits home that people actually do die from this poison. You hear about it on this site periodically, but it just seems like it couldn't possibly happen to you. I just think of the shame and embarrassment I'd put my children and wife through if I died from this. I simply couldn't live with myself.

Fantastic, uplifting and some sad posts.
Thank you everyone for taking the time to share your most personal and intimate thoughts and feelings, I truly appreciate it.
We all have powerful reasons it would seem and maybe can't make the change until the real clarity of our situation hits us like a sledge hammer.
C

self hatred- it was get help getting sober or kill myself.
which was kik started by my ( by then ex) fiance kikin me to the curb the morning after my last(to date) blackout drunk.

Constantly feeling ashamed. Ashamed to be my husbands wife and ashamed how I had been living for so long. And fear, its exhausting being afraid all the time.