Life is Black
 

I cant stop drinking for more than a few days. It has become worse, although Ive struggled with drink for years, the last few weeks have been dreadful. I spent the weeks leading up to and over Xmas at the hospital and then the hospice as my dad was dying. He passed on Jan 4th. It was awful to watch and I have been having flashbacks about the way he looked when he drew his last breath and some other things that were not nice to see, or hear.
Everything looks black.

Welcome to SR Mandy

Hi Mandy, I am sorry you feel this way, and I am so sorry for your loss. You are on this site so you know you need and want to stop. Try using this site daily, read the posts, post how you feel yourself. We find it helps us. ]

If you only quit for a few days you will be in withdrawal and will feel bad. If you get can those first few sober days out of the way (camp out on this site if you have to) it will get a whole lot better. I am only 3 weeks sober but I already feel good and am beginning to cope with things a lot better.

Welcome to SR Mandy. I am sorry you feel like this and I am so sorry for your loss. If you have found this site you know that you want/need to stop drinking. If you only manage a few days you will still be in withdrawal and feel horrible. If you can get past those first few sober day (camp out on this site if you want) you will begin to feel better.

I am only 3 weeks sober but already I am beginning to feel better and am coping with life better.

Read the posts on this site, post how your feel. Stay close to us. I wish you the best.

Sorry for repeating myself, thought I had lost the post.

Hi mandypandy, welcome to SR. It sounds like you have been through an awful lot recently. The death of a parent is a life-changing event and remember that you are going through a grieving process that will involve your emotions changing over time.

Alcohol can be an easy 'crutch' to reach for in times of extreme emotional stress but it will not help and will probably make the situation worse. I speak from experience here. Alcohol + grief + family = confrontation, certainly in my experience. Also, consider that what happens in the immediate aftermath of such an event can have lasting consequences, at least in a family context.

Keep posting and try and stay away from alcohol. It really is not your friend at this time. Things will get better, in time. Good luck and strength with your recovery.

Thanks julietuk, double posting is fine, sometimes I need to be told things more than once!!
More than anything I want to stop drinking. I know it's not helping anything, just making the blackness worse.

Thanks bOglerd69, I know you speak sense. The drink is just isolating me. Like you said, grief drinking and families do not mix. I stay away from everyone when I drink and living alone doesn't help. I still manage to cause havoc with the phone though, and then hate myself.

Please keep coming on this website as much as you can. I spent the first 4 days reading posts and posting myself. That was only a couple of weeks ago but when I read them back I can't believe how different I feel. But nothing has changed on the outside, I am just coping better.

Read some posts, they are so uplifting. Take care. You should probably see your doctor for help with the withdrawal. And most importantly take it one day at a time.

Thanks for concern julietuk, I only drank for a couple of days this time, so haven't got bad withdrawals, just a horrible black feeling. I will try to get on this site as much as I can. I never watched anybody die before. It wasn't pretty, and now I am afraid of death. And thats all I can see in the future, living then suffering then dying. I'm a total little ray of sunshine at the moment. I havent really lost anone close to death before either and Im almost 50, so I find the loss completely overwhelming.

Hi Mandy,

I am so very sorry for your loss. Everyone’s grief experience is different and I do not presume to know yours, but just to share something of mine. My husband was ill for a long time and I watched a whole and hearty man shrink away. In the aftermath I worried that his last months would be my memory of him and those images of him sick would be how I always saw him. I just want to let you know that has not been the case. I hardly ever think of those times unless there is a trigger, I have reclaimed all the wonderful memories of the love and laughter and I only think of him as being his wonderful joyful healthy self. It took a while for that to happen, but hold onto the knowledge that eventually it will.

The grief path is a tough one and there are no short cuts, I didn’t drink for four months after his death as I was breast feeding, but as soon as that was done I looked for escape at the bottom of a wine bottle. Worst. Plan. Ever.

Be kind to yourself, black days are horrible, but posting here is such a positive and hopeful step towards brighter days ahead.

Hi mandy

I'm sorry for your loss as well. There's a great amount of support wisdom and help here tho for addiction - I hope you'll stick around :)

D

scottynz, thank you for that post. I can't imagine how hard it must have been for you, and with a small child. I know that the drink has made things much worse mentally and emotionally. I hope one day too, I can remember my father as he was before he became so ill.
Dee,it's the help with the addiction I have came here for, I have read a lot of uplifting posts on here already. I'm not sure what kind of plan you are meant to make though. A day to day one? A longterm one? Do you plan your day out, or do you just plan to stave off any temptation to drink?

I just need to relearn how to become a "real" person again, like before I started to use drink as a crutch (about 20 years ago).

For sure. I'm so sorry for your loss. I watched my husband die after a long battle with cancer and it is painful for sure. Well, that doesn't begin to describe it. And those 5 stages of grief? I haven't a clue what the he!! any of that means....didn't really apply to how I felt, or help.

But, one thing I know, I could not move on drunk. I couldn't even 'feel' in a genuine way....my thoughts and feelings were warped. No doubt grieving is a process and by wallowing in a bottle I just screwed the whole process up. I had to get in the moment, deal with the facts, feel in a way that was in line with what I was dealing with...not with the shame and guilt I felt from my addiction....distorting my feelings. And being drunk was not honoring my husband, it was honoring my addiction.

Acceptance was/is the foundation of everything.

I am so sorry for your loss. It must be very hard to grieve while trying to quit drinking. But it's an incredible way to honor your father's memory, and I know you can do it! What everyone says above is true. There is lots of love and support here.

Yes, Frickaflip that is all true. I'm sorry for what you went through too. I do feel like I dishonouring my father by killing my true feelings with drink. I know he really wanted me to be able to kick this. I'm not surprised nasty images are haunting me, poisoning my brain is not going to heal anything and even before this happened drink withdrawals would leave me with horrible mind images. I didn't drink all the time he was in hospital, apart from boxing day, so it is in me somewhere to do it. These posts of what other people have gone through, do make me feel like Im not the only person in the world to have ever gone through this, and to be fighting to get sober. And I am lucky to have gotton to my age without any major losses. I was relieved when he first died, because the cancer had taken everything away from him, and his pain was so bad he had to be medicated to the max. When I think of how brave he was, makes me ashamed of not handling my grief like a grown up woman. But I will from now on, no more poisoning myself. Yes, acceptance

Professor D, you are right, what greater way is there to honour his memory? Thank you

I lost my vibrant mother about 5 years ago and I was also haunted by images of her dying. She died at my home on hospice care. I lived in the bottom of a vodka bottle for the next couple of years... I lost interest in many things and ended up losing my job, friends and support. Somehow I managed to get into therapy and from that I discovered that I was prolonging the grieving process by not dealing with my feelings and going through the stages of grief. Alcohol was prohibiting all of this. Once I stopped drinking I was able to embrace the process and finally come to terms with her death. Now I can think of the good things and I no longer have those images and bad memories of her last days. The key here was to stop drinking. Best of luck to you.

Thank you FallingStars for sharing that. I haven't drank since Thursday, so day 3 for me, and I find dealing with the images more managable without the hyper anxiety of withdrawals making things worse. I'm glad you reached a place of coming to terms with your loss. I hope one day I can remember the good memories without the bad crowding them out. Hearing others have been in the same boat and managed to do that and stop drinking has been immensely encouraging.

Anyway, if my dad was still alive he'd give me a right kick in the pants. He was so brave during the years of his illness. I'm 100% positive that ignoring the urge to drink, going through grieving process naturally, and not chemically numbing it and changing my life (which I have needed to do, in more ways than one for a long time) is a lot less challenging than what he went through, with a lot of grace.

Hi Mandy,

I am truly sorry for all you are going through. I lost my dad less than a year ago and also saw many awful things I can't unsee. Although I had an alcohol problem before then, it had become utterly terrible, a real blackness that is the opposite of living. I actually think of his lively spirit as a motivation - it would make me feel even darker and more ashamed to be binging to blackout alone, thinking how much he would hurt knowing what I was doing.

You are still early in the grieving process I imagine. Do you have access to free grief counseling? Many places offer support groups or even talking to a grief counselor one on one. It may help you with your emotions.

I hope you stick to it and don't let alcohol rob you from this world. You have my support.

my condolences to you, mandy. your story brought back memories and im very glad youre doing something about the drinking now.
my dad died in 1995. it was at that time i crossed the line into full flown alcoholism- i no longer needed nor wanted an excuse to drink- i just drank.
i wasnt able to properly grieve until i got sober in 2005. it wasnt easy, but im greatful and blessed i was able to get sober and do it. there was a whole lot of emotions and feelings i had tried to stuff for many years that came out, but it was well worth it to go through it sober.
you may want to look into some F2F support for yourself- both with the grieving and the alcoholism.

This explains a recovery action plan pretty well Mandy:
https://www.soberrecovery.com/forums...very-plan.html

It can be as basic as when I feel like drinking I will do _______, ___________ & _______ instead.

Make one of those _________ reaching out here for help and I reckon you won't go too far wrong :)

:(
 

I am so sorry for your loss. I lost my grandpa in June who was like my father. I watched him take his last breaths while holding him and hugging him. I have flashbacks daily. Alcohol got the best of me after that experience and my drinking got out of control. So amazing you have already noticed to get help now. I wish I did. Keep it up and think about how your dad wouldn't want to see you like that. You can do this. You got this

dizzybee, tomsteve and Lynne86, thank you so much for your condolences and taking the time to post to me. I am sorry for your losses too. No matter how many years, I cannot imagine a time will come when I stop missing him, and you, your loved ones too.
I don't think I need professional help with the grief, I know we can't live forever, and losing someone you love to death is always hard, the hardest thing in life. My dad was 73, he had had cancer for 7 years. Four years ago it spread to his bones, they gave him 2 years then! He was such a jolly gentle man in his later years (he had his own problems with addiction when I was young, but turned himself around).
It comforts me to know, that other people have had the same experiences as me when being with someone in their decline and death. I realized that all I know about the actual mechanics of dying are from the media, all very sanitized and clean and UNREALISTIC!
I can't blame his death on my drinking, it started and was very bad, long long before he became ill. Infact, when I was forced to come to the realization that he needed me, my mother need me, my younger brothers and sisters needed me, I drank once, in the 6 weeks he was in hospital, then the hospice, over the Xmas period. And it was the one day I didn't have to be there, as someone else said I needed a break.
It really saddens me, that two nights before he died, I was staying overnight in his hospice room with my mother (she was so scared bless her, that she wanted me to be there). She said to me that she was really grateful that I had not drank over the whole crisis and was there for them. I was so sad when she said that. Who should have to be grateful that their daughter is putting them first, above their own wants/needs for bloody once?!
Before he was actually very ill with the cancer, although the monthly tests got worse and worse, he always fought on. He never gave in to despair or dark thoughts. He lived his life, he enjoyed his life. At the time, me perfectly healthy (apart from the drinking) lamented the awfulness of my life, ha. The awfulness of MY life was self inflicted, thanks to the drinking.
He died in mine and my mother arms, my other siblings (apart from one who is always late) were there. The end was sudden and peaceful. The lead up to it wasn't. I always maintained I drank for stress. So how can I explain at one of the most stressful periods of my life, I didnt drink through it?

I thank him for the lesson that what we all went through together, or little family, me sober, taught me, I am stronger than I think I am

Dee..thank you, I am taking instruction from that thread :)

this all sounds like a perfect time for you to:

make the firm, deep and sincere choice to grab on and embrace sobriety.

support that choice TODAY with clear action - because 'sobriety' without action is just a wish.

get yourself plugged into a sober community - whether AA or some other form of connection - having a network of sober friends is crucial.

I'm sorry for the struggles you're having - but remember; we all have struggles. Life continues to happen. In sobriety, our struggles are simply the flow of life and they need not knock us so deeply off course.

In addiction, struggles compound struggles and we flail, flouder, eventually to drown.

You can do this.

:grouphug:

Freeowl, yes wishful thinking is just that, thinking.
Action is what counts.
I am thinking about going to an AA group (although have left in the past) just for human contact.
Infact have tried everything in past, from AA to Smart to RR
I know nothing will work unless I want to give up drinking!
I know, life is life, it ends in death.
For all of us. It has been brought home to me, even the bravest fighters have to die, nevermind the wimps like me!
But I am coming to realize, drinking is a living death, the opposite of life..in all it's gory forms, and I want to live, no matter what the pain, not live in the numbness of the living death of drink. Thanks FreeOwl :)

I am sorry for your loss Mandy. It is indeed traumatic for a child to lose a parent, no matter the age of the child. This is a tough time for you. However, you are your father's daughter and can remain strong.
he always fought on. He never gave in to despair or dark thoughts. He lived his life, he enjoyed his life. You can do this too. Hang in there.

Rar, bless you, I am indeed my fathers daughter!!
He was such a brave man, how could I not be a brave daughter?
He struggled with addiction..and won
He beat 2 life threatening illnesses before the cancer.
He lived with the cancer until it took him own totally and didnt give it a thought.
I know losing a parent young must be very hard. But he was my all, my rock ,for the 50 years of my life
At my age, you think, grow up woman, I did grow up, but I lost the rock and the soft place in my life.
Is that easier or harder on a person? I think it's the love for and of that person you miss no matter what age.
I remember him in his prime, he threw me about, joked with me was just a big kid.
I wish I wasnt and glad I was when he died at the same time.
The weeks over Xmas were horrible, but I hope he knows I was there, with my mother and in the end with his other kids