Dee74

I genuinely thought this too - but lying on your bathroom floor for hours not being able to get up drifting in and out of consciousness and bleeding from a head wound has a marvellous way of focusing you and your aims in life.

Alcohol numbed me - even when I wasn't drunk I floated about in an apathetic haze.

I thought that was me but it was addiction at work.

I'd become the frog in the saucepan.

https://www.soberrecovery.com/forums...dont-frog.html (Don't be the Frog)

D

Renvate

Hi Dee.

Thanks for your reply. I have taken the day off today and going to a doctor in a few hours to discuss some options. I don't want to go to AA and share these thoughts with a group people because that is ultimately what i will do. I believe i need some professional advice and guidance at the moment.

Buckley3

No apology required. Getting out of denial is a shocking experience. I thought I knew what denial was. I didn't. That's the irony. Denial stacked on denial. It's very hard to see. That's the nature of the thing.

I too had gotten to a point that I 'accepted' my lifestyle. I was so deeply cynical about everything that I was ok with dying slowly - or so I thought. I lived that way until I had an incident that blew everything up.

It's one thing to be able to think we can accept the destruction when the world isn't collapsing around us. It's entirely another when it does. And it's not a matter of if it's going to happen - only when.

Good on you for getting help and being honest. Seriously. It takes courage.

Do whatever you need to to stay sober in these first few days. But big picture be very cautious about judging programs. AA may not be for you - maybe it's another course. Whatever the case - be aware that we have an Addictive Voice (see rational recovery) that will use judgements to keep us down. Sometimes we have to do what we have to do regardless of how we feel about it in the moment - that's exactly the place I'm confronting right now.

Be well. Keep us in the loop on how things develop. You can do this and you have a lot of support here.

-B

Verdantia

Hey, Ren.
I understand all too well about shame, but it can be deadly and prevent you from living a good life without the crippling effect of alcohol.
I needed a lot of help to get and stay sober. I nearly killed myself with drink but found that spark of hope (almost extinguished) within me, said to hell with the shame and went to detox and inpatient treatment for two months. Even after all that I relapsed 3 years later, drove drunk, wrecked my car and nearly died. I went back to rehab for a month and decided to give sobriety my absolute all. Now I am in my twenty-seventh month of sobriety and I am happy. My mental and physical health have improved greatly. I do volunteer work with a local museum, with a summer camp for girls to teach them how to play an instrument and form a rock band, and I play bass in the band at my church. I also spend lots of time at SR. The good people here have been a huge help to me. I don't attend AA now, but it has helped me before and most rehabs use the 12-step model.
My shame is no more. It is a wonderful feeling and I wish this for you, too. You can do it!

August252015

To the parts I marked in bold-

I had to choose to LIVE- or CHOOSE to DIE. Period. No negotiating, and when I was honest: passively or actively I was choosing death.

It's never too late for AA, IMO. Other things like therapists, etc, are often good choices as well as a fundamental, DAILY program - at least if you are a hopeless alcoholic like I became. And I certainly don't think of MY AA program as "casual." As someone said in my mtg today: my recovery and my life are inseparable. "Half efforts (would) avail me (us) nothing," is how the Big Book puts it at one point.

I think the answer to that last part is "because you know the answer." You know what you need to do: quit drinking, full stop, forever. However you do that is up to you - but that's the only solution I have found to the death path I was on and the unmanageable, terrifying, horrible so-called life I was existing with while drinking.

Your choice.

Renvate

Thanks for the inputs. I spoke to my doctor, unfortunately he didn't take me all to seriously, with humor he asked "you only have a problem if you drink more than your doctor"

I didn't find it to humorous, neither did he when I told him my intake.

Long story short he said I should go to a psychologist to determine the cause.

He asked about willpower, I said "well everyone has willpower they just have to try"

He said "then it's doable" ..so, take a break and go see a psychologist and then come back to see me"

I think I was just another substance dependent patient for him.

Anyway off to work.

August252015

It's good you talked to your doctor....sounds like many GPs because they just are not trained about addiction. Humor, downplaying, talk of will power....not things that are good practice - personally, I am grateful that my GP and her team know what their domain is- and ISN'T- because I was sent directly to a psych who is an addiction specialist- and a huge AA proponent, while not being bossy....

One last thought- most of us alcoholics spent a lot of time with the whys of being an alcoholic. It kept me drinking for quite awhile- turns out, it really doesn't matter why - because I qualify for the title.

Hope you become willing to get sober, no matter what it takes.

Dee74

If it was me, renvate, I'd find a new doctor.

D

hellrzr

"I just had a thought, I think i might be a bit past casual AA meetings to get on the road to recovery. "

That is a lot of denial and arrogance there! Why do you think that you are so unique and special that AA meetings won't help you but have helped millions of others? If you would attend some AA meetings, find a sponsor and work the steps you will soon find out why you are so self centered and how that is the root of your problem. You came here and asked for help and virtually all the responses have told you to get to AA and work the steps and yet you still have excuses. Alcoholism is a wonderful thing isn't it! You will learn in AA that alcoholism isn't about drinking but rather about how you think and deal with life. You can learn a lot there my friend!

Algorithm

Since you like to post in various AVRT threads, MindfulMan, I have to ask...

Abstinence is a terrible place to live for whom?

A bargain is also a loophole.

What if life doesn't become better?

What then? Back to the stuff you go?

Best to settle for life not getting any worse from using, I would say.

Some words of wisdom I recently came across:

August252015

I have to respectfully disagree with almost everything in the last post.

Abstinence is a terrible place to live for an alcoholic- when there is so much more of a life in actual recovery, not just not drinking. It's also a terrible place for family and friends who love an alcoholic- because most likely what they are getting is just a sober (jerk or whatever you want to call it - but drunk is the bottom line word) drunk. Behaviors largely unchanged.

Which leads me to - the two choices aren't just being a dry drunk or a drunk drunk. Being a recovered drunk, living in a new way and with a joy and peace I never had is the best thing possible for me and anyone and everyone who knows me.

Which leads me to the simple fact that for me, life is infinitely better - and when it is rough, as it is for everyone, it is STILL way better than a life drinking (read, the settling on that has been mentioned) if only because I have clarity to deal with what comes my way. That gives me strength, builds my courage and confidence in my ability to navigate life- which I simply didn't have by the end of my drinking.

Ultimately? I refuse to settle for anything less than going for the best life I can have, and I would wish my kind of recovery peace on anyone, whatever their method of reaching it.

Renvate

Thanks, Newway7

I was meant to reply to this earlier. And when I read this, it hit home

It has become all i know.

I would lie and say I am staying at my family's place for the weekend, but what id do instead was go to the 2nd empty apartment we had to listen to music and drink. No friends, no company, no cheating - just drinking on my own, this happened on countless occasions, this was "me time"

I, of course, saw nothing wrong.

if anyone has any insight, then THIS is where I am at, I am addicted to the point of lying and sneaking off to drink and obviously when i was confronted i got defensive because she was trying to take my "thing" away from me.

I have a feeling my real, deep down reason i drink is that my life has always been like a rollercoaster, I am a very energetic, spontaneous, restless, impulsive, (as noted by hellzr) self-centered and reckless, ...iam also an ******* with a short temper to the closest to me.

Iam also not a social group activity person or anywhere close to a team player.

and as much as i try to build a life these traits hold me back - iam either going nowhere or going in circles.

Now i don't know if I am like this because i drink? or i drink because of iam like this. I guess a bit of both. Cant really look in the mirror these days and be proud, never really was proud to be honest.

(yes iam in denial and blaming it all on traits now...excuse my arrogance)

thanks for the reading and your input guys, i don't expect all eyes on my post to "help me" I am kinda using this to write down my thoughts if anything and reading the advice.

August252015

So I'm going to be a little 'softer' here - yes, perhaps you are being arrogant and it has struck some of us that way. BUT- you are searching for answers and even if you know what you should do about some of them (ie the big one, stop drinking), like the rest of us you are grasping and talking and such on your early way through it! That itself is brave. AND it can possibly be the tiniest beginning of a journey to humility if you decide you want what we have.

So you do not feel alone- the lying, to self, others, anyone and everyone is SO common for us. I went to a mtg this morning where that was exactly the topic. Pretty much all of us related to stuff each other said. We made up unnecessary lies - we lied about our whereabouts or when we'd be home/back/there/whatever, we lied on lies on top of lies, we lied to ourselves (denial, or even sometimes nearly convincing ourselves that the junk we were saying to others was actually true...)....I also commented how horrible it is to be in a family (I was both the child of the alcoholic and then the alcoholic) where basically everyone knows at least one person is lying, but it's just under the surface like a deadly tension....

We are all trying to give you straight talk and challenge you, yes, on your thinking. I think that is the right thing to do, but I also remember clearly what it was like about the last six months of my drinking and in my early days sober (I am 25 mo and change now) - anger, resentment, denial, avoidance, bogus acceptance of my "fate" - LYING- all of it fit a description of me.

I needed help to get out, from my program to my drs to my IRL fam and friends support system. My wish, as I think it is from all of us, is that you can make the leap to sobriety then recovery and discover this new life for yourself.

Dee74

My drinking life was horrible, bitter and often agonising but it had one thing in its favour for drunk me - it was familiar.

I drank for so long that I forgot there was another me - the pre drinking and drugs me. The only me I remembered as far back as I could was the messed up me.

Even when I quit, I still did not remember the old me for several weeks, months even.

I thought a joyless, deprived existence, full of difficult emotions and no respite was all I had to look forward to.


But it got better - and I rediscovered the me that has been subsumed for all those years.

Its a leap of faith Renvate - things may not get better instantly, you may not feel terrific right away - but it's the only road to take - there's nothing for you back the way you came and I think that by signing up here and posting for all these months you know that too.

D