Cosima11

It's hard for some people to wrap their minds around being a full blown alcoholic in your 20s but it's very real and very possible. Things progressed really fast for me. It didn't seem "fair" but it was the reality. It was kind of a perfect storm including some events and trauma that was out of my control. Had some circumstances unfolded differently it may have taken longer to "cross the line", but the way I see it is I was heading in that direction regardless. Part of me is grateful to be learning these lessons at a young age and that I never have to go through this (again) in my 40s or beyond..

lessgravity

I don't think there is anything wrong with this thread, as others have said.

It's valuable for me to think about what it would have been like had I quit in my 20s or 30s. I'm not going to drag myself down with thoughts of the what-could-have-beens; as JayZ says, gotta learn to live with regrets.

I know there's time left me for to do some things of value. Most importantly I know I will only be able to get those things done sober.

entropy1964

Sorry if I kind of poked fun. It was well meaning.

So seriously. In my 20's I was highly successful and career driven. I was in a work hard, play hard Silicon Valley job and I really never stopped to think about whether I was over doing it. It never affected my life, my health, my job, my relationships or my appearance.

I quit working when I was 35 to raise my child. A far more important job to me. My marriage was on the rocks (as it had been for a long time...I married a gay man...I've never spoken of that. Weird) and I was suddenly grounded. No more global travel, fast paced weeks, intense presentations, deadlines, kuddos for a job well done. It was me, my quiet somewhat rural home in Cali and a newborn. By the time she was 3.5 I admitted I was an alcoholic. I guess I was close to 39. So I quit. For one year. Then I tried again. Quit again for 9 months. Then my drinking morphed, turned into bender drinking and hiding. Lying and other BS. I'd be sober for a period of months to 2 years, then drink for 2 weeks. It was awful. I'm now 52. I've been sober a while. I don't 'celebrate' milestones, I do know them however. I do whatever I need to do to stay sober. And I'm grateful I haven't wanted a drink in a long time.

I have been to treatment and seen increasing numbers of very young alcoholics. That just didn't happen for me. Or, they are realizing, because of more community awareness, that what they are doing isn't normal, at an earlier age. Alcohol can take one down very quickly (as I have seen in women that start when the nest is empty and are full blown within 5 years) or painfully slowly, as is seen in my father, almost 87, still yearning for that drink. Rarely do we see older street drug addicts because overdose is such a prevalent thing...but alcohol is slow and very patient.

Dunno. If my father had quit at 30 I never would have know him as an alcoholic. If he had quit at 40 my life may have been totally different. If he had quit at 50, I would have been so grateful and so happy for him. If he quit now, at almost 87, I would be proud.

Myshot59

Consider yourself lucky, I am 58, and I have heart arrhythmia and six bad vertebrae and a replaced knee, also still a torn rotator cup, I recently found out about the arrhythmia, so anytime you are still alive is a good time to try. I have a really rough road to travel, and hope I make it, I know I have a lot of cards stacked against me, but I'm trying my best! I have a child with downs to care for and a hard working wife to help out, so I have reasons to want to live! I got dealt some cards from previous deeds or karma, whatever but now I have to deal with it, I just hope I am strong enough to make it thru it, smart enough to make it thru it.

Myshot59

I forgot to mention I am on suboxone, a really tough drug to drop, I think as bad as any if not worse than most, but that is a personal viewpoint.

daredevil

No message.
No takeaways.
Just sharing my observations from people I've heard at meetings.

lessgravity

I was at a meeting a few weeks ago - a huge, very vibrant Saturday morning meeting. The story told by the guy who spoke was that he quit drinking when he was 19. He was in his 50s.

Was incredibly hard for me to wrap my head around. He was very funny, smart, and an excellent public speaker.

Realized his public speaking skills were most likely developed in the THREE decades he's spent going to meetings. The guy had literally remained sober for 30 years.

So I was torn. Here is this cool, smart, funny, confident sober guy. I found his talk inspiring. I certainly esteemed to be that sober. On the other hand I was turned off by the idea of being in "recovery" for 30 years of my life. Was he addicted to the meetings as much as anything? I'm not criticizing him, in any ways - I'm certain he has brought knowledge and support to suffering addicts.

But I still can identify the conflicting feelings I felt. DD, your post reminded me of it.

yinzer

Some don’t live to 40.

Kudos to those who quit whatever your age.

ProfessorD

Surprised when I read this. I would LOVE to be addicted to my recovery. And I would love to have 30 years sober. I really don't see the downside?

goodbyeevan

I thought the same thing. I wouldn't want to judge his motives. I would want to believe they are pure. I feel like being addicted to meetings is like being addicted to friendship, community, love, support, if you are a part of the group. You know they always say at meetings that they can't keep it unless they give it away. Helping newcomers and sharing their story is how many people stay sober for so many years.

lessgravity

Yes I agree that I would love to get and stay sober as well. In fact, I am going to. What I don't like is the idea of being in a permanent state of "recovery" - maybe it's just semantics. I am an ex-drinker - like an ex-smoker - we don't say that ex-smokers are in recovery, they just don't smoke. Maybe it's also a reaction to the many times I've been in the grey faced rooms, constant war stories, the feeling of "missing out" that I get at times from those types of meetings. And the language of recovery - PAWS, relapse, kindling etc - I am at times turned off by that as well. Just stop drinking. That's the cure-all.

Again this is just ME. In NO WAY do I devalue anyone's way of getting and staying sober.

ScottFromWI

Stopping drinking definitely gives us the power to do a lot of things, but I would disagree that the act of quitting solves everything. Especially underlying psychological issues like anxiety, depression and other even more severe ones.

It took me the better part of 2 years after I quit to finally accept that I also had other problems I needed to address.

ProfessorD

"Missing out" from what? A feeling that you're missing out? Or a feeling that you assume he/others are?

(Not trying to fight btw, just not following this thread on any level lol!)

DreamCatcher17

Hey PD.
You are totally right, it could get much worse, alcoholism is progressive, right?
I have done enough things in my drinking days, I really did not want to see any more harm I could have caused. This mindset keeps me in check
I just celebrated 8 years at my current career, 11 in the profession. We are highly regulated by the government and our licensing requires a clean criminal history, I was going down a bad road of getting a record had I not stopped when I did. I had to pay my lawyer over $1000 to get the last incident cleared from my record or I would be working at a fast food joint, since I do not have a college degree.
Blessing come to all, I just had to realize mine before I lost it.

have a wonderful day, one day at a time!

ProfessorD

Based on the logic that a 40yo is somehow the perfect age for recovery, would a 40 year old getting sober and lecturing in the rooms until he is 70 be ideal/ not "missing out"? Or is the point just that recovery itself is flawed? So confused here.

eyes99

I think something happens as you get closer to 40 (I’m 41 and started trying to quit at 36). You’re too old to party, at least everyone but you thinks so, lol. Stuff starts to ache, reminding you that you’re getting older and are supposed to be acting like a grownup. You’re wiser (I disagree with the idea that you stop maturing when you pick up), so cognitively you know that what you’re doing doesn’t make much sense. All of your friends who have anything going on that you respect have grown out of getting wasted. You’ve got bills and you know that you need to pay them, instead of thinking that some magical fairy will make things alright. You’ve lost people - high school friends have started to die from a number of things, so you feel your mortality.

And you’re 40 or almost there, which is the age that people were “old” when you were growing up. And you still feel like you don’t have it together, and you figure that you probably should.

So, it’s not surprising to me that 40 seems to be a magic age for sincere sober attempts. I wish I had done it younger, though.

lessgravity

Prof - Never a fight from you! It's good to go back and forth like this, what else are these boards for? I guess I just mean there's a level of self-pity and sadness and stuck-in-the-rooms-forever that I've found at certain meetings. The one I was describing is the opposite - like I said, very vibrant and inspiring. But, again, I think of "being in recovery" like an athlete healing from an injury. To say the guy is "in recovery" is to say the knee is still bothering him, he's not himself, he isn't healed yet. I want to be recovered. An ex-drinker, like an ex-smoker. Again, maybe just a matter of semantics.

Scott - No question. Whatever is there, for me an addiction to self-sabotage via procrastination is the battle I am going to be facing sober. I know this even early in my sobriety.

goodbyeevan

I don't like the ex smoker, ex drinker comparison. I read about that when reading the naked mind. I don't think it's the same. I think any alcoholic, no matter how many years since their last drink, are just one pick up away from being in active alcoholism again. I don't think alcoholism ever goes into remission. I wish it was like quitting smoking but I just don't think the comparison holds up.

Delizadee

Just to stick my 2cents in here.

I think and it's just my thought from all I have read here on SR and out of it, that when we start drinking heavily we are pushing pause on our mental and emotional maturity. Definitely the case here.

So if we are drinking around 25 OR whenever when our brains are still developing, we're pushing stop on a pretty important part of our lives.

When we start removing mind altering substances, we're back at the place we mentally left off at. The human body is a resilient thing- but we only get so many chances and development and repair.

I think it's hard and this is a super broad generalization so don't shoot me for it, it's tough for the younger crowd. If the emotional maturity is not there, it's harder to commit to something so huge as sobriety.

Not necessarily that it's a full push stop and we do continue to grow and gain clarity along the way, I think part of the denial falls away around a certain stage in life and we can become a lot more willing to accept we are adults, can't control life, and we're tired of being sick and tired. Because those feelings just get worse the older we get.

So, I do find it very admirable when a person can stick with sobriety when they are young.
I also think it's not as easy maybe to wake up being and feeling 40ish with the mental and emotional maturity of a 20ish year old? I know the feeling for me is, It doesn't sync up well and easily.

But part of recovery is working through all that crap.

I got sober at 33 and I awoke a 23 year old. It's kind of jarring. (and just fyi I have had many, many relapses)

So those are my thoughts on that. Your post, I understand it that way.
Every time we check out and then check back in, life has moved on and we haven't, and we have dealt with nothing and not learned how to.

I truly believe this is a part of the mental and emotional maturity that helps or hinders our recovery efforts.

Again, my 2 cents, very, very broadly generalized.

And absolutely no matter what something we can overcome. No matter where we sit on the universal broad spectrum of addiction.

ScottFromWI

I was not a smoker, but a heavy daily user of smokeless tobacco for a long time. I quit about a year prior to quitting drinking and would agree that there was definitely something different about quitting that and quitting alcohol.

Having said that, I did quit the smokeless tobacco for a period of about 3 years previously. I went on a fishing trip with "the guys" and decided it would be OK to pick up a can or two of chew to take with for old times sake. It only took 5 days for me to be back to my can of chew every 2 days habit. So yeah, it's different but I think it's still addiction and can be strong.