Zamie

Hi, I've never been involved in a forum like this before. Nor have I ever sought treatment for addiction.

About three weeks ago I woke up with a numb right hand. At first I thought I had just slept on it, but a few hours later it was still the same and I was googling symptoms and found out that it could be alcohol related neuropathy. This was the wake-up call I needed.

For the last few years, possibly four or five, I had been drinking half a 1000mL bottle of vodka every night, straight no mixers. I never had a hangover, I never blacked out, I have a successful career that has never suffered because of my drinking, a great decade long relationship, and I never drank during the day - for all intents and purposes - I was totally getting away with being a functioning alcoholic.

However, my Dr was questioning my liver results after numerous blood tests, my skin was dry and my face and body was bloated. I also resented that I couldn't go a night without caving and buying a bottle.

So exactly 17 days ago I drew a line, and made a deal with myself. No more vodka for at least a month.

The first few nights were horrible, sweats, anxiety, irritation and complete and utter boredom. Five nights in I felt a bit better, eight and I could deal with the cravings. My Dr gave me some diazepam which helped.

It wasn't until day 15 that I stopped craving a drink. Today, day 17 I know that I can do this.

Considering the amount I was drinking every night I think I've got off lightly.

In the back of my mind what I really want is to be able to drink on a Friday / Saturday night - but not half a bottle of straight vodka.

I hope after a month I will have reset my drinking pattern.

What I want to ask is if anyone else has managed to do this, to reintroduce alcohol and not fall into their previous bad habits? Am I kidding myself?

Thank you.

Zamie

Ghostlight1

Hello and welcome. And yes, you're kidding yourself.

least

Yes, you are kidding yourself. Don't confuse abstinence with control. Just because you went without for a period of time, doesn't mean that you've 'reset' your drinking. All I've ever heard from people doing that is that their drinking eventually went back to awful levels.

I hope you'll use the support here to get sober for good. It's really better sober.

ThatWasTheOldMe

This is what alcohol did to you. You weren't functioning, you were dying inside. You need your liver. It does a lot of stuff that if it wasn't doing that stuff, you would be constantly suffering. And sometimes, the progression from elevated liver enzymes to hepatitis to cirrhosis is a lot quicker than one would think. The dry skin and face are signs of dehydration - alcohol is a diuretic. It causes your system to release hormones that encourage the production of urine. It sucks water from your body. Bloating is a sign of dehydration and GI irritation. Both common side effects of alcohol abuse.

Given what alcohol did to you, why?
From my personal experience with myself and others that drink like that, I think it's highly unlikely you would have any fun moderating, even if you're able to do so. 500 mL of vodka a night is about 11 shots. That is very heavy drinking and your body is going to remember that.

After a while, you also might start getting withdrawals if you constantly binge drink on the weekends. Putting large amounts of alcohol in your system and then taking it away causes a rebound effect on your brain chemistry that gets stronger over time. Common symptoms are anxiety, jumpiness, nausea, and general discontent.

Life is much better sober for me. It took lots of bargaining with myself, failing, wanting to kill myself, ER visits, detox visits, embarrassing message / texts, embarrassing behavior, financial trouble, health issues, etc for me to realize it. My way was the hard way.

ThatWasTheOldMe

When your doctor gave you Vallium, had he diagnosed you with alcohol withdrawal?

Hevyn

Hi Zamie - I'm so glad you joined us.

I wasn't able to become a social drinker after becoming dependent on it. I wasted precious years trying. I was so afraid to let go of it - I don't know why. It was bringing me nothing but misery in the end. Once that first drink is in our system, our resolve to have just a few goes out the window.

I hope you'll keep posting. This is a great place for encouragement.

ThatWasTheOldMe

This is my relationship with alcohol in a nutshell. My body craves it once I give it a small amount.
This doesn't make me a bad person. It just makes me a person with alcoholism.

LiveLikeGold6

Zamie

@ThatWasTheOldMe - To be perfectly honest, I told my Dr that I was drinking a bottle of wine per night rather than admit to a half bottle of vodka - and that's because he asked how many units of wine I drank so I went with wine because I was embarrassed it was vodka. I had told him I had some anxiety, but also because I had run out of my anti-depressants so he gave me some low dose diazepam. I need at least 10mg to even feel a difference so they went pretty quickly.

I know it's a weakness on my part, but the thought of NEVER having a drink again totally freaks me out, even though I haven't slipped up at all in the last 17 days. I had to attend a social function one evening early on and just drank Seedlip with tonic.

I know I'm focusing on the little wins without looking at a long term plan, but like I said, I miss feeling blurry around the edges and the thought of never feeling that total relaxation and fuzzy 'I don't care about anything right now' feeling is really bloody scary.

I'm just being honest. Please don't judge.

ThatWasTheOldMe

I'm not judging, Zamie. I'm looking in the mirror reading your honesty.

Zamie

I'm judging myself.

least

When I decided to get sober, I wondered what I'd do with my time, how would I cope with stress? It took a few months but I found myself less and less preoccupied with drinking, and more and more occupied with practicing gratitude every day. I used gratitude to replace the habit of drinking. And not only does it help me stay sober, it makes me happier too.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/o...pier.html?_r=0

Dee74

Hi Zamie - welcome

Yes, I;m afraid I also don't think it's possible to reset ourselves, I tried for 20 years.

Its only after I stopped drinking I realised I never had a normal relationship with alcohol - I always wanted to get smashed/wasted/obliterated.

There was no 'norma'l for me to go back to.

D

ThatWasTheOldMe

I once drove to Iowa drinking the whole way from Colorado. I intended on running away to hang out with a girl I had met online (she wanted me to go meet her). It was in reaction to a girl I knew that I wanted to date at the time getting with a male coworker of hers. We were roommates, and I was jealous and upset. So I woke up the next morning, grabbed the remains of my bottle of vodka, hopped in the car I had bought for her (without her asking), that she was going to use to go to work that day, and took off. I was off to Pittsburgh.

I ended up in a parking lot in north Des Moines. Once I realized I80 had turned into I35 and I was headed north toward Minneapolis, it dawned on me that I was too ****** up to figure out where I was. I slept it off and by the grace of God did not get a DUI. I slept in my car. The next morning, I decided to turn around and go back to Colorado. I got more liquor because I was starting to withdrawal. I got a flat on I80 between Des Moines and Nebraska, and I did not have a jack to lift my car up and change the flat. So I tossed all my vodka in case a cop showed up and started walking. An elderly couple stopped, picked me up to go buy a jack, and I changed the tire. Then stopped in the nearest town to get a new tire to drive back to Colorado.

I stopped for liquor again in Nebraska. There were cops up and down I80 in Nebraska and I never got pulled over. I was ****** up, but I had such a tolerance that I could drive like I was sober.

I'm not proud of this story. But I don't judge myself for it anymore. I see it as symptoms of untreated alcoholism. I did not drive with the intention of hurting anyone; I just wanted to run from my problems. By the grace of whatever god you believe in, or the grace of the universe, or whatever; I did not hurt anyone and I didn't get a DUI.

I hated myself for a good while after that incident. Judged myself constantly. Used it as a reason to drink. Then drank and made more unfortunate memories.

Instead of judging yourself, try this:
Take a logical approach to your drinking and accept that it's likely a problem. Most of what you've shared with us here are symptoms of alcoholism. That's not judgment, that's just a fact. You can Google symptoms of alcoholism for yourself or ask your doctor and be honest that you were really drinking 500 mL of vodka a day. I would imagine, that would probably get his attention.

Zamie

That's a pretty scary story @ThatWasTheOldMe. Luckily I don't drive, I'm pretty sure that if I did drive and lived a long way from an off-license I would have driven while over the legal limit. My local liquor outlet is only 5 minutes walk from my place. Once a blessing, now a curse because it would be so easy to nip out and stock up.

I'm actually too embarrassed to tell my Dr the truth about how much I have been drinking.

Thanks to everyone who has replied to my post. I guess I need to re-evaluate my journey from here. I just need to make it to a whole month sober, and then take the next steps from there. But even 17 days in, my skin is great, my sleep is great, and I'm already losing weight. I feel calmer. Not so angry.

The down side is that I've been online shopping like a demon due to boredom, replacing my alcoholic treats with shopping thrills. But at least I remember what I've bought the next day lol.

I'm going to hang around SR to keep myself in check. I've given up marijuana and cigarettes over the last six years, that was easy - this not so much.

Ghostlight1

Good for you for trying. That's all we can do, try.
I hope it works out for you and I hope you stick around here.

AtomicBlue

Zamie sometimes it’s a day at a time especially in the beginning. I would recommend to anyone to quit for at least 2 months to start really seeing the benefits. Telling the Dr. I get it. I waited until about 6 months sober to “confess”. It was part of my way of solidifying my commitment to life long sobriety.

MindfulMan

Giving up weed for me was easy. Quitting cigarettes the first time was not.

I think your honesty is refreshing.

For years I drifted in and out of addiction, at one point it was cocaine, at another benzos, but always alcohol. But I didn't have a problem, because I could suffer through soul-crushing withdrawals and have months of "sobriety." Then I'd start again and gradually it increased. The periods of "normal" drinking and sobriety lasted for months, at one point I stopped for 7 months and drank "normally" for a year after that.

Yeah, I had no problem with alcohol.

My final binge was drinking 5-7 bottles of wine a day around the clock, which lead to an inpatient stay and a medical detox. They put me on a valium taper, and to be perfectly honest the withdrawal was pretty painless; however had I tried to do it cold turkey I would almost certainly have had seizures, possibly DTs, or worse. It's amazing what a little benzo can do if you're properly tapered.

I'm guessing that had you not had the valium, your withdrawal would have been far more severe, so in a sense you did "get off easy." I also "got off easy" in rehab with the taper, and at first I was just going to stop for 90 days and try drinking again, then it was 6 months, then a year. Fortunately I was locked up with no access to booze, drugs or negative friends and dealing with serious addicts and addiction counselors that didn't let me get away with my ********.

It finally hit me that I was in a place with heroin addicts, meth heads, and lifelong alcoholics who were in their 2nd/3rd/10th rehab. I woke up the first morning not knowing where I was and barely remembering how I got there. I didn't want a second rehab, so I decided that Step 1 made sense and I just really can't drink anymore. That one drink will almost definitely lead to everyday wine, one a day, then two, then three, then a bottle a night with cocktails on weekends, and I'd eventually

be back in rehab.

At that point I was past where you are now, and realized that...so what if I could never drink again? I was a trained sommelier, I'd never get to taste a sauternes with fois gras.

SO?

I'd never get to have that blurring feeling again, and I'd have to negotiate social situations sober.

SO?

When you start to add up the positives of drinking compared to the negatives, it's pretty weak sauce.

I hope that you continue to live for a while without alcohol and REALLY look at your life, and how good it feels to be present at every moment. Sure, you can remember the bloated feeling, the liver issues which CAN eventually kill you, the neuropathy (which for me was a lovely parting gift from booze), the blotchy face, the wasted hours.

But for me the positives are what keep me sober. When I feel this good, why the hell would I ever want booze?

I simply am no longer a drinker.

I like you Zamie. I hope you are no longer a drinker as well. It's good out here.

Ghostlight1

Great post, MindfulMan.

kk1k5x

Hi Zamie

Great posts and honest accounts.
Here, we're all in the same boat basically. The only difference between people on SR trying to get help and stay sober is that they've quit one time more compared to drinking. However, the number of times we 'started again' is for the most part unknown, but certainly a big number.

What resonated with me from your posts was that yearning for 'fuzzy' and 'not a care in the world'. I'm slowly working towards realising that disassociation from my problems isn't solving them. Only solving problems solves them. It's real easy to apply this simple logic in all other parts of our lives, but somehow and for whatever reason, logic stops working once alcohol is introduced into my system. My control over alcohol lasts exactly up to the first drink. From there, **** knows where I'd end up or what I'd end up doing.

Regarding your anxiety. It might be helpful to realise that the anxiety isn't 'primarily' because you're not drinking currently, although the alcoholic voice in your brain probably runs a heavy-handed propaganda campaign to the contrary on a daily basis. It's because you had been drinking the amounts that you did. Alcohol absolutely destroys chemicals in your brain that non-alcoholics have plenty of. The sedative effect of alcohol is a ruse, because it turns off the natural production of chemicals that have the same effect. Your brain's thinking "why the heck should I bother with this, if the host is giving me an ample external supply of the stuff". But it takes time for things to start returning to normal and that time is critical.

Another question you could answer for yourself is: do you actually like the effects, consequences and emotions that entail from drinking or do you like some twisted, lopsidedly positive 'idea' of what booze feels like (even though the hard evidence suggests otherwise)?

The 'functioning' part of 'functioning alcoholic' is that oft overlooked miracle of actually still being alive and walking around when taking into account the damage and mayhem we wreak on our systems. 'Functioning' is also a nifty wordplay on things, because we never talk of 'functioning doctors' or 'functioning cashiers' or 'functioning X of whatever nature'. If X is functioning, then it's just X. So a functioning alcoholic is, in truth, just an 'alcoholic'.

Keep fighting the good fight! Stay adamant in your decision and the benefits will soon follow. And definitely keep posting!