Greetings from Portland
 

Hi Everyone,

I'm Steve and I'm an alcoholic. I live in Portland Oregon USA. I've been lurking on this site for over a year, but just now registered to post.

I'm 56 yo and recently finished 17 days in rehab. I'm home now and will begin out-patient treatment on Monday. I expect to do at least 10 days in OP, work the Smart Recovery program and supplement those by attending meetings and visiting the SR website. I have a sponsor on board and a positive support network.

My story is much like most drinkers. Short version is that my moderately heavy beer drinking was manageable until it wasn't. Getting hammered at a basketball game in which my 15 year-old daughter had to drive home from (and subsequently called me out on) was the last straw. I woke up at 5am on the couch in my clothes and realized I had hit bottom. So, I went upstairs, packed some clothes and woke up the kids to tell them I was going to go somewhere to get better.

I took an Uber to the hospital and they directed me to the ER where a nice, very competent social worker found me a detox/recovery center and arranged for a taxi to take me. Detox was a blur (not surprising because I had a BAC of .20 at 10am after not drinking since midnight). The treatment center was great. I learned a lot and met some really great people that I hope to keep in touch with for many years to come.

Anyway, I'm feeling very good right now and looking forward to this next chapter in my life. I know that "talking" with all of you will be very beneficial to me maintaining my sobriety and thriving in this new reality.

I have many more details that I plan on sharing, but this will have to do for now. I just wanted to make sure I got the ball rolling by saying hello.

Steve

Hi! Glad you are here!

Welcome Steve

You've been lurking a while so I don't need to tell you how great this place is.

Hi StevePDX, welcome.

It's great to meet you, Steve! Congratulations for making this life changing decision.

I found that sharing my thoughts here really helped with the anxiety & adjustment to my new life. We're learning to live differently, and knowing we're not alone is so important. Congrats on your 17 days free of it!

Welcome Steve. You will find lots of support here. Your story is so common of the things we have all done and survived. I'm glad you posted and are on the road to recovery. It sounds like you have a great start and have a good plan in place. Keep posting and let us know how it's going.

Welcome Steve!

Welcome Steve, and I'm glad you decided to post. It sounds like you have a good recovery plan in place.

Welcome aboard Steve. Yes, talking things through here has definitely been very helpful to me.

Welcome to the family Steve! :grouphug: Glad you decided to join us. :)

Glad to have you join us Steve - welcome :)

D

Sounds good, Steve. Clinical OP treatment and AA provided me the much-needed kick in the ass to stay sober. It's very doable and reaps huge benefits. Welcome...

Hi Steve, welcome to SR!

Welcome!! I've been to Portland only once several years ago. It's a beautiful city. Powell's books was near my hotel. Green. Beautiful. I absolutely loved it. Anyway, welcome.

In air traffic control, your user name would be SteveKPDX. The K means you are in the continental US. Welcome and don't hesitate to post.

Welcome to the posting side of SR Steve! It sounds like your experience with the ER and Detox were really positive, that’s awesome. You also seem to have a pretty solid plan to continue to get a nice chunk of sobriety under you.

This site has helped me to stay sober for four years. I’m looking forward to getting to know you!

Welcome Steve.

I'm 47 days sober and can attribute a lot of my success to coming here, to SR.

You sound as if to have a very healthy plan in place. Congratulations on making the decision to quit. Your daughter will be so proud of you.

Hope to see you posting real soon. :)

Hi Steve, welcome to SR, hope to see you posting regularly.

Welcome to SR Steve

On going treatment is vital, whatever form it takes, a program and meetings was a huge part of my recovery.

It's exactly like going to the gym to start building muscles. If you stop going and lifting, the new muscles stay around for a while but eventually, if you don't start up again, you end up back at square one.

Muscle loss won't kill you, but alcoholism, untreated, can and does.

Keep up the good work 💪👍

I'm glad to be here, thanks for the warm welcome.

I'm feeling optimistic about my recovery, but know that I need to be cautious about getting ahead of myself by being over confident. My cravings tend to revolve around time of day and locations. I would typically start my drinking in the late afternoon or early evening depending on the time of year.

I've never really been the drink to get really drunk, have to finish everything in the house type. I would generally go to bed in time to sleep off what I drank, although that (sleeping it off) got harder as I got older. I was very functional at work and socially despite my drinking and weekend partying. I took a lot of pride in never calling in sick and would ridicule people who missed days with the brown bottle flu.

I have had a long, long relationship with craft beers and they were mostly good friends to me. I enjoyed going to pubs to socialize, or just to read. It was my decompression, getaway time and it felt good. Over the years though I started bringing beers home with me to keep the feeling going. This still wasn't much of a problem until about my mid 30's when I started feeling the affects of that drinking the next morning.

Around that time I got a DUI and arrested for pot in Reno, both of which were wake up calls. I took inventory of myself and started moderating my drinking. Taking days off, limiting my consumption etc. You know, things normies do. Problem was it didn't really stick for long. Fast forward a couple of years and I was back at it, having 2-3 pints at the pub and then several at home afterward. Of course weekends and trips largely revolved around drinking with heavy drinking friends. My saving grace was that I met my wife to be around that time. She soon became my anchor, or rudder if you will. She drank too, sometimes heavily, but her habit was much more of a college type, take it or leave it, type drinking.

...Sorry to cut this off here, but I need to get to some household duties. I will continue at another time. Have a great day everybody!

Hope you stick around Steve. It has helped me tremendously to come here and post something before heading home in the afternoon to refocus the thought process that so many times has led to a stop at the beer cave.

Oh, and haven't spent time in Portland propper, but there is a lot of cool stuff in the area, the waterfalls, lava field, crater lake, and the beach. Very good seafood there also.

Hi Steve! My daughter goes to Portland often, she is in fact there now - she has family there. It looks beautiful and the people are so lovely. She wants to move there and raise her children there - not so great for me but as long as she's happy! Good luck at the start of what will be the best decision you ever made x

...picking up from meeting my wife.

Fast forward 20 years and I'm happily married with 2 great kids 12 & 15 y.o. with a great career as a home inspector. My drinking has remained relatively the same, but being a heavy moderate drinker with weekly binges is taking its toll physically. It is definitely on my mind, and I find myself lurking on the SR sight, reading books about drinking on my kindle. I'm obsessed with thinking about my after work pints. Am I going to stop at the pub again even though my first thought this morning was "no drinking today"? 9 out 10 times I would stop, or at the very least open a beer after getting home.

Then in October of 2018 the unthinkable happened. My lovely wife is diagnosed with a brain tumor and surgery is scheduled for 2 days later. After the biopsy it is determined that she has GBM4 and a little research shows that it is a beast, there is nothing even remotely hopeful about it on the internet. I think 90% die within 18 months and it is very rare for anyone to make it even 5 years. My wife doesn't want to hear prognosis numbers so I'm left to hold that secret as we start into all her treatments.

She is a fighter though, and takes on literally every form of treatment available to her. My career goes on hold as my days are filled with taking her to various appointments and keeping the household running. My kids both play various sports all year round and getting them to and from practices, games and tournaments can eat up a lot of time. Meanwhile I kept drinking the same, escalating somewhat on nights when I was particularly sad, or meeting with friends who want info and to commiserate. It wasn't long before I started noticing that my hands were starting to shake in the mornings making my kids breakfast and when taking notes at the Dr visits. The pints started getting consumed earlier in the afternoon to get back to a comfort zone.

My wife's disease started becoming more apparent physically and mentally. She stopped being able to read after her 2nd surgery in February and her speech was affected in that she had trouble finding words at times. I decided to have a dry April and made it 11 days before I decided that I was ok and that stopping whenever I wanted wouldn't be a problem.

Despite all of the treatments my wife's disease progressed pretty much as the internet predicted. My role as care giver became more and more demanding. We started traveling when ever possible which was demanding, but I didn't mind and we had some wonderful times together in those months. Of course, I was drinking all the way and white knuckling most mornings, counting the hours until I could grab a beer at lunch.

In early September 2019 we made a trip to Honolulu to meet some friends for a week of fun. We met up with them at the hotel bar and ordered drinks. My beer came and I realized that my hands were shaking bad enough that I didn't think I could pick up the glass without using 2 hands. I quickly excused myself citing stomach issues and went to another bar at the other end of the hotel. I drank 2 pints in rapid succession took a few deep breaths and made my way back to join the group and picked up my glass there with no problems.

That week turned out to be a drinking watershed moment for me. My wife was sleeping about 16 hours a day and so I had lots of time to kill. She had medication times 4 times a day and in order for me to administer them properly I had to get a couple of drinks in me. Vodka in my orange juice or gatorade became my go to for maintenance drinking. I started buying bottles on the sly and hiding them. I knew this was a no good thing and would say it to the mirror as I was mixing drinks in the bathroom.

My wife passed away Nov 5. We had decided to go to Hawaii for the end. My wife was mostly asleep, but she loved being there and agreed that doing hospice there would be a good thing. Her therapist and our friends agreed that taking the kids out of school and us all getting away for the final weeks would be best. Everything played out as expected, She went peacefully with us around her. I was drinking pretty much all day every day at that point. Feeling guilty, but unable to function without it. All along I knew that once I got back home and settled back in I would be able to slow back down and at the very least, go back to my heavy moderation.

Well, you can probably guess what happened from there. I was able to put a few days under my belt, and despite telling myself that I was going to stop until her memorial. I started back into having pints with fellow mourners and I stocked up the house. I was committed to staying lucid at her memorial, but I didn't follow the plan. I drank only beer as planned, but I put them down quickly, didn't drink water and didn't eat. By the end I was hammered and a friend had to get me back to my hotel room. I very much regret that I didn't do a better job of staying present so that I could remember reuniting with all the old friends and extended family that came to celebrate her life. I was told that I was fine from others' point of view, and for that I'm grateful, but inside I felt like ****.

Afterward, I once again I put a few dry days under my belt and thinking that I had at least some control, went back to having a few pints every night. But, as you can imagine, the start times began to creep up the clock and the daily number of beers started expanding. It wan't long before I found myself waking up early so that I could have a couple glasses of "orange juice" before the kids got up so that I could make them breakfast and lunches without my hands flopping around.

The bottom came Jan 13th when I took my kids to a Trailblazer basketball game. We had great seats near the floor, seats where they serve you beers with out having to get up. Well, my daughter has her permit, so I knew she could drive. Despite not discussing it with her, I decided to take the governor off and dink to my hearts content. I managed to drink 3-4 high gravity 20 oz beers (that was on top of the ones I had before we left the house) and when my daughter started questioning me I said, "You're ok with driving home right?" she said "I guess I don't have a choice now" She was not a happy camper all the way home. We gathered in the kitchen to put together some late night snacks and I had the brilliant idea to have a big, fat stiff drink as a nightcap. I was busy mixing it up when my daughter said" What the hell are you doing?" I immediately went on the defensive and said I wasn't all that bad, like the drive home had sobered me up. She then really laid into me saying that I was drunk all the time now and everyone can see it. She said that I was being a **** up and that she was sick of worrying about me and what might happen while I'm out drinking.

I woke up the next morning at 5am, on the couch, in my clothes from that night. My first thought was, "Well, this must be bottom. Time to go.". I got up, packed a small bag and woke up the kids. I told them I needed help and was going in to get better. They would have to get themselves off to school and that I would let them know what was happening before school was out. I ended up in ER which lead me to detox and treatment. My brother in law, God bless him, was available to basically sit in for me as a surrogate father while I spent 17 days in in-patient treatment.

I am blessed and fortunate to be here typing today with my health and my childrens' love and support. I have a great community and family to support us as well. I feel well, strong and cautiously optimistic that I can stay sober.

Thanks for reading my story. I look forward to sharing more in the future and getting to know you all.

May peace be with you and Go Niners!

Damn Steve sorry about your wife.
I can't imagine how tough that's been.
You know it but I'll say it. Your kids need you more than ever. Imagine their sorrow.

Do whatever you got to do to stay sober.
Your daughter sounds like a strong voice of reason even at 15yo.

Don't let the child have to become the parent.

All of you need you to be sober.

Best of luck man. Keep coming here and focusing on your childrens needs and there will be no time to drink.

I’m so sorry about your wife, I but I’m so glad that you are getting sober and being there for your kids. I hope you have a support system to be there for you and the kids as you navigate this next chapter.

I’m glad you’re here.

Thank you for sharing that Steve. Sounds like you have great kids and a lot to live sober for. You can spill your guts here anytime. It's helped me tremendously.

Three weeks in, I'm beginning to see a little difference in my kid's behavior as a result of my setting a better example. I've recognized the importance of that from the beginning but it just wasn't enough as a stand alone deterrent. Too many other factors to let go of.

Sounds like you are moving in a very positive direction.

That is an amazing story Steve and I thank you so much for sharing it with us. It really helps people like me. You really changed my day by reading your story, in a very good way. By the way you could write for a living.

I'm so sorry for the painful time you've been through, Steve. I hope it helps in some small way to talk about it here. Be proud of yourself for being determined to stay sober even with all the challenges you've faced. Staying numb wouldn't have been an answer - and I'm glad you realized that.

I am sorry about the loss of your wife. :hug: But I'm glad you got sober and have a lot of support in staying sober.