SkinnyPete

Hello all the good people on SR! I’m Skinny from California.
I’ve been sober now since Dec. 30, in my mid-40s.. been a heavy drinker for 20 years or so.
12-pack a day until I started to add whiskey in the mix last year.

I’m a performing musician, or was rather.. COVID stopped that. Enter the tailspin.
Managed to abstain for a few days here and there but that’s all. Until after last Christmas.
I started to feel my body collapse and the heart pounding all day got unbearable.
Doctor prescribed a weeks worth of diazepam and it helped with withdrawal.

So here I am. 18 days. Feel fine physically and have even started to do some brisk walking.
But there’s emptiness inside. I’m married with a son and it’s all good but the lockdown is hard. Time crawls and every day blends into the next.

Just wanted to introduce myself. I hope to spend a lot of time here. Have a good rest of your weekend and stay strong. Best to everyone.

Surrendered19

Hi SkinnyPete. That is a great start. 18 days - there is so much healing taking place. The lockdown has been so challenging for so many. I think people have really struggled in their sobriety. I have a real life group I go to each week. The last 10 months we've met on Zoom and 6 or 7 out of a dozen or so have had some slips and relapses in 2020. I do think we all need to make sure we have the tools to stay sober, come what may. But 2020 really put all that to the test. I hope you stay on your healthy road.

Chancellor

Nice to meet you SkinnyPete and congrats on 18 days!

Dee74

Welcome aboard pete

18 days is a good start bit it may take a little longer for the empty feeling to go...alcohol really does a number on our bodies and minds and all that takes time to heal..we do heal tho

D

Mizz

Congrats on 18 days! You are doing wonderfully.
This pandemic has us all a little sideways. We will get through this.

I do think that empty feeling will pass with time. Restructuring our lives takes quite a bit of effort. I do think that when we remove something that has become habitual in our lives it needs to be replaced with something else. That something can be reading, participating on a recovery community, taking up an exercise routine and hobby.... All of it and more. Just my thoughts on the matter. I couldn't just quit alcohol. I really needed some major life changes.

Keep posting and reading. Thank you for being here.

least

Welcome to the family Pete! I started feeling quite normal at around 3 months sober. But that's also when I started practicing gratitude every day and that helped a lot.

You'll find lots of support here.

Hevyn

Welcome Skinny! How great to have you here with us.
It most certainly can be the time you quit for good! 18 days sober is fabulous.
You picked a good time to join & talk to us about your situation. We all understand exactly what you're going through - like others can't.
I think it's normal to feel a bit odd & disoriented in the early days. Those feelings should settle down.

advbike

Welcome SkinnyPete. Hang in there brother, you're through the worst of it. Just a mental game now.

In my experience there was a feeling of loss.. probably the alcohol. But the gains are so much more. I had to find things to do to keep busy.

Exercise is great, hobbies are great, I read a lot of stuff and I spend a lot of time here on SR (that doesn't have to be forever but it helps in the beginning).

This is a great place to get and stay sober.

EllyB

Hi Pete! Welcome!
Yes, the CA lockdown sucks, and it sucks to be out of work (I am also struggling with both). But when I sobered up this fall, I realized it would really suck to get COVID and still be drinking. You have a family that needs you, and that level of drinking is not sustainable!
Feel free to join a Newcomer thread and post as much as you need to.

SkinnyPete

Thank you all for being so welcoming. These forums are great. I’ve been lurking here a lot in the past and created this account last spring but it took me this long to actually post. Because alcohol.

CA lockdown makes it impossible for me to do my line of work. A lot of colleagues are really struggling which is hard to see. USA is going through a bit of a crisis, to put it mildly, in other aspects as well. People are anxious and future uncertain.

I figured that I either increase my intake or stop completely. I’m trying the latter. Famous last words maybe but it feels different this time. I know 18 days is just a start but I’m staying busy at least. My wife works remotely so I help our son with the distance learning thing, cook food, read history books (World War I at the moment), go for walks and even strum guitar a little bit. So far so good.

But booze can sucker punch you hard. I need to watch out for that. Amazingly I haven’t had cravings really but if / when I get em, I’ll come here instead of driving to the liquor store. That’s the plan. Thanks again folks! Keep up the good work and looking forward to talking more soon.

BarbieKen

Welcome Skinny Pete,

Hey, my hubby got sober at 47. He celebrated 15 years in December. I just wanted to share that it’s SO worth it AND you can do this sobriety thing too— no matter the age!
Ken plays (lead singer) in a local band (music IS his passion — also a full time job as owner of a small business for 30 years).

Of course, no gigs. What he started doing back in April was singing & playing guitar (with amp) every Friday night on our porch. Live on FB too. It’s such a break from the sameness of our lives .... great response from our neighbors too! We ALL look forward to it .

Perhaps you might be able to do this?

Feeding our addiction took up a lot of our day. So yeah when you quit you can at first be bored. Ken & I both joined A.A. from the beginning. I could write a ton of positive things. But .... look around and find fellow like-minded people who will support your sobriety. Like here on SR. 💛



Bobbi

Steely

Welcome SkinnyPete. The empty feeling will undoubtedly be there at 18 days but it passes.

You seem to be doing everything right in replacing the alcohol with positives moves. And it gets better. I'm 12 months sober now and it is so much better. Even the crappola days. We learn from these too.

Bet you're not as skinny as me Pete. "Who comes to speak for the skin and the bone?" - Billy Bragg

Getting sober, learning along the way is the very best thing you will ever do for yourself SkinnyPete.

Keep posting and get to know people. So many good people here.

AAPJ

Hi SkinnyPete and welcome. I am very sorry that COVID shut down the live performance industry. We are on the east coast and we liked to occasionally travel to NYC for a Broadway show. But that's been shut down for 10+ months now. Sigh. I hope the vaccine gets society back to normal soon.

DriGuy

It's not uncommon. I think that's what they call an existential crisis. But it doesn't have to be a crisis on the order of a 5 alarm fire. It's just something we must work through, ignore, or change. It's common enough that it is often a humorous cliche', where people ask the mundane question, "What is the meaning of life?" When you're a musician playing gigs, that's the meaning of life. But where did this meaning come from? Well, you put it there. So that would suggest you might put something else there for now. It can be anything you want, you could practice to get better, collect stamps, or do nothing at all. And most of the time and existential crisis might just be noticing the reality that life has no meaning in and of itself. The amoeba doesn't wander around aimlessly. It doesn't strive for anything and it doesn't concern itself with meaning. It is just alive. Or some people believe that a meaning to life is put there by a creator, and that suffices to fill the emptiness.

I don't know if life is imbued with a special meaning. I can't think of what that would be, and that transient sense of emptiness has been one of the smaller issues I have had to deal with. But I have decided that while I'm here, I'm just going to enjoy this life as much as possible, and I guess I'm doing OK. I'm happy most of the time and have certainly felt productive at times, and I find that meaningful.

brighterday1234

Congratulations on 18 days sober! Recovery from alcoholism is a life long journey. It takes a long time to really start healing and this is obviously conducive to how much “work” you put into it.

IcedVoVo

Welcome Skinny Pete! Congratulations on your 18-day milestone. I’m sorry you’re not working right now, but you’re doing something that is going to make your working life much better when things open up. I like Dri Guy’s existential ‘crisis’ description where it isn’t so much a crisis but a replacement of purpose.

Again, welcome. I look forward to reading more of your posts.

tursiops999

Welcome, Skinny! Great job on 18 days. Sobriety is really worth it, and it gets better over time. I too felt empty, or something missing when I quit. Finding how to fill that has been a great adventure, with things I never would have discovered if I kept drinking. It is extra tough having your work put on hold -- I feel for you. We're here to support you.

lifewithart

Covid-19 has been rough, but we can take it back with fulfilling lives of sobriety!

FlyingDutchMan

Hey Pete, it’s good to have you. I read you’re strumming the guitar a bit. YouTube is full of such good tutorial videos. Surely there must be something that you would like learn to play. I really like playing fingerstyle myself but I don’t know if that’s your kind of thing.

If I can recommend something else, it’s reading old and new threads on this forum. It can be so refreshing to read that your struggles are the struggles of many people on this forum. I always thought no one could relate to what I was feeling and going through. Well...that turned out to be something else when I had a good read on SR.

Congratulations on the 18 days btw, that’s a strong start and hopefully the beginning of many more beautiful things to come for you.

Take care!