Dee74

We don’t want people to be triggered.

D

MLD51

I went out with a bang. Had some red wine at a bar. Drove home, over the limit, as usual, and got pulled over for my 3rd DUI (the second one in the space of 2 and a half years, the first one was 10 years before that). Twice the legal limit, but didn't even really feel drunk at all, my tolerance was so high. I decided pretty much the minute I got pulled over that I needed to quit drinking for good. That reality really sank in over the next few days, and when I stepped into my first AA meeting 4 days after the DUI, and went for treatment intake the day after that, I knew I was going to surrender and quit. I was broken and at a rock bottom I had not ever felt (although I had felt and known for years that I was an alcoholic). It was a dramatic incident that was the catalyst, but I already knew the game was up long before that, I just didn't know how to quit.

Hevyn

It was a sip of beer. It tasted like poison. My life would have ended if I'd continued. I poured the rest of the can down the drain & cried. I knew it was over.

izzy1962

Honestly dont remember the last drink or pretty much anything the last day of the binge. I was a mess but something made me call the Dr. Sure do remember the withdrawals though.

katlin

This thread intrigued me so I read all of the posts. For me, this current (and final!) stretch of being free from alcohol is my third real attempt. For my other two attempts, I'm pretty certain my last drink before a (short) period of abstinence was some version of a white wine. Both times, I picked back up after two or three weeks alcohol free. This time, I set a date of 08/01/21 as my day one. On 08/03/21 two frozen lime margaritas at a local Mexican eatery took me down. So, those little "buy one - get one free" frozen concoctions were my swan song. Day 1 was 08/04/21. Today is Day 94. Like another poster, I am so looking forward to the Holiday season alcohol free. It's been about a 1.5 decades since I've experienced one completely sober.

Reid82

I'm honestly not 100% sure. I think it was a few cans in the early hours of the 10th May 2019 as I was on a wild bender for over a week solid. I more or less blacked out for 3-4 days near
the end of it. I can only recall bits and pieces of the end of the bender. I do recall the horrific withdrawals once I stopped drinking that day though.

Hodd

Makes me shudder to think of it. And to think, just one drink would’ve helped (not).

Polaroid

Totally not out of the blue. It was yesterday. I wanted a drink. Worst of all, it was hand sanitizer, 85%. Ethanol-based though, so it's the same thing they stuff in beer, wine, etc. Unfortunately, it has become has become largely available because of the pandemic.

Today, effin dissapointed that I relapsed. Headache, depression, anxiety, you name it. Could've been day 16 soon, but I'm back at day 1.

Ringside

Christmas night. I woke up Christmas morning anxious, depressed, and more empty and spiritually and emotionally bankrupt than I had ever been. I spent a while before getting out of bed talking to my then-girlfriend about how my affairs could be handled if I ended my life. This was while her family, visiting from across the country, was getting ready for the holiday in the guest room.

I put on my best face and went to my parents' house, and then my cousin's house. All I could think about was when I could get drunk, but I realistically couldn't because by that time it was common knowledge among my partner and my immediate family that my drinking was out of control. Sneaking it was really my only good option. So, while the people at my cousin's house were together in another room, I slipped out, grabbed a bottle of wine from a box I saw in the garage, shoved it down my pants to sneak it out of the house, and went to my car to drink it as fast as I could. Problem was, I couldn't get the bottle open. So I waited until I got home and while everyone was getting ready for bed, I ran out to the car, finally opened the bottle, and chugged it down in about 30 seconds. It barely moved the sobriety needle. It was sad and pathetic and I'll never forget it and the moments leading up to it that day. It was also the day that completely changed my life, for the better.

RecklessDrunk

It was a 3 day event.

I wasn't a daily drinker and more often then not went on a roll of only drinking on weekends and following a strict diet/exercise schedule. I take advantage of the late summer heat to build my endurance running outside. I thought I was doing well, hadn't drank outside of my schedule in weeks.

It started on a Thursday. Supposed to lift weights but then realized my favorite team's preseason game is nationally televised. I'm an out of state fan but hardly miss a regular season game. Didn't realize this was televised tonight. Oh no, I can't watch without drinking. I'm in luck or so I thought. There is a liquor store right across the shopping center from the gym. I will just do a cheap job in the gym and grab some drink for the game. Uneventful, team sucked as usual and i went to work a little hungover.

I knew that since I've been doing so good controlling my drinking I can probably just get right back on track. Once I drink on a weeknight normally the week is shot. Once I break that schedule it becomes a binge. Its like I can't get sober until Monday whether I started drinking on the previous Saturday or Tuesday.

This will be different. I will just resume with my scheduled 6 mile run on Friday night after work and it will shake off any remains of a hangover and I will feel great and not need a drink.

So after work Friday I need to get in the left lane to proceed straight across the traffic light to go home but there is a problem. The car is staying in the right lane to make a right and go to the liquor store. I park at the liquor store but I get the strength to leave. Then the car turns back around, I do not have the power to leave without getting drink! The thought of narcotics isn't even on my radar at this point.

A few drinks later and suddenly the person I turn into when I drink has my car, my license, and bank card. Soon he has a craving for narcotics.

So the next thing I know its the middle of the night and im in jail for felony drug possession, dwi, some narcotics in a car crap, near a school crap, reckless driving, speeding, misdemeanor weed, etc. The printout of the court tickets was taller then me (I'm not that much under 6 ft)

I was rattled that Saturday morning. My career is probably over and I have no other skill. How will I ever work again?How will I survive? Will this be in the newspaper? All over the internet? Should I just kill myself now? Thought I was too chicken but I've got a really good idea. My next focus is get the car out of impound and I probably can't smell like alcohol doing it. Not even really much of a day time drinker but this is different. Once I get the car parked back home I'm drinking!

I usually drank on Sundays and wrote Mondays off as a hungover day. Adjusted my work schedule accordingly, keep Monday's work mellow and ran Monday night to shake it off. This Sunday was different. I guess after all those years of drinking I realized there is no way I can sit at work with a hangover fueled anxiety attack on Monday. Im afraid I will be in a straight jacket. So I ran on Sunday instead. The anxiety was still bad. I dealt with it trying not to make it worse. My plan was not to quit drinking for good at this point it was to try and get a grip on my anxiety and keep up with an important project at work. Also not let work know anything was wrong. If I knew that was going to be my last drink I would have had another!

Finally by that Tuesday i was able to meet with my lawyer. The one that got a dwi reduced 20 years prior. After that first arrest I was really careful, until I needed drugs, doh! Lawyer sent me to AA. Much of that anxiety came off my shoulders right at that first meeting. I had a sense of hope that I didn't even think existed anymore for me.

Jim1958

I know it was a beer, but I don't remember drinking it. I did not go out with a bang or a party or anything. What I do remember is the hangover the next day. It was awful and maybe the all time worst. And that is saying something. My hangovers would last days, usually 3. Not a wild end, but an end. I feel so much better after quitting. I am sure everyone does, health wise. Mentally the issue is far more complex. Asking yourself why you are drinking is a big step. Quitting is not easy, but avoiding relapse is the real hard part. I should say that a big help to me has been SR and my family. My brother in law has been in AA for years. Another family member just got their 5 year chip. Being around sober people at family events is a huge benefit. We all give each other positive feedback on sobriety, and that helps tremendously.

Hodd

My wife has never drunk which is obviously a bonus now although she didn’t appreciate how hard it was to quit. She was given some bottles of wine not long after I’d quit and left them in the living room for weeks. I asked her to get rid.

I feel for those who quit/are quitting when the partner continues to drink. It shouldn’t be a reason not to quit, of course, but it must be tougher.

Glad you’re doing well, Jim. Long may it continue.

DriGuy

I can't remember much about my last drink. I can't remember what I was doing, how drunk I got, or what I was drinking. It was in Montana, and it was January 3rd, 1996, followed by 5 days of climbing the walls, and then a peaceful relief knowing I would never drink again.

TroubleAfoot

I was at a restaurant/bar drinking with friends when it hit me that I was drunk and needed to get the hell out of there. This was happening more and more towards the end. My tolerance had really began to drop and I couldn't maintain as nearly as well as I had been able to. Its a small town and there were many tables of people I knew personally. I went to the bathroom, before leaving, and had to try really hard not to stumble, as I walked through the place, so as to attempt to not look as drunk as I really was. This situation was another increasingly familiar dilemma. I got out to my truck and made the short drive home.

I was so over this stupidity and tired of feeling like garbage everyday after years of living drunk, hungover, drunk, hungover in perpetuity. I didn't necessary plan on quitting drinking that next day because I had been telling myself, incorrectly, I was going to quit nearly every single morning I woke up. But that day something clicked and I haven't drank since.

So far so good. Best decision I ever made even if it was very much better late than never.

lessgravity

It's strange to think about for me - it's not all that long ago, a little over 3.5 years ago, and it both feels like another lifetime and right around the last corner. I had a sporting event on a weekend with an old friend that I got so wasted at I couldn't even enjoy it, then a day after spent chugging a whole bottle of wine in a city park, knowing, hoping, steeling myself to put it down, couple days later a few last swigs of the horror of cheap vodka to calm my nerves before I finally, finally put it down for good. What a mess it was. So luck to have freed myself and escaped in time.

TroubleAfoot

I completely understand your point but, speaking for myself, I actually find these kinds of threads motivating. There was a similar thread to this, a few months ago and, for me, to retell my story, and read those of others, about the despair we had gotten to serves as a stark reminder of why we quit in the first place. These are the bad memories that we tend to forget as, like you said, has been proven to happen more than forgetting those wild good time stories. To be reminded of the bad stuff is to help stay on track.

PeacefulWater12

My last drink was over eleven years ago, I don't remember any details other than it was disappointing and not working for me any more. It would have been vodka as that was all I drank towards the end. Beer and wine were far too weak by that point.

My former friend was not my friend any longer. The fun and laughing was gone, it was all darkness now.

I had been trying to quit for quite a while and I was stuck in a four day loop. Go for three days then cave on day four. At the time I was convinced it was due to some weird out of my control body chemistry thing. No. It was purely the b/s I was telling myself that kept me in that four day cycle.

Then one day, and I have no idea why, I didn't drink on day four. That was it. I was done.

I relate to a comment above about crying at the loss. Grief for the very product that was ruining my life and health.

My husband continued to drink and died from it. I quit and did not. Simple as that.

TroubleAfoot

I am very sorry to hear about this. It is such a tragedy when someone drinks themselves to death. For myself I could see this happening if I didn't quit soon, could see myself dying of what pretty much amounts to a slow agonizing suicide of despair. So I, too, quit. Unlike you I only have six months under my belt but I hope to one day be able to say I haven't drank for 11 years and am still going strong.

PeacefulWater12

Thank you. Your description is accurate, that is exactly what it was like.

Congratulations on six months.

DriGuy

That was very much like me. I tried for years too, but I was on a three day cycle. Then one day, I didn't drink on day 4 or 5. Day 5 was the worst, and then that was it, and I was done.

Those withdrawals were the worst part of quitting for me, after that it was all about not listening to my own BS (the AV part of me), and recognizing the stupidity of it all. I found that relatively easy, but I somehow knew that this was still a vulnerable time, because I watched so many others fail after making it through the withdrawals.

I'm pretty good at making good decisions and committing, and I decided never again to have to go through withdrawals, because while thinking and choosing is easy, exerting that much will power is just too exhausting for me, and even today, I doubt the strength of brute willpower; Well mine at least.

I had to learn to be happy not drinking I guess, but even that is not exactly true, because on day 6 and everyday after that, even on a bad day, I was always happy and grateful to be out of the addiction cycle. I cannot remember one day since then when I wanted to drink, and those cravings that surfaced on rarer and rarer occasions, were nothing but ugly thoughts and reminders of how sick I once was.

The fact is, being sober was the "easier softer way." And I like things to be easy... Well, somethings.