Posted on 12/11/2004 5:37:20 AM PST by RobFromGa
To Any Person Who Suspects They May Have a Drinking Problem,
I have written this to describe my experiences of the past 14 months as I have worked to resolve my drinking problem. Everyone is different and I do not propose to be an expert on this topic, but I have my own personal experience and I am sharing it in the hope that it might help someone else to solve this problem and change their life.
I have now been sober for 14 months without a drop of alcohol. This is not a long time as compared to over 25 years of heavy drinking, but I also know something else: I am totally confident that I will never drink again.
In that 14 months I have made it through two football tailgating seasons, over a hundred business lunches and dinners, numerous trips to Germany where beer flows like water, parties, picnics, Super Bowls, a Caribbean cruise, several family vacations, ups and down in life, etc. All things that I thought “required” alcohol.
Fortunately, I did not have some event that caused me to hit “rock bottom”. (I could have had many rock bottoms but I was lucky). Some people need to lose their job, lose their family, kill or seriously injure someone in a car accident, end up in prison, or many other horrible things that alcohol (or drugs) can cause in order to gather the will to quit. Some people think that “bottom” is the only thing that can make a drinker quit for good. I have met many people who proved to me that this is false, you can make such a decision without going through the horrors. But in some ways it is tougher to take the first step.
In every other way, it is much easier to skip the “rock bottom” step and I hope that this letter helps at least one other person to avoid the lost job, lost marriage or prison route to sobriety.
Last October, I made a firm decision to quit and I followed through on that commitment. But I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t admit that I had similarly tried to control my drinking or quit at least 100 times before.
Why was I able to quit this time as compared with the previous 100 attempts? This is a very good question. The only answer I have come up with as to is that this time I was really ready to quit for myself alone. I was truly 100% sick and tired of the way alcohol affected me and I wanted a different life. All the other times I was, in some way, not really ready to control my drinking. The bottle was still in charge. I tried many tactics: I’d only drink on weekends, only drink after 5pm, only drink at parties (almost anything can become a party in such a plan), only drink beer, only drink wine, only drink hard liquor, only drink things I didn’t like the taste of (I know it sounds nuts but I was nuts), only drink every other week, quit for a day, quit for a weekend, quit for a week, quit for “this vacation or event”. I tried every way to quit in the world to stop drinking except the way that eventually worked for me.
If you are reading this and you know someone that has a drinking problem and you want to help them, you must understand that you are at a severe disadvantage. This is a condition of the mind more than a condition of the body and it is nearly impossible to bring another person to a mental place where they can admit that alcohol is causing more pain in their life than the pleasure it brings. Because a drinker can hardly imagine life without alcohol. It is with us at many points of our thinking and decision making process. We make plans around alcohol and drinking, not all of the time but enough.
If this does not sound like you at this point but you still think you might have a problem, I am not going to tell you that you are OK with your drinking, I will only say that you don’t have the same problem that I was facing so my experience may be of little value to you. I do know people who can go for long periods with nothing at all, then they “binge” and drink to pass out. This is obviously a problem, but not the problem that I have experience with. For 25 years I drank to excess. I often did not get "drunk" but I was always under the influence. For many of those years I drank daily, sometimes starting at 6am and going till 2am the next night. I am not proud of this but it is the truth.
As a problem drinker, you probably associate most of the “fun” you have in life with alcohol in some portion and are worried that without alcohol you will become a dull, bored person with no joy in life. You probably think that there are some things where you will always have to drink to enjoy. I know I worried about that, and I can assure you it is false. You will enjoy life more when you quit, at least that has been my experience. Even that Caribbean cruise and college football tailgating.
I first started drinking in High School. I don’t feel that it is necessary to recount the whole story but I drank to blackout on a number of incidences. Other times I just got really drunk and did stupid things that put my life at risk. I drove many times when I had no business on the road, and it would not have taken much to have had a series of events happen that would have changed my life for the worse. In college, I made good grades at a top Engineering school, while drinking heavily. It was a joke that I would study with a bottle of Jim Beam next to my desk.
As I got into the business world, and specifically into sales, drinking is a daily part of business life. At least that’s what a drinker thinks. And for people who do not have a problem controlling it, drinking is a wonderful part of life. The occasional party or business dinner and a few social drinks to move the business forward are great. But I was never able to do that—for me it was five, ten, fifteen drinks. Into the late hours, with not enough sleep, feeling like crap the next morning when I should have been at my best. Then repeating the same behavior each night. And I was very successful, and I thought drinking was part of the success.
I rationalized that with my talent, the drinking was part of who I am, and that even at 50% I was still more capable than most others so it wasn’t necessary to control myself.
I know this is getting long so I’ll get to the point: One Friday last October I was driving down the road. I hadn’t had a drink in two days and was in one of my “quit drinking the rest of the week” attempts. Rush Limbaugh announced that he was going to a Rehab Center for his drug addiction to resolve his problem. This for some reason got through to me. I called two people that I am close with and told them that I was not going to drink one drop of alcohol until Rush came out of treatment. (Telling these people I had made this decision helped me).
I told myself that after thirty days, I would decide whether I would drink again in a more controlled manner or stop completely. I did not have the luxury of taking the time off from work to enter treatment, but since Rush was going in, he was in there for both of us.
I did not attend AA (although I will talk about AA later) but I was clearly at the first step of their program. It is a very simple concept:
I admitted that I had a drinking problem and that I wanted to do something about it. I can tell you that if you are really at that point then you can fix yourself. If you are not at that step, then there is nothing that anyone can do to help you and I hope that you stay alive, and intact until you reach that point.
After about a week of sobriety, I stopped thinking about alcohol very much. I threw myself into work and tried to start losing weight as well. By the second week I made the decision: “I WILL NEVER DRINK AGAIN” and I wrote that in my journal. I recognized that a bottle of booze is an inanimate object that is simply poison to me and that it cannot force itself into my body. I have the control over whether I use my arms to bring the poison to my lips. And I choose not to allow that to happen ever again.
I have noticed that there is an inner “voice” that I have (he stays fairly silent now) that in the beginning used to put thoughts in my mind like: “surely you can just have one, you’ve been good”, “it’s a beautiful Fall Day, surely you could just do the social drink”, “you’re in the Caribbean for Gods’ sakes, shouldn’t you at least have one Margarita to celebrate your sobriety”. When my mind lets the inner voice talk, I quickly reassert control and think about the serenity that I have found since I quit drinking.
I need to stop writing now, the family is waking up, but I will write another letter tomorrow morning which describes these 14 months and what other tactics I have used in my sobriety.
I hope that this helps at least one other soul out there. Feel free to post questions or suggestions.
FReegards, RobFromGa
Glad you enjoyed it! Have a nice day.
Rob N.
We had a meeting and voted and after several recounts, I an pleased to reportm, it was unanimous!!!
You've been accepted for the Addiction Recovery ping list!
This is a low volume list, ping me if you see something related so I can alert the other wagon-riders.
Rob N.
Welcome to the party. I'm a recovering alcoholic myself as are many others on this thread. I'm online just after midnight central time most nights. Feel free to Freepmail me anytime BEFORE you drink.
Bookmarking for later this morning.
you have a family? children? here is the good news.
my dad was a nasty drunk, but totally functioning, in the work environment, until ... it caught up with him at age 47. hit the bottom. trashed his career (USAF) and finally, his wife left and took the last two children with her. She had about 5 years in Al-anon and had learned how not to enable (difficult). Dad found Bill W, thank God. He got sober and was sober for 2 years. There was some media speculation that a detoxed alcoholic might be able to have just a little. Not him. But he had to try it. two weeks later, some friends of Bill W found him in a crummy motel and intervened. He awoke again and was sober for 27 years until the day he died. I found him years later, a man i had never really known. The past is gone, and my good news is that whatever has happened, its done and those who were hurt will also recover. I remember the bad times, but when I think of him, all i feel is love and admiration, and pride, that he was my dad. Lester Earl Clark.
Thanks for sharing your story, I have three kids and they hopefully don't have any bad memories about me drinking-- thank God. I know it destroys a lot of families.
Have a great day!
bump
Bumping this thread!
"Alcoholism is NOT a disease bump."
Cool, you bumped my bump, LOL!
SO what do you think?
insomnia 12 step bump
Lol.
I believe "alcoholism" is a choice. The proper term should be "drunk" as opposed to "alcoholic". But, hey- we live in a PC world.
So there ya go.
I, too, believe alcohol is a choice.
It's just more of a choice for some than others.
Famous quotes overheard at 12 Step meetings.
Treat your mind like a bad neighborhood - don't go there alone.
Ten out of ten people die, so don't take life too seriously.
Be profound, funny or quiet.
After you talk in a meeting, listen to hear if you said anything.
I don't need your help today.... Love, God.
Our sickness is between our ears.
Want to hear God laugh? Tell Him your plans.
Don't expect to learn about people from books; a person can't fit in a bookcase.
Now I can wake up and say, "Good morning, God!" rather than "Good God, it's morning!"
When I turned myself over to God, I took my life out of the hands of an idiot.
When the world comes to an end, it will do so without my permission.
If you pray for a Cadillac and God sends a jackass, ride it.
There's no one too dumb for this program, but it's possible to be too smart.
All I wanted was to control you, myself and everything else.
My disease is an elephant. As long as I remember it's there, I won't get stepped on.
Try praying. Nothing pleases God more than to hear a strange voice.
Reality can be hell when you're only visiting.
God save me from myself.
"keep it simple"
We're all here because we're not all here.
Constructive criticism: I tell you what's wrong with you.
Destructive criticism: You tell me what is wrong with me.
My mind is out to get me.
I need to get the cotton out of my ears and put it in my mouth.
Come to ninety meetings in ninety days. If you're not satisfied, we'll refund your misery.
Things I turn over to God most easily are those things already fixed.
EGO: Easing God Out
God has never been a problem in my life, but I have been a problem to God all my life.
I know that I'm not yet the person I can be, but I thank God I'm not the person I used to be.
If you think you're happy, you are. If you think you're wise, you're not.
When I don't have expectationsof others, anything positive they do is a pleasant surprise.
"It's just more of a choice for some than others."
How so?
Please add me to your recovery list Rob, and thanks for the thread.
(Quit 1/1/1989--thanks Bill W. for the tools. Thank You Jesus for everything!)
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