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
A wonderful life awaits, replete with ups and downs, the spices which add flavor. May God continue to help you stay sober.
Thank you for this letter.
(Quit 1/1/1989--thanks Bill W. for the tools. Thank You Jesus for everything!)
Powerful example.. Amen.
thanks for the bump.
good quotes! thanks for sharing them.
How so?
Some people are unable to drink a few beers without drinking a case.
Others are unable to drink Friday night at a social gathering and not start drinking Saturday morning when they wake up (and Sunday, Monday,...)
I don't know how or why it is so, but people are different and some very disciplined people are unable to handle alcohol for whatever reason.
For me, I know that I cannot regulate alcohol usage but I can choose not to take the first drink. So that's what I have done. And I will be two years sober on October 8.
Most who have been on this thread are trying to better themselves or help someone they know with an addiction. They are not looking for your sympathy or your understanding, they are looking for solutions and for what worked for others.
Before quitting, I never would have imagined how much better a life with ZERO alcohol would be. Do I ever wish I could drink normally? very occasionally. Do I think that this is possible for me? No. The fact that I would even ask the question or consider it is proof to me of my inability to control alcohol usage.
May God continue to help you stay sober.
I will be TWO in another 9 days! Thanks to everyone who has helped me in my continued sobriety.
thanks for stopping by
You are now on the list. You are welcome for the thread, hope it helped.
I gave up drinking seven years ago. I had just gotten married and was renting a house from my parents. My parents were not pleased with my fiance, and gave me an ultimatum. My father told me to choose between them and her. I chose Mrs. Exile. A few days after the wedding, they told me to pack up and get out. I hit the bottle hard during the move, and on October 31, 1997, I handed my mother the keys to the house and never saw or spoke to them again. I continued to drink pretty heavily until about May of 1998, when my wife told me I needed help. I saw a shrink and got some help with clinical depression. Shortly thereafter I had my last beer. I haven't had a drop of alcohol since, and have no desire to. My life is good. To everyone that has given up the "demon rum," I'd just say, good luck, and it gets easier.
Hello Rob. Glad to hear all is well for you. Not sure if you remember me. Remember the thread, "Judge says alcoholism no disease"? We spoke a bit about the subject.
I'm the guy who probably caused you to pull your hair out. Needless to say, I still believe now the way I did then.
Again, I'm happy you are still well -
Thank you for your post. I also want to share with you a poem that someone had read to me that I like. Its a well known AA poem that you might of already heard.
The Man In the Glass
Author Unknown
When you get what you want in your struggle for self
and the world makes you king for a day,
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself and see what that man has to say for it isn't your Father ,Mother or Wife whose judgment upon you must pass...
The fellows verdict that counts most in your life is the one starring back from the glass.
Some people might say your a straight shootin chum and call you a wonderful guy but the man in the mirror says your only a bum if you can't look him straight in the eye he's the fellow to please never mind all the rest for he's with you clear to the end and you've passed your most dangerous test if the man in the glass is your friend.
You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years and get pats on your back as you pass but your final reward will be hard ache and tears if you've cheated the man in the glass....
Good to hear it’s going well for you Joe. I don’t know where “I had to quit drinking last year” fits into that hierarchy, but it’s holding strong on this end.
If you don't drink, you don't drink--that puts you in the same place as the rest of us, imo. Life is good!
Thank you for posting the poem.
It is so true for life in general.
Ditto. It's not the easiest road, but well worth it!
Thanks for clearing that up bump! Thank God you weren't around to help me when I quit drinking 14 years ago.
Ping
Congratulations to you. And no.. It is NOT a disease.
Put into terms I think you might understand, convincing alcoholics that alcoholism is not a disease is a classic case of winning the battle, and losing the war. Or as momma used to say, "you can be right, or you can be happy...".
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