If You Suspect You Might Have A Drinking Problem (An Open Letter)

RobFromGa | December 11, 2004 | RobFromGa

[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

[SealSeven]

I grew up with an abusive "alcoholic" father. I appreciate your pearls of wisdom but save them for someone who is ignorant on this subject. I will not praise an "alcoholic" for ceasing his habit, but I will condemn him for starting it.

[RobFromGa]

I posted a two year anniversary update thread here if you found this thread first:

No Hangovers for Two Years!
	Posted by RobFromGa On News/Activism 10/08/2005 10:33:57 AM EDT · 304 replies · 3,917+ views self | October 8, 2005 | RobFromGa

[colorado tanker]

You might consider Al-Anon. Living with that much anger can be almost as toxic as doing the booze.

[RobFromGa]

If anyone wants to discuss the topic of is Alcoholism a Disease, here is a thread on that topic,

Judge says alcoholism no disease
	Posted by RobFromGa On News/Activism 07/29/2005 8:37:23 AM EDT · 268 replies · 2,973+ views

[SealSeven]

I appreciate the concern, but..... I don't need it. My anger is not a disease. It is the end result of somebody elses habit.
No, it does not occupy my every thought. I don't walk around saying I'm angry because my father was a drunk. I lived (barely) and learned.
Such as life -

[SealSeven]

Thanks for the polite way of asking me to leave, Rob.
What a guy -

[TChris]

Congratulations! May God bless your honorable decision and continued commitment to sobriety. :-)

[colorado tanker]

All I can say is I've been exactly where you are. If you ever decide you might want something better for you, other folks who have been there are ready to help. This is for you, not the alky. FRegards.

[Republic of Texas]

No argument from me. I just don't want to get hung up on semantics. The word disease is a bit misused perhaps, but it works for alcoholics. Bill W. (co-founder of AA) was an English major, and a bit of a word-smith. That's why his book (Da Big Book!) was so effective. At the time there was no other effective treatment for alcoholism.

As far as your second point, I always get embarrassed when people congratulate me for being sober a while. In my mind I'm only doing what I should have done all along (and I don't think I made me sober). The only reason it is relevant is that it might help someone else.

[RobFromGa]

I'm not asking you to leave, I am just pointing out that there might be a better thread to discuss this on, and you wouldn't have to repeat yourself. Most of your arguments and history are found on that other thread, so why have to type it all in again.

I am very sorry for the way you were treated by your father and hope that you find peace in your life as you deal with the damage he caused you. You will have to find that peace, it will not be delivered to you gift-wrapped.

Take care and feel free to stick around.

[RobFromGa]

thanks for the kind words

[SealSeven]

Fair enough, sir. You are a credit to your group. You speak in a very non-condescending way. In other words, you have tact (somewhat of a rarity these days).


Colorado Tanker, I appreciate your concern and can sympathize with you since you've been down this road.
However, at this point, I am beyond counsel, so to speak.
Hopefully, life is good for you now, but as you know - You will never forget.

[SealSeven]

No prob, Rob. You are correct. Forgive my being a butt.
I'm as peaceful as Im gonna get. Don't need to look for it.

Godspeed

[RobFromGa]

Take care and good luck!

[bad company]

It's not the easiest road, but well worth it!

Sure beats the hell out of waking up in bathtubs.

[Cementjungle]

If you can take it or leave it, you are probably okay. I drink occcasionally, but if someone told me I could never have another drink, it would not really bother me that much.

That happened to me a few years back when I discovered I somehow have Hep C. The only thing you're supposed to do to control that is not drink. I have Irish blood, so I always drank like a fish, but have not had a drop since that day I got the news. I'm hoping that someday they invent a cure so I can have a JD and water again or at least a good red wine with my prime rib.

[RobFromGa]

Depends on the bathtub and who's in it with you.

Most bathtubs are not great.

[RobFromGa]

Glad you were able to quit for health reasons when you had to. But sorry you had to. Hope you find your cure...

[RobFromGa]

thanks for your contributions to this thread Tex

[sanemom]

I know there will be many who see themselves in your post Rob, and as the child of two alcoholics (one dead at 53, one recovering poorly from a liver transplant at 63, both heavy, heavy burdens to their children) may I say thank you for that.

May God bless you and keep you strong-I cannot begin to tell you the gift you give to your family. And YES I will praise you for stopping-whether alcoholism is a disease or a choice I don't think any of us are born perfect, we are all works in progress in one way or another. It's not what you've done in the past but where you go from here that counts, and it's never too late to be the best person you can be.