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
God bless and keep you elfman2. May He be with you every step of the way.
The bottom is different for everybody.I thought I had hit bottom many times.Then when hit, There's a trap door!
Godspeed on your journey.
"I admire your mental fortitude and hope to follow the same path one-day."
How about today?
"My worst day sober was better than my best day drunk." Ray
Alcoholism is the gift that keeps on giving, generation after generation, and you don't even have to be a drinker to be the recipient.
There's a wonderful book that I picked up at an Al Anon meeting in which different people describe their situations dealing with alcoholics or just having had an alcholic in their distant family and how it has affected their lives and how they've overcome.
In a nutshell, when you have an alcholic in your family, and it doesn't even have to be your immediate family, in this instance, let's say your grandfather on your father's side was a secret drinker, he kept his bottle hidden beneath the tractor seat and only drank when he was out plowing the field and your parents don't touch a drop, what happens is this:
He comes in from the fields and he's acting funny, erratic. The little boy that is your father now quickly learns how to act around his dad to keep the pressure off, he learns not to say what he thinks as his dad might blow up, he learns to keep silent, to joke around a bit, to not show his feelings, in fact, not to feel at all or at least not to know how he feels. His mother (your grandmother) reinforces this behavior as she's been dealing with this a lot longer than you have.
Your dad grows up and he thinks this kind of family relationship is normal. He finds a woman who puts up with his secretiveness, his inability to feel, she, too, probably grew up like this. They get married and have children. Nobody drinks in this new family but the gift that keeps on giving is always present. With no idea that they are not "normal" they teach their children the way they grew up, the way they deal with life, the way they they were shown relationships are supposed to be, with NO IDEA that they have been cheated and are now cheating their children.
And the "gift" just keeps on giving, from generation to generation.
I probably should not have said it in exactly that way. I will address that more tomorrow morning. To give a short preview, I did go to about 75 AA meetings in the past year starting after I had been sober for four months. I got a lot out of that but I have some specific thoughts about the "One Day at a Time" philosophy as it pertains to me.
AA is a valuable organization, and has given me much.
The mental picture I went to my first AA meeting was that I was sober, but that I had a paper-thin coating around me to repel alcohol. I used AA and other reading to build that to 1/2" thick armor plate. I am working on hardening that plate and extending the thickness.
Thanks for your comment, it is on target. And hubris is one part of my weakness.
Keep it up Rob, and if things ever get tough don't ever hesitate to Freepmail me. I'd happily give you my ph. # if it helps to keep you away from the drink, ok? God Bless!
If you do a PING list,Please put me on it. Thanks
Scratch that. 14 years since starting recovery. 11 years since my last drink. (some are sicker than others, you know)
1) Large brass conjones for posting this, and
2) My respect and admiration.
5.56mm
I will build a ping list called "Addiction Recovery". If you want to be on it, let me know. If anyone knows how to mine a thread for all the names to start a ping list let me know. That way I can put everyone who responded here on it as a start.
My fiancé was killed by a drunk driver, herself. She was only 26 years old. Talk about a wake-up call. Although I am happily married a over decade later there is still a hole in my heart that will never be filled.
Thanks for posting your story, it is important.
Alcoholism comes from a person's genes, not from some social problem. Many can enjoy a glass or two of wine or some beer and not go beyond that. Others just can't stop. Most people have examples of this in their own families as I have in my own.
I'd like to be on that ping list please.
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.
Congratulations. Keep up the good work.
Congratulations on your sobriety to date. I wish you many more 'one day at a time's. From a fellow traveller who has been a friend of Bill W's for 23+ years.
I grew up in a family where I was surrounded by alcoholics. Both my mother and father died early because of it and I can think of a few more in the immediate family that shortened their lives from it.
I came close myself but thru the grace of God I was able to over come.
I do have a drink or two now and again but I do know what it can do and I can relate to what you say.
Feel proud for what you have accolplished. We will keep you in our prayers..
I never had a drinking "problem" other than I think I too developed an allergy to it. A severe headache within a few minutes of taking a sip is not a good sign. I stopped even taking a sip about 10 years ago. I am now the "designated driver" when I am out with my friends.
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