Hello all,
Finally got my email to work so I could create an account.
I’ve been off alcohol for 10 days now. I’ve been on the app reading for a few days, but couldn’t respond or post due to said email problem. Anyway, I downloaded this app and a few others wondering what would work best, and I love the camaraderie and the feedback here. It seems like such a welcoming place. Also, being very numbers driven, at least in the “ how many days has it been?“ sense, I love the fact that you can get your sobriety down to the second and have that chart right up there to it see ticking away.
One thing I’ve learned in reading so many different stories is that we all have so much in common (especially for me the ex drinkers) and yet our stories are all as unique as we are.
I see a lot of people coming back, having relapsed or clicking reset for any number of reasons. I myself have been there a million times as well. This is my phase now, but I’m not so naïve as to say that I’ll never drink again. I don’t do well with absolutes. I’m just not drinking today.
This is the first time that I actually went public with it. In the past I would quit, but since I hid my drinking, I also hid the quitting. No one would know if you slipped up right? No benchmark to really go off of except your own ironclad will. LOL
So I did one of my final days like I’ve done so many times 10 ago, but the next day I made an appointment with my doctor. It was a few days before the visit, and in that time span I could’ve canceled the appointment and just kept on, however I downloaded this app and a couple others and I found people like me and as suspected, just something in the telling of my story, helps me with my motivation.
It was about three or four days before
the doctor appt,
And those days went fine. I took a Benadryl last night as my wont. When I went in, I teared up quite a bit when I told my story. I’m not a spring chicken, but in my adult life drinking, the longest I’ve gone without is only five weeks. Not to say that every day has been a bender or that I’ve been down in the gutter—no DUIs, not been arrested, all that. That stuff goes to your head because you think I’m not that bad. In many ways, a solid reset earlier in life would’ve done me a lot of good. but you just keep going on with your daily habit and the days go by… stereo typical high functioning alcoholic I suppose.
Well I told him the story, and told him that I wanted a therapist who can help in this kind of thing ideally. I understand that AAA or other groups are for some people, and I’m not ruling anything out, but right now this is the approach I wanted to take. His thought was, let’s take this seriously. It’s up to you if you want to do this, but he suggested an anti-depressant, and also Naltrexone. Needless to say this is the first time I’ve used that, coming clean as it were to someone else about the alcohol, but also the fact that I want to quit, I’m determined, so I said sure, let’s do it. The drug (or the combo of the two) really messed me up the first day or two, abdominal pains and I honestly felt buzzed to the point where I thought wow this is pretty good and I can swap out alcohol for this. But after a couple days it settled in. I do feel a little subdued: in a way I wish I had my real feelings, but if this is working, I’ll take it for now. I haven’t drank or wanted one in 10 days, and that includes a couple of family situations and a trip to the bar with people who were drinking. (By the way it’s sad how few choices there are for the non-drinker! I think there’s a market there.)
What I want to do long term is not just go through every day not drinking, but to investigate the source of the problem or what caused the problem in the first place, or at least enabled it.
Well, I could go on for hours and hours. I guess that’s what the therapist is for. Thanks for listening, nice to meet you. I hope you can help me, and I hope to help you and newcomers as well.
Cheers!