Step one is acknowledging that there is a problem. That using your drug of choice has made life unmanageable. Im curious when and what made YOU realize your life was unmanageable while using and enough was enough?
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Many things, but the main one that made me say enough, beside the pain in my body and anxiety, wich should been enough, was the mom I had become, or I was not a mom. I was not there for my kids, my body was, but I was not. I was allways drunk, tipsy, blacked out or dead gone zombie. Like sleeping drunk at 14.00, not making dinner, drunk 17.00 not going to fotball with my son, started drinking as soon as I woke up not abel to make birthday cake so bougth cookies. I did not help with homework, they could not bring friends over or for sleepover. Pick up from kindergarden tipsy, going on schoolmeetings tipsy, fotballgames with wine in my waterbottel.Omg so much. Im really embarresd.
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This is a great, thought provoking question.
For me, I could not manage lifes big feelings without alcohol. Deaths, weddings, births of my children, etc. I used alcohol to cope.
As my use increased in both frequency and quantity, I could not manage lifes small feelings without alcohol. It became all that I was. Use became abuse.
It got to a point where I couldnāt stand to feel anything sober, so I was drunk most of the time. Life, big and small, became unmanageable.
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My weekend use slowly progressed to thurs- sun. Then id find āreasonsā to drink during the week. I was throwing up constantly. I wouldnt eat because i didnt want to lose my buzz. That moment where i knew something had to change is when i was drinking when i really didnt want to. My mind and my actions didnt align and i was in a habitual cycle.
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From the outside my life would appear very manageable always partying and still getting up for work and paying the bills but no one saw the cost on the insideā¦ The fear everyday as soon as I woke up, suicidal thoughts, chronic depression, everyone against me, the only thing that matters is getting that next drink or high.
None of it exists when your sober. Problems come and go and everything is manageable.
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I did that to, did not eat, then the alcohol was wasted, like I did not get the feeling I wanted.
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I felt like I was owned all the time and everything else was secondary to it. Despair was all that I was and dying sounded okay to me.
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When I noticed my shaking hands.
But there were many many red flags, that was one of the final ones.
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ā¦when I was able to do 15 shots of vodka in the evening and wake up at 4:30am and go to work like nothing happened on a somewhat regular basis . I didnāt always do 15 shots , but I would never do less then 8 . I finally came to the conclusion that what I was doing was not sustainable and that at some point it was going to effect my job or my marriage
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I was a binge drinker and I realized it was enough when I was going through the same relationship problems due to drinking and I was at a point where I could not be left alone on a Saturday or Sunday or I would spend all day/ night drinking. Not to mention all the poor decisions over the years I had regret, shame, guilt, and anxiety about due to my drinking. Enough was enough.
By following a program of recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous, life is good. 
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Over 22 years of drug use i definitly have had many different life altering experiences or situations that showed me truly how unmanageable my life was. I literally couldnt function as a ānormalā human being. Was doing things for money that the average person doesnt do, having to stop at random bathrooms and stairwells to use drugs so i wouldnt get dope sick, many overdoses, relationships falling apart, my ānormalā jobs suffering, getting in trouble with the law, and then as of my most recent DOCā¦ it was mainly mental. Dont get me wrong there was alot of unmanageability in a physical sense but what brought me to recovery this time around was my mental state. I was just soo tired. Sooo tired of struggling for sooo many years, sooo tired of failing, sooo tired of being empty, sooo tired of not having a sense of self. I felt it in my soul that it was going to be my time soon. I couldnt explain how but for about a month or so before I fully quit, i just felt like i was running out of time. My body was done. I wanted so badly to gain me back (in whatever sense that was bcuz i didnt know who me was). And then there was my son and even though he never saw me use and had everything he needed, he didnt get me as his mom in the full sense. And that KILLED me. It broke me mentally. But that brokenness caused me to get clean. He is a huge motivating factor to never go back to that life. I will never be going back. I refuse to have my life be unmanageable like that ever again. Drugs serve absolutely no purpose in my life and never ever has.
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I spent years trying to moderate. That became exhausting and very unsuccessful. I had been working on reducing stress in my life and I was coming to realize that dealing with the cycle of use was itās own major stressor.
Then one night I drank a good amount and became mean to my husband. I recognized that I had crossed a line I would not tolerate in myself and I decided to do the work of actually quitting. I read a lot about it and got through the first few days on my own. I realized that I needed better ways to hold myself accountable than I had tried before, so I took the plunge and told some people close to me that I was done. I had never really done that before.
I read a lot about alcohol and learned a lot of things I did not previously understand. This helped me make an informed decision. Iām a pretty decisive person, so sticking to the decision is the actual work I have in recovery.
The real answer to the question is that I finally realized that drinking was causing me problems and that Iām at the age where further drinking is about to cause a lot more trouble.
I use the TS community several times a day for support. It really is phenomenal to have immediate access to everyone and reinforce my decision every day. I still want to drink every day even though it has been over a year, but Iām so happy to have ended my use. I had plenty and donāt want anymore.
Iāve gained better health, more patience, less anxiety, more money and more time to do other things that I enjoy. Iām fortunate to have escaped and I work every day to stay sober now that I have found this freedom.
Thanks for the great thread and I wish you all the best in the new year!
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What REALLY made me feel like my life was unmanagable enough to finally actually take the action of not drinking was realizing my body was shutting down because of it. My life was plenty unmanagable in soooo many other ways so I had intended on quitting drinking the week before. But, Friday night came and my partner at the time came home with alcohol and we ended up doing our normal weekly routine. Except this week was different. My higher power stepped in and did for me what I could not do for myself. I drank half of what I did every Friday prior and I was sooooooo sooooo sick. My face had a rash previously and my doctors blamed my auto immune issues-in that moment when I saw my face (which had been doing better) there was no denying the alcohol was shutting down my body. I couldnāt stop throwing up for most of the next day. And I began to realize the path I was heading down was going to leave my son without a mother. I was heading down the same path my father took but a little faster actually. My life was unmanagable and miserable in many ways but that was my wake up call that I needed to actually do something different. I found this website when I downloaded a sober tracker and the wonderful people here helped me to save my life. I still didnāt think I was an alcoholic with my twisted thinking, I thought I was only going to quit for a while. But people here got me thinking about it and there was not one true good thing alcohol brought to my life. It was all BS that helped me bury my head in the sand. I am an alcoholic. I canāt go back to drinking or it will kill me. This was me on that first day, March 10, 2018.
And this wasnāt even the worst of it, this was later in the day when I was able to get out of bed and shower. There is no life in my eyes. I was miserable, hated my life and I didnāt recognize self anymore. Everything was falling apart and I was close to losing everything.
Iāll take my worst day sober over my best day drinking every time. But, it still takes doing the work to keep me sober. My life has improved greatly, one day at a time. But I am still me-flaws and all. If left to my own devices, I can still after almost 5 years sober have the thought creep in that I could drink again. Iām grateful for my recovery, my sober community and my higher power as this is what stands between me and a drink today.
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Thank you so much for this post, Mandi. We share the same sobriety date, Iām a few years behind you at 3/10/2021. So grateful to be sober.
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This was me as well. High functioning (as it is labeled) as far as paying bills, living life, work, family, relationships (mostly)ā¦partying away constantly for decadesā¦my entire adult lifeā¦40+ years.
Insideā¦suicidal, depressed, anxiety ridden, constant thoughts on how to end my pain, shame, guilt. Utter despair. And completely unable to stop drinkingā¦over and over and over for years. Despair.
It took me decades from, āI know I cannot keep doing thisā to āsobrietyā. No one āthis is the momentā or turning point. Just another quit like all the others.
The only difference I can see now is finding this place. And sticking around here.
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When I couldnāt control my moderated drinking anymore and even then we all the red lights were screaming, I couldnāt stop. I was fit on a physical level but inside I was dead. Felt like a Duracell bunny. On the outside smiling, always being there for the patients and back home the surface broke down and I drowned my misery in alcohol. I got a first glimpse of how life could be without being hungover every day after 8 weeks therapy after which I turned to the bottle the first night back home. Already wrote this story many times here. Itās still healing for me to rewrite it from time to time. How bad it was. I still am sure no-one knew how bad it was. After a breakup I lost contact to many people which helped to drink even more. Because poor me deserved no better.
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