First time posting about my addiction anywhere. I started drinking at age 13. I drank a lot throughout my development into adulthood and I feel like it fucked up my brain chemistry. When I drink, I feel more myself. I’m witty, happy, I access a part of my brain I feel like I can’t without it, my anxiety is gone, I feel more loving, I feel more intellectual. For a decent amount of time I felt fairly in control, even though when I drink I drink very heavily. I can finish a pint of whiskey and follow with an unmeasurable amount of beers into the night. When I wake up, I feel gross. I feel depressed, sometimes headachy. I think maybe the drinking has contributed to bad nightmares I’ve had for a while too now. I feel exhausted all the time too. This last year I’ve felt out of control. I have worked 3 years in a psych hospital and this last year I saw some things I wish I could erase from my memory. I think that contributed to loss of control a lot. I’m at the point where I will say I’m only going to drink on the weekend, but it bleeds into the week, and I feel like I can’t stop. I will stop for a night, maybe 2, then start back up. I don’t drink in the morning, unless it’s a weekend. When I don’t drink I feel angry, irritable, anxious… I don’t want to be that girl as an adult. I don’t want to die early, or have health problems because of this addiction. I’m not ready to accept the concept of completely stopping yet, I want to believe I can get back to a controlled amount, but I’m trying to put that in the back of my mind and just focus on getting maybe 90 days for now. Baby steps I guess. So here I am. Looking for support, looking for other stories, looking for hope. Thanks for reading.
Baby steps are still steps. I hope you are able to succeed, but it will be difficult with this mindset. You are NOT yourself when you’re drinking, you arr a chemically altered version of yourself that you think you like better. That’s the alcohol playing with the perceptions in your brain. And it sounds like you may have a much deeper real problem with alcohol you realize at this point. You may require medical intervention to quit to avoid dangerous withdrawal symptoms. I applaud you for wanting to take positive steps, and wish you the best.
Yeah, I recognize that I don’t need alcohol to be myself, and that’s a bullshit idea I’ve created. But it’s very real to me. Thankfully I’m not in a place where I get the shakes or anything. Hopefully medical attention won’t be needed. I appreciate your realness and you’re support. Thank you.
I thought I was the “real version” of myself when I was drunk. I felt more confident, temporarily happy, relaxed, outgoing, funny… but at 33 days sober, I can honestly say I’m FINALY my real self now after heavy drinking for more than 10 years. I’m a completely different person. I am really confident, REALLY happy, really relaxed- and I don’t feel tired or sluggish and ridden with guilt in the mornings.
I was like you, every week I would set goals. They would always be no drinking during the week, exercise, eat right. But like you I too would drink during the week.
At day 28 something has shifted within me; I can really see sober life as a way of life.
You can do it too! Your brain will tell you it’s hard, but I’m telling you once you feel the benefits I am… you’ll love life
This is great to hear, thank you so much. I know somewhere in the back of my mind this is true for me too.
That’s very good news. I encourage you to check out SMARTrecovery.org and utilize some of their tools. It may be an eye opening experience for you. All the best to you!
Sounds like a rough way to grow up, I’m sorry to hear that. Being so used to living this way for so long, I really admire the courage you’re showing by talking about it and being ready to make steps to lessen alcohol’s negative impacts on you.
I started drinking much later, but it became 24/7 drinking, and very heavy at that towards my lady relapse. I know the heaviness of coming to terms of alcohol eating up more and more of your week. I don’t know how you make it work, holding down a job at the same time. At least it shows you’ve got strength, which you can start to use against alcohol instead of using the strength to fit alcohol into your life.
I get feeling more yourself, I do, and I liked disinhibition that helped me share parts of myself with others, but in all honesty, you’ve most likely developed a psychological dependence on alcohol to feel like yourself, because “yourself” right now is a person used to having alcohol in the system. Underneath there’s a true you to discover in sobriety, and I’m excited for you to experience that. And it will happen without the need for alcohol. 
While I personally think cutting out alcohol entirely, zero drinks, just being completely done for life is the way to go, I am not at all here to force that on you, it’s your decision to make or not, as you decide what you want. It’s just that there are endless stories about people “cutting back” for various durations and then relapsing, and pretty much never any success stories for moderation. But you don’t have to wrangle the long term plans in your head - many of us take it day by day. We wake up in the morning and decide not to drink that day. The future will come when it comes. It gets overwhelming pretty fast if you think of it in terms of “the rest of my life”. Today I decided I won’t drink. I managed today. Tomorrow I’ll face the same decision, it’s just a rhythm for me that becomes more automatic with time.
On withdrawals, you do have some risk factors for having worse withdrawals but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll need medical attention. When in doubt ask a professional. Seems like most of us here did it cold turkey. I did cold turkey as well as inpatient detox/hospitalization on different occasions.
At any rate, I’m really glad you joined us, it’s been such a great place for me, finding community, support, and advice.
Yes! @PnwPaintedSoul I hear great things about SMART and AA all the time, it helps especially with making the quit stick. I personally have only tried AA (which is excellent), there’s lots of discussion on various programs that you can find by searching, if you are ready to consider working a program. There are others I’m struggling to remember names of… Women for Sobriety and SOS I believe. Beyond that I don’t really know much about them.
But getting over the physical challenges of quitting cold turkey or with medical assistance is probably going to take your focus at first. If you do decide to try cutting back, you’ll have a big exhausting mental struggle to deal with as well, associated with having to try to stick to drinking some but not more. And in my experience it’s more pleasant overall just to rip off the bandaid and let it sting than slowly pull it off. It’s sucky withdrawal either way.
Welcome to the forum, @PnwPaintedSoul . Welcome to sobriety. I worked for many years in and around psych hospitals, it did make me question conventional definitions of sanity.
I’m aching a little when reading your post. I hear your admission that you’ve lost control, and at the same time, the denial is still at work. I too was not a guy who drank in the morning, until I worked third shift and drank after work at 7 am. And then drank in the mornings only on weekends, but just try to get me to not drink one of those mornings! The shakes eventually came for me, and the alcoholic neuropathy (numbness in the links and extremities).
After I got sober, in about 2 months, I began to feel that my real life was what happened at AA meetings and around my sobriety. The other stuff, work and riding the bus and even family time, was kind of what I did until I could return to my real life. I’ve gotten more balance now and feel more whole, but being a sober alcoholic is at the core of my psyche. It defines what I do and think and feel. And it is good.
Blessings on your house 
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Thank you. I really appreciate it. Sometimes it’s nice to hear “wow, that sucks”. I pride myself on not needing any validation about how I’ve grown up or what I’ve gone through. It feels good to let that barrier down.
Cold turkey is definitely where I’m starting. I just don’t want anything to do with alcohol right now. I feel gross. I feel lost. I feel unmotivated and missing a piece of myself having hurt my body for so long.
I never really considered myself to be strong because of holding a job and drinking, just figured I was a “functioning addict”. I appreciate the words about moderation in relation to success. That’s a good reality to have in mind.
I am tearing up from the overwhelming amount of encouragement I’m receiving already. I feel really blessed I found this community. Just the fact there are people out there that want to take the time to hear me gives me so much hope.
Forgot to mention in my story that I recently considered cutting myself while I was drunk, which was odd because I stopped that habit at about 16 with one relapse in my early 20’s. My guess is that I just have gone so deep my brain is just searching for more and more chemicals to feed addiction, so the alcohol wasn’t enough and it wanted dopamine too or something. Or maybe I’m just honestly super depressed from how hard I’ve fallen.
Another thing I wanted to mention was I have noticed my heart beating irregularly more often. Especially at night when I’m laying on my side. That has really scared me. A lot.
I don’t know. Just sharing more things as they come to my mind so I keep the awareness of how it’s hurting me alive.
To clarify, I don’t mean that it is demonstrating your strength that you were drinking, it’s that you kept tackling your responsibilities despite being poisoned, and also that when alcohol figured out how to hijack your strength to keep itself in your life, it was really effective. The tough part is getting that power back from alcohol for yourself and your own plans for your life.
This was my exact sentiment when I found out for myself what this community was like 
It’s less intense now, but after a couple of months it still feels like a warm encouraging internet hug to log on here and talk sobriety where all of us are at in our individual journeys.
I’ve turned to all sorts of things, as have others. I think it’s pretty common under stress to try to escalate our escape from the world by trying new experiences or reviving old ones. I’m 6 months clean from self harm, and I remember getting sorely tempted to try fentanyl when alcohol wasn’t feeling like enough. Thankfully I didn’t.
Heart palpitations or irregularities are scary. If you think it might be more than just a palpitation due to anxiety or whatever, it might be worth getting it looked at. There are just a number of things that could be. Might just need a quick EKG to figure out what’s happening. I can’t say a whole lot since I don’t have the medical knowledge. In my case, my anxiety heart palpitations as well as panic attacks made my heart feel so wonky that I got several EKGs, a portable heart monitor (Holter monitor), ultrasound, and seeing a cardiologist before they could really rule things out and tell me it was almost certainly just anxiety and that my heart was healthy.
It’s possible your magnesium levels may be low. It can happen from heavy alcohol use, and is important for proper heart and nervous system function.
Hi. Well done you for thinking that you have a problem. Like you I held down a job, I thought i was a better person when drunk.
In just the short time that I have been sober, 30 days, I have realised that was bs! I function a lot better at work, I did drink at work, I’m better at home, a better dad.
Its not an easy decision to make and it took me 3-4 years to actually get round to it and in that time I used to set myself goals, moderate my drinking but I still ended back to 24/7. I have made that decision to stop. I can never go back. When I think about the future with that in mind it scares me! But like what has already been said I’m taking it one day at a time.
Don’t think about all the things that could happen, or should happen or all the other 1000 things that are probably going around your head
Think I’m not drinking today. It gets easier. I know from personal experience.
It’s time to find resources to help quit instead of reasons to drink. Your mind says, oh I’m good with drinking and working and keeping it all held together. But, now, your body is SCREAMING for assistance, and it’s time to make the choice to seek medical care. We can walk the line of death for so long before it consumes us. Make the choice to live and seek medical care. You know all the reasons to quit NOW, for good. Your heart is your core and once it has issues, you’ll have life long issues or worse if you ignore them now.
Please, get to medical care and drop this burden of addiction. You owe it to yourself.
I have a very similar story, I thought the only time I was fun was when i was buzzed. But really that was only around people I wasn’t totally comfortable with. With my close friends I was always able to be my fun loving self. Once I stopped drinking it took awhile but I found that the anxiety I get from being around new people was mostly caused by drinking and never allowing myself to learn how to interact with people sober (i also started drinking very young). Now, I am more myself in all situations. And don’t worry about saying you will never drink again, I knew I didn’t want to drink and wasn’t sure if it was for 30, 90 however many days, I am now on day 110 and don’t find many situations I miss drinking at all. Best of luck to you and just fight thru the first few weeks, it gets better and is so worth it.
I think the reason that you believe you are “more myself when I drink” is that you never really got to know yourself sober. How “formed” are any of us at 13? You’ve been drinking the whole time that your “self” has been developing. Physically, psychologically, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, each part of who you are has been marinated in alchohol.
There’s a reason why there are warnings on alcohol that pregnant women shouldn’t drink, because of the effects it has as the unborn is in undergoing the development process. This doesn’t change, just because a child has taken its first breath.
But I’ve got good news: you can heal, and you grow…if you want to. You just have to be intentional about it. Get sober. Eat healthy. Exercise. Feed your brain with intellectual stimulation. Explore sober pursuits like music, art, sports. Learn where your interests, aptitude, talents and passions lie. Work to master these.
Then you will really know yourself.
This. At aged 37, I’m getting to know myself for the first time. I’m figuring out my likes and dislikes, independent of others. I’ve spent so much of my time doing what others have expected of me, or my idea of what others expected of me, and didn’t take the time to figure out what I wanted and what makes me happy. Until now. It’s fun and beautiful and exciting. 
I like your 90 day plan… That is what eventually got me to my current sober self.
I said do 90 days no matter what, and If I want to go back after that I can make that decision after 90 days.
That was back in 2015. I did about 120 days then tried to moderate . Took me a little over 2 years to get away from drinking again but in the back of my mind I remembered how great it was to be sober and I am now at 148 days sober with no desire to try moderation again.
When I drink, I feel more myself. I’m witty, happy, I access a part of my brain I feel like I can’t without it, my anxiety is gone, I feel more loving, I feel more intellectual.
I can identify with this SO much. I started drinking heavily at 19, after 8 years struggling with severe anorexia and a pretty abusive childhood before then. I fully believed (and my parents seemed to, as well) that I was not like other people and never could be. Both my brother and I had been in psychiatric institutions before our teens and I couldn’t imagine living or feeling like other kids. Getting drunk for the first time honestly felt like a revelation. I thought (and I know how stupid it is, but also how common) “this is what normal people feel like all the time”. Suddenly I didn’t care about food or weight or compulsive obsessions and actually felt able to speak. Even now, over 20 years later, there is a small part of me that thinks “what if you’d never drunk? Maybe the anorexia would have killed you”. But the alcohol nearly did.
Realising that drunk me isn’t the real me - that there’s no “real” me to uncover, just the person I choose to be one day at a time – has been hard. I’ve felt despairing at not having a normal “before drinking” me to return to as my goal. It’s also been exciting, though, to realise that I can cope with feelings without starving or getting drunk. I have found a voice, one that alcohol was slowly destroying. The truth is, I never felt “this is how normal people feel” again after that first night of drunkenness and I spent 23 years trying to get that feeling back.
You can do this. Focus on those 90 days - there will be good days! You deserve to feel well.