Living in a bottle more and more

[fader]

My drinking has not been good but it’s taken a leap recently. It has gone from quite hard a couple of weeks to nearly every day. I am not doing this because of cravings so it seems strange to me.

The reality is I really don’t like my life. I’m not getting the greatest grades on my MSc despite really working on it and taking it seriously. My job is another emotionally punishing service job. My home is a slum and they’ve recently built a noisy business downstairs which comes through to my apartment. I’m not broke but never have any real money. No friends or family. Nightmares very often about the past.

I have promised myself to work and study my way out of deprivation. So I hold down the degree and job. And there are good things in life too. But my soul is exhausted. Challenges in life are one thing. Being crushed is something different. I fear being stuck in service work forever. Failing or being withdrawn from my education. I hate having absolutely no one. It’s too much. No one can help me here. It’s my responsibility of course. But that’s why I am living in a bottle more and more.

[SinceIAwoke]

Hello @fader and welcome to Talking Sober.

I got quite a jolt reading your post. There were three times in my drinking career when I was suddenly aware of a shift in my drinking pattern, I knew it wasn’t good, and I did not know what to do about it.

First time was eating a pizza on a Friday night and I said to my wife “Do you know I just drank up an entire six pack with that pizza?” What I did not tell her was that I did not feel the expected effect from drinking that quantity. At the time, that was toward the heavier end of my consumption. Later, a 6 pack was merely the appetizer for the evening’s drinking.

Not long after that, I had another awareness that the amount that I drank that day did not get me feeling mellow and numb the way I wanted. The booze “wasn’t working”.

At that time in my life, I was a lot like you, a broke graduate student plugging away at a hard job to pay the bills. Shortly after this, my marriage fell apart, I was kicked out of the house, my relationship with my kid started going south, and I entered a new phase of my drinking - I started dropping into AA to get out of trouble but always quickly returned to drinking the way I wanted to.

The third time was about 5 years later. I realized at Christmas break (when my employer granted us all extra days off between Xmas and New Years) that I had started drinking every day (which was a frequency increase from 3-4 times per week), heavier amounts, and most importantly - I did not intend to drink every day, I did not want to drink every day, I was drinking daily because I was incapable of not drinking. This started my long slow slide into hell, with increasingly serious legal, career, and marital consequences of my drinking.

That’s how my alcoholism worked, it snuck up on me and I felt powerless to stop it. In my recovery, I keep that top of mind, that I have it in me to drink daily in spite of any and all costs of maintaining that. So I treat my illness daily - I come here, I go to AA, I have some simple daily spiritual practices.

Today, I know that the surface events of life will not seriously disturb my serenity. My “real life” is lived on a different plane, and the balance and strength that comes from that lets me live at peace in the world.

Blessings on your house as your journey unfolds.

[fader]

Thanks very much for your reply. It makes me sad to hear from other people when they explain their habit brought them so many problems. I have heard this in AA too. Then if or when other things come into the mix, such as additional substances, problems with the law and charges, relationship breakdowns - that is when things really start falling apart and eventually sobriety is the only way.

I also get to feel jealous. There’s no relationships to suffer because I don’t have any. No home to be kicked out of because I don’t have any real home. No career to destroy because there’s no career just whatever job available. There may be an addiction, but without a problem that would be solved by kicking it, there’s no meaning to word.

If I lose my job who cares? Get another nothing job. Lose my degree? Transfer to another mid level school. Liver or kidney failure? No one is going to be at my funeral. What would be gained right now from stopping drinking? Nothing because I am already at rock bottom. How do I feel better? Alcohol works pretty well.

[SinceIAwoke]

Setting up your life so you have nothing to lose may be more sad than losing it all. You deserve a good life, and you can have one. Sounds like you may be your own worst enemy, and that sounds familiar to most of us drinkers.

Let me tell you that I began my sobriety, the first 3 years of it, under control of the courts and department of corrections, serving my sentence on house arrest and then parole for a driving while intoxicated charge (it was my 5th conviction, so the state took it pretty seriously). That enforced abstinence and accountability have served me well. I’m two weeks from 19 years and 6 months of continuous sobriety. I have been declared rehabilitated by the Canadian Immigration Service so that I can once again travel freely to Canada despite the two felony DUIs on my record.

My life actually looks about the same as a non-drinker who was on the career path I had at the time, so no big changes there. I’m in the same technical field, just as a manager now. Getting ready to retire in a year or two. I’ve had a wonderful time as an amateur athlete and we’ve raised our two kids to adulthood. My relationship with my oldest child, from the first marriage, is still rocky. I’ve made lifelong friends, mostly in AA, and some of whom have died.

The real difference, no matter what the circumstances of my position in life, is that I got my soul back. I tried to kill the connection to my divinity with booze. When I started getting permanently sober, I became aware that the connection to the universal and the divine and the eternal, that is where the real juice is at. And that’s what is the ultimate gift of sobriety - connection.

I feel a lot of despair coming from your words - and let me tell you, that can be a good thing. You have nowhere to go but up. You are in the same place I was, waking up my first morning of sobriety on a holding cell floor, feeling lost and hopeless and destroyed.

One secret to getting sober is to just put one foot in front of the other. Get to the end of the day without taking a drink, and let tomorrow worry about itself. We all have excellent experience tolerating pain, boredom, dullness and discomfort. And you can tolerate those things without booze, you will find. The other secret is that you cannot use logic on a drunk, and “good reasons” will not get you sober. It is faith alone, a feeling that no matter what, you will be ok today. And if you do not have the faith today, you can believe that I believe. I live my life in the knowledge that every little thing is gonna be alright, and you can trust that I will live that way tomorrow and the next day.

[Dirk]

I am sorry to hear that life is such a drag on you at the moment, @fader

While I admire people whose sobriety can be solely attributed to (re-)connecting with a higher power, must of us aren’t that ‘lucky’ and must do the daily hard work ourselves to stay the course.

The same applies to mental health, however unfair that feels at times. It is up to us who struggle to speak up, reach out and seek help. I know that probably feels like yet another chore on a sheer endless list, but please take that first step and engage with mental health professionals (if available where you are, I don’t know where you are situated).

You are not alone, there are many of us who have found themselves entangled between alcoholism and mental health challenges, not knowing which is the root cause versus the symptoms. There is no denying that being sober will improve mental health in the long run, but it’s all too easy to assume that all your struggles will simply fade as soon as you embrace sobriety through a higher power.

I am here to support you, feel free to DM me if at all helpful!

[Just_Laura]

Alcohol is depressing and exhausting. I used to believe it gave me the energy to make it through life, when in reality it was the reason I wasn’t. The more I drank, the more I needed to function. In the end, once the worst of the hangover past, my day began with 8 shots minimum just to feel normal. I’d never understood true depression until that point. It was the first time in my life I’d ever contemplated suicide bc of the hopeless despair I felt everyday. I suffered this way for years, desperately wanting to quit but rarely able to make it 24hrs without a drink. I had to go through all that to finally understand sobriety was the only answer. It had to be better than what my life had become. I wanted it.

On my first attempt I relapsed after 4.5 months. I started right back up where I left off and it only got worse. I was back out for 3 more years before being able to stop again. Hell. There I learned that, for me, it’s black and white. No gray area. All or nothing. No between. No matter what life throws at me now(and there’s been some doozies), nothing will convince me alcohol is the answer. I don’t ever want to feel the way I did back then, and I haven’t once in the 585 days since I quit.

Welcome This place saved my life. I knew nothing about recovery and learned as much as I could. Even when I was back out I still lurked around. One day it all just clicked. I wish that for you Keep coming back.