There were many times for me in the past couple of years that should have been the last straw but weren’t
-I woke at 2 in the morning to scraping on the front door to find I’d locked my wee angel dog outside
I fell and badly scraped my cheek and phoned into work sick for a week while it healed
-I was followed home and it’s only that my mum happened to be staying that one night that I was ok. I was then sick on the carpet in front of her
Going into work everyday and blaming insomnia when the real reason I’d been up since 3 was because of alcohol
I guess it was all of these things and just generally being sick of being a mess that made me take the final step. I woke in the middle of the night before work panicking that I hadn’t hung my washing up and would have no clean clothes for work. Got up and discovered I’d hung them all up in blackout phase and just thought what if the neighbours had seen or a friend had called. Phoned the doctor the next day and got tablets. I’m on day 14 now and have had a couple of wobbles but not to the extent I was drinking before. Oh and you know the best thing about being sober for me? Actually having dreams Good luck to everyone on here in their sober journey!! High five
I couldn’t control myself either and I did some bad things as a result. I want to be in control of my destiny and I couldn’t do that if I couldn’t stop drinking. I just want to land on my feet and be able to take care of myself. It scares me to think of all of the dangerous situations I’ve put myself in.
The feeling of letting myself and everyone around me down.
My mum is a recovering alcoholic, I didn’t want to end up down the same road as her.
Cheating on the love of my life due to having no self control when drunk.
Feeling sick and hungover all the time when at work, not being able to focus 100% on my job. I’m a commercial insurance underwriter so if I make a mistake it can cause a lot of problems for me/my company/the clients.
Generally feeling like crap, I’ve been lucky so far for it not to affect my skin etc. But I need to nip it in the bud before I start looking older than my years.
I’ve been a heavy drinker for 20 + years, I grew up in pubs, I’ve always been surrounded by booze/boozing. My father died when he was 36, I’m 36 soon (he was a heavy drinker/smoker/overweight). My mum is 72 and has buried 2 husbands (my late stepdad was an alcoholic too), I need to make sure I stay on this sober path because I have seen what it does to good people.
I hope I can do it this time, I have so much to lose and nothing to gain from boozing/smoking/smoking weed.
Being hangower ar work become a normal thing even i was not able to focus 100%, but few times hangower was so bad that i started to drink at work. Thanks God my boss was understanding and gave me a second chance, but that was a sign for enough is enough. Reading all of your stories also helped to realise that i really have a problem and I am not alone and its nothing to be asshamed to admit that.
Also get tired af all black outs and wondering next day what a hell I have said or done
Because of a wish to drink started to avoid my friends. The crapy feeling on hangover kept me to stay in poison relationship just not to feel alone.
Just first week of beeing sober and feeling is great.
Fed up of the anxiety and depression that came with it. Fed up with the angry feelings while drunk. Fed up with screwing up relationships due to my anger and depression. Fed up with letting a substance control me. Fed up with needing to self medicate after work every day. Fed up with being so tired all of the time. Fed up with not being productive. Fed up with not being healthy or taking care of my body. Fed up with my lack of relationship with God. Fed up with being controlled. Fed. Up.
Earlier I mentioned shadow people…the truth is I had reached a point where death looked a lot better then living…no friends no family I had burned those bridges…all that was left was the drugs…being homeless and hopeless that life was gonna get any better pretty much became the norm…I can’t really say I decided to get clean but what I know is in the midst of my addiction there where plenty of foxhole prayers…anyway running from my problems/the grace of God presented me the opportunity to be presented with the solution…I didn’t expect to stay stopped but by some freaking miracle and the work I did!
My straws added up but the final ones were finally giving in to the fact i have absolutely no control over drinking after i have that first drink. This finally came after going 78 days sober only to relapse weekly for 2 months until a night 32 days ago i drank, blacked out, called someone i shouldnt have drove over to her house. This was friday night. I woke up saturday confused so i continued drinking, the woke up that evening confused again. Finally i left her place only to see my front liscene plate was half ripped off and my bumper was scratched. I must have done something on my way over. Fuck. So i went home and keept drinking. My wife, understandably, was extremly upset.
This, however, was unlike all the bad shit from my past because it got me to aa and to finally give up control of my life to a spiritual existence.
In the Summer of 2013, I was on my computer, drinking of course, and my son and daughter were watching a movie. I dropped the bottle in the garbage can and went back to my monitor. Thirty seconds later, my son who was nine was standing beside me with a beer in his hand.
“Hey, Dad. I got you another beer.”
I hadn’t asked for one, but in his mind, what made me happy was “another beer”. Not him, not his sister, not watching a movie with them…but another beer.
And I still didn’t quit.
I assuaged my conscience by never drinking in front of my children again, but it took another 6 months to decide it was important enough to actually quit.
I was sober for thirteen months and 24 days when he had a massive intracranial aneurysm. He died at age 11, seven months and three weeks later.
There are days I still despise myself for the time I lost with him, but I rely on the fact that for the last thirteen months and twenty four days that he was really himself, he saw me sober.
hating to look at myself in the mirror knowing I was a drunk and a liar
obsession with ending my life
constantly lying to my husband
being ill all the time
wishing a car would crash into me and kill me
waking up my last drunk night with a series of night terrors that made me feel like I was going to die
seeing the pain in my husband’s eyes when he saw me so broken
wow I am 252 days today and as i write this i have many tears. oh how broken i was. makes drinking seem so meaningless. i am thankful to God for protecting me and saving me from this terrible trail i was running not walking through to my own self destruction.
For me it was the constant black outs, the not remembering what I have said to the people I loved, walking out naked trying to get dressed, falling and smashing my face on the ground. My body not being able to handle the alcohol…seems like 8 beers were the norm but it physically smashed me. Before that would just be a warm up. Losing friends for being a dick and the guilt that followed.
The final straw for me…I knew what I was doing (drinking constantly was wrong) so I was in the process of trying to quit on my own-made it about 2 weeks with the worst headache ever. I made up my mind to just drink a little to take the edge off so I dropped my daughter off at the neighbor’s house for a playdate and bought some vodka. Once again I got wasted and needed to sleep it off. When I woke up I was in a black out and completely forgot about picking my child up from school and taking her to the neighbor’s house. I saw it was dark outside and my child wasn’t home so I assumed I forgot to pick her up from school. Police were involved…it was scary as hell until the neighbor called to ask when I planned to pick her up. That was it for me…what could have happened? I knew I would never be able to live with myself if something really did happen. I checked into rehab very shortly after that and stayed for 28 days. Best decision ever!
A Gallon of Vodka a week, sometimes supplemented with a bottle or three of wine. I knew I had been drinking too much, and had been telling myself I needed to stop, One Monday, I ran out..and I told myself I was going to make it until the weekend without anything. Once the weekend came, I just kept going…Now going on 25 days totally sober! It just hit me one day, what a mess I was and what a mess my life had become. I got tired of coming home at 5 and drinking until I blacked out, and waking up feeling like crap. H
It’s like you keep hitting your head against a brick wall expecting different results until you get so sick of yourself and the life you are living. You hit a huge bottom, emotionally, physically, spiritually. You will know, believe me, once are really done. Pray for it too, that helps, and life will be beautiful on the other side. So much brighter and better. Sending love
Increased blackouts, extreme anxiety and guilt with hangovers. Wasting whole days being hungover… The very last straw was when my husband and I were drunk and had our son come pick us up. He brought his two younger brothers as he was babysitting for us. I hopped in the car with my glass of wine. I modelled that behaviour infront of my kids while in a blackout. My son could have been fined because of me. I was horrified the next day.
I knew I had a problem and need to stop a long time ago. When I realized how much money I was spending on pills and how much it was effecting my life. My love life, my work life, my social life. So I quit a few times for a few days and kept telling myself this was my last pill. And the next day would come and it would be one more. Well the day came when I found out my best friend who ended up getting addicted to heroin and turned himself in, ended up getting deported. I remember the day I found out I had pills in my hand just crying because of you idk when I’ll get to see my best friend again or if he will ever be able to come back. That’s when I realized I lost someone I cared about for drugs. And I didn’t want to be that person . Thankfully I’ve talked to him since, but by the time I found out he was getting deported. I also realized I was letting a pill control my life and I didn’t want that anymore. I want to be in control of my own life. No drug or drink will control me again.
Good luck to everyone on here in their sober journey!! High five