Afraid

[Guest Freegrl]

When I drink too much, I vomit a lot of blood. I've been kept in two ERs with IVs and sedation because I don't pass out. The alcholic moment of clarity intensifies the more I drink. I had to admit to my two closest friends that recently I went on a drinking binge twice that involved 30+ beers each time. They seemed sad/concerned.

I really don't know what to do. On most days, I'm pretty functional and responsible, but my closest friend remembers those days in college when 5 beers were good enough for me and 7 were good enough for him. He seems afraid.

And yet, I'm more afraid of continuing what I'm doing. In the last week, both my brother and my father have asked me how many beers I drink a day, and I only had fuzzy answers for the two men I love the most.

I dried out once without MD supervision and it was torture. If I ever dry out again, there will be a structure behind the process. I wound up in another ER when I went dry and lost 25+ in a week because I just cut off all the booze. I couldn't keep food down, everything tasted wrong, I had to sleep on towels because of the sweat.

Sometimes when I'm drinking, I feel like I know what I'm doing is right. Tomorrow, I have an appointment to keep at a certain time, but if I didn't have that time to make, I'd probably still drink more trying to find the "truth" behind the "clarity." It's all pretty terrifying.

I don't think I'm a 12-stepper. I looked at the list and while I believe in a higher power, I think that I'm going to need to make my own list based on the 12-step list. I think I need to cut back, but at this moment, the next beer looks like pain and joy to me and I know I can do this all night. It's funny and sad that I can tolerate alchol so much and find interesting nuggets of painful joy in the middle of the night when I should be sleeping.

The scariest thing is that I _know_ that I'm chasing a truth and that I might never "catch it."

Chasing is good enough though...

-tina

[MaryEllen]

You seem hell bent on a path of self destruction. It could benefit you if you could find out the root cause of why you are doing this. I'd recommend both medical and psychological therapy. For sure, you can't keep this up and expect to live to an old age. For your own sake and for those who love and care for you, please seek help. We're here for you and we care about your wellbeing.

MaryEllen

[Charlize]

Your story sounds much like mine. I drank until i slept. I always felt i was in "control" and was only smarter and better looking the more i drank. in the end i was a 24 hr a day(except for brief fits of "sleep". My first detox was after open heart surgery and i was hallucinating both images and sounds in the hospital as i crawled my way back to life. Got home after a week and when i was strong enough to walk to the garage i went for my vodka bottle while i held a pillow against my chest to keep from popping open. Like you i didn't really have a problem. In another 5 years i finally went to my first AA meeting. I had finally grown to know i had a problem i needed help with. I was powerless! My wife was an addiction nurse at a local mental hospital. She said that AA was the only thing she had seen work. I went, i was beaten. There was no way i could get myself out of the problem. I did detox myself, a big mistake that almost cost me my life. Staying sober was another matter. I did what i was told. I learned a bit of humility and a great deal about my disease. It has been almost 7 years since i last used any drug not prescribed. I love my life, have transitioned and am living beyond my wildest dreams.

You are reaching out here. Please continue to reach out. AA worked for me and has helped millions around the world. Don't worry we all know we are "different" to start. We are but we also can share sobriety and a better life.

Hugs,

Charlie an alcoholic

[Guest Brenda Hailey]

Tina what you are chasing is the truth,the late night moments of clarity arent truth.

The simple truth is without sobriety there is no clarity in life.

Any time you are seeing blood you have gone to far. ( That "IS" your real moment of clarity. ) <------- your body,and higher power both telling you its time.

You need the help of other people,such as AA 12 steps are pretty complete and actually work for the majority of alcoholics. Give working the steps a try and afterwards you still feel you need a few more then by all means add some more, but you will be surprised how well the first 12 can work if you give yourself and honest chance.

You simply cant live your life and find the truth one painful and joyous nugget at a time, you will destroy yourself before ever finding it.

The way in which you are seeking is never going to work.

As painful as detox can be the pain of slowly dying is going to be much worse.

Give AA a chance at least once before you say you are not a 12 stepper you cant truly say that until you have tried. Not to mention you will be surrounded by people face to face who have successfully detoxed and found a way to live the truth of their lives.

Finding ourselves can only happen one way,,,,,,,and that way is sober.

Brenda Hailey

recovering alcoholic

[VickySGV]

Unsupervised withdrawal from alcohol has a much higher risk of fatality from blood pressure collapse, heart attack, digestive tract bleeding and respiratory causes. Those are the quick ones!! Liver damage and even brain dysfunction are a bit slower, but once started are a sure ride out of life. I did a medical detox stay 5 years ago that took my blood pressure from being a gun with a round in the chamber pointed at my head, to much more livable levels. At that point, it was worth putting me in a program where we discovered the "clarity" and "TRUTH" for my life. One of the elements of TRUTH that came out, was that I had been attempting suicide by booze. I had only been having two bottles of malt liquor at night -- 40 ounces each -- but it was the highest % rot gut on the market, after a liter of wine, and a couple other flavors of juice.

Being with people who are sober, but who have tried to find your "clarity" themselves and failed as you have, and then with help from loving, concerned friends is about the only way to really get clear. I have done "the steps" and still do them. I do not have the "religious vigor" that some folks can apply to them, and for most, that is OK! To me it is the companionship that I get no-where else that gives me "clarity" in life. You have AA groups there in Hawaii, pick up the phone and call them and you will be on the track to finding what you need. Taking my head out of the bottle got me the help, therapy and other GD treatment that I needed. I am alive and not dead, but I needed help.

[Guest Freegrl]

I'm sorry to have posted. I'm not ready to quit yet.

My most loved ones are all telling me that they are concerned. 3 of them are male friends who stick by me despite my CD'ing, my sister is an active participant, and my brother and father are shielded for now. My life is very very good and stable, but I'm looking for something that I may never find.

Apparently, I've been blacking out even while talking about money or motors and one of my friends from college remembers when I'd have 5 beers and he'd have 7 beers from the cold-pack. i don't think I'm ready to quit yet, but at least I know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. When I finally detox, I'll do it correctly.

I guess I'm still in denial and I'm sorry have posted because I''m not ready yet.

love,

-tina

[Guest Freegrl]

Your story sounds much like mine. I drank until i slept. I always felt i was in "control" and was only smarter and better looking the more i drank. in the end i was a 24 hr a day(except for brief fits of "sleep". My first detox was after open heart surgery and i was hallucinating both images and sounds in the hospital as i crawled my way back to life. Got home after a week and when i was strong enough to walk to the garage i went for my vodka bottle while i held a pillow against my chest to keep from popping open. Like you i didn't really have a problem. In another 5 years i finally went to my first AA meeting. I had finally grown to know i had a problem i needed help with. I was powerless! My wife was an addiction nurse at a local mental hospital. She said that AA was the only thing she had seen work. I went, i was beaten. There was no way i could get myself out of the problem. I did detox myself, a big mistake that almost cost me my life. Staying sober was another matter. I did what i was told. I learned a bit of humility and a great deal about my disease. It has been almost 7 years since i last used any drug not prescribed. I love my life, have transitioned and am living beyond my wildest dreams.

You are reaching out here. Please continue to reach out. AA worked for me and has helped millions around the world. Don't worry we all know we are "different" to start. We are but we also can share sobriety and a better life.

Hugs,

Charlie an alcoholic

I'm sorry to have involved you, but I always try to do right with anyone who is connected to my life, so I might try an AA meeting just to get over my fears.

I know I have a problem, but I might not be ready, so no promises (which I always keep), but thank you. I was kind of on the edge about trying an AA meeting but I guess I'm "committed" now. I have a lot of reasons for not going to an AA meeting, but I guess one meeting won't hurt, right? (or is the 1st meeting the most painful?) LOL

[Guest Freegrl]

Tina what you are chasing is the truth,the late night moments of clarity arent truth.

The simple truth is without sobriety there is no clarity in life.

Any time you are seeing blood you have gone to far. ( That "IS" your real moment of clarity. ) <------- your body,and higher power both telling you its time.

You need the help of other people,such as AA 12 steps are pretty complete and actually work for the majority of alcoholics. Give working the steps a try and afterwards you still feel you need a few more then by all means add some more, but you will be surprised how well the first 12 can work if you give yourself and honest chance.

You simply cant live your life and find the truth one painful and joyous nugget at a time, you will destroy yourself before ever finding it.

The way in which you are seeking is never going to work.

As painful as detox can be the pain of slowly dying is going to be much worse.

Give AA a chance at least once before you say you are not a 12 stepper you cant truly say that until you have tried. Not to mention you will be surrounded by people face to face who have successfully detoxed and found a way to live the truth of their lives.

Finding ourselves can only happen one way,,,,,,,and that way is sober.

Brenda Hailey

recovering alcoholic

I've been raped and beaten regularly by older cousins and one uncle and one aunt as a child. I grew up having to learn how to fight or lose just to defend myself. I never picked on anyone, but it was sad. I can walk into the roughest bar in town and nobody will mess with me because I might be crazy or a cop, but I've taken things out into the parking lot to protect a friend. I'm not proud of any of it, but all of the beatings that I took and gave and all the vomiting and oral lacerations that happened along with the headaches...but...

I have nice pouty lips due to interior stitching! (True!)

I need to find more answers for now and I'm sorry to have bothered you.

with love,

-tina

[Guest Freegrl]

You seem hell bent on a path of self destruction. It could benefit you if you could find out the root cause of why you are doing this. I'd recommend both medical and psychological therapy. For sure, you can't keep this up and expect to live to an old age. For your own sake and for those who love and care for you, please seek help. We're here for you and we care about your wellbeing.

MaryEllen

Thanks!

I have a board-certified psychiatrist, a very competent internal medicine MD, and a "LMT of the year" massage therapist that I schedule on a regular basis. I'm not ready to stop drinking yet and I'm sorry to have bothered you. I have a spinal abnormality along with some emotional pain that is evaporating every day. I'm basically in some form of physical pain everyday and emotional pain when I think.

I think that I'm at step 0: Realize that you have a problem based on what loved ones say. I'm only surrounded by love, so if 5 very smart and loving people say that I have a problem, but I don't think I do...I just needed to reach out. It might be my fortune to CD again and stumble across the this forum, but a lot of things just happen because of luck!

[Guest Brenda Hailey]

Tina what you are chasing is the truth,the late night moments of clarity arent truth.

The simple truth is without sobriety there is no clarity in life.

Any time you are seeing blood you have gone to far. ( That "IS" your real moment of clarity. ) <------- your body,and higher power both telling you its time.

You need the help of other people,such as AA 12 steps are pretty complete and actually work for the majority of alcoholics. Give working the steps a try and afterwards you still feel you need a few more then by all means add some more, but you will be surprised how well the first 12 can work if you give yourself and honest chance.

You simply cant live your life and find the truth one painful and joyous nugget at a time, you will destroy yourself before ever finding it.

The way in which you are seeking is never going to work.

As painful as detox can be the pain of slowly dying is going to be much worse.

Give AA a chance at least once before you say you are not a 12 stepper you cant truly say that until you have tried. Not to mention you will be surrounded by people face to face who have successfully detoxed and found a way to live the truth of their lives.

Finding ourselves can only happen one way,,,,,,,and that way is sober.

Brenda Hailey

recovering alcoholic

I've been raped and beaten regularly by older cousins and one uncle and one aunt as a child. I grew up having to learn how to fight or lose just to defend myself. I never picked on anyone, but it was sad. I can walk into the roughest bar in town and nobody will mess with me because I might be crazy or a cop, but I've taken things out into the parking lot to protect a friend. I'm not proud of any of it, but all of the beatings that I took and gave and all the vomiting and oral lacerations that happened along with the headaches...but...

I have nice pouty lips due to interior stitching! (True!)

I need to find more answers for now and I'm sorry to have bothered you.

with love,

-tina

You havent bothered me at all, I basically like being here and if something I say could possibly help someone then its not a bother at all.

Sounds like you are living a pretty rough life, I share a few of those bar room scars you have from my time drinking, all I can say is that as a sober person I dont miss fighting and getting beat up at all. Not one single bit.

Weather the alcohol itself, or the beatings you suffer from being drunk is really not to much different ,the alcohol is what is causing you to bleed either way. I dont see one better than the other, you may still find yourself equally destroyed eventually.

Getting pouty lips for the sake of drunken honor is going to be a regrettable action at best, long after you are sober and your fearless friends have parted ways the realization will come that being crazy or a cop didnt work out like you thought it would.

The best advice I can give you is to get to AA, detox, and get sober so you can deal with those past horrors you had in life as a clear thinking sober person, its the only way those demons are ever going to leave. Not to mention if you really want to help your friends you will get sober and show them the way to sobriety,instead of enabling them.

There is no amount of friendship or bar room chivalry worth what you are putting yourself through.

Proving yourself a man to phantoms is never going to help you find and be secure with the woman in you, it simply is not.

No need to apologize for seeking answers and help, just get the help.

Brenda Hailey

[Guest Jennifer T]

My heart goes out to you Tina. While I understand why you drink like you do, I think you need to seek some help. (Yeah, I'm a hypocrit) And you certainly aren't bothering anyone by talking about it. So please, don't apologize for such. Keep talking. Keep searching. There has to be a way out of the abyss.

My thoughts and prayers for you.

[JenniferB]

One thing I like about AA is that when you are having mental obsessions about drinking, you can always call an AA member who will be glad to talk with you. That has helped me immensely, especially at the beginning. The support system is definitely there, and from people who understand what alcoholics go through, because all of us are one.

Jenny

[Charlize]

I'm glad you are considering a meeting. I just left an AA trans Skype meeting with MTFs and FTMs from all over the world. The rooms accept all of us. I've learned so much more than how to stop drinking. If i could have a glass of wine i'd love to but i know that one is never enough for me. I thought i'd miss it but instead i have learned to love my life.

If you decide to join us the door is always open and there are hands reaching out to help.

Hugs,

Charlie

[Guest Freegrl]

Thank you all (again) and hugs!

I'm going to beat this thing and while I'm very afraid of failure, I know that if I keep trying that I will find more balance in my life so much so that my loved ones don't need to gently hint to me that they are worried. I can't promise that I'll ever go dry, but I will followup on my word to Charlie to at least try one AA meeting.

I'm very intimidated about going to an AA meeting. Actually, I'm afraid, but based on the fact that I'm afraid of it, I know it's something that I need to try at least once so that my bucket list doesn't overflow.

Please don't prep me for what to expect. I'm going in without expectations. I hope that the experience is positive for me but am willing to accept that I might just need to try another AA meeting if my "first" one sucks. While I have a "fit" problem with the 12-steps, I'm just taking my baby steps for now.

Intellectually, I know that I'm still in denial based on being able to "practice" _my_ drinking and thinking for 30+ years. I think that recognizing that I am in denial is my first step, and while I think that the successive steps might be painful if I choose to take them, I think I've found a supportive community that the wisdom and love to help me along this part of my journey.

On the converse side, I'm afraid of the fact that I need to share and ask for wisdom here. CD'ing is part of who I am but it's a forbidden subject with my closest friends (except for sis).

I keep trying to figure out the girl in the mirror, and she spills out into my everyday life in the ways that I talk to other folk and the way I look at life, the way I treat other people. I sometimes feel like I'm wrestling two alligators coated with olive oil in a pit filled with vanilla tapioca pudding. Yet, I do everything I can to make sure that I have a predictable and stable life, finances are good, there is more balance in the family since I started to CD again (more balance due to moments of understanding).

I have a lot of schedule checking to do, but I _will_ go to at least one AA meeting. I'm not in crisis and have only been in that mode a few times despite not taking care of myself, but I know that I need other answers than the ones I've came up with.

Honey and Luck make a good meal,

-Tina

[Michelle 2010]

When I drink too much, I vomit a lot of blood. I've been kept in two ERs with IVs and sedation because I don't pass out. The alcholic moment of clarity intensifies the more I drink. I had to admit to my two closest friends that recently I went on a drinking binge twice that involved 30+ beers each time. They seemed sad/concerned.

I really don't know what to do. On most days, I'm pretty functional and responsible, but my closest friend remembers those days in college when 5 beers were good enough for me and 7 were good enough for him. He seems afraid.

And yet, I'm more afraid of continuing what I'm doing. In the last week, both my brother and my father have asked me how many beers I drink a day, and I only had fuzzy answers for the two men I love the most.

I dried out once without MD supervision and it was torture. If I ever dry out again, there will be a structure behind the process. I wound up in another ER when I went dry and lost 25+ in a week because I just cut off all the booze. I couldn't keep food down, everything tasted wrong, I had to sleep on towels because of the sweat.

Sometimes when I'm drinking, I feel like I know what I'm doing is right. Tomorrow, I have an appointment to keep at a certain time, but if I didn't have that time to make, I'd probably still drink more trying to find the "truth" behind the "clarity." It's all pretty terrifying.

A friend of mine says asking why an alcoholic drinks is like asking why a television shows TV shows.....its because its what they do.

I don't think I'm a 12-stepper. I looked at the list and while I believe in a higher power, I think that I'm going to need to make my own list based on the 12-step list. I think I need to cut back, but at this moment, the next beer looks like pain and joy to me and I know I can do this all night. It's funny and sad that I can tolerate alchol so much and find interesting nuggets of painful joy in the middle of the night when I should be sleeping.

When I got sober I couldn't argue with the fact that my best thinking got me a seat in AA. So the idea that you can customize the program is a thought produced by the same brain that thinks there is no disconnect between vomiting blood and "most days I feel what i am doing is right". For most alcoholics of my type, the distortions of thinking do not become obvious until one is sober for a little while, The insane seems sane. The abnormal seems normal.

The scariest thing is that I _know_ that I'm chasing a truth and that I might never "catch it."

The truth is that alcoholics of my type, the type that vomit or pass blood, are powerless to stop drinking and life has become unmanageable. Your "god" need not be anything other than a power greater than yourself which you will discover can do for you that which you cannot do for yourself. One "truth" I discovered in AA is that Happiness is not a noun, its a verb

Chasing is good enough though...

-tina

Best wishes

Michelle