YO. Did you get to a mtg yesterday? How's about today? You are so NOT alone in how you feel. I was just telling a friend late last night how alone I feel despite all the love and support I have. It's that proverbial HOLE that we used to fill with booze. Remove the booze and the hole remains. We seek fulfillment. Look in the right places. Keep trying AA - I think you will find help even if it takes awhile.

xo

thanks howtolive...yeah, I did go to the meeting last night..it was good, talked a little bit...but yes that is it, there can be a hundred people in th eroom and I still fill all alone..empty and that HOLE..just really getting to me today! Guess that is part of the reason I drank for so many years too....
ANd yes I do need another meeting tonight...even if I am not sure why I am going, lol I know its the right thing

Thanks howtolive

You did the first step found these site i know that every is strugle,but you need to take it one day at time ,get some professional help and keep coming here for suport you are not alone keep teling your self that and you will be suprise all the things you can find ,will pray for you god bless you good luck

wow i can totally relate. I too feel a hole! a massive hole that is accompanied by anxiety. i too drank to fill the hole although we all know that it just made things worse.

so, i'm trying to occupy myself with activity. go for a walk or something. breathe deep breaths and take a natural supplement. are you getting all of the nutrition and vitamins you need given the fact that alcohol depletes our bodies of so much?

valerian root can help calm things down. i'm taking st. johns wort seems to help a little.

I hope you feel better. please find something else to fill the void. know that you are not alone and there are so many that can relate.

Hey Ashley, welcome back. It takes time for that feeling to go away....and it takes work to make that feeling go away. Keep going to meetings, get a sponsor, work the steps. That's all I can tell ya to do cause that's how I got that feeling to go away.

Just a meeting or two here and there didn't do it.....

Keep it up, you can do it, just takes some effort on your part. That feeling won't just go away by itself. It's good to "see" you again. :)

G'Day Ashley

This is life ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ there will always be up's and downs as long as we are breathing if not it would be like this-------------- but the further along I got into recovery the highs came down and the bottoms up and I was able to handle things a lot better and so will you.

It's not easy but it's doable . It wasn't till I came into recovery that I realised I used alcohol ,food ,gambling,sex to try and fill that void I didn't even know existed in me.

In time I was able to fill that void with a loving God I am still trying to understand . He guided me to AA and a beautiful 12 step program for living.And by working the program I was able to hand my past over to the care of God so I could live in the day.

And instead of dwelling on the past I have been able to use it to help others and I found by giving we receive .And I have received so much more than I have given. One thing is piece of mind rather than a mind in pieces.

I can only talk about what worked for me .I know all about that alone empty feeling I survived it for many years feeling alone in a crowed room. I still like to be alone but today I am not lonely.

I have you to talk to plus all my friends here on DS .I have Family and a loving God and all my friends in AA..

Ashley thanks for posting and being honest and as you can see by the responses people care .

God Bless...

Lionel

Hello Ashley,

I can tell you that I had that empty feeling all of my life and no amount of drinking would make it go away. I was always looking for something but I could never figure out what that something was. I could be in a room that was full of people talking, laughing, drinking and having a good time and I would feel so alone that I could have been on another planet.

It might sound like a strange thing to say but sometimes I now feel blessed to be an alcoholic. You see, if I was not an alcoholic, I would never have found out the cause of my trouble and better still, a solution that works.

Today, I do not have that void within anymore and I have learned how to make myself feel better. The first thing that I did was to go to a lot of meetings. Then, after I found my way around I got a sponsor and started doing the steps. It has been an amazing experience and one that I would not miss for anything. I learned that alcoholism attacks us alcoholics in two ways, mentally and physically and that made a lot of sense to me. However, the most rewarding thing that I have learned is that in order to recover from alcoholism, I need to get a closer relationship with that spirit that has so many names but that I choose to call God.

I suppose that the greatest and ironically the simplest thing that I learned was that I did not have to travel the highways and byways in search of that missing something. It was within myself all of the time - the spirit within. The trouble we have, not just as alcoholics, is that through wrong thinking, we erect many barriers between ourselves and that inner spirit. What the 12 Step programme teaches us to do is to tear down those barriers and to establish a closer contact with that spirit.

Now, I had no belief whatsoever that anything like that would work for me. As I shared at a meeting last night, my sponsor laughed at me and asked: Are you some special kind of alcoholic - this programme that works for millions of others is not going to work for you? I had to agree with him that I was in no more special than any other hopeless drunk and I decided to give it a try. I listened to people at meetings talking about the horror stories of their drinking lives and where alcoholism had taken them; yet those very same people were laughing and joking and had a great peace of mind. All that I was asked was to BELIEVE that I too could have what those people had.

Tonight, Ashley that is all that you need to do. Above all else, BELIEVE that you too can have that happiness and peace of mind. You wont get it without taking some action but that comes a little later. For now, all you need is to BELIEVE.

Hi Ashley-good to hear from you.

I use to feel like that, then I would feel a little bit better, and start drinking again.

I tell you what-when I felt so empty that there was absolutely nothing left in me or in the world,

like I wanted to absolutely frickin die of lonliness, frustration and utter despair...

that is when I really found salvation! I had no where to go but up. It was absolutely pivotal for me to feel that low. I would not wish that upon anyone-but perhaps this is what is needed for many of us hard core alkis to really hit bottom. Utter and complete lonliness and despair.

For me,the hole comes and goes.If I'm doing what I need to be doing,it's not so bad.Sometimes it's there in full force.Even though I've been alcohol free,the quest for emotional sobriety is an ongoing process.If I take time out to smell the roses,to be grateful for the day I'm living in and all the things that have been given to me,I always feel better.Just stopping drinking didn't make the hole inside go away,but it did make it much smaller.