Alcoholism Support Group
Alcoholism is the continued consumption of alcoholic beverages, even when it is negatively affecting your health, work, relationships and life. If you think alcohol is causing you to lose control, it's time to seek help. Our group is a safe place to vent, check in, get back up if you fall, and reach sobriety.
I don't do much reading, but I fell upon this title of a story in the back of the Big Book and thought to myself now THAT I can relate to. I'd read other stories and couldn't find my niche. I avoided the ones in the very back because they were low bottom drunk stories, people who had lost everything. I had lost "nothing" by the standards of most of the alkies I had heard speak.
Funny thing is, in my obsessive little fucked up mind, I aspire to lose everything for the sole purpose that I would have nothing to worry about anymore and could then drink without reservation.
The "yets" took on new meaning. I could relate to the guy telling this story because he followed through with my "plans". Strange thing happened... For the first time ever, I played my own tape all the way through. I saw how it would end. I could now ask myself "What then?"
And the answer I got from his story and a few others like it, I could apply to my own "fantasy". They all ended up right HERE where I am now only they had no dignity, no job, no relationships, no money, poor health, and many difficult amends to make, among other undesirable consequences.
Shit. All I want is to drink uninhibitedly "forever" and own nothing to lose. I don't want to BE those people. I just want to drink. I want to "drink myself to death" only I don't want to die. Much as I crave that existence, I don't want it to be that way forever. I will get DONE eventually. I will get sick and tired if I don't accidentally kill myself first. I don't want to lose my intelligence or what little sanity I have. I don't want to wake up 50 and decide I ought to get sober finally. I don't want to be THOSE people. I just want to drink and not stop until I want to stop. I am an alcoholic.
I will eventually end up where THEY ended up. I feel the pull, the grip of the obsession, the cravings. And "what then" is, I will end up right freakin here if I am so lucky. Now why the fuck would I want to ruin everything I have and end up back here with nothing?
...I wouldn't.
Every time I drink, sobriety is a little harder to hold onto. I sense it will never get any easier. My time is NOW to get this or I have a long miserable road ahead of me.
(yes, posted this as a reply to another thread. wanted to share again. was a great epiphany for me.)
Funny thing is, in my obsessive little fucked up mind, I aspire to lose everything for the sole purpose that I would have nothing to worry about anymore and could then drink without reservation.
The "yets" took on new meaning. I could relate to the guy telling this story because he followed through with my "plans". Strange thing happened... For the first time ever, I played my own tape all the way through. I saw how it would end. I could now ask myself "What then?"
And the answer I got from his story and a few others like it, I could apply to my own "fantasy". They all ended up right HERE where I am now only they had no dignity, no job, no relationships, no money, poor health, and many difficult amends to make, among other undesirable consequences.
Shit. All I want is to drink uninhibitedly "forever" and own nothing to lose. I don't want to BE those people. I just want to drink. I want to "drink myself to death" only I don't want to die. Much as I crave that existence, I don't want it to be that way forever. I will get DONE eventually. I will get sick and tired if I don't accidentally kill myself first. I don't want to lose my intelligence or what little sanity I have. I don't want to wake up 50 and decide I ought to get sober finally. I don't want to be THOSE people. I just want to drink and not stop until I want to stop. I am an alcoholic.
I will eventually end up where THEY ended up. I feel the pull, the grip of the obsession, the cravings. And "what then" is, I will end up right freakin here if I am so lucky. Now why the fuck would I want to ruin everything I have and end up back here with nothing?
...I wouldn't.
Every time I drink, sobriety is a little harder to hold onto. I sense it will never get any easier. My time is NOW to get this or I have a long miserable road ahead of me.
(yes, posted this as a reply to another thread. wanted to share again. was a great epiphany for me.)
I had a moment I guess. ;-p ...I don't get many "moments" these days.
I think that you may think if you get rid of everything you will have nothing to lose. BUt the things you would lose in truth are ENORMOUS.
THink of it. Lose your ability to bounce back. Lose your dreams. Lose yourself. We think we can hold onto these things and just have one more bender to get it out of our system-but that is just not true.
Get rid of the material shit-and you will lose things that really matter if you keep drinking, eh?
Good post.
I had been a professional in a high status, high acheiveing career, I had an apartment with a mortgage and still had a car, if VERY neglected!! lol But outside work I was a scuzzy barfly drunk with the morals of an alley cat. It was lucky I was the owner of my apartment because I would have been evicted by a landlord - or the Health Department would have condemned the place. A serious of brutal events occurred, including me resigning from my job as I had the alchoholic radar teliing me they were going to fire me.
My interations with the male barflies were out of control and I seemed to pick tha baddest bloke in the bar - and I did - I really did at the end, and along with a whole lot of other terrble things that happened at that time, the last time I saw him I had only just wrangled myself away from him as he was trying to strangle me.
And here's the thing, even as an intelligent, educated, sophisticated woman, my best plan ended up being I would sell the apartment and drink and drug myself to death. Truly.
I was fortuntate that I did have my "Moment of Clarity", I did get to AA and thus I am alive to type this post.
As KK said, there are many TORTOROUS things in the road down to what you see as the ultimate freedom. And don't forget, you are not the only person in this equation. There are the family, friends, employers, sundry people who can be hurt by us on the booze in myriad ways - I certainly just cut a swath through them in my drinking. And being a low bottom drunk on the Hungry Mile can in no way be a place of freedom. I call alcoholism the only illness that can take a person living in a First World Country to a state of living as if they were in a Third World Country, along with mental illness.
I'm not meaning to be mean by being so hard core. I think that your self esteem is so low that you would consider the Hungry Mile as a place of freedom and that is part of the insanity of this disease.
When I first got to AA I thought it was the Arse End of the Universe but now I see it as the Door to the Universe.