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 am new to AA, and I have read the big book, but I am still drinking. I really want to quit but I have had a lot of bad things happen to me that were not caused by alcohol.My life has been basically ruined by terrible people and I don't know if I can repair the damage that has been done.
I have been drinking to cope with these traumatic events for a long time and when I try to drink less (to taper down) I feel like I am having a panic attack because the reality of my situation is so horrible . The things that people have done have left me in poverty and my spirit broken - so the consequences of those peoples actions are still in my face everyday .
After reading the big book I feel like that most of the people had pretty good lives and they had problems largely due to drinking. Most of these people in the stories could get their lives back on track if they just quit drinking (but my situation is not that simple). I haven't really had many problems related to drinking - except now my health is deteriorating. However, I would like to quit drinking before I have any major problems due to alcohol and try to do what I can to rebuild my life. How do I overcome this self pity?
I have been drinking to cope with these traumatic events for a long time and when I try to drink less (to taper down) I feel like I am having a panic attack because the reality of my situation is so horrible . The things that people have done have left me in poverty and my spirit broken - so the consequences of those peoples actions are still in my face everyday .
After reading the big book I feel like that most of the people had pretty good lives and they had problems largely due to drinking. Most of these people in the stories could get their lives back on track if they just quit drinking (but my situation is not that simple). I haven't really had many problems related to drinking - except now my health is deteriorating. However, I would like to quit drinking before I have any major problems due to alcohol and try to do what I can to rebuild my life. How do I overcome this self pity?
But I must tell you that I thought the same before stopped drinking - if some horrible people didn't do that and that to me I'd be okay. I felt the same that my situation is not so simple then other's. After being in AA I realized that me and later my drinking played a big, huge part in doing my life miserable. So I stopped blaming others even though sometimes I still like to blame somebody else for something - because it is easier to see the wrongdoing of others then recognize my fault.
Self-pity? It is not easy to overcome and it is very hard to give you a definite answer. I struggled and still struggle with self-pity but getting easier to stop it as my sobriety time adds up, day by day. I have health-problems as well, and it is not easy to accept them or deal with them, even not drinking. Drinking would kill me, anyway.
I hope that you'll overcome your difficulties and wish you well.
So from the depths of my soul I do not see how I can react differently or blame myself. Other than it is stupid for me to drink as a result of other people's actions. I think it would be easier to blame myself than other people because I wouldn't feel like a victim of a horrible crime. Which all my problems actually are crimes and whoever I tell my problems agree - what occurred was wrong.
I read an article about self pity and they say that I should make a list of things that I am grateful for and I do have a few things left in my life that are good. I also think about other people having worse problems than me (which really doesn't make me feel any better). But what is making things so difficult is the fact that I feel permanently damaged and destroyed and no matter how hard I try I can't make those feelings go away!
I guess the bottom line is that no matter what happens I still shouldn't take a drink to cope with it. Although that is really hard for me to do when the consequences of the problems people caused are making me miserable( i.e. poverty)! I just wish I had a magic wand sometimes : )
I hope that you feel better today. I stay angry or in a state of despair most of the time and it is hard to get rid those feelings. And the medication my doctor prescribed isn't working either: )
You have raised some interesting points that I will try to address based on my own experience.
First of all, in many but not all cases the main problem that alcoholics have is about living rather than drinking. Reacting in the wrong way to people, places and things will cause people to reach for the only solution they know and that is alcohol. Drinking excessively then results in a lot of guilt and remorse and it may be easier to justify it by blaming other people. I could list a hundred reasons why I drank and some of them would be convincing enough but when all of the cobwebs are blown away, I drank in the way that I did for only one reason. I did not become an alcoholic because of what life sent my way or because of what other people did it was because I drank too much over a long period of time.
When it became obvious that the only choice was to either drink on to the bitter end or seek help in order to recover, feelings of self-pity became very strong. I cannot say for certain but I think that if I had done nothing else but to quit drinking that I would still be burdened with that self-pity today. Somebody else who had been around the block a few times was able to read the situation better than I was and I asked that person if he would help me to get what he had.
I would urge you to be careful about the personal inventory stuff. The purpose of the inventory is not to allocate blame but rather to identify the things within ourselves that cause us to react in a certain way and to change those things where necessary. The question of who is right or wrong does not matter here as it is solely about your reactions to those people and events. I know that if I read the Big Book a hundred times I could not fully understand what was being suggested. In order to gain that understanding it was necessary to get help from a sponsor who had someone else explain it to him. One of the first things that the sponsor talked about was the importance of doing things in the exact sequence that was suggested in the Big Book. Information is carried from one Step into the next so it would be pointless for me to skip Steps 1 to 3 and jump straight into Step 4.
You say that you feel permanently damaged and destroyed and no matter how hard I try I can't make those feelings go away! Well, you can be pretty sure that is a false feeling you are not permanently damaged or destroyed. However, you need help in finding a way to deal with those feelings as these are skills that are not taught in school. The path that you choose is your own business, whether that may be through seeking professional help or through the Steps. All that I would say is that if you do decide to use the 12 Steps, it would be wise to get assistance from a sponsor.
The following link may be of interest:
http://youtu.be/GiHpJRqzsQg
I could not have gone through the 12 Steps while I was drinking. I lacked the honesty or willingness to take that personal inventory. I always blamed other people for my lot in life while I was the one tipping the glass every day. It's good that you're reading the Big Book.
My hope for you is that a seed gets planted. A sober life really isn't a vale of tears. I've seen people who recovered despite devastating odds. Can't say I've seen you around so Welcome!
"I am new to AA, and I read the big book, but I still smoke crack cocaine. I really want to quit but I have had a lot of bad things happen to me that were not caused be smoking crack cocaine''....
"I have been smoking crack to cope with these traumatic events for a long time"...
Try to stop drinking while your ahead. At the end of my drinking days, alcohol made my issues 100% worse. I could not sleep, I had high anxiety, I looked like shit, felt like shit. I was a slave to the bottle.
I can tell you it is the alcohol that is making your problems/issues worse.
I am happy that you want to quit!!!
I understand that it feels as if your drinking was caused by all the terrible things that people have done, that have happened to you but all of us have stuff like that in our lives - some more than others I agree. I used to use that excuse for my drinking but it was simply not the case. Sure bad things happened to me, but I learned I had to let go of them or they would end up killing me.
What is takes to get rid of self-pity is to stop indulging in it - that is hard if you are still drinking as alcohol just loves a pity party!!
Your life has not been ruined, you still have plenty to come, if it ruins your future then that will be because you allowed it to.
Most of us found that it wasn't possible to taper off drinking. You shouldn't try to just stop, you need to go to your GP and ask him/her to help you with this. Then you can get properly detoxed.
Once you are physically sober, you can get on with the steps WITH A SPONSOR! please don't write an inventory alone, I tried it and I ended up feeling even more sorry for myself because it brought home to me what these others had done to me. When I did the inventory properly, it all made sense.
Feel free to PM me if you think I can help!
Lyn
When I was working through my inventory my sponsor explained why it was necessary and that all I was looking for was my part in the way I dealt with life and how I treated people. It is not a self punishment exercise, it is an enlightening exercise. For example, those who had truly done me wrong rented a lot of space in my head and to be free of them I had to be able to forgive - for my sake, not theirs. As people in AA often say, resentment is like taking poison and then waiting for the other person to die. Chances are they won't but the person who takes the poison (in this case let's say it is alcohol) surely will. That I kept recycling old hurts was "my part" because all I ever did was seek oblivion in alcohol. I missed out on many essential life lessons when I was drinking because I was not clear headed enough to to mature as I should, not withstanding the fact that what takes an alcoholic back to drinking every time is the mental delusion aspect of this illness.
Through the years I have met alcoholics with truly horrendous backgrounds who have managed to get great sobriety in spite of that because they have learned a better way. Like the people you read about in the Big Book, they took the necessary action because they really wanted to. I'm hoping you will find that burning desire to be free of all those negative feelings by getting well too.
Your situation, which you say is of great complexity, really isn't as complex as you make it. We love to complicate things. Some of us hang onto the idea of being "terminally unique" - which means we think we are much different than everyone else out there and our conditions are unique and hence nothing will help...so why bother? We all have gone through that. In the end, there isn't any kind of alcoholic who can find recovery / sobriety. Where there is breath, there is hope!
Alcohol is just a symptom of something greater. I drank alcohol to deal with life. Life was anything and everything that happened to me, or most often, caused by me (sober) and not always bad. But I drank regardless. Whatever your situation is, feeding the self-pity doesn't make any lick of good. Stopping is the good first thing to do. Reading the book while drinking doesn't do anything other than tire the eyes. I mean, I am glad you are reading it, but it's a book of action, a way of living, a guide to finding your truth.
I hope you find your way :)