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.
Quitting is the beginning, how do you STAY quit is the key. Personally my sober journey began in June of 2012 and I was a daily drinker and that particular sat had been to a bar, stopped on the way home and bought a bottle of liquor and a 12 pack. I was so wasted that sat that when I woke up on Sunday there was about 2 fingers left in the bottle ( I remember walking and pouring it out in the street sewer) then I was so at odds as what I should do.
See I knew that drinking was not working for me anymore. I was requiring more and more booze to get drunk and my tolerance was getting ever higher. Also I was totally out of touch with life. I woke each day and acted like I was going to work, but would sleep in my truck behind a church until lunchtime, then I would eat McDonalds and try to work for a few hours. Then I would go to the bar by 4... then drink about three beers and two shots and be headed home by 730. Stopping at the liquor store for more and I would get home, put the beer in the garage fridge and open one ( like it was my first, so the booze on my breath had an alibi, and go into my house. I had a wonderful wife and two children 3 and 6. I would just booze until I went to sleep. Wake up AND do it all over again. Like clockwork.
Well I was hooked and on that fateful June Sunday drove around and was trying to decide which bridge abutment I could hit so my death looked like an accident. Yes I was ready to die, because I couldn’t live with booze and I couldn’t live without it.
Some time in the afternoon I had a thought, why don’t you go to an AA meeting. I called the hotline and found a 8 pm meeting near my house. I remember sitting in my truck and watching people arrive. They looked like normal people. So I got out and went into the church.
I didn’t do much that first meeting except sit there and sweat alcohol. But someone said to come back tommorow at the same time. They said there was a meeting every day at 8. And by some miracle I decided that I would. The next day I didn’t buy booze for the first time in about 25 years.
I will admit the first year was tough but I found help from the group and was able to STAY for awhile. I found out I was not a bad person, I was a sick person. I have a disease and it’s not going to just go away. I process alcohol differently than most others. I have ONE sip and then begin a death spiral of one after the other until it’s gone, then I get more.
So over the last decade, I have had good times and bad , but because I go to a daily group and have accepted booze is not how I need to medicate. I now have a defense, something I didn’t ever have. When booze is offered to me I just say... I’m ok thanks
sounds simple but to stay sober, I just don’t start drinking.
aA has taught me how to cope with life’s issues that I used To drink away
How long you been around? How do you stay?
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I invited Bill to have dinner with me last Sunday. He wasn't willing to drive 7 hours to mid Michigan and teased me with his beautiful ribs!!! So, of course I ate alone and had cedar salmon
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check out that smoke ring. It tasted really good. I smothered it with Maulls BBQ sauce which is Local to St. Louis and one of the best I ever had.....
I had moved to Guam in 1994 with the longest I had without drinking but when I flew to Guam I hit Hawaii as a layover and I have been in a lot of states and not Hawaii....so I think I need to drink to knocking off another state I have been in....somewhere around 44? anyway that opened up ten more months of drinking with a couple buddies from work as a teacher on Guam.....one of them turned out to be gay and was trying to get me to go to bed with him on the last night I drank....but the killer was a I drove home on the back road from Anderson Airforce Base and drunk as a skunk but I decided to drive the speed limit so as not to get pulled over just kind of pointing the car down the road....
so a line of cars is forming behind me because nobody at that time of night is driving speed limit....so at first point the car behind me could speed up and move out to pass me it did....then the second one.....which turned on its red and blue lights and pulled over the wrong car because the entire back road from Anderson Airforce Base is no passing zone.....I yelled out as I passed them pulled on side of road you got the wrong guy! I am that arrogant when drunk....
so I asked a guy at work who I pretty well knew was gay about his sobriety......and sat with him in KFC talking finding out there was AA meeting right next to my apt building on Thursday night....I had never wanted to go to AA until then but had been 12 stepped taken to AA before leaving for Guam which is why I had put together over a year of sobriety before leaving....
I started going and stayed....I liked having more friends.....we had gays and trans sexuals in our meetings.....someone might wonder about that but Guam was the place that sexual diversity was accepted but the other islands out in that area were very strict and they did leave these islands to go be their choices on Guam.....
I had my experience in gay sex at 12 or 13 and I really did not want to be that way....since then never again....but the whole thing of this guy wanting me to go to his bedroom with him and let him have sex with me really drove me from wanting to be drinking ever again.....
now I rarely go to AA but use 12 steps in Debtors Anonymous and also Spenders Anonymous.....but I do daily inventory with my AA sponsor thru Texts at the end of day......we have been doing that for a few years now and I enjoy it so much to be accountable to my AA sponsor.....I got sober June 14 1995....
It's something that I still occasionally struggle with and it shows up in my life at the most opportune moments in ways that wouldn't bother most people. Simply walking down the alcohol isle at the local grocery story can be a cause for concern if I only turn my eyes toward the inviting labels on each brand. I look straight ahead if just passing through. "Oh there's the hard apple cider" so I keep walking but then my ego says, "and besides, you can make better!" Then my mind drifts off to the old days when we would get together as a family, press bag after bag of fresh apples from the trees that grow wild everywhere, here, to be stored in whiskey barrells over the cold winter months. Many months later, on the day we would tap it, the whole neighborhood would show up and the fun would begin.
Luckily, I have a new family here right on DS and my second family is the nearest AA meeting which brings me more happiness then any mind altering chemical ever could.
In the beginning of my sobriety, it involved hiding from the alcohol and the people who were drinking. That's how I handled all of my problems, I hid.
Slowly, I realized that it was my heart and mind that needed healing. I still hid from alcohol. I found the people are almost impossible to hide from, if I am trying to live a full life, so I began to accept them where they are.
And I guess that's been the trick for me. Acceptance. Accepting that I had to start from scratch in many ways. Accepting that I can't change others. Accepting that I am just as responsible for my happiness as I am for the consequences of not seeking it. All that jazz.
The funny thing is, I don't feel like I'm hiding from alcohol anymore. Others bring it up in conversations, and I no longer cringe. I have this deep rooted knowledge of how it would destroy my life (and I actually have a life now) and I'm not willing to gamble with it. I have a partner who doesn't drink, has a lot of compassion towards who I was in the past, but would not tolerate drunken stupidity from me if it came back into my life. And I wouldn't want to risk missing out on my kids and their growth.
Going to AA, coming onto DS, as well as witnessing what life is like with and without alcohol through friends and family, has been a big help in my journey.
Thank you for this post, 1is2many. Your name on here is always a "keep that in mind" moment when I read it each time. I'm very grateful to your contributions on DS. Big hugs to you.