Questions about stopping drinking for those who have beaten the booze

[AWholeLottaNosy]

I'm really struggling with stopping drinking at the moment. I know I need to but it's not going well at the moment. So I have a few questions for those of you who have successfully stopped;

1 Was there a final straw moment that made you realise you had to stop?

2 How have you found the AA meetings?

3 Do you have a technique you use when you really crave a drink?

4 When you stopped, what issues did you realise the drinking had been masking?

Any thoughts or advice would be really helpful to me right now.

It's not just physical addiction that's the problem. It's the total mental obsession. But bloody hell I love waking up in a clean bed with no headache. I don't vomit in the morning and can clean my teeth without retching. I can phone my friends and family without repeating myself. I can hold my head up high at work and at my children's school. I don't need Samaritans on speed dial. I have respect. And I'm less shouty less shaky and look ten years younger. I have a lot of friends who know and some who don't. That's my choice. I love aa for giving me back a life. Just don't have one drink for one day for ones self. I wish you all the best.

i'm 8 months sober on Monday.

the final straw for me (after losing my job, my daughter, my husband and my home) was the realisation that it really was going to kill me. it very nearly did. stop or die. after my last drink, the withdrawals were terrifying - alcohol withdrawals can kill and i should have sought medical advice.

i love AA and it saved my life. i'm not getting to many meetings at the moment but that's ok. it's always there.

i can't advise about cravings as really the first 6 months sober were about getting just one day at a time in the books as sober time and it's a bit of a blur. luckily i don't get cravings as such now - the odd thought but i've retrained that neural pathway - alcohol is poison for me.

i was a rock-bottom, lost-everything, 24hr-vodka-swigging alky.

i love my sober life. my mental health is still fucked but now at least i take my medication and keep up with appointments now. i see my daughter regularly and she's doing well. we're probably going to be ok, in time.

please - for anyone struggling - if i can do this anyone can. don't wait until you're like me. you can get off the down elevator now. don't wait for rock bottom - it's lower than you would believe.

thus endeth the lesson. sorry for the essay. be well.

exWife, I'm so sorry it took for you to lose so much to stop but well done for doing it!

The few AA meetings I've gone to ( I first went to one 5 years ago), there would be people there talking about getting into fights, staying in bed all day drinking and I thought, I'm not an alcoholic I don't do that and so justified carried on drinking. However I know I have lost control over it and it has already damaged my liver ( too scared to get it checked out but I have pain in that area), and if I don't try and get a hold of it now I know it will destroy me one way or the other. One day at a time!

Thank you everyone for sharing your stories.

my GP has been massively helpful. you really should get a health check - especially if you have pain in your liver area. luckily, the liver can bounce back, but you can only push it so far.

in AA, look for the similarities, not the differences. don't get hung up on the Higher Power thing - the only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking.

at it's heart, AA is group therapy. i can go to a meeting and relax because everybody else there is the same as me. it's such a relief - alcoholism is exhausting, what with all the effort involved in getting as pissed as possible without anyone noticing!

AA was v good tonight. I shared for the first time and people were v kind. I feel strangely hopeful, calm and excited now...

Also been reading some v illuminating material about the components of alcoholism which really make sense. It's like a lightbulb has gone on in my head about why I haven't been able to control my drinking...

Awholelotta. You're sounding much more positive. Great work

keep on reading - for me saturating myself in sobriety information, blogs, books and podcasts worked a treat. Have you tried podcasts? I had that going in my ears all the time

AWholeLotta, it's really worth going to talk to your GP. For one thing it makes it 'real' and there's no way back from active addiction unless you accept that it is real and bring it into the light. Addiction thrives on secrecy.

Your liver can recover - mine was buggered and for years I could feel it was swollen underneath my ribs. I was too scared to do anything about it. When I finally went to my GP he thought I was dying. I had an ultrasound and that showed that my liver was okay, just stressed to shit. It's recovered fine.

Your GP can do some blood tests and make sure you get the right supplements. I seem to recall taking folic acid when I first stopped drinking.

Like exwife I treat booze as if it were radioactive. It basically is for me. I try to avoid being around it whenever possible; I can cope with going out with work friends as they all drink beer and wine was my poison. But I still don't stay long. I would never go to the company Christmas party, for example, where the wine flowed non-stop all night (and based on some of my colleagues' appearances quite a lot of the next day too!).

Keep going. Watch your triggers. And make sure you have distractions - I played Animal Crossing on the DS a lot when I was first sober, until I got back into knitting. Now all the money I've saved on alcohol has vanished into a black hole of yarn and needles

ooh - supplements. i still take my Vitamin B compound and Thiamine every day - helps the brain recover apparently. my GP prescribed.

awholelotta your GP will also be able to advise on any Alcohol services in your town. i did 8 weeks of outpatient rehab which was so helpful in the transition to living sober.

so, yeah. GP! like ninawish said, i also read a lot. there's a forum at a website called Sober Recovery which is amazing for support.

www.soberrecovery.com/forums/

keep on keeping on!

Thanks all! I do feel good today and just been to the supermarket. Got lots of lovely soft drinks, chocolate and even bought some Camp coffee which I used to love years ago. Seemed a lot of money and sugar but at least it won't kill me! Bit scared about going to Dr as it feels such a shameful thing to admit but hey oh it's facing reality which I'm only really just starting to do.

Podcasts? No I would love to listen to some if you could send me a link?

Thanks!

Your doctor will have heard it all before, and will treat it like any other health problem.

The book that really helped me was this one.

Awholelotta

the podcasts I listened to all the time in the first few weeks are The Bubble Hour podcasts - chock full of lots of real life info on sobriety for example at the moment a holiday survival guide but also lots of deeper stuff and experiences from lots of speakers from the sobriety world

I just went through the list and downloaded what I fancied listening to and listened to a few a day. It really helped me so much to keep my brain topped up with sobriety stuff by listening to it as I was going about my business.

Cheers Nina. That looks great. I really wanted to have a drink tonight at about 6.45. Really really did! So I ate a ham and cheese croissant, a chocolate pudding, had some dates and after eights instead and carried on drinking my J20. I couldn't face how bad I'd feel tomorrow if I had a glass ( bottle) of wine plus a load of fags. So, day 3...

Awholelotta wow day 3 that's fab. Give yourself an almighty big pat on the back in the morning when you wake up without a hangover. The first few days are super tough so well done!

Oh and yep I was eating so much sugar too.

enjoy the podcasts there are some great tips on there

So day 5 of not drinking and I feel great! Calm and cheerful and optimistic about the future. Still reading lots, bought a book today about women and their relationship with alcohol. Fascinating. Feel a bit obsessed at the moment but think I need to retrain my thinking, so that I really get that I don't need to drink to be happy ( the exact opposite is true)

I went to Hotel Chocolat today to buy some Christmas presents and I picked up a packet of Champagne truffles for me, which I love. I suddenly realised, oh no they've got alcohol in them! Was only 2% but I thought no, don't risk it. So I put them back. Felt proud of myself. I really hope I can keep this up. I know I'm only one drink away of relapsing back into a bottle of wine a night. Early days!

Well done AWholeLotta. Don't worry about how obsessive you feel about the 'not drinking' bit, I was completely focussed on it for weeks. Whatever it takes. I had loads of really early nights, nights in bed for 8pm armed with my kindle, reading up as much as possible. There is so much identification to be had by reading other people's stories, it really helps.

I second the Bubble Hour podcast recommendation too.

I think you did the right thing re. the truffles. I would personally not buy things like that, not because I think they'd get me drunk (as if!), but because to be honest once you stop drinking the taste of 'raw alcohol' is quite full-on. I have a couple of bottles of cooking wine in my cupboard and I do use that sometimes in recipes which calls for wine, because I know the alcohol is burned off and the resultant taste is not one of actual wine.

I had a quick read of your benefits to drinking, and agree with you that those are just perceived benefits. That's what society tells us drinking does for us, whereas actually it causes huge problems instead (for many people). I have just had my first 'big night out' - got home at 2am. I didn't drink, and still had a great time. I felt confident, relaxed, sociable. Who knew!

I wouldn't buy them either - particularly not at this early stage of recovery. I wouldn't have tiramisu for the same reason. It may be small quantities of alcohol but who knows if it might set off a craving. As I said upthread, treat it as radioactive.

I gave up 17 days ago after a decade of drinking more than a bottle of wine a day! Check out my blog on www.mummywasasecretdrinker.blogspot.com It's like a virtual support group x

I have just read Sober is the New Black - her blog is brilliant too - it really helped - I could relate to it all. Mrs D is going without is another brilliant support blog too. xx