To think my life is unsalvageable?

[nothereforalongtime]

I'm not really sure if this is the correct place to be posting but I needed to write.

I am a 27 year old female, I am a single mum to a 6 year old DD.

And my life is fucked.

For as long as I remember I've had an issue with alcohol, I started drinking for fun at 11, went through many years of binge drinking, taking drugs (ket, cocaine, mdma etc) and have finally arrived at the stage of drinking myself into oblivion every single night.

I have luckily still got an amazing support network of friends and family who know about my drinking and my issues but I just can't seem to fix things. I have found myself lying and making up stories to get out of commitments so that I can drink and I know they don't believe it for a second.

I feel physically in pain everyday, constant knot in my stomach, the best way I can describe how I feel is a feeling of homesickness when I am at home. When I am with my people I have this constant, debilitating feeling of sadness. I manage to just keep it together but I am in agony.

I don't feel much, I feel no love towards my daughter or my family or my friends. I feel nothing. And when I do feel, it's a negative emotion which I drink to escape.

I am doing counselling and my counsellor suggested that I don't do housework during the day and instead leave it for nighttime when my DD is in bed to fend off my wine cravings. I mean really? If only it were that simple.

The thing is, on the outside I am a lucky person, everything in my life is great, but inside I am dealing with this overwhelming horrible sadness that makes me now understand why people decide to check out of life.

I ruin everything I touch, soooo many relationships been ruined because of my alcohol use, friendships have been the only constant in my life and for that I am grateful.

I am 27, I see myself at a cross road. One path is happy, clear and stable. The other path leads to death, and I seem to be choosing that path.

I never had a bad childhood. There was definitely some physical and emotional abuse that happened but why can't I get over that? I had it much better than other people. I grew up never asking for anything.

I've just never felt so close to hell before.

My GP prescribed me antidepressants but the prescription is still sat in my kitchen.

I feel like I want to get better but at the same time I don't. I feel like a broken person. I feel unlovable. I feel like my moral compass has broken. I feel like a shitty mum. I feel like a shitty person. I don't know how to escape this.

You need to go to AA and get yourself referred to rehab as soon as possible. You are in the grip of a very serious addiction and you need professional help.

Your daughter is not safe and she is actually in an abusive situation. You are putting drink before her. She deserves better. Get help.

Alcohol is a depressant. You are experiencing depression.

Your situation is complex, which makes it more difficult to unravel. So start to simplify it by stopping the drinking.

Get to AA and make an effort to connect with people there, particularly the women. Everyone in AA is there because their life became unmanageable.

I was a few years older than you when I went to AA. My life was fucked then too. I've been sober for 25 years. I have a good life now.

You can do this, but you cannot do it alone. The peer support and power of example are critical success factors.

I think this can help you. please read it www.fuckportioncontrol.com/blog/2017/1/29/the-cure-for-alcoholism

You mention abuse in your life- dont underestimate the effect that it had on you. It doesn’t have to be horrific to constitute a trauma. Long term trickle of abuse is trauma just the same (so my counsellor told me) and the effects leave us vulnerable.

get to AA. you can sit through meetings hating it and hating life and hating everyone there but it doesn’t matter as long as you’re there and listening to other alcoholics’ stories and you commit to listening out for the SIMILARITIES not the differences to your own story.

my life was a mess, also at a crossroads. AA literally saved my life

Please go to AA. As you know, the consequences of this continuing will be very serious. Your life is not unsalvageable, unfortunately it can get so much worse than this. Which would just take so much more for everyone to recover from.

Without a doubt, I can tell you that the difficult emotional issues you are suffering will be 100% easier to address, manage and improve once you are able to get the drinking under control. At the moment, the alcohol is keeping you in this cycle of misery.

I hope you get the support you need.

If you can find a therapist with expertise in trauma, in particular childhood trauma, I think it could really help you. It would certainly be a much better fit for what you're experiencing. All those horrible feelings engulfing you, the ones you're trying to push away with alcohol, come from your trauma. Addressing that will be key to breaking this cycle.

I had it much better than other people

So? It is literally of no relevance whatsoever that other people may have experienced worse abuse than you. Many other people also had it much, much better than you. (if you want to put this into context, then let's do so fully).

The only thing that matters to helping you find a way out of this is what happened to you and how it affects you and affected you.

If we take your way of thinking to its logical conclusion then only one living person in the whole world at any one time would be permitted to struggle and suffer mentally and emotionally. That's what you're saying by trying to put your suffering into some kind of hierarchy and then declaring you're not allowed to be distressed because other hypothetical people had it worse. Follow that up the hierarchy you are creating in your head and it only leaves one person who is "allowed" to be suffering.

What you lived through was bad enough for you to be distressed and suffering. It shouldn't have happened to you and I'm so sorry that it did. You deserved better.

One of the biggest steps forward you could take would be to put down that stick you're using to beat yourself. Maybe today you can only put it down for five minutes and try to notice what it feels like without it. But maybe tomorrow when you put it down you could try saying to yourself "I'm allowed to be distressed about this, it wasn't fair, and I didn't deserve it".

I've never met you, but I still believe you deserve kindness and compassion. And I really feel for you to have had those experiences growing up. It wasn't right and I'm sorry it happened to you.

Where do you think that brutal voice in your head comes from? Is it really your voice, or is it from someone else?

You'll get so much further if you can be a little more gentle with yourself and be a little kinder to yourself. You've talked about your relationships with others, but what about your relationship with yourself? Would you like it to be different? Would it help if it was different?

Your first step is that prescription, long term you do need counselling.

AA has saved my husband's life. He's been sober for 10 years and his life and mine has been transformed, a day at a time.
Go to meetings and as pp said, hate it, hate everything but keep listening. The programme works.

You poor, poor thing. I really feel for you and found your opening post quite chilling because I went through a couple of phases of binge drinking (sometimes to oblivion), but not at such a young age or with a small child. I was a lot older.

I was able to stop. It frightened me so much, I hated being a slave to anything and alcohol made me feel ill anyway. I was depressed but booze only makes depression worse. It just wasn't worth it.

You can stop but it sounds as though you need help and guidance to do so. Please do grab it with both hands. You've taken the first step by telling us. Well done.

@nothereforalongtime you need proper help, you deserve proper help, I want you to get better!

OP, you are really brave for putting all of this in writing and I'm with all the PPs who're saying, you can do this and you will. You've made the first step in owning it. Taking ADs isn't failure; more people than you'd ever dream take ADs, and once you find the right one, they can really help. My DH has had depression for a long time due to childhood neglect & much lower level abuse than you describe, also from his mother. He turned to alcohol for a while and it was absolutely at its worst then. He's now been on ADs for about a year and is making a lot of progress. As another PP said, you won't get all the answers through one counsellor, you'll need to talk to several and work through each issue as it comes up.
Everyone here is rooting for you. Your life is absolutely salvageable and totally worth saving. As you said to yourself, don't go quietly xx

oops, as you said yourself (not to yourself)!

You’re on the way to crack this problem already. You have been honest. You are powerless over alcohol. The great news is that you can- with loads of support from other alcoholics- stop drinking. The alcohol is a depressant. You know this I’m sure. It’s all salvageable and you can change the trajectory of yours and your daughter’s lives.
Start with the antidepressants. Very important.
Go to AA tomorrow. Some meetings will allow you to bring children. A day at a time and you can absolutely get this salvaged. I’d love to hear from you and hear how you get on.

And please also to the person who plans to raise their child and then ‘go quietly’ - you are worth more! You can have a fulfilling life and you deserve good things. Life is bloody difficult I know that.

I'm another whose life was saved by AA. I was full of denial for a long time but my life was utterly unmanageable and I was powerless over alcohol. Please get to a meeting. Newcomers are welcomed and as others have said, you may not enjoy sitting through meetings as first but if you listen and persevere your life can and will turn around. If you lived anywhere near me, I'd be happy to introduce you to a meeting. Good luck.

Continued, consistent, low level abuse of the type you describe is just as traumatising as more dramatic physical and sexual abuse. Because it’s drip fed into you over a long period of time it starts to seem normal. It shapes your development and changes your psyche. You can recover from it but it will be a slow and gradual process.

You are very young and you have recognised that you need to change. Both of those are great things. Take things one day at a time. Use the antidepressants - keep reaching out for help.

Just posting what you have shows that your life isn't unsalvageable.

But you do need help. That could be AA, as PP have suggested, but there are other options: smartrecovery.org.uk/ is one of them.

You should probably not stop cold turkey - you may well need to detox. However, once you have you really should take the antidepressants. Give them time to kick in, start accessing support at once and you will see a difference soon.

Just go for it. Do what my OH could not.

You need some counselling, and maybe CBT and it will take time. Whatever has happened to you in the past that has left you with unbearable emotions now can be looked at and dealt with in the safety of counselling.
Be kind to yourself and value any small improvements you make, don’t beat yourself up for set backs. Regularly make gratitude lists of all the small things that you appreciate.

I never had a bad childhood. There was definitely some physical and emotional abuse that happened

This bit. My love, you sound like you are brushing over this very key piece of information. Maybe take the anti-depressants and find some better therapy and substance abuse help. It will get better with acknowledgement and help.

Even if you are having a drink right this minute, you can still turn this around. You have insight. That's more than a lot of people in despair. Go back to the doctor and ask for support with counselling while you try the antidepressants and quitting drinking. You need to dial back to the start because there was a happy little girl in there some where in the past and you can get her back. I wish you so much love and luck.

We hope you don't mind, but when these threads are flagged up to us we usually add a link to our Mental Health resources. You can also go to the Samaritans website or email them on [email protected].

Support from other Mumsnetters is great and we really hope you will be able to take some comfort from your fellow posters, but as other MNers will tell you, it's really a good idea to seek RL help and support as well.

Best of luck.

Please go to AA . Listen for similarities. Alcohol is depressing is a depressant. The more you drink the more you need and the lower you get. You can have a happy life . Shit will happen but you will learn how to deal with it and get some self worth through AA. Also get some counselling for childhood trauma. Please get to an AA meeting tomorrow. Google , there are loads . Take care x

OK so I am going to be quite blunt.
How much do you love your daughter?
More or less than the drink?
She needs you. If you drank during her pregnancy she could potentially have fetal alcohol syndrome disorder caused by your drinking.
I know because I have two amazing adopted kids with it as their birth mum drank.
What would happen if social services found you to be unable to care for your daughter? would you continue to drink and risk her being taken into foster care? How much would this hurt her as well as you?
You can change, you can fill that prescription or go to AA, or do both but you need to want to.
I am being cruel to be kind. Think about how much you love her and then make a decision. Do it first thing tomorrow, no waiting, no excuses and make the change you need to.
I hope you are able to and get the support you and your daughter need.
Best of luck

In the most supportive way possible, your childhood was fucking dire. DIRE. You did really well to survive that and be where you are. To move beyond this point and on to good health, you will need help. Go back to the doctor, tell them what you've told us.