Has anyone ever sorted out a completely, utterly, fucked up life?

[WindfallenArch]

I've no job, no friends, a disastrous marriage, no money, family all dead. I have two tween kids who used to make it all worthwhile, but now look at me with contempt and have no interest in being in the same room as me let alone doing something together. I'm a 42 year old fat alcoholic and I'm utterly pointless. I drag myself sadly through each day and I see no joy in anything at all. It hurts in my heart all the time I'm awake.
Has anyone ever sorted themselves out after fucking up everything they touched?

Sorry for the self pity. Today is particularly excruciating.

Sending you love and strength

If nothing changes nothing changes.

Only you YOU can make the changes.

You can be a success but not until you get rid of your best friend.

Try a meeting, ask a worker from Turning Point to go with you.

Hello quitelikely you're right, of course. I'm very grateful for you drawing it so clearly.

I'm trying very hard tonight. I'm watering it down hard and just trying to keep the tremors and panic at bay. I've had 8 units. By my standards and recent experience I'm white knuckling it - I'm fully aware this is a skinful to normal people.

You're doing brilliantly, keep going

Hope it's a good night Windfall

Hi Brank. I've cleaned my teeth and I'm going to try to sleep. This, for me, is a tiny triumph. I'm not sober, but I'm not drunk. I know I won't sleep but I'll live.

Your kindness to a sad worried little stranger is a credit to your humanity and an enormous boost to me. I can't tell you how much it means to feel someone might be there to listen. It's such a small thing in a way but to me it's helping. I'm in bed and I know how I got here.

Hope you get some sleep or at least some rest. We're all rooting for you.

From the outside, your life doesn't sound like a catastrophic mess AT ALL.

You've had a long career, a long marriage, 2 normal kids!, and you've coped well despite losing ALL your family. You actually have a lot to be proud of.

It's the booze turning your thoughts into blackness.

My only 2 tips:

1. Nytol will help you sleep without alcohol. The herbal one works as well as the over-the-counter version.

2. The brilliant FlyLady routine will help you sort out your house.

Good luck! Can't wait to meet the new you!

Hello blue! - forgive me -so many lovely people have been so generous that the thread is too long to scan at speed for names - I hope I'm not forgetting we have spoken before?

Hello whatsgoingon' your positivity makes me feel warmer andhLlied than I thought possible on a difficult night

I have commented at the beginning and I've been following along, Wind. A little at a time is fine.

I meant every word!

This'll sound like shit when you're fed up, but it's SO easy to make a good life sound awful. It ALL hinges on how you're feeling.

When you're depressed, you look back on your life and see only all the mistakes, the lost opportunities, the missed connections, the mistakes.

When you're happy, you can look back on EXACTLY the same life, and see only the lucky breaks, the contentment, the coincidences that led you to where you are (happily) now.

I do that ALL. THE. TIME. My life either looks amazing or totally shit, depending on my mood, where I am in my menstrual cycle, if I feel fat or thin that day, if I've chatted to any school mums that morning, if I've shagged DH, if my kids were nice or hideous at breakfast... Etc. It's awful how fragile it can be.

So, I really wouldn't trust your own version of events at the moment. It's all sullied by the depression and the wine.

I'm glad you have decided to go to AA. In answer to your first question, I have several friends who are members of AA and they are even higher quality people than my friends that don't have an addiction because they are people who are working on themselves everyday.

Alcohol is a depressant and it is probably the reason why you are overweight too.

You could also benefit from taking Vitamin B complex because alcohol removes it from your system and it helps you to fight depression.

And never, ever examine your past when you are depressed, because even the most wonderful life will seem horrible under the influence of depression.

Good morning! Did you sleep? Does anything feel different since you've decided to take action?

Morning Windfallen

I hope you managed to sleep.

Keep at it. Try going to bed early each day at 9.45 like you did last night as more time in bed is less time drinking and also probably means more rest.

Do you drink all day or just after a certain time? My mother never drank until she had got us home from school so after 5 or 6pm.

Morning. I'm so grateful to you for asking, but I can't say I slept, no - a weird frightening clock watching night, then an hour where I dozed off at around 5 am and had a huge, film like dream involving dramatic escapes from confined spaces and a lot of running frantically away from various perilous disasters. I've not had a dream in years; my subconscious clearly decided to go high budget for its relaunch. Not to mention slavishly Freudian.

Hi me2017 I've never touched a drop before 6pm. Some semblance of propriety won't permit me to. Come 6.20 I've normally had best part of a bottle of plonk though, so the propriety takes a nose dive fairly soon after that.

Hello fantastic well right now, I feel like death warmed up, but I dare to hope I might be able to sort this out.

Do you like yourself? REALLY like yourself? Can you look deep inside and say, well I ain't perfect, but I'm ok, deep inside. I'd be friends with me.
Do you have inner confidence? because that is the crux of it.

I was in a bad place. I fell to my knees, rocking in the foetal position, sobbed and sobbed till I had nothing left to give.
I cried at the injustice and how was I so stupid that I'd ended up in this place and not realised that everyone else had been playing a game, that I hadn't realised.

2 years on and it is quite different. Things feel huge at the time, but with hindsight we realise they actually weren't that big and things can change quite quickly.

Take comfort in that.

oblomov do I like myself?! not at all. I look back and see a boundless waster with no compass that, facts being facts, no one has ever wanted to spend time with, I see nothing but clear evidence that I was a waste of food and fresh air to be honest. My kids loved me once. Seems like a long time ago now.

It's lovely to hear you've found your path though - what changed?

Perhaps cutting down last night meant the fug of alcohol lifted enough to let you dream?

Sorry to hear it wasn't a good night, but you know what? You drank less last night, cleaned your teeth, had an awful sleep and are here to tell the tale today, that little bit stronger for it. Another little step. This is you actually doing it!

If you're exhausted because of that bad night do you think you'll manage to fall asleep early tonight (so less drinking time)?

Can I throw in a different perspective - my mum was/is an alcoholic (not sure you ever 'stop'), and probably could have written your post if MN existed in those days.
She started at AA when I was 17 and I'm 45 now and we have had bumps along the way but overall pretty much she has stayed sober. I could never be prouder of her, nor could I love her more.
But ye gods was I an obnoxious and arrogant teenager. Give your kids time, they are starting their own life journeys and as with most teenagers selfishly they will be focusing on that.
So concentrate on yourself and finding your own peace. Eventually they'll grow out of their teens and I can bet they'll be delighted to see you thriving.
Wishing you every ounce of strength to make those first steps 

Hi brank I hope so. I've not tried it in recent years so I don't know. I feel dreadful this morning which is damnsnly unfair.

And Wind, I utterly despise myself when I'm depressed. Everything I say and think irritates me. It makes it so hard to get out of the depressed cycle because I don't like myself enough to bother fighting it. But it's not real and you won't feel like that forever now you have started fighting.

Your kids loved you and you were (and still are) very much worthy of that love. You can get back there again.

I sometimes picture myself as a stranger and it makes it easier to see that if I bumped into myself in the street (or an AA meeting, or whatever) that I'd just see yet another person who was hurting and struggling, not someone to hate. It's so easy to screw up, it's not a reason to hate yourself.

Plus, you sound kind and lovely. It comes across in your writing. You are just lost, not a waste of space.

Oh yakari you've made me cry - the thought that they might still love me one day is more than I dare to hope for. I miss my darlings every minute of every day. They were my life. I miss them so much.