Fellow Dopers...Please Help

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

To my fellow Dopers:

I find myself in a situation that I have never had to deal with before, that is to say, my abject poverty. I need help, and by help I mean of a financial nature.

Guys, I realize that I have expressed to you my alcoholism in the past, most notably in a flameout thread in July where I relapsed, was at my most despondent, and got myself suspended over it and rightly so. I feel the need to get that right out because I am, and have been, sober since that moment, and I also expect a fair amount of blowback over that in asking for assistance here. I guess God and the Dope (or the threat of a lack thereof) works in mysterious ways. This isn’t so much about that as it is about myself and my sons.

I got a DUI on January 28th 2017, a day that I now can see actually saved (or at least prolonged) my life. I lost my job the next day due to being in jail, and for having a dirty license. You can’t sell cars you cannot drive! But, I also in the ensuing months, lost my ability to find work, got diagnosed with liver cirrhosis, applied for and got denied disability, got a job lifting heavy weight with Kroger, only to lose that due to an umbilical hernia I am in the midst of trying to get fixed and basically haven’t found a decent job since.

I had a reasonable amount of savings I have lived off of from February of last year until about this August. After I lost my house to foreclosure, I had been relying upon my parents for help, and they still pay my rent. But they are old and on a fixed income, and not only have I become a burden to them financially, but to their minds as well, which is soul-crushingly worse. After Kroger let me go I applied for unemployment, and that got denied as well. Apparently they classified me as “taking a leave of absence”.

Anyway, I do not know what else to do. Over the years I have seen others fall on the sword of other Doper’s largesse, and I remember thinking “Damn, that will never be me” as I made 100k a year. Well…it’s now me. Guys I have nowhere else to turn. I am sure I will get a job eventually, but I have a quarter tank of gas and $4 in my checking account. I have already sold all my valuables, save one guitar. I had a nice car, a good job, nice things…it’s all gone. ALL of it.

And now in asking for your help, I have a little less of my self esteem, which is fragile to begin with as I continue to overcome alcohol addiciton, get my health right and do right by my two sons that need me. I have foodstamps ($500/month) and medicaid, and…well, that’s it, other than my rent being paid. I have prolonged the inevitable as long as I can. I do not know what else to do. We didn’t even have a Christmas here at my place for the first time since my boys were born. This is all so disheartening I do not know what else to say. I also was just informed that I have a lesion on my liver and am awaiting a CAT scan to see if it’s cancer, the prospect of which is scary in it’s own right. If you can find a way to help me, I would dearly appreciate it. I will have another job soon (after surgery) and I swear I will pay it forward.

A special thanks to the mods/admin for granting permission to do this in my hour of need.

Thanks all,
FGIE

I set up a GoFundMe page here if you’d care to help. Of course any advice is also very welcome. This is one hell of a mess.

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Hang in there!

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A few questions/suggestions:

-Are you living with your parents or are they helping with rent? If you are not living with your parents, is that an option, in order to save money?

-HeyHomie started a thread about needing to find work, and there were a lot of good suggestions in there. You might take a read through that. A lot of it focused on working from home.

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Lots of luck to you.

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Thank you guys. SunnyDaze, I will check out that thread. And no, I’m not living with my parents. They live in some kind of community where you have to be 55 or older to live there, and family can only visit for (I think) up to three months.

I am generally unused to having to ask for assistance of pretty much any kind. I have been more or less self-sufficient since I was 21, which was 37 years ago.

I also understand that due to many of my issues being due to my own making that not everyone is going to be sympathetic to my plight, and that’s fine too.

As I said, advice is every bit as welcome as money. I am always thankful that I had the foresight to join this place back in 2008. There’s a lot of really smart, experienced people on here that have answered many questions that I had asked, or answered questions of others that I have read and would have never thought to ask. And everything in between.

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Alcohol addiction is a disease, no less than any other disease.
I have lived with and around drinkers in every stage of the disease. I have drank some in my past. I know of these things, bitterly. Please, what ever you do, don’t fall prey to its return. You are legit despondent, and it would be easy to go back, don’t do it, please!!
How old are your boys? Do they live with you?
I will check out your go-fund-me page.
I wish you the best. This year may be the one that pulls you out if the hole.
Keep going to AA, if you don’t go, start.

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Best of luck. Please let us know how you are doing. You can get a lot of moral support for this community.

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Thank you for the kind words. I will not be going back to drinking, especially in light of the possibility that I may have liver cancer (pending CAT scan results, which I will share…there’s still a decent shot it’s a fatty deposit and not a lesion, but the ultrasound is inconclusive, hence the CAT scan). The health issues are one thing, others are my relationship with my sons, needing work, etc.

My boys are 16 and 12, and yes, they primarily live with me. They see their mom on the weekends…which is another reason to stay alive. I don’t want them to live with her full time. Whatever my shortcomings, things are far worse with her. I was a functioning alcoholic for a long, long time…up until this year, it’d never interfered with my work. I’ve never had a DUI before in my life, nor been in trouble with the law, never drank at work or during the day at all, etc.

And I have been going to AA. It does seem to help, if for nothing else to give me something to do in the evenings, which used to be my time to drink, even if I rarely say anything. I just kinda sit in the background.

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Your story is sadly typical. Except for some details, you could be my son, my brother, my father, etc. Donation sent.

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Is that you in the photo on your Facebook page, in cammies? If you are an honorably discharged veteran, seek out the assistance of your local VFW/American Legion. You do not have to be a member of either organization to get referrals from them, and in my experience (I work with the military population) no one knows hidden gems of community resources better than those two organizations.

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I have read things you have written in the past regarding your family. I am sorry I have been a part of this legacy, one I never thought I would be a part of. You never think it’s going to be you…until it is. Thank you.

That is me, when I was 19 and clearly taking my CQ duties very seriously in Deutschland! I’m guessing you managed to (easily enough) put two and two together based on a combination of my email/name to find it. I knew that my anonymity was going to go out the window with this request for help, but I have reached a point where I couldn’t care about that anymore, as precious as I know that is to many at large and on here.

I hadn’t thought of the VFW route, so I will look into that as well. My primary focus is just to eke my way through these next couple months and have a job with a living wage so I can get back to the business of supporting myself and my family.

I’m so mad I lost my house. I had been in it for 10 years, but due to my credit and depreciation, I didn’t have enough built up equity to do anything with in, and in retrospect, I’m probably better off having not borrowed against it. Once I realized I wasn’t going to be able to short sell it, I just had to let it go. It’s already been sold at a Sherriff’s auction.

Another hurdle I am going to face that’s adding stress and urgency to this is my car. Back when times were good, I leased a $40,000 car. I did a one pay lease where I paid cash to pay all my lease payments up front, so thankfully I don’t have a car payment. But my lease is up in July, and there’s no chance I can finance the residual to buy the car outright once that happens, and with my credit, I won’t be able to get pretty much anything, so I need to start stockpiling cash to buy a beater to get around in when the time comes.

Thank you all again for your replies. I am trying not to think too deeply into my financial stress because it’s so depressing, but I’ve gotta start all over from the bottom up, I guess.

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If you are attending A.A. I suggest talking to your sponsor (if you don’t have one, get one asap) or talk to whomever is running the meeting. Explain the situation. The folks in A.A. have been there and done that enough to know who can help and how to get through the b.s.

Also, if the A.A. folks think you are serious, they generally will do a lot to help. They can help with finding jobs, food, clothing, cheap cars, etc.

When I got sober i had nothing but my guitar, a bed and some clothes. No job, no where to live. Within six months I had a good job, a new car and a nice condo. Things can change fast if you work it one day at a time.

Good luck.

Slee

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yes+1

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Slee-

I have been meaning to consult you. As you are aware, this isn’t my first time on this rodeo, only in that it is now hopefully my LAST time due to circumstances. I don’t know how I could ask the AA people for help, they barely know me. Maybe they will, I don’t know. I’m extremely reluctant to ask them given the nature of AA.

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I don’t want to hurt you in saying this, but I can’t help but think of your kids. As the child of a severely alcoholic biological father… well, the fact that I refer to him as my ‘‘biological father’’ probably speaks volumes. He never bothered to even try, he just told me “I can love you and alcohol at the same time,” but he was wrong, drunken affection is not the same thing as love. I’m glad you’ve been making efforts toward recovery but I want to make sure your kids are getting help, too. I know from experience that this has taken a toll on them.

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I can assure you I was “never that guy”. I do try. My sons know that I do. They know what I am doing now. Throughout this whole experience my sons never wanted for love. My alcoholic experience was largely dedicated to after they went to bed, so they rarely saw me drunk. Not that this makes it better per se, but it was always a distinction that I maintained throughout my alcoholic career. The worst my sons ever experienced was negligence. Which of course, is just as bad as abuse, depending.

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Dribble added. Good luck.

StG

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Upon re-reading my last post, it makes me sound like a complete douchebag. I never intended that to be so.

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We have a serious Dad shortage around here, it’s become an awful thing about the holidays. I donated earlier in memory of mine. He was an alcoholic too. I miss him.

Best wishes.

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Sorry things are going so badly for you now. We all need help sometimes. Donation made.