So, hi. I am mostly a lurker but I have noticed many Dopers are successful non-drinkers and I know you all give great advice and support.
I went to the walk-in clinic yesterday for an upper respiratory infection and mentioned my recent struggles with anxiety. The doctor asked if I self-medicated with alcohol and I said that I did. My blood pressure is out of control although I take something for that. I also take Cymbalta and Narco. I am pretty much a mess.
Anyway, the plan was to go to the doctor, get a shot, and go get some vodka. I have been sharing a bottle of vodka every day with my boyfriend for the past year or so. Turns out this might be having an adverse effect on my health. Who knew? On the way home I opted to NOT get the vodka, and my bf and I stayed up all night watching tv and I still haven’t slept after taking my regular dose of Ambien and Soma. Not drinking is a good thing. I know this. I don’t want to die from mixing all this stuff I am relatively sure. But I am having a hard time making myself understand that the physical and mental pain I am numbing by drinking is really something I want to deal with. I could use some encouragement. I am an atheist and AA is not for me.
One of y’all recommended Rational Recovery and I own it now. Thank you. Bought it last year, the last time I decided drinking every night was a bad idea. Just remembered it and took it off the shelf.
I am 43, I work full time, have three grown kids that live with us and way too many dogs and cats. That is probably not relevant. I have been to counseling, not for this particularly, though. I am writing this in part for accountability, because on this subject I have not been very accountable. Any positive energy would be appreciated.
Just remember you don’t have to quit forever. Just try quitting for one day. Today. Don’t worry about tomorrow, or whether you can stop drinking completely. Just decide not to drink today, and worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.
That’s what worked for me, and I have been sober 15 years. I still have urges to drink, but I can reliably say, Not Today.
I am not an alcoholic, or a doctor, but I’m pretty sure that if you’ve been drinking every day for a while, it might not be a good idea to stop abruptly without being medically supervised. Is there a place you can go to detox?
You sound like you’re in a good place, and you want to stay in that place. I hope you can! If you fall off the wagon, we will all support you and forgive you, but you seem to have made the decision for your sake that alcohol is not for you right now. You’re not alone. Many of us have been through this.
[mod] Since this will involve advice and experiences from those in recovery, as well as numerous opinions about the best way to achieve sobriety, I’m going to move this to IMHO from MPSIMS. [/mod]
When you say “a bottle of vodka” how big of a bottle are we talking about? A 750ml? A pint? I guess where I’m going with this is how much vodka you personally are drinking every night, because, depending on how much, you might not want to quit cold-turkey. I have a close relative, for example, who was drinking somewhere between 4 and 6 oz of vodka most nights, and when he decided to cut down, the doc told him not to go cold turkey, but to minimize it in steps, because you can get some very bad side-effects (not sleeping being one of the milder ones!) if your body is used to it and you suddenly cut it off.
Man, I knew I was going to post in the wrong forum! Thanks for the move, twickster.
Yes the 750ml one. Half of that. Don’t want to know how much that is. I guess I will call my PCP. I have read that if you keep stopping cold turkey over and over it can be bad. I sound stupid but denial isn’t just a river, etc.
One day at a time. I have heard that. Spent a lot of time at AA places as a child.
Okay. Thanks you guys. I am so disappointed in myself.
Please find a way to (safely) quit. A brother-in-law of mine nearly killed his liver at age 39 due to his alcoholism. It was a medical miracle that he lived, but he’s still on disability a decade later due to the sheer damage that the experience did to him. The really bad side effects aren’t just something that the old alcoholics have to worry about. At least this was his “rock bottom” and he hasn’t drank alcohol since then.
One day at a time. And stop beating yourself up - be glad that you’re figuring this out now, and go forward from there.
Here are some of the symptoms of going cold turkey, in order: shaking (so much that you can’t even take a drink of water without sloshing it; hell you can’t even POUR a glass), deep depression (crying for stupid reasons), insomnia, hallucinations (audio and visual), and seizures, sometimes within 3 days of your last drink. And yes, the more you drop off the wagon, the faster these symptoms present themselves and the more dangerous they are, especially the seizures.
In any case, in just one year, on a bottle that small, you shouldn’t have much of the above symptoms. I know people who can drink half of the larger sized bottle of vodka per night, or one full large bottle of wine themselves, and still not feel drunk enough, and have been doing it much longer than you. They don’t even get hangovers now. But they have severe health problems.
It’s good that you’re stopping this early. I hope you can stick to it. A doctor can prescribe medications to help you as you taper off.
Er… isn’t 750ml the “larger size”? I mean, I know they make larger, but half a 750 ml bottle of vodka is close to 13 oz/8 shots. I’m very much on the liberal side of the coin when it comes to drinking, but that much per night seems to me to be more than enough to do some serious damage if kept up. As I said above, my relative was drinking 4-6 ounces per night, and the doc was worried about some really unpleasant side effects if he cut it cold turkey.
One of the crazy things with alcohol is what it does to your sleep; you may drink at first to sleep, but after a while it’ll actually keep you awake.
I can guarantee that a few nights without booze will improve your sleep immensely. Waking in the morning after a deep sleep and being sober is really one of life’s simple pleasures.
Good luck. Been there. Done that. Threw up on and then lost the t-shirt. I hope you find something that works for you. Contempt prior to investigation kept me from AA for a long time. I sure didn’t want it to be my solution. But after 18 years of sobriety I have to admit those AA motherf’ers will ruin your drinking and, for me, that’s just what I needed.
I am also an alcoholic, and my choice of drink was vodka as well. You sound similar to me - I drank to sleep. One of my wake up calls was when I’d wake up in the middle of the night because I stopped breathing. I was mixing vodka with sleeping pills and NeoCitron, so greatly supressing my respiratory system. I also didn’t want to die. I also had anxiety and panic attacks.
I went to outpatient rehab. It was three weeks, Monday to Friday, six hours a day. I also went to a few AA meetings and CBT meetings. I stuck with twice weekly meetings with my therapist one on one. That, the rehab, and the full and ongoing support of my husband are what kept and continue to keep me sober.
Can you tell us what state or province you live in? Some of us might be able to help you find resources in your area. Do you have insurance for this sort of thing, or will it be a struggle for you to do some sort of rehab or therapy? Will your partner support you in this? Let me tell you, the fact that my husband essentially quit drinking along with me is part of what made me successful. I couldn’t imagine trying to not drink while someone else in the house continued to drink.
Congratulations on taking this brave step! It sounds like you have been thinking about this for at least a year, and it’s important to remember that it’s ok to fail. You just have to get back on the wagon again. Twice now I’ve tried to return to drinking in moderation and both times I quickly (within a month) returned to drinking in excess. I know now that I just can not drink. You may be able to return to responsible drinking later on (some folks here have), you may not. As said, just think about today, think about your health, and think about your kids.
Yeah, the best thing I took from the meetings was ‘Holy shit, I do NOT want to be like that person’. Granted, I was pretty low, but I had not lost my job, family, home, etc., yet. I could see it happening though, and I certainly didn’t want to end up on the streets.
Also, some of the people I met in rehab were amazing. We were all told to not maintain contact outside of rehab, but I always remembered this one guy Ernie. He was in his 40’s, was a cop, had a wife and two teenage kids. He was struggling so much but was trying to be sober for them. I always thought of him in the years afterwards. I eventually tried to find him a few years ago and found out he had relapsed and committed suicide (with his service revolver). I ended up talking to his wife through Facebook about him and shared some of my memories of him with her, which she seemed grateful for. Anyway, I guess what I’m saying is please don’t be Ernie. Look at other people’s life lessons and learn from them instead of learning them the hard way by yourself.
I find AA helpful. Your post sounds fairly honest, and that is a good start. My sleep was pretty screwed up for a few weeks after I quit drinking. My take is that my body was compensating for the alcohol, so there was a big rebound when I quit. It took 2-3 months to really settle down and start feeling normal. I don’t know what bipolar people feel, but perhaps I was in something like a manic phase would be.
Much better to quit before it starts causing major health issues. I watched my brother die after killing his liver with alcohol. That is a very ugly death: Bloated, yellow, and stupid due to ammonia build up in his brain.
I quit after seeing that, and it scared me shitless when I couldn’t stay quit beyond 3 months. I tried several more times, with less success each time. Finally decided that I would go back to AA even though I have issues with them. 9 months + so far, and not one day has been white knuckling. I actually enjoy my meetings. Who knew? Beyond not drinking, there is learning how to deal with life without escaping into a bottle.
I have met people from every walk of life in meetings. At some point I stopped looking at how different I was, and started noticing how I am the same. And every time I think “I am not that bad” I remember to add “…yet.”
Talk to your BF and see if he has any interest in quitting. Being with an active drinker will most likely make it much harder for you to succeed.
If you are like I was, being disappointed in myself/ashamed was one of the bad feelings I would try to fix by drinking.
It is not something to ever be proud of, but it is important to put your past deeds in the past, and not allow them to screw up your present and future by dwelling on them. You don’t have to keep being the same person that did that stuff. If you keep beating yourself up over it, you are likely to keep drinking and generating more stuff to regret.