What’s wrong with just going to sleep in the chair?
Easier said than done.
Probably true. I don’t know how long you have been not drinking or how long you drank. I suspect that you spent more time getting your sleep routine messed up by the mind altering drug alcohol than you have spent getting over it.
Perseverence overcomes most obstacles. Also see the last sentence of Qadgop’s post.
I’m pretty sure I’ve had a sleep problem before I had a drink problem. I could say that the drinking problem is an indirect result of the sleeping problem. But I don’t remember how long I have had the drinking problem. I know I drank at University. I don’t know if it was every day or just once or twice a week (I doubt I could afford to drink every day at the time, even with a steadily growing overdraft)
Then again I don’t think I drank much, if at all, during my previous job. It was quite an active job so I guess sleep wasn’t a big problem.
To be honest I don’t really remember when I drank and when I didn’t (I mean long periods) I guess that’s what drink does to people.
That is one of the most effective consolations that keeps my confidence up. Lack of sleep is the lesser of two evils, and so I can cope with not getting much sleep.
I was once told (at University) that consistent lack of sleep has the effect of lowering the IQ point by point. That struck a chord, as I prided myself on my logical intelligence skills (being a good programmer) now, I don’t really care about IQ points. I just want my life back.
Or to put it more accurately - I want a life, of some kind.
Another one for the Pros: imagine how you will look and feel after 5, 8, or 12 years of sobriety, then compare that to how you would be after the same intervals had you not decided to quit drinking now.
Does that make sense? I quit drinking one week ago today. I notice a change in cognitive function. My doctor convinced me. I’m doing a lot of shopping (not buying too much), navel gazing (feeling more flexible!), and exercising. I’ve announced it to a few of my friends. Most have been supportive. Thursday, I went to a party where people were drinking. I have not announced it to my parents or siblings. I have not attended a meeting yet, though I may.
I’m surprised to find how many people I know who do not drink. I asked one very good friend how he was able to overcome his addiction to alcohol and to other substances. He said, “I prayed a lot. This was God’s doing. I couldn’t have done it on my own.”
Interesting. What motivates and sustains people? Health, religion, spirituality, vanity, love, substitution, survival instinct, legal consequences? I’ve heard that even those who are incarcerated are somehow able to get alcohol and drugs if they’re desperate enough.
I meant to add, about the party, that drunk people are not nearly as clever or charming as they believe themselves to be. The hip crowd ain’t so pretty when they’re all drunk and you’re sober.
I cringe whenever I come across one of my many drunken posts here.
Getting back to the topic of the thread, I had to stop blaming my drinking on things such as sleep problems or depression or a stubbed toe, and accept that the drinking was the direct or indirect cause of most of my troubles.
Interesting how, after a few weeks of sobriety, my sleep problems went away (I started sleeping instead of passing out and then regaining consciousness), as did the worst edge of my depression and the looping reel of suicidal ideations in my mind.
Lobsang, I know how bad alcohol withdrawal can be, especially when you know you can’t quell it with another drink. Just remind yourself that nobody ever died from being uncomfortable.
(Although I should point out that alcohol withdrawal can in cases be very serious and even life-threatening, but I’ll let the resident board MDs discuss that.)
DING DING DING!!!
This statement is very correct!
The first time I went out with my friends who were drinking and I wasn’t was not as hard for me as I thought it would be. I then realized how they acted, I wondered how others who were not drinking viewed me when I was drinking.
The very best thing about my friends is that when I went out with them after I had quit drinking is that they NEVER tried to get me to drink.
My SIL, on the other hand, was just sure she could “get” me to drink. She went so far as to buy a drink for me and sit it in front of me - it was still sitting in front of me not touched some 3 hours later.
Yeah, the excuse, “You’d drink too if you had my problems.” really should read, “You’d have my problems too if you drank like I did.”
Count me in as another non-drinker. 11.5 years’ sobriety here, in fact.
I’m constantly amazed at how much I can get accomplished without alcohol. When I was still drinking, I was horribly unfocused with my life, and had no self-confidence and thought I needed alcohol to make me “popular”, whatever that means.
Eleven years later, I’m a completely different person. I’ve got self-confidence coming out the ass; I don’t have to make a fool of myself to be liked, and I can sort out and solve my own problems without hiding in a bottle. And because I don’t have to structure my life around drinking, I can take on additional things that mean something to me, even if it’s just making some extra time to spend with my son.
Don’t worry about the insomnia. I’ve gone for weeks on a few hours’ bad sleep a night, and I made it through OK. If it helps, I detoxed on chocolate milk. It’s got sugar, it’s reasonably healthy, and it’s a comfort food. In fact, if I start craving chocolate milk, it’s time for me to take a step back and figure out what my problem is.
Robin
Why would you sleep in the chair when you’ve got your nice comfy bed to crawl into? You generally don’t know ahead of time that you’re not going to be able to sleep, after all. Besides, there’s no alarm clock in the living room, which is a pain if you have to get up at a specific time. That’s not to say I haven’t drug my clock into the living room and slept on the couch or in the chair on occasion, mind you, just that it can be a right pain in the arse.
My life sober is great. All the promises were true. It’s been over 17 years now. I’m going to be the speaker in Orangeburg on Wednesdayand I’m going top tell what it’s been likedrunk and crazy and brain damaged. I am so happy to read posts from all the sober Dopers. I never knew there were so many, I’m used to reading all of the drunken threads.
Yay for you, Lobsang!!!
I think the cons you list will pretty much resolve themselves and you’ll feel a lot more human soon. On the Restless Legs - a lot of sufferers turn to alcohol to deal with it, trouble is booze works poorly and only in the extreme short term. There are lots of better alternatives, check out www.rls.org. Iron supplementation is one of the first things a knowledgeable doc will recommend, but don’t do it willy-nilly as excess iron isn’t good for you either. And there are medications that work pretty will for most RLS sufferers, if you wind up needing them.
Ok, this thread and some real life incidents have convinced me it’s time to dry out. I have known I am an alcaholic for a couple of years, and have tried stopping drinking before. Monday morning I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking, I was half an hour late to work, and almost didn’t show I felt so bad. I consume between a liter to 1.75 listers of vodka and rum a week. This has to stop. I boxed up my massive liqour cabinet tonight, sealed the box with ducktape, and locked it in our storage unit downstairs with a key only my boyfriend has. I plan on having a friend take it within a week. I have to do this, my life cannot continue in the old pattern. Wish me luck!
I want to congratulate all of the sober people and the newly-recovering and wish everyone luck.
I’ve been struggling with a prescription drug problem for about 6 years and have been trying to quit since February of this year. I relapsed in May, then I relapsed around the first week of September, but this time it was on alcohol. I wanted to be “normal” and have a glass of wine with dinner when we went out or to have a bottle of wine on Saturday nights. My husband didn’t understand that I shouldn’t drink, regardless of the fact that it wasn’t my drug of choice, so I used that as an excuse to drink and feel normal. I thought if I just drank occasionally, then there would be no problem. I thought wrong!
I then started to drink on a couple of weeknights, too, without my husband’s knowledge. He went to bed at 8:00 and I went out to my car to get the wine. It was after he found the empty bottle that I thought I hid so well, that I decided that I can’t use any addictive substances…PERIOD! I’ve been clean from pills for about 110 days and from alcohol for about a week. I do crave alcohol now and I’m struggling.
I’ve been attending NA meetings since February and now I’m going to go to some AA meetings, too. If you go, don’t worry about the “God” stuff. The way it’s worded is “God of my understanding” or “higher power”. There’s no talk of Christ or Allah, etc. We’re careful not to bring any particular religion into the meetings.
Jeeves, I’m so glad that this thread was one of the reasons you decided to stop drinking.
And Lobsang, you’re one of my favorite posters here. I wish you much luck and strength.
The physical struggle is hard, but temporary. The mental struggle is ongoing. As soon as you lose sight of the addiction, it can bite you in the ass. I’ve learned that the hard way.
Good luck! If the words of a stranger can help at all, then here they are.
Just wanted to stop in and wish both Lobsang and Jeeves the best of luck and plenty of strength on their battles. I’m pulling for both of you.
I quit drinking 3 years ago this past August. I only remember because it was a couple of days after my brother’s wedding that I quit and he just had his anniversary.
I started drinking to sleep. I drank daily for about two years. Before that I only binge drank. Since I quit drinking daily I have tried to drink like a normal person two or three times but each time I got very depressed and ashamed after the first drink or two and couldn’t relax or enjoy it.
My dad is an alcoholic. He has alcoholic dementia and he lives in a home but he still drinks every day. I don’t take care of him. My mom takes care of him and she is either his enabler or his codependent or whatever but the two of them are really bad. Anyway my dad used to be very smart. 5 years ago he was handsome and smart and successful in a profession with his masters and lots of friends and dinner parties. Now he is a drooling idiot and can’t make the TV work half the time. What I really hate is that he never ever ever admitted that he had a problem and HE STILL WON’T. It’s really weird that you don’t have to actually live outside the liquor store to look and act that way. You just have to have a strong liver. If you have a strong enough liver, your brain will go first. It shrinks. I think his liver is catching up but I really and truly wish that his liver had gone first because I would rather have lost him physically before he turned into this scary monster.
I don’t mean to be all “scared straight” because even seeing him do this to himself didn’t stop me from drinking. I’m pretty sure it’s what put me over the edge into drinking every day!
I miss that feeling of getting nice. I used to get to that point and think, “I totally understand my dad and he made the right choice. I can totally see why he chose to drink himself to death and it’s worth it because this feels so nice” I really did think that many times! Ha ha. The truth is that I never never feel good and that was the only experience I have really had of feeling nice.
I think the big thing for me was some William Burroughs story where he talks about (I think himself ?) having alchohol poisoning and smelling like pee? (Not sure–was drunk reading.) It put a terrible idea in my head that I was going to die of alcohol poisoning and in my intense shame that was somehow a fate much worse than death because I would be all fat and smelling like pee with a hard-drive full of porn and everyone would know I was an alkie and that all that time I was yelling at my family about the drinking problem I was really a drunk… I don’t know. All I know is I was really paranoid that I smelled like pee all the time. That the smell was coming out of my pores. I would constantly shower and smell my hands and I would think I smelled pee and freak right out. All that anxiety really helped me enjoy drinking even more!
It was all pretty stupid. Anyway. The main thing is that now if I die it will nothing to be ashamed of. That gives me a huge lot of peace. Alcohol sucks because it is supposedly making you calm but it makes you feel so ashamed!
This is weird but the thing that helps me at night is to listen to tapes about Buddhism. It doesn’t make me sleep but it makes me feel calm. I don’t have to lie there and listen to my own thoughts, yet I’m still right there on the bed with my eyes closed just in case sleepiness comes. It’s hard to sleep but I have a philosophy in life that sleeping from 11 til 7 every night is arbitrary bullshit and that nobody has ever done it successfully but everyone feels bad about it. Also, no matter how crappy I am after not sleeping I’m still smarter and more alert than when I drank.
Sorry to write a novel:(
It can be tough. I’m proud of anyone who quits.