Need advice please.

Inadarkplace

As my user name suggests things aren't going well for me presently. I'm a 32 year old male and I need advice on how to give up alcohol for good. Up to recently I would have gone out maybe twice a month. In the last four months that has increased to weekly. I have a very unhealthy relationship with alcohol. I can go a certain amount of time without a drink but if I go out I binge. I can honestly say that in the last four years I have been in a dark place because of my binge drinking. I don't necessarily do anything stupid when I drink but for days after a night out I'm short of being clinically depressed and unhappy. I realise I have a serious issue here and I want to much to start living a proper life without alcohol. I'm physically very fit and keep myself in good shape but my mental state as a result of drink leaves a lot to be desired. To anyone on the outside I'm a very happy individual but the opposite is the case. As a result of the affects of alcohol on me I've destroyed a long term relationship because I was not able to be happy myself therefore I couldn't make her happy. I'm interested to know what advice people can give me. Also I'm not keen on the aa approach I don't like the idea of speaking to groups or people knowing my private business. In dire need of help.

Wattle

Inadarkplace wrote: »

As my user name suggests things aren't going well for me presently. I'm a 32 year old male and I need advice on how to give up alcohol for good. Up to recently I would have gone out maybe twice a month. In the last four months that has increased to weekly. I have a very unhealthy relationship with alcohol. I can go a certain amount of time without a drink but if I go out I binge. I can honestly say that in the last four years I have been in a dark place because of my binge drinking. I don't necessarily do anything stupid when I drink but for days after a night out I'm short of being clinically depressed and unhappy. I realise I have a serious issue here and I want to much to start living a proper life without alcohol. I'm physically very fit and keep myself in good shape but my mental state as a result of drink leaves a lot to be desired. To anyone on the outside I'm a very happy individual but the opposite is the case. As a result of the affects of alcohol on me I've destroyed a long term relationship because I was not able to be happy myself therefore I couldn't make her happy. I'm interested to know what advice people can give me. Also I'm not keen on the aa approach I don't like the idea of speaking to groups or people knowing my private business. In dire need of help.

Ok I'll give this a go and hopefully some of it might help you

First off I can definitely empathise with the effects of your drinking because my pattern was very similar. Like you I wasn't a daily drinker but every time I did I had no control over it and it would leave me feeling ashamed and depressed. If you have no control over it and always drink to excess that is a bad sign. One of the things that you need to accept is that drinking is never going to get good again.

Secondly you say you don't want to go the AA route and that is understandable. AA is not for everyone. I'm off booze nearly ten years and I went to AA for a while but just found that it never sat right with me. Nevertheless I would definitely recommend that you talk to a professional in the beginning and be honest about the difficulties that you are facing. Giving up drinking is entirely possible but can be difficult to do on your own at least at the start. Maybe you can find some counselling that is not using a 12 Step model.

After that you really need to make a plan for your life that doesn't include alcohol in it. Perhaps you can take up a hobby, perhaps you can start going to the gym. Get a pen and paper out and brainstorm some ideas. Try staying away from drinking situations initially at least until you feel a bit more sure of yourself. A lot of people find that after a while of not drinking that being in heavy drinking scenes no longer interest them. I'm not sure where your living but you can also google meet-up groups. There are several of those that are focused on non-drinking activities.

Lastly I would recommend that you keep reading and contributing to this forum. You can get plenty of tips and support here. I like reading the 'Havent Touched A Drop In' thread because people are reporting about how great they feel in their new sober lives.

Best of luck. You can do it.

Fyda

Hello! First of all, it's great that you decided to look for help. I dond't know your personal situation, but maybe you could talk to a counsellor? There are some very good ones here in Ireland, some of them are specialised in addictions. Unfortunately this isn't covered by health insurances usually, but if that's not a problem for you I'd give it a try.

GRMA

Go to your GP and ask him or her for help, but you have taken the irst step, you have a problem and are trying to address it, thats something to be proud of, it takes courage.

maco12

fair play for admitting your probs..........a very good base to start from..

Stuey Byrne

I recently finished my 4th 90 day treatment program...and these are tough programs {or as tough as you make it} I have done 6 treatment programs in total in the past 6 years so in reality i spent over 1 year out of the last 6 in rehab...and at the end of the most recent program i decided to throw it all away again and go on an almighty bender which lasted 6 days and nights, and such is my pattern! I finish a program do a lot of work and go nuts leaving myself on the brink of homelessness everytime as i have burned all bridges ive ever had. My drinking would consist of complete isolation locked away in a room or house and drink maybe 1lt of vodka and 14 cans of strong cider, not eating, turn my phone off and keep drinking until my body wont keep the drink down any longer. Then comes the real nightmare......the DETOX...cold turkey...unmedicated!! {not recommended!!!} This will consist of no sleep, no food,bed,couch,hallucinations, severe shakes and weakness, severe abdominal and chest pains, massive headaches, extreme sensitivity to light, sound and much more which i wont go into detail here about. And thats my "pattern" which is simply going to kill me sooner than I think. I am a 33yr old man, ive worked as a chef since i was 15, ive been to literaly 100's of AA meetings years of different therapies, acupuncture, hypnosis, meditation, and the only thing that ever changes is that it always gets WORSE...I know that i have never really surrendered to the idea of recovery and never truly accepted the fact that i am an alcoholic who can never drink again.....its that simple...I HAVE NOT SURRENDERED.....I have lost every job i ever had since i was 20 yrs old to the point where ive even worked for Gordon Ramsay in 2 of his restaurants and lost them too..I buried my aunt last year from this sickness, my mam is an alcoholic and is now 2yrs sober...theres a lot of it throughout my family...so wether its genetic or not i dont know....wether its a high pressured job im not sure....but what i do now know about myself is that i suffer from a lot of fear....fear of rejection of others, rejection of self.........{self rejection seems to be a big one for me} that feeling of never being good enough...I should also add that i am cross addicted, i have smoked cannabis since the time i started drinking and im aware that this plays a huge factor in my life! For me cannabis just numbs everything i feel while still increasing the anxiety and fears i have, it clouds my judgement about everything and leaves me with a complete lack of ambition and discipline required to sustain any kind of decent sobriety. When i start drinking i could say i was sociable about it, just on weekends, after work etc, it took away a lot of my fears and made me feel comfortable in my own skin or so i thought because this very quickly changed and made me worse than ever....so thats just a few highlights of my life so far, i hope i didnt offend anybody, this is just my opinion, my experience..........TODAY i have now been without a drink or drug for 4 days and if i can continue to do the things i know help me from picking up a drink or drug, tools i have gained over the years about how to live my life simply on a daily basis i should be ok. One thing that helps me to read whenever things get rough is to read this great poem "Desiderata" Thank you for reading http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~gongsu/desiderata_textonly.html

Sunnyisland

Stuey byrne reading your post it seems to me you know what you have to do, You said it yourself, like you it took me years to stop after trying every which way you can, with all the blaming others and excuses to go with them. In my end I just gave up fighting it, I accepted and admitted defeat, I cannot drink alcohol, Come to accept that and get your base plan into plan.

There are other selfhelp groups out there other than AA in which they might make a difference,But at the end of the day its always down to oneself,goodluck and keep posting here its sure to help.