The struggle is real. It’s not something I can hide anymore. I want to be a good person and I do have good intentions I just can’t get past myself. For those of you who don’t know me I am hard-working person with four kids. At this point in my life the struggle that I am in might just end everything I’m about. I have a best friend who posts on this site as well but does not give me the time of day because I’m a fucking asshole. I’m not asking for sympathy but I am asking for prayers. I’ve been here before and I fought through it I know I see myself back in the same position. I have asked for help but because I continually do this to myself my prayers are answered. I’m putting this out here in the community because I don’t have a choice. I’ve been on this site for a few years and seen people come and go I don’t want to be that person. God bless to everyone who might read this and I have any input on what the next step should be. My wife will soon find out what’s going on and that will end us. But this is my own fault
Hey man. I know it might seem odd to say because I know right now it seems like you’re in a pretty desperate place, but my first impression after reading your post is that I was happy for you.
Take any of my advice for what’s it’s worth because I can only talk from my own experience, but I feel like I’ve been where you’re at. I’ve been sober for coming up on 6 years after being a daily drinker since I was 17 (I’m 43).
The part about you “having fought back and ended up in the same place”. I don’t know if you’re the same as me but I have a lot of pride and I was always trying to control my drinking. Not being able to control my drinking I viewed as a sign of weakness and I felt like I would never give in. I would figure it out myself and find a balance to keep booze in my life. I would remember all the successful drinking I had done where I was able to put it in it’s place. What I had to realize and the way I look at it is somewhere along the line I broke my off switch. No matter what my intentions were one drink always became 20. I kept looking for the logic in it, saying to myself in all other aspects of my life I have pretty good willpower and I act like a fairly reasonable person, I can control this, but then I had to be honest with myself and just look at my track record. I had been trying to control it for the last 10 years of my drinking. The fact was I couldn’t. I would white knuckle it without booze for a couple weeks just to prove to myself I could do it, but then first night back on the bottle I would wake up on the couch with no idea what I had done for the last 5 hours of the night before. In order to quit drinking I had put my ego aside and say “I can’t even have one”. The truth for me is quitting drinking wasn’t that hard for me once I made the decision to have no booze at all. I don’t walk around craving a drink. But the way I’m wired (and I think most alcoholics are wired) is that as soon as I have one, I crave a second and I will use any convulted logic my mind can create to justify why I should have that second drink.
If I don’t have one I don’t have to deal with it.
Sorry this is already way longer than I wanted it to be but I honestly think a good first step is to go to an AA meeting. I had pushed my wife to the edge and she was insisting that I go to a meeting. Just to get her off my back I went, thinking I would get nothing from it. I’m not an AA member and haven’t gone to a meeting in years, but it helped me a lot. I went to a bunch of meetings in my first couple of years. For me chronic drinking was a pretty isolating thing. I honestly believed that not a single person could understand or relate to what I was dealing with. First AA meeting I just sat and listened while people stood up and talked about what is and was going on with them and booze and 90% of it directly spoke to my drinking. There are other parts of AA like doing the steps and stuff. Do them if you want, (I didn’t) but don’t worry about any of that other stuff. Just go to listen to their stories.
I didn’t mean to write this block of text. PM and I can give you my number if you ever want to talk.
