Hi Isolde.
I am a full blown alcoholic. What I referred to as a functioning alcoholic. Adding that functioning part made me feel a whole lot better.
I have been in your shoes so many times I don't know how you still have any soles left on them. I have walked them off...lol
When I was bartering with myself about how I could just drink a little at the concert or maybe if I just chose a day, maybe Wednesday, to not drink...hmmmm, well, I thought, That would surely work. Wednesday never came. I found myself fooling me over and over and over again.
20 years of tee-totalling. Come 4pm and it was always 5 o'clock somewhere for me! On Sundays it was usually 2pm! I LOVED Sundays!
okay, enough using that wonderful word " I ". Let's talk about your feelings now.
Ask yourself the questions you have posted. What advice would you offer your son or me if I asked you those questions? Hey..they are legit questions. We've ALL been there, done them. I'm sorry if I sound harsh. I sincerely do not mean to. This is one of the toughest jobs anyone has to do in their entire lifetime.
You'll know when you are ready. For some people it takes a bad blood test result to get through to them and start turning their thinking. For some it takes a whole lot of blackouts and almost loosing everything they have. (waving..that would be me).
Before my Mother passed away she had smoked for, I bet, close to 45 years. 10 years prior to her death she was diagnosed with lymphoma. She laid those smokes down and never picked another one up. I asked her, Mommy, how did you quit smoking so quick?" She replied, "Everytime I wanted a cig I would imagine that cig was a dill pickle and it would make me laugh." She was a real cut up so I don't know if that was true or whether the cancer made her mind up.
What made me stop visiting the bottle was one day at the beginning of this month it came to me in a thought....You wouldn't put mud in your old 92 Buick's gas tank yet you could care less about your liver or any other organ in your body. That thought haunted me.
The last straw for me was 8-10-08. Totally drunk, blacked out and I had a knock down drag out fight with my husband that I don't even remember. When I drug my sorry butt out of bed the next morning I got on my cell phone and I left him the nastiest message you can even imagine. I told myself, this is it. I am leaving that SOB and he will be sorry cause I am going to take everything with me.
Well, he called me back in about an hour. I was still crying my eyes out because I didn't want to leave him. I love him. I just wanted the fighting to stop. When he called he said, "Sweetheart, what's the matter? I thought we talked this all out last night. Don't you remember kissing in the hall for about an hour last night?"
oh my gawd.
That was the last drink I have had and I will NEVER NO MATTER what ever look back.
I told myself a couple years ago that I could just have a few too.
It has to be your choice. and I hope you never make the mistakes that I have made. Life is too short. Our families are too precious and so are you.
I feel like I have been let out of prison for the first time in 20 years.
But..if someone had told me what I just told you last month before I laid the booze down ..and this is just me.. not anyone else. I would have said, yea, right.
I wish everyone could feel as good as I do right now.
When you do decide to make the move the book that everyone has recommended and the supplements may help immensely.
Good thoughts and happy days are being sent your way.
Happy Feet
