(My Story)
Hi, everyone. This is only my first full day here but I thought I'd get straight on with it and do as is suggested – tell my story. It's split into three parts though as there's a 10,000 character limit.
Where I come from is not too different from this place. It was a quitting drinking forum that collapsed at the beginning of the year, a forum called WQD (We Quit Drinking) and I joined it back in the May of 2014 when I was very much still active, still ''performing'' as they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, still very much caught in the cycle of drinking and drug taking, and couldn't see a way out. I joined that forum and did as they suggested, set up a journal, and committed to writing in it every day to document what it was like for me to stop drinking permanently. I write quite a lot and would put in excess of a thousand words onto the page, per post every day, pretty much every day, sometimes a few times a day, for my entire two and a half year stay there. It seems like a lot of writing, and for a simple forum it was, but it only really scraped the surface of what it's been like and all that's happened in the time I've been abstinent, and I notice from reading some of the other stories in this thread that writing large amounts of text is something done often in this thread when people first sign up here.
So here's a little background, in as few words as I can tell it:
I joined the WQD forum after making the statement that I would be quitting drinking. I told my family and was convinced that it was gonna happen. I was seeing an addictions counsellor once a week at the time and she would support me. My friend's father had died the month before while in his mid-fifties from smoking and drinking related causes and I was going nowhere fast. I was working, owned a window cleaning company with my brother actually, but I was rarely able to work and tended to just stay in the safety of the indoors while our employees went out and kept things ticking over, handing in the takings for the day at the end of the shift. My home (which I call a cave) hadn't seen a lick of paint despite me ''living'' there for over a year, and it had become so terribly dirty and cluttered that no one was allowed in. I spoke with my doctor about my plans and was detoxed off the booze starting on June 01st of 2014.
Over the weeks I came to realise what all of that drugging and drinking had left me with. I had two people I could call friends (which, to be fair, is more than some people can claim to have who have never drank to excess) and I call them English Sara and Gillon. My relationship with either of these guys was at an all time low however and I wasn't in the habit of visiting people very often. I still could count on them though. I also have a brother (who I already mentioned I ran a business with) and have two nieces – both of them preschool at the time. My relationship with my mother was as poor as it's been and my father.....well......he wasn't around and hadn't been for a long time. I sobered up to try to change all of this but also, vitally, because I knew I had to. It was quit or die. Off the back of a terrible winter alone in my cave where I spent my first ever Christmas by myself, too ashamed of what I'd become to join in the festivities with my nieces and family, I started to seriously weigh up the pros and cons of suicide. It didn't happen but it left me a very scarred and bitter man going into another year. I was struggling to hold it together going into 2014. When Gillon's father died I knew it was coming. This wasn't a game anymore.
So I quit. My relationships were so poor that I often had nowhere to go and no one to talk to. I wasn't able to work despite my debts building all around me to the extent where I was always fighting to keep my home (which I'd gotten as a result of being through the homeless system in this country so wasn't sure if I'd have it to fall back on another time) and heating and lighting. I was incredibly isolated. My addiction counsellor referred me to a local organisation which helps to take those early in recovery out of their isolation and give them opportunities to meet new people in similar positions. I tried it but my anxiety would tell me I didn't belong there, didn't belong anywhere, and so I went once and decided it wasn't for me. This place was called Restoration and I was at their Annual General Meeting yesterday I am happy to say. Back in 2014 though – it was more socialising than I was able to take.
In late August the inevitable happened and I went out and bought a drink. This started off a five/six month slide which saw me go back to my suicidal thinking of the year before. I dropped everything (not that I really had anything) except from my sessions with my addiction counsellor and writing on the WQD forum.
2015 began the same way the previous year had only this time I had experience of sobriety and didn't want it. Nope – wasn't for me. At least when I am with drink I don't feel so alone. When sober I couldn't believe the intensity of the isolating feelings. But then it got out of hand. February came and I was with my friend English Sara. The house was busy and I had one of my ''moments'' when she decided to take my drink off me and pour it down the sink in front of me. She wanted me to snap out of my depression. Despite my warning to her – down the sink it went. I then grabbed a kitchen knife from the kitchen worktop and threatened the household until they found me some booze. I then went home and kicked the shit out of my cave. I remember nothing about this evening.
It proved to be the turning point though. I don't fancy jail, nor did I at all like the person I had become, someone capable of behaving in such a way. Someone asked me of that evening if I could believe having acted like that when it was explained to me what I'd done the following week and I had to say that I actually could believe it. Each and every time I had a good drink I was becoming more and more out of control, more unpredictable, dangerous, desperate. A caged animal angry at the world because it couldn't find a way out of its hellish cage. A member of my forum had suggested to me a few times Alcoholics Anonymous and I had actually been a couple of times but had decided it wasn't going to work. There were no other options left though. I had been seeing my counsellor for some time; had been relying on the forum; had tried all of the local agencies – nothing was working. I allowed myself a couple of days to sober up lying on my bed trying to sleep off my hangover, jumped into the work van, and made way for a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous one Tuesday evening – way back on the 10th February 2015. It was my third day sober.
This was the difference. AA. It took me out of my isolation this time around. It gave me something to do every day and somewhere to go. My days consisted of getting up and going to an afternoon meeting. By the time I got back to the cave and posted on my forum it was about time to get heading to the evening meeting. Then the day was done. My head hit the pillow sober for another day. I went to AA quite a lot in the early days – 235 meetings in my first 218 days of membership. Gradually I managed to get myself back out to work a couple of times a week. Because my debts were now so high I had enormous problems in coping financially. I went to the local job centre and explained to them that I was out of work. I doctored the business accounts so that it looked like we had ceased trading the previous December. I went onto benefits for a few months while I tried to get myself better while a couple of my employees kept the company running illegally in the background.
When in AA I tried to do everything as it was suggested. I was advised to get a home group – a meeting I could get involved with every week and be a part of – and I did so. It was also suggested that I find a sponsor and try to work through the Twelve Step program of recovery to the best of my ability. I did this as well. I found a guy of ten years sober and asked him. For the next few months he took me through the first five Steps and it gave me something to work on, something to be doing in my early recovery. There were complications though. I met a girl in AA who became my special friend and I spent a lot of time with her in those early months. She wasn't new to AA by any means. She'd been going for around six years but had never followed any of the suggestions and so had never managed to get any further than three or four months of continuous sobriety. We became close and it looked for a while like we would officially begin dating at any moment. This never actually happened but it alerted me to how immature I was in this regard. It had been a long time since I was intimate with a woman and, to be honest, I hadn't really had a proper relationship at all (although I do have a son and a daughter – neither of who I actually have seen for years) so became incredibly confused and it led to problems.
There was an old ''friend'' of mine who was to be coming to help me out with something in the cave and as payment I had got for him a gram of cannabis. We had to reschedule a couple of times and one evening I came back from a meeting of AA feeling a little dejected. I wasn't getting into this sober way of living at all. I rolled a spliff and ''enjoyed'' a night of toking. In the end, as you can imagine, this led to me smoking the rest of the gram, heading back to my dealer the following day to buy more, and then getting into the habit of smoking weed daily once again. I went to AA to speak about this but they didn't have much to say about it. ''We are hear to talk about alcohol!!'' they would say, ''Not drugs!!'' And so there was little support for me.
Hi, everyone. This is only my first full day here but I thought I'd get straight on with it and do as is suggested – tell my story. It's split into three parts though as there's a 10,000 character limit.
Where I come from is not too different from this place. It was a quitting drinking forum that collapsed at the beginning of the year, a forum called WQD (We Quit Drinking) and I joined it back in the May of 2014 when I was very much still active, still ''performing'' as they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, still very much caught in the cycle of drinking and drug taking, and couldn't see a way out. I joined that forum and did as they suggested, set up a journal, and committed to writing in it every day to document what it was like for me to stop drinking permanently. I write quite a lot and would put in excess of a thousand words onto the page, per post every day, pretty much every day, sometimes a few times a day, for my entire two and a half year stay there. It seems like a lot of writing, and for a simple forum it was, but it only really scraped the surface of what it's been like and all that's happened in the time I've been abstinent, and I notice from reading some of the other stories in this thread that writing large amounts of text is something done often in this thread when people first sign up here.
So here's a little background, in as few words as I can tell it:
I joined the WQD forum after making the statement that I would be quitting drinking. I told my family and was convinced that it was gonna happen. I was seeing an addictions counsellor once a week at the time and she would support me. My friend's father had died the month before while in his mid-fifties from smoking and drinking related causes and I was going nowhere fast. I was working, owned a window cleaning company with my brother actually, but I was rarely able to work and tended to just stay in the safety of the indoors while our employees went out and kept things ticking over, handing in the takings for the day at the end of the shift. My home (which I call a cave) hadn't seen a lick of paint despite me ''living'' there for over a year, and it had become so terribly dirty and cluttered that no one was allowed in. I spoke with my doctor about my plans and was detoxed off the booze starting on June 01st of 2014.
Over the weeks I came to realise what all of that drugging and drinking had left me with. I had two people I could call friends (which, to be fair, is more than some people can claim to have who have never drank to excess) and I call them English Sara and Gillon. My relationship with either of these guys was at an all time low however and I wasn't in the habit of visiting people very often. I still could count on them though. I also have a brother (who I already mentioned I ran a business with) and have two nieces – both of them preschool at the time. My relationship with my mother was as poor as it's been and my father.....well......he wasn't around and hadn't been for a long time. I sobered up to try to change all of this but also, vitally, because I knew I had to. It was quit or die. Off the back of a terrible winter alone in my cave where I spent my first ever Christmas by myself, too ashamed of what I'd become to join in the festivities with my nieces and family, I started to seriously weigh up the pros and cons of suicide. It didn't happen but it left me a very scarred and bitter man going into another year. I was struggling to hold it together going into 2014. When Gillon's father died I knew it was coming. This wasn't a game anymore.
So I quit. My relationships were so poor that I often had nowhere to go and no one to talk to. I wasn't able to work despite my debts building all around me to the extent where I was always fighting to keep my home (which I'd gotten as a result of being through the homeless system in this country so wasn't sure if I'd have it to fall back on another time) and heating and lighting. I was incredibly isolated. My addiction counsellor referred me to a local organisation which helps to take those early in recovery out of their isolation and give them opportunities to meet new people in similar positions. I tried it but my anxiety would tell me I didn't belong there, didn't belong anywhere, and so I went once and decided it wasn't for me. This place was called Restoration and I was at their Annual General Meeting yesterday I am happy to say. Back in 2014 though – it was more socialising than I was able to take.
In late August the inevitable happened and I went out and bought a drink. This started off a five/six month slide which saw me go back to my suicidal thinking of the year before. I dropped everything (not that I really had anything) except from my sessions with my addiction counsellor and writing on the WQD forum.
2015 began the same way the previous year had only this time I had experience of sobriety and didn't want it. Nope – wasn't for me. At least when I am with drink I don't feel so alone. When sober I couldn't believe the intensity of the isolating feelings. But then it got out of hand. February came and I was with my friend English Sara. The house was busy and I had one of my ''moments'' when she decided to take my drink off me and pour it down the sink in front of me. She wanted me to snap out of my depression. Despite my warning to her – down the sink it went. I then grabbed a kitchen knife from the kitchen worktop and threatened the household until they found me some booze. I then went home and kicked the shit out of my cave. I remember nothing about this evening.
It proved to be the turning point though. I don't fancy jail, nor did I at all like the person I had become, someone capable of behaving in such a way. Someone asked me of that evening if I could believe having acted like that when it was explained to me what I'd done the following week and I had to say that I actually could believe it. Each and every time I had a good drink I was becoming more and more out of control, more unpredictable, dangerous, desperate. A caged animal angry at the world because it couldn't find a way out of its hellish cage. A member of my forum had suggested to me a few times Alcoholics Anonymous and I had actually been a couple of times but had decided it wasn't going to work. There were no other options left though. I had been seeing my counsellor for some time; had been relying on the forum; had tried all of the local agencies – nothing was working. I allowed myself a couple of days to sober up lying on my bed trying to sleep off my hangover, jumped into the work van, and made way for a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous one Tuesday evening – way back on the 10th February 2015. It was my third day sober.
This was the difference. AA. It took me out of my isolation this time around. It gave me something to do every day and somewhere to go. My days consisted of getting up and going to an afternoon meeting. By the time I got back to the cave and posted on my forum it was about time to get heading to the evening meeting. Then the day was done. My head hit the pillow sober for another day. I went to AA quite a lot in the early days – 235 meetings in my first 218 days of membership. Gradually I managed to get myself back out to work a couple of times a week. Because my debts were now so high I had enormous problems in coping financially. I went to the local job centre and explained to them that I was out of work. I doctored the business accounts so that it looked like we had ceased trading the previous December. I went onto benefits for a few months while I tried to get myself better while a couple of my employees kept the company running illegally in the background.
When in AA I tried to do everything as it was suggested. I was advised to get a home group – a meeting I could get involved with every week and be a part of – and I did so. It was also suggested that I find a sponsor and try to work through the Twelve Step program of recovery to the best of my ability. I did this as well. I found a guy of ten years sober and asked him. For the next few months he took me through the first five Steps and it gave me something to work on, something to be doing in my early recovery. There were complications though. I met a girl in AA who became my special friend and I spent a lot of time with her in those early months. She wasn't new to AA by any means. She'd been going for around six years but had never followed any of the suggestions and so had never managed to get any further than three or four months of continuous sobriety. We became close and it looked for a while like we would officially begin dating at any moment. This never actually happened but it alerted me to how immature I was in this regard. It had been a long time since I was intimate with a woman and, to be honest, I hadn't really had a proper relationship at all (although I do have a son and a daughter – neither of who I actually have seen for years) so became incredibly confused and it led to problems.
There was an old ''friend'' of mine who was to be coming to help me out with something in the cave and as payment I had got for him a gram of cannabis. We had to reschedule a couple of times and one evening I came back from a meeting of AA feeling a little dejected. I wasn't getting into this sober way of living at all. I rolled a spliff and ''enjoyed'' a night of toking. In the end, as you can imagine, this led to me smoking the rest of the gram, heading back to my dealer the following day to buy more, and then getting into the habit of smoking weed daily once again. I went to AA to speak about this but they didn't have much to say about it. ''We are hear to talk about alcohol!!'' they would say, ''Not drugs!!'' And so there was little support for me.
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