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What was your rock bottom

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  • 23-09-2014 2:02pm
    #1
    Sunnyisland
    Closed Accounts Posts: 10,562 ✭✭✭✭


    Don't know whether this is allowed or not,if not Mod can delete or close and apologies :-!)

    For those suffering from the disease/abuse/ruined life of alcoholism it seems to be an almost universal truth that before things can get better, they have to get worse -- sometimes a lot worse. They call it "hitting bottom" -- the place an alcoholic must reach before he finally is ready to admit that he has a problem and reaches out for help.
    After all, for the true alcoholic, it doesn't seem to him (or her) that he has a problem. He's just having a good time. If everybody would just get off his back, everything would be okay. He's got a disease, but it sure doesn't seem like one and the last thing that would ever occur to him is that he needs help.

    Because alcoholism is a progressive :disease: there comes a point at which even the most dedicated drunk decides that there just might be a problem.

    Alcoholism does not stay in one place. It doesn't hit a certain stage and then level off. It keeps deepening, affecting us physically, mentally, morally and spiritually. On all of those levels we keep getting worse until finally he hits bottom.

    So where is bottom? Nobody really knows. For some, getting that first drink and driving kmight be where the turning point comes. Getting locked up, even for a few hours, and facing the public humiliation of a court date is for some the only signal they need they have a problem.

    For others, however, 10 drunk driving arrests have no affect whatsoever. Driving without a license and frequent visits to the local jail don't phase them at all.

    Alcoholics have lost driver's licenses, jobs, careers, girlfriends, wives, family and children and worse and have still continued to deny they have a drinking problem.

    It was always somebody else's fault. His wife just didn't understand him. The only reason he got that DD was because he was driving a red vehicle and cops watch for red vehicles. He wouldn't have all the problems he's got if it weren't for those nosey people !

    His boss was a real pain to put up with anyway. His career as a professional was going nowhere fast and besides he enjoys selling used cars -- gets to meet more people.

    Some alcoholics go on for many years denying their downward spiral into social, economic and moral decline. But every alcoholic has a "bottom" out there to hit. A place where even the hardest of the hardcore drinkers finally admit that their lives have become unmanageable,

    What was your rock bottom ?, or have you not hit it yet ?


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    #2
    Sunnyisland
    Closed Accounts Posts: 10,562 ✭✭✭✭Sunnyisland


    This was my rock bottom,

    When it finally hit me that i cannot drink anymore.

    In January 2009 after a lovely holiday with both our families (as my partner would not go away with me on my own) I went on a mad drinking binge and ..................................

    The next day true to form I was back in the pub first thing in the morning as if nothing happened. It wasn't because I didn't remember the things that had happened, I did! This is what I always done when I had problems in my relationships.

    When I woke up in my sister’s house the following morning massively hungover as usual, something clicked in my head. It was, I can’t do this to myself anymore. Apart from any chance of saving my relationship which I knew was finished, I knew I had to try and save myself. and so far i have,.......... and havent had a drink since.


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    #3
    Carpet diem
    Registered Users Posts: 543 ✭✭✭Carpet diem


    I've been at rock bottom for the last while now. Staying off the drink for few weeks in a row and allowing myself to go on it then for a week.

    I've been working a few years and while I've managed to keep an alright lifestyle ive very little savings, few small loans which shouldn't be the case as I have no major commitments. I've also struggled to finish my course of studies and that certainly has been the low point for me. In some way it could be a blessing for me that it has highlighted my problem. I do now believe there is some higher power looking down wanting me to get better and I'm determined to follow that path.


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    #4
    Carpet diem
    Registered Users Posts: 543 ✭✭✭Carpet diem


    Just to add on my above :

    My constant obession with going drinking , have countdowns to go drinking, using it as a reward for everything and anything good or bad.

    Just not a life I want but a little devil in me wants it.


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    #5
    iusedtoknow
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,698 ✭✭✭iusedtoknow


    my rock bottom. I was at a festival - i was supposed to meet my GF, ended up drunk off my face, left my GF stranded and fell down some stairs and broke my wrist and a rib.

    Everything changed the next day, my gf gave me an ultimatum - her or the drink.

    I chose wisely. Since then...i've had 3 drinks in total...the last one being 3.5 years ago.

    Life has been good since then, my gf is now my wife. My anxiety is less, my depressive moods are few and far between.


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    #6
    beano345
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,105 ✭✭✭beano345


    Lowest point probably for me was after I'd been on a month long bender,I came home hammered one night and was talking crap to my mother in the kitchen whilst she was doing dishes when all of a sudden she went kinda quite and said real serious out of nowhere "ya know you'd want to ease up on the drink,your going to kill yourself" it hit me like a freight train,I went straight up to the bathroom and poured the naggin of vodka I had in my inside pocket down the sink.I did 10 months off it had a bit of a relapse about two weeks ago but I think it was needed to remind me I can never drink safe again,once the body and mind turn alcoholic that's it.


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    #7
    emmabrighton
    Registered Users Posts: 582 ✭✭✭emmabrighton


    My rock bottom lasted several months. It started with missing my friends wedding day, having my partner call off our engagement and ended with being arrested sitting in a garda station for 3 hrs, the next day I signed up for an in patient program that was 3 years ago.

    Prior to that I was going to A.A. meetings in the roughest parts of town, no bored housewives drinking bottles of wine in the tennis club at lunch. Everyone in the meetings I attended had been to prison, both men and women and had serious anger issues.

    I somehow managed to convince myself that because I was not like them, I hadn't been to prison, I was not an alcoholic. nine times out of ten I would race to the off-license on my way home from a meeting to buy a bottle of wine before 10pm. Sometimes I would have a drink in the car park on the way into a meeting.

    How did I not think I had a problem?


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    #8
    Doublin
    Registered Users Posts: 238 ✭✭Doublin


    realies wrote: »

    Alcoholics have lost driver's licenses, jobs, careers, girlfriends, wives, family and children and worse


    What was your rock bottom ?, or have you not hit it yet ?

    I honestly believe I don't have a rock bottom and at this stage am just waiting to die. I've lost my spark.

    My worse(as well as the above) includes homelessness, prison, pscyh wards etc. but I still keep going back. I used to have a very good job, beautiful partner, beautiful healthy daughter, nice house, car etc. Now I live in a tiny flat in a rough part of Cork just drinking every day, not eating & wishing my life was over. Here I am at this hour of the morning already on the drink since 07.00, I can feel all of my bones as I've lost so much weight, have no energy to move & don't go out of the flat much because of that and that I hate having to interact with other people for more than a minute.

    I moved to Cork 2 years ago for a fresh start after my last rehab stint thinking I needed to get out of Dublin. The people down here have been very nice and friendly for the most part so I know the problem is me. I just don't seem to want to address it. Of course in a small country like Ireland and me moving to a different city where I thought I knew no one the first people I met were people I met from rehab or prison & it's very easy to get sucked back into that way of life/frame of thinking. In the last 2 years I've fallen into 2 coma's(first one I was given the last rites and the consultant even said he had written me off), but when I came out of them and was in the wards for a while and felt much better, I still went back to my old ways.

    Not sure why I'm writing this because I've been told all the answers before and I was off the drink for a long time but my life was hollow, it still is. I am too physically weak to work, even if I could get a job with my criminal record now plus I walked away from some cc debt & loans years ago leaving a bad credit history & I used to work in finance, but also my head can't seem to get beyond that I just don't get any joy from life anymore. I have family/medical staff/counsellors telling me I'm am an intelligent, still fairly young, good person but it just seems I'm the only one who can't see it.

    Sorry for spreading misery here, but hopefully someone questioning their drinking habits gets the picture that it is a hellish path to go down leading to a sad, lonely, inevitable death.


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    #9
    xzanti
    Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 10,435 Mod ✭✭✭✭xzanti


    Doublin I won't patronise you.. I just wanted to say fair play to you for being so open and honest.

    But I will say this.. Where there's life there's hope! Don't give up.

    Please keep sharing here.


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    #10
    spice bag
    Registered Users Posts: 6 ✭spice bag


    Doublin, thank you for your post, thank you for sharing.


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    #11
    Kunkka
    Registered Users Posts: 793 ✭✭✭Kunkka


    I was 25 when I gave up drinking which was 3 years ago.

    I had abused drink since I was about 15. Before that I hated it due to what I seen it do to my parents but I finally gave in. I'm not going to lie I loved the stuff for a long time and I used to dislike people who didn't drink and people who only drank the social amounts. I was one of them arseholes. The cracks were there from the start I didn't do as well in my leaving certificate as I should have due to knacker drinking midweek and the usual blow outs at the weekends. I used it for everything, for pain, for happiness, for escape & to change how I felt about myself.

    Fast forward 10 years and it had taken everything from me already. I was on the verge of being thrown out of my house & my health was ****ed. By then I had already tried to give up drinking several times. I had loads of friends growing up and I was reduced to maybe 2 or 3 who weren't really bothered as I had hurt them along the way. Any girlfriends I had wanted nothing to do with me due to how badly I had treated them due to the cheating, lying and just not being there. My family including my grand parents who I loved didn't want anything to do with me. I was getting closer to losing another job due to drinking(I had lost several before). All I did was go to work and drink. The only reason I went to work was to get more money for drink. The worst part was the loneliness in that room in my parent's house just drinking by myself, but I was so unstable that it used to annoy me when anyone would ring me asking to do anything. I didn't want people in my life but I was dying inside to talk to someone, to anyone. I absolutely hated the person I had become and I couldn't figure out how it happened. That's when the suicidal thoughts crept in because I thought no one would care. They started to become more & more frequent. It was starting to get very scary. I felt there was no way to live without it and no way to live with it. I know now that if I had gone on drinking a few more months I would have finally plucked up the courage to do it.

    I was in one of my locals with my mate watching a match and I admitted to him I thought I was an alcoholic. I had told him because I knew his dad was in AA for years and I thought he might be able to help. My throat & stomach was in a very bad way at this stage, it literally hurt drinking the cider I was drinking but I drank it anyway. I stopped about half way through my next pint and it just hit me that I was poisoning myself with this stuff. That this beverage in front of me was what was in control of my life including all my actions & thoughts. Some people in AA call moments like that a moment of clarity all I know is the penny dropped. I didn't drink the rest of that pint. I left early and walked home. I broke down on the way home and I finally knew I had to do something about it. I was hospitalized the next day due me throwing up a lot of blood that night. That day in hospital with my dad who took a day off work was the lowest I've ever been. I had been in a hospital before due to drink or drink related incidents but this time I was overwhelmed by the night before and everything that had led up to it, that was my rock bottom.

    I got out a few days later and got myself to a meeting. I haven't looked back and I could go on for pages about what being sober has given me. Literally everything I always wanted in my head all those times when I was drunk but now I get to actually experience them. Still not over the health issues and probably will never be but I'm alive and happy.


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