MWOers,
Hey gang, woofer here 35 year old male in the Phoenix area (I just moved here from the DC/Baltimore area a couple weeks ago). As I speak I am waiting for what I hope is to be my final six pack ever. I am shaking, sick as a dog, and terribly depressed. Pardon me if this is way too long but it's helping me to write this out. So, a bit (well, alot) of my story...
I started drinking much like anyone else, with friends on the weekend in high school at about the age of 15. I'd had a couple occasions prior to that of having a few drinks, and even getting drunk a few times, but one summer night after my 9th grade year the "magic" happened, where I finally put enough of the stuff into me to feel like everything was ok with me and the world. I wasn't really a terribly depressed kid, but I did have a lot of social anxiety (along with general anxiety, I can't stand sitting still or being bored) and worried alot about what others thought of me. Drinking gave me the ability to comfortable in my own skin and take away the anxiety that plagued me in meeting new people, going new places, and doing new things.
I was always right from the start able to drink as much as or more than my friends, and trouble began pretty early. I started having my first blackouts in 11th grade, though I didn't know it yet and didn't even know what blackouts were. I did a fair amount of drugs in high school as well, mostly pot and hallucinogens, but drinking was always my favorite. Things started to really get problematic after I graduated from high school. My sweetheart dumped me during our "beach week", where all the graduates go to get smashed for a week. I took it really hard, and turned to the bottle for comfort. Drinking became almost nightly, and started to be more hard liquor than beer. That summer is a blur, and I really don't remember much of what I did or said. I was having long blackouts and was acting really bizarrely when I did blackout. People told me I turned into a completely different person. I wasn't party-woofer anymore, I was angry and vilolent quite often and ended up getting my ass kicked several times (I can't fight when I'm drunk lol).
Fast forwarding through the next 10 years, my drinking and drug use was up and down. I was a musician and my first real career was as an audio engineer and video editor, which I did both in the music industry and in TV. I just so happened to be a hard worker and very good at what I did, so I was able to advance my career pretty well, despite calling out of work quite a bit. The main thing that kept me from being a total screwup was that I could still smoke pot instead of drink every night. During the work week I would go home, smoke a little pot, eat dinner and go to bed. On the weekends I would binge hard with my drinking buddies, but I didn't have a physical addiction to alcohol yet.
At 22 I was arrested in a bar fight and charged with 2nd Degree Assault on a police officer. It was a female officer who startled me during the melee and I grabbed her shoulder not knowing who she was. I immediately put my hands in the air but by then she had alerted the rest of the cops and they tackled me and threw me in the car. At 24 I got my first DUI coming back from a show I played with my band in Delaware. Both of these charges got me only probation, as I come from a pretty financially well off family and they were always able to hire me good lawyers.
Shortly before I turned 25 I violated my probation for testing positive for drugs, and moved to South Padre Island, TX with my band to work for a promotions copy that did events for MTV, Girls Gone Wild (the most depraved people I've ever met), E-TV, etc. While this year and a half of my life had some AWESOME times, and I wouldn't take it back, this is also the time period where I truly crossed the line with being able to control my drinking. The nail in the coffin was that I was starting to get paranoid and a racing heart whenever I smoked pot, so I began to drink every night instead.
My time in Texas ended with a row between me and my band members. We were doing a gig in Dallas and I drank two bottles of Mad Dog 20/20 in the parking lot, blacked out and got into a huge fight with them. They left me at the venue to fend for myself. I finally managed to make my way back to the hotel, where they informed to that I was to take my stuff out of the van and that they were going back to Maryland without me. No amount pleading would persuade them, they were totally sick of my constant drunkennes. I was left in the hotel room with my stuff while they packed up and headed back across the country. My dad flew out, rented a car, and drove me and my stuff back to MD.
When I got back to MD I started to do really well in my career, strangely enough because my drinking was escalating. I did however, get fired from a few REALLY good jobs due to my drinking and drug use, and I started to become physically dependent on alcohol. My typical day went something like this:
Wake up feeling absolutely shattered with a terrible hangover. People who don't drink like this would take themselves to the ER if they felt how I did, I was probably at least semi-alcohol poisoned every night. I would (usually, I called out alot) make it to work and say to myself "omg I feel awful, I can't believe I'm gonna have to be here for 8 more hours". For the last two years before my first attempts at getting sober, I would also say to myself every morning that I wasn't going to drink that night. Anyway, so by about noon I've rehydrated a bit, maybe eaten half a sandwich, and started to feel a little better. My mind would also change about that decision I'd made that morning to not drink, and I'd again be at the liquor store on the way home buying my usual amount, which was on most nights a pint of Bacardi and a 12 pack of beer.
I wasn't eating much anymore, and I looked really emaciated. I was down to 140 lbs (I weigh about 190 now). I was continuing to black out and get violent, and was scared to go out anymore, so I became a solo drinker. No one wanted to hang out with me at the bars or parties anymore anyway because I was just such an drunken a-hole that they didn't want me around. I got a job working for a production house that does work for several large TV networks. It wasn't two weeks before I was fired for calling out and coming to work with alcohol on my breath.
The day I got fired I walked out of the building, bought a fifth and a 12 pack, and went back to my DC apartment and started drinking at my desk. The last thing I remember was it being about 2pm, and I came to at about 11:30 pm in my car with the cop lights behind me, giving me DUI number 2. I have no recollection of those 9.5 hours at all, but from what a few people told me I had driven to my dealers house about 25 miles outside of DC to buy coke. They said I could barely make out a sentence, and that I didn't recognize people that I had know for 20 years, quite the drunken stupor. After booking me I was released on my own recognizance and took a bus back to my apt. While in the bus I felt the inside pocket of my jacket and the drugs were still there. I can't believe the cops didn't find them, they weren't even hidden at all. I got back to my apt, snorted up all the coke, drank the rest of what I had and passed out. I went on a 3 or 4 day bender after this, and this was really the first time that I realized I had a serious problem. I was 27 years old.
I tried to stop on my own and found that I couldn't, so I checked into my first rehab. I wasn't too serious about it and was drunk 3 or 4 days after my release. 9 more months of drinking, fired from another job, and checked into another rehab. Over the next 5 years, I was sober the vast majority of the time in AA, with most relapses being only a few days, some as long as a few weeks. At the time I guess you would call me an agnostic, and I didn't believe in the AA program (the 12 steps) at all. I did enjoy the social aspect of AA though, and was at a meeting almost every night. Over the course of time I did have some really bad relapses that scared me though, and I became desperate. I finally started working with sponsors and really diving into the program with 150% effort. I worked the steps three times, and started talking about God alot, even though I didn't truly in my heart believe in God or any higher power. I was trying to do a true "fake it til' you make it", because I didn't know what else to do. After about 5.5 years in AA trying to "get it" I decided that I wasn't going to go back to AA anymore and was going to try to find some alternatives. I finally came to realize that I am an atheist, and that the spiritual approach isn't something that works for me. For anyone that is in AA, please don't take this as a slight against that program or you. Whatever works for you is best, it just isn't the best approach for me.
However, the one thing that did negatively impact my life from AA was that since I was so immersed in the program, when I left I was totally alone. The only friends I had were in AA, the only social events I went to were AA, etc. So here I am again, isolated like I was when I was drinking, and really starting to get anxious and depressed. I found SMART online and started going to online and f2f meetings, but I had little social interaction outside of that and work. Evenings and weekends were dreadful, I was so lonely and bored. I also found that, at least in my area, SMART had FAR fewer people and meetings that participate in it, and even fewer than that close to my age (I was 34 when I first started going), so I wasn't really meeting people that I would hang out with outside of meetings either. So anyway, yeah, my time since leaving AA has been difficult as well, learning to live without total dependence on the program. While living in Baltimore I got my 3rd DUI. I was finally fired from yet another job just recently, and I decided that was going to leave MD and try to start over here in the Phoenix area with my family.
I actually had been doing some controlled drinking over the last several months, and was doing pretty well with, having at the most six drinks a night, usually less. But of course, my tolerance built back up and I started up with the Bacardi again, which always ends in disaster sooner or later. This past Friday I drank a fifth on my birthday, blacked out and scared my family. They called the paramedics because they didn't know what else to do. I'm devastated that this happened, I'm so tired of scaring my family and causing them heartache.
I was up to about 15 drinks a night again, and I have been tapering with beer over the past couple days to keep the withdrawals at bay. I am now 100% convinced that I cannot drink at all, I just cannot control it. I don't get bad every night, but when I do it's disastrous, arrests, family issues, blackouts etc. I am drinking my last six pack tonight and am going to give this another shot starting tomorrow morning. A couple parts of my plan:
- Get involved with SMART here in my area, go to as many meetings as I can
- Get back in to the gym and start eating better. When I feel bad physically I'm more prone to relapse
- Try to branch out more socially, I'm going to try and do some meetup.com sporting event meetups
- And finally, just GROW THE F UP. The party is over, has been for a long time.
I feel like I'm at a turning point in my life right now. If I keep drinking things are of course going to get worse and I don't know if I'll be able to bounce back anymore. If I stay the course I can have a great life. I guess the choice is mine, now it's time to start taking the action again. So here I sit, sipping my last six pack and am going to make tomorrow Day 1. Wow, I just previewed this post and it is just entirely too long lol. Thanks for being here all,
woof
Hey gang, woofer here 35 year old male in the Phoenix area (I just moved here from the DC/Baltimore area a couple weeks ago). As I speak I am waiting for what I hope is to be my final six pack ever. I am shaking, sick as a dog, and terribly depressed. Pardon me if this is way too long but it's helping me to write this out. So, a bit (well, alot) of my story...
I started drinking much like anyone else, with friends on the weekend in high school at about the age of 15. I'd had a couple occasions prior to that of having a few drinks, and even getting drunk a few times, but one summer night after my 9th grade year the "magic" happened, where I finally put enough of the stuff into me to feel like everything was ok with me and the world. I wasn't really a terribly depressed kid, but I did have a lot of social anxiety (along with general anxiety, I can't stand sitting still or being bored) and worried alot about what others thought of me. Drinking gave me the ability to comfortable in my own skin and take away the anxiety that plagued me in meeting new people, going new places, and doing new things.
I was always right from the start able to drink as much as or more than my friends, and trouble began pretty early. I started having my first blackouts in 11th grade, though I didn't know it yet and didn't even know what blackouts were. I did a fair amount of drugs in high school as well, mostly pot and hallucinogens, but drinking was always my favorite. Things started to really get problematic after I graduated from high school. My sweetheart dumped me during our "beach week", where all the graduates go to get smashed for a week. I took it really hard, and turned to the bottle for comfort. Drinking became almost nightly, and started to be more hard liquor than beer. That summer is a blur, and I really don't remember much of what I did or said. I was having long blackouts and was acting really bizarrely when I did blackout. People told me I turned into a completely different person. I wasn't party-woofer anymore, I was angry and vilolent quite often and ended up getting my ass kicked several times (I can't fight when I'm drunk lol).
Fast forwarding through the next 10 years, my drinking and drug use was up and down. I was a musician and my first real career was as an audio engineer and video editor, which I did both in the music industry and in TV. I just so happened to be a hard worker and very good at what I did, so I was able to advance my career pretty well, despite calling out of work quite a bit. The main thing that kept me from being a total screwup was that I could still smoke pot instead of drink every night. During the work week I would go home, smoke a little pot, eat dinner and go to bed. On the weekends I would binge hard with my drinking buddies, but I didn't have a physical addiction to alcohol yet.
At 22 I was arrested in a bar fight and charged with 2nd Degree Assault on a police officer. It was a female officer who startled me during the melee and I grabbed her shoulder not knowing who she was. I immediately put my hands in the air but by then she had alerted the rest of the cops and they tackled me and threw me in the car. At 24 I got my first DUI coming back from a show I played with my band in Delaware. Both of these charges got me only probation, as I come from a pretty financially well off family and they were always able to hire me good lawyers.
Shortly before I turned 25 I violated my probation for testing positive for drugs, and moved to South Padre Island, TX with my band to work for a promotions copy that did events for MTV, Girls Gone Wild (the most depraved people I've ever met), E-TV, etc. While this year and a half of my life had some AWESOME times, and I wouldn't take it back, this is also the time period where I truly crossed the line with being able to control my drinking. The nail in the coffin was that I was starting to get paranoid and a racing heart whenever I smoked pot, so I began to drink every night instead.
My time in Texas ended with a row between me and my band members. We were doing a gig in Dallas and I drank two bottles of Mad Dog 20/20 in the parking lot, blacked out and got into a huge fight with them. They left me at the venue to fend for myself. I finally managed to make my way back to the hotel, where they informed to that I was to take my stuff out of the van and that they were going back to Maryland without me. No amount pleading would persuade them, they were totally sick of my constant drunkennes. I was left in the hotel room with my stuff while they packed up and headed back across the country. My dad flew out, rented a car, and drove me and my stuff back to MD.
When I got back to MD I started to do really well in my career, strangely enough because my drinking was escalating. I did however, get fired from a few REALLY good jobs due to my drinking and drug use, and I started to become physically dependent on alcohol. My typical day went something like this:
Wake up feeling absolutely shattered with a terrible hangover. People who don't drink like this would take themselves to the ER if they felt how I did, I was probably at least semi-alcohol poisoned every night. I would (usually, I called out alot) make it to work and say to myself "omg I feel awful, I can't believe I'm gonna have to be here for 8 more hours". For the last two years before my first attempts at getting sober, I would also say to myself every morning that I wasn't going to drink that night. Anyway, so by about noon I've rehydrated a bit, maybe eaten half a sandwich, and started to feel a little better. My mind would also change about that decision I'd made that morning to not drink, and I'd again be at the liquor store on the way home buying my usual amount, which was on most nights a pint of Bacardi and a 12 pack of beer.
I wasn't eating much anymore, and I looked really emaciated. I was down to 140 lbs (I weigh about 190 now). I was continuing to black out and get violent, and was scared to go out anymore, so I became a solo drinker. No one wanted to hang out with me at the bars or parties anymore anyway because I was just such an drunken a-hole that they didn't want me around. I got a job working for a production house that does work for several large TV networks. It wasn't two weeks before I was fired for calling out and coming to work with alcohol on my breath.
The day I got fired I walked out of the building, bought a fifth and a 12 pack, and went back to my DC apartment and started drinking at my desk. The last thing I remember was it being about 2pm, and I came to at about 11:30 pm in my car with the cop lights behind me, giving me DUI number 2. I have no recollection of those 9.5 hours at all, but from what a few people told me I had driven to my dealers house about 25 miles outside of DC to buy coke. They said I could barely make out a sentence, and that I didn't recognize people that I had know for 20 years, quite the drunken stupor. After booking me I was released on my own recognizance and took a bus back to my apt. While in the bus I felt the inside pocket of my jacket and the drugs were still there. I can't believe the cops didn't find them, they weren't even hidden at all. I got back to my apt, snorted up all the coke, drank the rest of what I had and passed out. I went on a 3 or 4 day bender after this, and this was really the first time that I realized I had a serious problem. I was 27 years old.
I tried to stop on my own and found that I couldn't, so I checked into my first rehab. I wasn't too serious about it and was drunk 3 or 4 days after my release. 9 more months of drinking, fired from another job, and checked into another rehab. Over the next 5 years, I was sober the vast majority of the time in AA, with most relapses being only a few days, some as long as a few weeks. At the time I guess you would call me an agnostic, and I didn't believe in the AA program (the 12 steps) at all. I did enjoy the social aspect of AA though, and was at a meeting almost every night. Over the course of time I did have some really bad relapses that scared me though, and I became desperate. I finally started working with sponsors and really diving into the program with 150% effort. I worked the steps three times, and started talking about God alot, even though I didn't truly in my heart believe in God or any higher power. I was trying to do a true "fake it til' you make it", because I didn't know what else to do. After about 5.5 years in AA trying to "get it" I decided that I wasn't going to go back to AA anymore and was going to try to find some alternatives. I finally came to realize that I am an atheist, and that the spiritual approach isn't something that works for me. For anyone that is in AA, please don't take this as a slight against that program or you. Whatever works for you is best, it just isn't the best approach for me.
However, the one thing that did negatively impact my life from AA was that since I was so immersed in the program, when I left I was totally alone. The only friends I had were in AA, the only social events I went to were AA, etc. So here I am again, isolated like I was when I was drinking, and really starting to get anxious and depressed. I found SMART online and started going to online and f2f meetings, but I had little social interaction outside of that and work. Evenings and weekends were dreadful, I was so lonely and bored. I also found that, at least in my area, SMART had FAR fewer people and meetings that participate in it, and even fewer than that close to my age (I was 34 when I first started going), so I wasn't really meeting people that I would hang out with outside of meetings either. So anyway, yeah, my time since leaving AA has been difficult as well, learning to live without total dependence on the program. While living in Baltimore I got my 3rd DUI. I was finally fired from yet another job just recently, and I decided that was going to leave MD and try to start over here in the Phoenix area with my family.
I actually had been doing some controlled drinking over the last several months, and was doing pretty well with, having at the most six drinks a night, usually less. But of course, my tolerance built back up and I started up with the Bacardi again, which always ends in disaster sooner or later. This past Friday I drank a fifth on my birthday, blacked out and scared my family. They called the paramedics because they didn't know what else to do. I'm devastated that this happened, I'm so tired of scaring my family and causing them heartache.
I was up to about 15 drinks a night again, and I have been tapering with beer over the past couple days to keep the withdrawals at bay. I am now 100% convinced that I cannot drink at all, I just cannot control it. I don't get bad every night, but when I do it's disastrous, arrests, family issues, blackouts etc. I am drinking my last six pack tonight and am going to give this another shot starting tomorrow morning. A couple parts of my plan:
- Get involved with SMART here in my area, go to as many meetings as I can
- Get back in to the gym and start eating better. When I feel bad physically I'm more prone to relapse
- Try to branch out more socially, I'm going to try and do some meetup.com sporting event meetups
- And finally, just GROW THE F UP. The party is over, has been for a long time.
I feel like I'm at a turning point in my life right now. If I keep drinking things are of course going to get worse and I don't know if I'll be able to bounce back anymore. If I stay the course I can have a great life. I guess the choice is mine, now it's time to start taking the action again. So here I sit, sipping my last six pack and am going to make tomorrow Day 1. Wow, I just previewed this post and it is just entirely too long lol. Thanks for being here all,
woof
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