first post, new here, need advice. sorry if this is long.

hi all, im 23. been drinking a long time. i drink a lot too. every night. im a chef by trade. im am stressed out every second i am awake. i will never give up what i do. that said things have finaly gotten to a point were i couldnt do my job. i was consuming almost a litre of hooch every night. some less some more. but for the most part people counted on me being the drunkest. moving on... to make a long long story realy short i drove a relative and freind home from a party that i passed out at(still dont know why i drove) and ended up hitting another car. i wasnt visibly drunk. but at the same time i had it flowing in me. somehow i made out with no police and paid the guy(i think he might have been drunk too) after that everything hit me. i dropped off my relative and talked to my freind for a while. i decided i had to make change. i went cold turkey. this was almost as bad as driving drunk. after 3 days without a drink i almost fired 2 of my employees and did nothing but scream at the rest for minor things. i went a whole month without drinkin. then i cracked and got wasted for 2 weeks straight. then i was fine for a few days and ive been drinkin like old days ever since.

i went to a doctor not long ago. gave him my speach about my drinking and such. he told me i had to find a rehab place and check in. i told him, i will not do in patient. only out. after much debate he told me okay well there is a good place in "" (note he just gave me a city name, no other info) so here i am. i finaly want to go clean sober forever. and im snubbed by a doctor, wont give me anything for anxiety, no numbers to call, nothing. wanted to kill him in his chair. so weeks pass i finaly find a place. call them. have a chat. the final process is insurance. my insurance company is well ummmm "not great" and seems to not know who i am in the system. but if im just getting a routine visit they know me. ya its that way with them. so its been weeks and nothing. i go a day without a drink and i realy feel like im going to have a heart attack. while i work i have so much coffee and energy drinks i end up shaking. funny thing is if i dont i usually shake anyway.

ive finaly come to realize i have a problem. ive tried to quit on my own, but i cant. i cant even controll it. and the insurance company sucks. im at a loss. i dont know what to do.

in advance i thank anyone who reads this and or reply's.
tim

well, for one thing, alcohol w/d is one of the few that can actually kill you if u c/t it.from vast xperience, get in touch with your local AA chapter.....they will have all the info on free clinics, good doc's etc.i know yer dead set on no i/p treatment.....but a basic 3 to 7 day detox with librium and other meds will have u clean enough to do your get ready......90 meetings in 90 days! this is a tried and true program available to all who seek it. a psychiatrist will be more agreeable in prescribing meds too just for info. purposes.i had same prob for 12 yrs with a horrendous opiate addiction as a bonus.......so i know where ur at. goo luck, keep posting.....take care...'core

Tim, welcome to the club. The guys trying to get and stay sober without going crazy club. You are not alone. I am an alcoholic, and there are legions of us. Daily drunks who aren’t drinking just for today. And who are OK with it.

Just going cold turkey is in my opinion, about the toughest way to go. I have known more that a few who have told me, “I am through! I am never going to touch another drop of that stuff!” And I will bet you money that you could have put them on a lie detector and they would pass with flying colors. They meant it when they said it!

Yet, within a month, every one of them were drinking again. I suppose there are people who can do it, I just haven’t met one yet. And I have been at this getting and staying sober business for a few years now.

Tim, hardcore hit it on the head. Find an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and sit down and audit it. Check them out, that place will be populated with guys who drank just like you, who drove cars into things drunk like you did, and most importantly, who aren’t doing so today.

Or… you can keep doing what you are doing, and of course you will keep getting what you are getting.

You strike me as a smart guy Tim. Take the time to research AA. 90 meetings in 90 days is an excellent way to do that. You will know in 3 months if this program has legs for you or not. Unless you live in the sticks, you can find a meeting before or after work. In big cities, they go on almost around the clock.

One last thing, you need to know this, it never gets better on it’s own. In 5 years from now, if you keep drinking, you will be calling what’s going on in your life right now the “The Good Old Days” Our drinking always got worse with time, never better.

If you keep on drinking, someday you will not be able to imagine life without alcohol, and you will not be able to imagine life with it either. That my friend will be the day you find yourself at the stepping off point. Nor a fun place to be.

Richard

thanks for the replies everyone. i looked into aa. not sure if im into it though. but its like my life(being a chef) cant say you dont like something until you actually try it for what it is.

richard, its funny that you say i strike you as a smart guy. heck everyone i meet thinks im in my high 20's or low 30's. no one can believe or immagine i have the job i do at my age. but i do. and at the same time, doing what i do.(drinkin so much) my personal life sucks! its the basic chef realy, works too much drinks too much, tired, stressed out. thriving for perfection, yet i cant find it no matter what i do. of course everyone will always say nothing is perfect. with food this is false(IMHO), perfection can be achieved. its just extremely difficlut. just like my addiction. its funny when i think about it. i have my own staff. im the youngest of everyone and they all answer to me. i lead everyone all night every night during the rush. making sure every thing is great for the customer, making sure everything is TIP-TOP. all the while i cant take care of myself.

i find it all rediculous realy. i run a buisness practicly. but i cant run myself. im like a kid in a candy store unless given boundries the kid will grab and eat way to much. im asked here and their, tim- why do you drink so much? you drinkin just for effect? you in physical pain? etc etc. i cant come up with an answer as of yet. but im working on it

I quote… “tim- why do you drink so much, you drinkin just for effect? you in physical pain?”

The answer to those knotty questions is simpler and yet more elusive that you may think. The answer is, you drink like you do because you want to. You like the effect alcohol has on your mind, mood and outlook.

We look for hidden torments from our childhood, my puppy died, that’s why. Or we blame it on stress, If you had my job, you would drink too. Or we drink to sooth a broken heart. I suppose one could add to that list ad nasum.

But that is all just so much bulls*** my friend. If tomorrow you had no job at all, you would still see a drink as a good idea. And in turn, you would start drinking, and would see no good reason to stop. That is what we do, we drink because we want to.

Toward the end of my drinking career, I suppose I drank because I had to, at the end, I could not stand life without the veil of a good buzz between me and naked content. I drank to preserve my sanity, or so I thought.

We don’t drink because of people, places and things, and people, places and things will not get us sober. All of this stuff is ancillary to our core problem.

When I showed up at my first AA meeting, scared spit less and hung over, I was told that drinking wasn’t really my problem.

And you know what? They were right. What was wrong with me ran a lot deeper than just booze. But how was I to know? I was still asking myself, “Richard why do you drink with such desperation”. Why can’t you drink like other people? I was looking real hard for an answer, but I was looking in the wrong places.

Things are much better for me now that I know why I needed that ol’ sweet blindness.

Richard

i still havent found any "reason" to my drinking. still thinking about that one. my last drink was friday night 5/11. since then i have been drinking insane amounts of water. ive also been eating rediculous amounts of food. the dt's suck. i wake up in the middle of the night panting, sweating. my hands shake a lot at work(i tell anyone who comments i drank to much coffee) everything else i deal with as it comes along. for the most part i feal like im in a constant panic attack. im sure it will get better. that is of course if i dont drink. i cant say i wont i can only say ill try. i read another post on here. it said go day by day, if thats too much go hr by hr. ive been doing that. working so far.

Hi timmah - congrats on not not drinking for so many days! First time I tried to get sober, I went to a rehab (inpatient) which was wonderful. I was 25. I didn't follow the advice when I got out, and ended up drinking again after about a year - for another 10 years! This time, I went to AA and followed their advice, and I have been sober now 12 years. Yea, AA was not for me either...I hated the idea of attending meetings, compared myself to them and said I wasn't that bad...hated the idea of not drinking EVER. But what I hated more was looking at myself in the mirror every day, and loathing what I had become. The outside was fine - great job, house, car, husband, 3 kids. But inside I was dying - I knew I was killing myself, I was superficial, I had no true relationship with anything but the bottle. I can only tell you that AA worked for me - I never, ever had to feel that shame again. Good luck!

TIM!
6 days without a drink! Man oh man, that is a long time to go without booze. I know! Congratulations big guy. Yea this getting sober stuff really sucks, but after 6 days, and you ain’t dead, maybe the worst of the immediate withdrawals are over. I hope so.

One thing that helped me in my first weeks was hard candies. The guys around the meeting told me to keep a bowl of them around and when the urge struck, and it did, stick one in your mouth. It seems alcohol metabolizes itself into a bunch of things in the body. One of those things is sugar. We are as strung out on sugar as alcohol. And when those itchy bitchy feelings crawled all over me, eating sugar helps calm them.

Take nowformerfiance’s advice. This going it solo, John Wayne style is probably the toughest way to do it. Hook up with the winners, they have much to offer. Again Congratulations on damn near a week without a drink. That my friend is no small feat.

Richard

i have noticed the need for sugar. ive been drinking a lot of those energy drinks. although i seem to be over doing the caffine. my heart is generally racing either way. how long do the withdrawls last? im not on any meds for anything. and i havent drank for a wk now. im getting decent sleep. actually its better than usual. i cant realy think at work and my performance is going a bit downhill and my bosses are not happy with me at all. i dont know what to tell them. i have no excuse. thing is other than a few very close freinds and this forum no one knows about what is going on. and further more i wouldnt realy know how to tell them. other than bluntly saying hey guess what. alcoholism has killed a few in the family long long ago and everyone has feared i would be a drinker. and they were right. and i realy dont want to have to listen to them say i told you so.(a few would actually do this) the rest would be asking me all the time how i am and making sure im not drinking. while part of this sounds great, its unrealistic and to me at best very very annoying. other than that i feal like im loosing my mind. im looking forward to actually having the time to goto an AA meating hopefully it will shed some sun light on a dreary garden.

Congratulations on what is it? Two weeks without a drink. That my friend is no small feat. There are people reading your story wishing they could put two weeks together. Pat yourself on the back.

How long it takes for things to settle down varies with the individual. For me, it was weeks before I could remember a phone number long enough to dial it. It drove me nuts that I just couldn’t focus on a conversation, my mind would just wander off, and I was constantly pulling my mind back to what someone was saying. It will pass Tim, just suck it up and keep doing the deal. No matter, whatever it’s like, or how long it drags itself out, it beats the hell out of drinking! We all went through it, you will to.

But it’s good you are sleeping well. That was another thing for me, couldn’t get or stay asleep, count yourself lucky on that score Tim.

I didn’t tell anybody either, just my wife. But funny thing, within a week or so, everybody knew. We think our drinking is a big hairy secret, but it ain’t! And the first time you pass up a drink, someone who knows you will take note of that astounding fact.

Tim, make the time for a meeting, it can literally save your life. Those guys get it. They know what it’s like trying to get sober. Just quitting drinking just gets us dry, what we want, and need is to be in our minds, not just dry, but sober. Show up, you will not regret it.

Richard