The Barflies Message Board

Welcome to the Barflies Group Message Board. We encourage all alcoholics to share their experience, strength and hope in a way that is conducive to AA’s primary purpose, which is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety.

PLEASE NOTICE: the Barflies Group maintains the right to block disruptive users and delete posts/replies that do not support our primary purpose as stated above or that we deem harmful to alcoholics. We truly want this board to be yet one more way for alcoholics to help one another, and we want it to be a safe place to go, should the need arise. With that said, we will do all we possibly can to maintain the integrity of the board.

[ Signup for the Board | Edit Your Account | Homegroup Member Login | Recover Passwords ]

23 members are currently monitoring the board. | Your IP address: 38.107.191.116

mayham - posted by fried green tomato at 06/21 04:44PM hey, I just wanted to see if there is anyone who has experience with struggling in the 1st few months of sobriety? I obviously need help, because I seem to struggle with just about everything. My life is a mess! I'm chaotic (?), scared, resistant, needy, tired, over bearing, confusing and lots of other things. I can't get out of my head and anybody who was ever good in my life is now gone. There aren't any protectors left. There is nothing to comfort me and I'm so fucked (sorry for cursing) right now. My prayers are very short and conscience contact is at a bare minimum. Basically, I pray "please help me" "please keep me sober" "thy will be done" and there is a specific prayer in the book that I use too. My days begin frantically because I can't get out of bed early enough to half ass get dressed, much less pray and meditate. To do things that seem pretty simple and easy seem to take days and are so exhausting. Talking to people is very difficult and my head goes around and around. I can't fall asleep at night so I either lay there awake or read or watch tv, etc. In the process of moving through the steps though, but I'm starting to think that I might not make it. I have been resistant on the 4th and will do step5 in a day or two. I don't really think a Higher Power will take all this stuff. Im real scared that im going to live like this until the end. Today, the urge to drink at lunch hit me while I was in a store. It suddenly felt like I was the only person in the store and relief was all I could think about. I have no idea why I didn't, but when I looked around after giving it a little thought, I felt like a weirdo and bolted out of the store. Driving back to work, I just kept thinking that this is not for me and I'm fucked. Dying is a nice option, but that hasn't seemed to happen yet. I have never been much suicide (occassionally felt like it would be nice) but I can't think of a time when I really thought I'd be able to do it. I really think I would if I could. anyway...if anybody can share what is was like for them in the beginning and when it started to change and get a little easier or a little more normal maybe, I'd be glad to listen. glad ur here so i could get it out

re: mayham - posted by grillboy on 06/21 04:54PM My life is insane too right now. 22 days sober. Wanting to drink everyday. When the clock hits 2am I feel the slightest relief. mental warfare. One part of my mind says Think of all the good things in your life, your Aa freinds you love bein around. The other side of my brain says "I dont care" We will make it work. I just want to drink. Completely obsessed with a liquid that I believe is the missing link. Knowing all the bad times that were trajic but focusing on the good times. Knowing and believing I'm an alcoholic but not caring. Freinds that came in at the same time as me 4 years ago that havent relapsed and are constantly awarded blessings for their " perfect sobriety" But despite all that I'm goin to a meeting with sponsor tonight and I'm gonna bring a newcomer with me tonight. I was convinced I was gonna drink tonight. But I was back home in Nola today and saw some reminders of just how bad it can get. Who knows maybe I'll stay sober. Maybe not.

re: mayham - posted by tweetie on 06/21 07:26PM I'm newly sober too. My life seems like it's spinning out of control too, but honestly, it's been that way forever; or at least for as long as I can remember anyway. I've reached a pretty desperate point as well. I can't imagine life with alcohol or without it, and I truly wish for the end right now. I don't know how to live, and more importantly, I certainly don't know how to live sober. I've been so screwed up on the inside today, and all I could do was read the Big Book. I attempted to continue my inventory, but that seemed to twist my insides even tighter. I couldn't write, participate, talk about it, or even ask for help. But I read about Alcoholism and about Alcoholics Anonymous and consequently, my insides seemed to settle somewhat for the 1st time in while. I wasn't trying to be a superstar at work, nor was tackling being a great friend to anyone. I wasn't going around trying to offer retarded services or lame charity to those around me, and even better, I wasn't trying to manage well. No "to do" lists, job applications, revised household budgets, pointless internet research about this or that, etc. This morning, I planned on trying to "hold on" until the week-end, but that seemed utterly impossible and completely out of reach. Then it occurred to me that I could just try to get through the rest of the day, which seemed a whole lot easier. So, I just read, and now I'm going out to a meeting. Anything more than that is just not possible for me today. I'm completely done at this point! Just absolutely Pickled!!

re: mayham - posted by kah on 06/21 08:52PM I was sober a couple of months and miserable, absolutely miserable. I did not know how to live without alcohol. I wanted to drink everyday, the money hole was so deep, it seemed impossible to ever right. I had moved in with my dad, whom I hated, but I was about to be evicted. The guy had left, but we still worked together so I had to see him everyday. I was a wreck and wanted to drink desperately. My prayer life consisted of "god please dont let me drink". I did not understand the steps or the book, but I was trying to read it anyway. I was going to alot of meetings, but was still just shell shocked. So, one day I was at work, crying my eyes out as usual and I called my sponsor. She listened to my tales of woe and told me to start picking up paperclips. I thought she had lost her mind and continued to repeat my long winded saga. She told me to pick up paperclips. We repeated this cycle several times of me going on and on about how awful my life was and she kept telling me to pick up paperclips. I still did not get it. She finally yelled at me in as gentle way as possible to "quit thinking so much about yourself and go do something to help someone else, pick up paperclips, whatever it is, go help someone". I went still. I did not understand how this could possibly help, but again I was desperate. I worked in an office trailer in a refinery. The trailer was the foreman's trailer and it was filthy, people coming in and out all day. I started cleaning up, picking up trash (and paperclips),etc for about an hour. It dawned on me later that for that hour I had not cried. For that hour, I had peace. That has been a lot of years ago and the message is still the same. Trust God, Clean house and help others. If I can see what I can do to help someone else, no matter how menial it may seem, peace just comes naturally. That all elusive peace that I have sought my whole life, just comes when I am helping someone. I dont even have to reach for it. It is just there. I never forgot that lady telling me that. "Selfishness, self-centeredness. That we think is the root of our problem". The only thing that has ever moved me out of my head is trying to be useful. "Our very lives as ex problem drinkers depend upon our constant thoughts of others and how we might meet their needs". A long time went by and life threw some hard punches. My oldest son got sick and was hospitalized several times in the course of a few months. I was terrified. On a particularly bad day, I almost tripped over a paperclip on the ground. Since then, I have picked up probably close to 100 paperclips in the most bizarre places. (I wont pick them up in my office, that is too easy). But in parking lots, on a running track. Had one just appear attached to collar on a shirt in the dryer, etc. Last week my youngest son had surgery and when I looked down on his bed in the recovery room, there was a paperclip on the corner of his bed. I dont know where they all come from, but I truly believe it is the higher power telling me "eveything is going to be ok - go help someone". Pick up paperclips. Peace. K

re: mayham - posted by Trail of Tears on 06/22 11:22PM I had one friend who would still talk to me when I got sober. I had repulsed everyone else and even she was on the fence. I was so disgusted and ashamed of what I had become, and I didn't believe I could quit drinking long enough for anything in my life to be fixed. I still had a few things to lose but I felt utterly alone and broken and so I went to AA, desperate --- desperate, I thought to regain friends and a happier time. My standards weren't high --- i just wanted to stop feeling like a useless piece of shit. I could hardly breathe for a year, even though the obsession to drink was removed early. I only went to work because I couldn't face the consequences of not going. I would go and do a shitty job and periodically cry in the bathroom. I would go home and try to figure out what normal people did after work. And I went to meetings. I heard a few things i latched onto --- 'rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path...' and 'trust God, clean house, help others' was another. I got some peace of mind believing that God had a purpose for me and it started with me being sober. And that was all I really needed to worry about...I just needed to show up where I was supposed to be and do the best I could...and I didn't need to understand it all at once. I had drank for a long fucking time, and it didn't get right for me for a long time. I was sober more than six months before I really understood how truly fucked up my life had gotten. It was far worse than I had believed. I still had a job and car and some family relationships in tact, but I couldn't make a grocery list or clean my house without a meltdown and/or emotional support. I drove for almost three years living in Louisiana with an expired Mississippi tag on my car, just because I couldn't bear the thought of talking to people at the OMV. Other people seemed to grasp things and speak more eloquently about their alcoholism than I did...so even with other drunks, I sometimes felt like an idiot...like they were 'better' drunks...All i knew was that I am a screaming monkey drunk and that if i ever take a drink again, I am fucked. And so I went to meetings and I latched onto the drunks who talked in a language I could understand. They talked about wanting to jump off bridges, they talked about hating themselves, they talked about hating other people and they talked about embarassing, humiliating shit they had done drunk and sober. But they also talked about a way out. The way out they kept describing involved doing something, doing anything, even something minuscule for somebody else --- picking up a paper clip, getting coffee for somebody --- was the way out of the hell of my Self. I couldn't believe --- still sometimes shocks me --- that doing something little --- letting somebody butt in line --- could change the way I felt. I felt like if I helped somebody it had to be HUGE...I had to save their life and I needed to know that THEY knew I had indeed saved their lives. But I liked the people I had fallen in with, so I tried their little paper clip, coffee games, and soon I found my own little things -- smiling when I didn't feel like it, holding the elevator door for someone, walking my dogs, feeding birds --- that made me feel like a part of the human race again. I still have issues with money and men and work and my inspection sticker expired last August. But I am sober and I don't want to die and I don't feel like a useless piece of shit anymore. Offer to let somebody butt in line... Peace... S.

re: mayham - posted by Norma Desmond on 06/23 09:27AM Hi Fried Green Tomato, I had a hard time deciding between giving AA a fair chance or killing myself. This was not an easy choice to make. While I was weighing my options from the bottom of a bottle, the thought crossed my mind that I could unreservedly give myself to AA for a certain length of time. That I could be willing to do whatever AA suggested and suffer whatever pain and discomfort came along with that decision. But only for a certain length of time, mind you. Not indefinately. For some reason I was given the clarity to understand that I had not gotten sick overnight and that it would take AA and the Higher Power a while to heal me. So I came up with a deadline for AA that I thought was pretty reasonable and told God that if I was still miserable when the deadline arrived, I could kill myself in good conscience...because I really had tried. By the time the deadline arrived, not only was I sober in AA, but I had been restored to sanity. My life was not perfect (I turned out to be even sicker than I thought), but I also knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that God was sweating bullets and pulling double shifts trying to work it out for me. Why don't you make the decision to finish the stepwork you've already started and see how you think after that? All you have to do is make the decision and be willing to be uncomfortable as you walk forward. Under these conditions, God will keep you sober. I promise. Alcohol isn't going away. It will always be waiting for you, if that's your decision. Just like God will always be waiting for you, if that's your decision. Love, Norma

POST REPLY: Please submit your experience, strength and/or hope as it relates to the program of AA below.

[ Signup for the Board | Edit Your Account | Homegroup Member Login | Recover Passwords ]

While we hope that all our guests share their experience as it relates to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, we remind everyone that the contents of these message strings are strictly personal opinions of the authors. When in doubt about the nature of statements made please consult the Big Book and other AA reference materials... our motto: "If its not in the book, it doesn't count." Thank you all for sharing.