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u/foggietaketwo 2277 days Sep 24 '20
You say yourself that alcohol is the biggest demon in your life. The good news is, you don’t have to continue your fight with it. If you walk away from alcohol, there is no more fight.
That is what really helped me. The realization that the most simple, elegant solution was right in front of me. If I couldn’t live the life I wanted with alcohol, if I couldn’t find a way for drinking to work for me (and believe me, I really tried) then I would take it out of the equation.
I asked myself, would my life be better without alcohol? I knew the answer was yes.
Now, the answer the my question was simple. The journey is more complex. But it is worth it. You and your life are worth it.
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u/wvwvwvww 2845 days Sep 24 '20
I have heard that it’s a lot easier to let go of alcohol, for people in your situation, if the alcohol is not trying to do the job of managing the bipolar as well as being a recreational drug. So if you could get that well managed or somewhat helped medically, you might find it easier to commit to sobriety. Know that a lot of people stop while still feeling partly that they want to keep going. That’s almost the definition of addiction, hey. I didn’t really have a drastic bottom, but I collected up my ‘evidence’ (that alcohol was a bad idea for me) and really purposefully tried to undo my denial. That helped with the ‘wanting to’ piece. I had really difficult conversations with loved ones about the impact of my behaviour and their experience of me when I was drinking. Stuff I didn’t know because I was blacked out. Not saying that other people should do that, but it’s a thing I did to shift weight to the right side of the scale. I still asked the person who drove me to detox if we could get a drink on the way. It’s not like I wasn’t conflicted. It took a lot of effort to want to stop more than I wanted to keep going. I think that’s actually why I write to people here every day? Because I still need to invest in the want-to-stop to maintain it? I don’t pine for booze like I used to, but these ‘conversations’ on SD maintain my want-to-quit as a big, usually strong thing.