Drug Rehab Options Blog

Ok, guys this time i no is the time i'm done for good!

Went through the whole denial, depression, excuses, quitting for 2 months then going back, and then the trying to cut back thing. This time its never again and i'm going to start posting on here regularly now. Ive kicked my dope habit 4 months back and now this is the next thing to go. I'm tired of hiding my feelings behind a joint and a bottle and i'm tired of the shame and disappointment that comes along with it. I know this is the time because i've run out of excuses and have stupidly tried everything else hahah!

When ever i see alcohol around and i'm tempted to drink i'm just going to remind myself of how much shame my drinking has brought me and how horrible i felt at those times because i know alcohol and drugs will ruin me if i let them. There's way too many things i want and want to be in my life!

This is my day new day 4.

Thanks everyone for all your support so far! :)


PS.
The reason why i think i was able to quit smoking pot easier even though i was so, so, addicted was because it's not socially acceptable and once you quit you don't have to see it on tv, when you go out, and when your around your friends. That's one of the things that makes quitting drinking so hard.

I saw Jazz's comments in Houston28's thread today. He said I must have mistakingly replied to the wrong thread, so I re-read the thread and he's right, I did. At least I think I did....

I went looking for the "other thread" and for the life of me I can't find it today. The other thread I was attempting to reply to was posted by a gentleman who said he'd hired a (mostly toothless) handyman to refurbish his wife's barn and she began an affair with him. He went on to say that she'd been abusing alcohol and drugs, was leaving his rather small children at home unattended, was spending hours on the phone talking to him in the barn, was staying out all night, had wrecked the car multiple times, lied repeatedly about everything, you get the picture. Hence, my response in Houston's thread.

Now when I describe all this, it sounds far-fetched and almost dreamlike, but I have enough experience with alcoholism to know that scenarios like this are all too real.

But still I can't find the dang thread. Somebody please tell me, am I crazy? Was it just a dream? Did the thread get moved or deleted? Did I somehow read a thread on a different forum? Is pumpkin cheesecake a mind-altering drug? I had a slice last night just before bed....

Help me before I go completely mad....

Hi everyone
I've been looking at the forums for a couple of weeks, from the point of view of an "adult child of an alcoholic". I've always thought I could never become an addict, I didn't have an "addictive personality" or thought that if I was going to 'become' one- I would have done it by now! (I'm only 27!!)

While I don't think i can call myself (at this stage) an alcoholic or addict (whether this is denial or a comparison to my father who was/is drunk 24/7?) I do think i have a problem with alcohol and drugs. Recently, I've been drinking pretty much every night, sometimes only 1 or 2, often a lot. I've been taking ecstasy every few weeks and ketamine too. Seems to be getting worse, in the last week::
i've got drunk, i'd say,4 nights and i've secretly crushed up ecstasy to snort to give me a "lift" and to keep me awake when i've been going out for a drink with friends.... one of these nights took some ketamine to try and knock me out when i went to bed and ended up throwing up everywhere. Missed work with a hangover/comedown 1 day... been crying and despairing a lot, not wanting to get out of bed ...

I do a live in job the middle of nowhere and only have a few people to hang out with, who i also live and work with. Stupidly I've gotten partially involved with a guy who works here and is like every guy i've been involved with/attracted to - angry, emotionally unavailable, immature, drinks too much etc etc... his mother is an alcoholic... i'm being a complete idiot and would have walked away a long time ago but i'm not strong enough to stay away from him .. he's always here! I feel like I'm suffocating and I'm going to leave. This will help. But that doesn't change the fact that without distractions of being in a city and around loads of friends etc I see how ****** up i really am...

A couple of years ago I used to regularly go without drinking for a month or so and i can't imagine having the willpower now. i feel weak. i need to sort this out before i f**k up my life, get physically addicted to something or end up in a relationship with an alcoholic. Need to deal with all my issues with my dad. I've done lots of reading and have plenty of knowledge, but how can you get it to sink in, maybe fundamentally i don't want to recover, or don't think i'm worth it???

Reading other peoples posts give me hope, thanks for sharing, im glad i found this place

Hi everybody!

Well, I'm 23 and have probs with a bit of everything. If its not drinking its drugs if its not drugs its cutting and if its prescription meds. I know I use alcohol and drugs to forget, but I want to enjoy things without them... seems impossible...
My fiance is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict as well, he lost his job by showing up drunk to work, and usually goes a month sober before crashing and burning again. It hurts so much when this happens... but I try to support him... He has to go to court tomorrow for his 2 DUI's... It scares me so much that he drinks and drives, not only for him, but for all the innocent people on the road.
I see myself going in a circle, moving my addictions from 1 thing to another... and I see my life spiraling out of control. I go to meetings, but I'm so scared of big groups (causes panic attacks) that I have trouble focusing.
I'm stuck here and I am so disappointed in myself because not only do I have a problem, but I can't seem to help myself. I just feel like I'm not in control of my life anymore.... Hopefully I will get over my fear in time and will stop rolodexing my addictions... only 4 days sober so far and cravings are really bothering me argh!!

Everything seemed fine the past few weeks. We hung out last weekend and he was sober. It was nice. We talked briefly yesterday while he was at work and he sounded good then as well. I have been doing very well. I am getting work done, I just won an award (yay!), and I have been socializing more.

I just got home from class and there was a message on my answering machine - a collect call from an inmate. I called him at work, but he hasn't come into work yet, so it has to be him (who else would it be???). He was in jail before because of a DUI issue, so I have been here before.

I want to be mad and frantic and try to find his friends who might know what's up. Instead I made some coffee and came here. There is nothing I can do. I will go about my day as I had planned. I will not freak out over this because at this point I don't even know what's up. Of course I am thinking that he got paid yesterday and this has something to do with alcohol and drugs, but then what's the point of speculating.

I am upset (and crying), I am not going to lie and once I find out what is going on, I might turn into mother hen again who will fight them all to get the poor man out of trouble. Maybe I should not pick up the phone, but I won't be able to not find out what is going on.

I can't believe this. On the other hand, perhaps it's what was needed. But really, I cannot believe this.

Ive had a problem with alcohol and drugs ever since i was about 14 and ever since then everything has become so messed up and i dont know what to do anymore it has gotten me in so much trobule in the past and still continues to do so but yet i still cant get alcohol off my mind knowing wot it has done to me. I got kicked out of school when i was 14 and since then have done nothing with my life but got in trouble with the law and abused myself with drugs and drink. Ive gone thru juvenille detetion jail and rehab and everytime i get out 1st thing i do is get off my head and im over it. I turned 20 the other day and am starten to realise there is more 2 life and Im over liven like this. Ive got drug induced psycosis depression and post traumatic stress disorder all becos of the life Ive led and I think Im starten to mature but im always thinken bout the bottle. Ive been going alright lately getten into boxing and exercise but Im at the end of a 4 day bender and i done some really bad things and i dont kno wot to do i wanna change but it just doesnt seem 2 want to happen. Ive lost all my family and most of my friends i dont even have any1 left who i would consider a true friend i feel like life is useless and sometimes I think bout enden it myself. I would love someone to talk to to try to get thru these hard times. Thank you.:c004:

I'm having a down day, I think, and I started to think about why I'm here. I came here because my mother is an addict. Plain and simple.

But then I started thinking that she's only one person with a problem in my life. My paternal grandparents were alcoholics, with my grandfather drinking himself into an early grave before I was born. And my grandmother took off on the run with a drug dealer and I've met her once. My father was into alcohol and drugs for a long time and is a NOT recovering sex addict.

And then there's mom. Probably the least dramatic. Drugs, but still it hurts more because she was the one who was always here.

Then my ex. I never thought about his alcohol and drug use when I thought about the people in my life. Yeah, he was a drunk. He was a MEAN drunk and somehow I never thought that alcohol and drugs were part of that violence. I always thought it was a different category of 'totally messed up.'

Now I'm happily married to a man who does not drink at all. And why? Because his parents are alcoholics. *sigh*

So here I am, still trying to begin a healthy life at 32 and I start to wonder if it's too late to undo the damage. Maybe I'll always have to do things with that smack of "recovering" in my psyche.

Will I be recovering from something forever? Can't I just be normal? I don't even know what normal is. :(

Just read this article today and wanted to share with others. Let's see if my kids' lessons to their old mom on copying and pasting actually sunk in!




Personal Health

Curbing Binge Drinking Takes Group Effort

By JANE E. BRODY
Published: September 8, 2008
Of all the advice parents give to children heading off to college, warnings about alcohol — and especially about abusing alcohol — may be the most important. At most colleges, whether and how much students drink can make an enormous difference, not just in how well they do in school, but even whether they live or die.

Every state has a minimum drinking age of 21, and the vast majority of college students are younger than that. Yet drinking, and in particular drinking to get drunk, remains a major health and social problem on campuses. Car crashes and other accidental injuries, sexual assaults, fights, community violence, academic failure and deaths from an overdose of alcohol are among the consequences.

College students spend about $5.5 billion a year on alcohol, more than they spend on books, soft drinks and other beverages combined. Alcohol is a factor in the deaths of about 1,700 college students each year.

The consequences can be particularly severe when people binge drink, a drinking pattern adopted by 44 percent of college students, national surveys have shown. Binge drinking is defined as consuming five or more drinks for men or four or more for women in a row, usually within two hours.

“Most alcohol-related harms experienced by college students occur among drinkers captured by the five/four measure of consumption,” Henry Wechsler of the Harvard School of Public Health and Toben F. Nelson of the University of Minnesota wrote in July in The Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

A petition circulating among college presidents seeks to lower the drinking age to 18 on the theory that it would reduce the number of students who binge drink beyond the boundaries of college campuses. But opponents say there is no hard evidence for this belief and a better plan would be to change the drinking culture on campus.

About half of college binge drinkers arrive on campus having engaged in similar behavior in high school; an equal number acquire this behavior in college, Elissa R. Weitzman of Harvard and colleagues reported.

Every year, tens of thousands of college students wind up in emergency rooms suffering from the life-threatening effects of alcohol intoxication. And every year, about a dozen students, including some of the best and brightest and most athletically talented, die from acute alcohol poisoning. In one study of students who suffered alcohol-related injuries, 21 percent reported consuming eight or more drinks in a row.

Although Greek houses, which have the highest rates of binge drinking, are infamous for a free-flowing alcohol culture, studies have found that student athletes and sports fans are also among the heaviest drinkers, often gathering to drink to oblivion after an athletic event.

A Community Approach

A concerted effort has been made in the last decade to define the factors that prompt binge drinking on campuses and devise effective methods to combat it. What has become most obvious to researchers is that colleges cannot achieve this on their own.

“Basically, having programs to reduce binge drinking on college campuses in the absence of broad-based community interventions to do likewise may be a bit like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic,” said Dr. Timothy S. Naimi of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study, which began in 1993, has identified several environmental and community factors that encourage binge drinking. Dr. Wechsler, who directed the study, said in an interview that high-volume alcohol sales, for example, and promotions in bars around campuses encourage drinking to excess.

“Some sell alcohol in large containers, fishbowls and pitchers,” he said. “There are special promotions: women’s nights where the women can drink free; 25-cent beers; two drinks for the price of one; and gut-busters, where people can drink all they want for one price until they have to go to the bathroom. Sites with these kinds of promotions have more binge drinking.

“Price is an issue,” he added. “It can be cheaper to get drunk on the weekend than to go to a movie.”

Although it is a college’s duty to educate students about the effects of alcohol and the risks of drinking too much, “education by itself doesn’t work,” Dr. Wechsler said. “You must attack the supply side as well as the demand side.”

More than half the alcohol outlets surrounding colleges that participated in the Harvard study offered promotions with price discounts, and nearly three-fourths that served alcohol on the premises had price discounts on weekends.

The study found that the sites of heaviest drinking by college students were off-campus bars and parties held off-campus and at fraternity and sorority houses.

Strong Policies Work

Among the factors associated with lower levels of drinking were strong state and local drunken-driving policies aimed at youths and young adults, as well as state alcohol-control policies like keg registration and laws restricting happy hours, open containers in public, beer sold in pitchers and billboards and other types of alcohol advertising.

“College sports events should not be sponsored by alcohol purveyors,” Dr. Wechsler said.

Community measures that helped to curtail binge drinking during the eight-year course of the study included a limit on alcohol outlets near campus, mandatory training for beverage servers, a crackdown on unlicensed alcohol sales and greater monitoring of alcohol outlets to curtail under-age drinking and excessive consumption by legal drinkers.

Campus practices that resulted in small but significant reductions in binge drinking included greater supervision of fraternities and sororities and more stringent accreditation requirements for Greek houses, policies to notify parents when students have trouble with alcohol, an increase in substance-free residence halls and more alcohol-free activities like movies and dances, especially on weekend nights.

But, Dr. Wechsler said, “college presidents can’t do it alone. They need help from legislative and community leaders. Alcohol is sold and consumed in the community. Residents need to get together to get it under control.”

What Parents Can Do

Dr. Wechsler urged that parents “put pressure on schools.” They should ask officials at the schools their children attend, or plan to attend, what they are doing to control drinking — especially binge drinking. When visiting schools, parents should check out the quality of life in the dorms. If they detect problems suggestive of heavy drinking, like excessive noise or vomit in the bathrooms, “they should demand that these issues be addressed,” he said.

Of course, he added, “parents should talk to their kids about drinking. Parents shouldn’t think that if it’s a beer and not a drug it’s of no consequence. Beer kills more people than drugs.”

Parents might also make it clear to students that they are expected to perform admirably outside the classroom as well as within it. Studies have shown that there is less drinking by students concerned about their grades, but also by those involved in volunteer work and other activities on and off campus.

Posted in the Bikers In Recovery forum here on SR.........

Wanted to introduce myself

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello everyone,
Hope you don't mind another newbie joining in....

We both ride, I have a 2000 Dyna Super glide and he has an 88 Softail.I just thought I would feel more comfortable talking with you all.

I'm not an alcoholic but my fiance is and I found this forum while looking into al anon. I guess I'm just looking to see how the rest of you are handling your recovery or the issues you deal with while trying to get sober. My fiance's drinking has gradually gotten worse over the last year and a half. He comes from a biker family in which he grew up around alcohol and drugs. Luckily he has never done drugs, but the alcohol use has increased from social, to 1 or 2/day, til now he is averaging a 6 pack or better per day. I know this is not my fault, that I can't control him or his drinking, and that he has to take responsibility for his actions. He tells me he wants to quit, that he hates waking up feeling like s**t, but his resolve only last a day, maybe 2. I've suggested AA, but of course 'AA is for quitters'. He doesn't do organized anything real well and I know that this is something he is just going to have to do on his own. He goes to work everyday and supports his family so he doesn't think his problem is that bad, but he scares me to death when we go out for a ride and he starts drinking. Sometimes he maintains and only has 1 or 2, other times he has more and I find myself watching out for him on the bike more than I'm paying attention to mine. I get so mad at him sometimes because of the stupid things he does when he drinks! He embarrasses the kids and I with his obnoxious behavior and of course all his friends drink as much as he does if not more.

Anyway, this is turning into a rant which I didn't want. Just wanted to say hi and that I'm glad I found you guys!

Hello everyone,
Hope you don't mind another newbie joining in...:e052:.

We both ride, I have a 2000 Dyna Super glide and he has an 88 Softail.I just thought I would feel more comfortable talking with you all.

I'm not an alcoholic but my fiance is and I found this forum while looking into al anon. I guess I'm just looking to see how the rest of you are handling your recovery or the issues you deal with while trying to get sober. My fiance's drinking has gradually gotten worse over the last year and a half. He comes from a biker family in which he grew up around alcohol and drugs. Luckily he has never done drugs, but the alcohol use has increased from social, to 1 or 2/day, til now he is averaging a 6 pack or better per day. I know this is not my fault, that I can't control him or his drinking, and that he has to take responsibility for his actions. He tells me he wants to quit, that he hates waking up feeling like s**t, but his resolve only last a day, maybe 2. I've suggested AA, but of course 'AA is for quitters'. He doesn't do organized anything real well and I know that this is something he is just going to have to do on his own. He goes to work everyday and supports his family so he doesn't think his problem is that bad, but he scares me to death when we go out for a ride and he starts drinking. Sometimes he maintains and only has 1 or 2, other times he has more and I find myself watching out for him on the bike more than I'm paying attention to mine. I get so mad at him sometimes because of the stupid things he does when he drinks! He embarrasses the kids and I with his obnoxious behavior and of course all his friends drink as much as he does if not more.

Anyway, this is turning into a rant which I didn't want. Just wanted to say hi and that I'm glad I found you guys!