Good Morning,

When I was reading this, I thought to myself, th Disease is in Full Gear in your Life. And going into overdrive.

I wanted to comment on something you wrote:

" Without the prospect of having my boyfriend, I gave up. I feel so needy."

I just want to add some Food for thought this morning,

Dr. Phil, who is NOT one of my favorites, however, he was speaking to three woman who had just lost their boyfriends, and were speaking of this in exactly your words.

He asked them to close their eyes and try to really "take in" what he was about to say, they closed their eyes, and he said the following " The person that you are Longing for, the man that has left you, is incorrect thinking. "The person that you are really longing for and NEEDING here is YOU" (I loved that, for the truth it held, to me)

When we pour Alcohol down us, to the point of being Drunk, who have we just abandoned? Ourselves. AND YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE THAT CAN EVER ABANDON YOU, if you really think about it.

If you are getting drunk everyday, who is the one really missing, YOU. The obsessing, is part of OCD, Obsession, Compulsive Disorder, that so many of us have, along with the Disease of Alcoholism.

It is an illness unto itself. After some time in this Program, that is the one I have to watch, it appears, and I can identify the Obsessing when I have continued to think about something, anything, and when it lingers there in my thought patterns. I have to begin a personal treatment of Using the First 3 Steps of this Program, where I will agree to Turn it Over, after making that decision (Step 3 - Made a Decision to turn my Will and my Life over to the care of God, as i understand God.)

I am Powerless over Alcohol, and I am certainly am Powerless over my own thinking when it becomes Obessive, that is when I go to "Your Will, NOT MINE, Be Done",
I have to stay there until the current Obsessive thinking is GONE. I gave it to HIM.

The program of Alcoholics Anonymous, can and will change all of what you were writing about in your Post. Picking up the 500 lb. telephone, making a telephone call to Your Local AA, Getting yourself to a meeting everyday, getting a Sponsor, beginning the Steps, with just that first Step, "We are Powerless over Alcohol - that our Lifes have become Unmanagable" Just resting in that first Step, and listening to those that have walked in you exact footprints, is the beginning.

You mentioned your Children, and wanting a Healthy relationship with them, that can only come to Pass, when you give up that "PRIMARY" Relationship with Alcohol, which is the destroyer in your life today. Alcoholism, will destroy any and all relationships, it is in the Nature of the Disease.

Before any Healthy relationship can come into being, we have to have a HEALTHY Relationship with ourselves, FIRST. I hope that you will give the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous a try, for it is in the working of 12 Steps of Recovery, that can bring you UP and OUT of the Disease of Alcoholism.

Been there, done that, don't do that anymore, just some words from a Recovery Alcoholic that has walked in your shoes.

I have personally known many young woman, who could not stop drinking, in spite of having children living at home with them, and sadly, those children were taken away from them. Sometimes they sobered up, and got their children back, and others felt so abandoned and lost without their children, they just could not stop drinking, for the "pain" they were in.

You are in my Prayers today.

Toni


When in the GRIP of Active Alcoholism, we might believe that we have other relationships, and we do, I guess, but the PRIMARY Relationship is with the BOTTLE.

imdone, your post touches me deeply.

What Tonibaloney said about Alcohol being our 'primary relationship' is so true. We are SLAVES to alcohol; it is our master, when we are at the bottom. The sad thing, is that for some people the 'bottom' does go even lower. My very best friend in AA is a single mother who lost her beloved daughter to the courts, becaue she could not stop drinking. She had a choice either to go on drinking to the bitter end, or to find help. She has since joined AA and gotten sober, done everything she was supposed to do and gotten her daughter back. Things have not been easy, as her daughter suffers from a lot of back-lash from being separated from her mother... but time is healing the relationship, as is AlAteen and counselling.

I myself lost my children to adoption at birth. I knew my disease was progressed to the point where I could not be a mother at all. Alcohol took away from me even the chance at being a mom. My Higher Power put those children into the care of people better suited for it than I... He was looking out for their best interest.

Alcoholism is indeed a disease of isolation. Alcohol wants nothing more than to be the ONLY relationship in your life. It wants to use you up and drive everyone and everything else away from you so it can have you all to itself. It won't eventually allow anything to stand in its way.

Not all of us believe in a Higher Power, but I do. And I believe that my Higher Power is loving and kind and forgiving. My HP allowed me to have free-will. It allowed me to come to a place where it was only me on my knees in the dirt, and my Higher Power beckoning me to reach out and start to heal. My HP never walked away from me; I was the one who had walked away, one day at a time, toward the bottle and into the darkness. It wasn't until I reached out, as others have said, and picked up the phone to call AA, got myself into detox, started listening to the people in AA and stopped drinking, that I began to have a teeny bit of hope. That hope blossoms if we nurture it, but so does alcoholism 'blossom' if we choose to nurture it.

Sounds like you are at a place where you can still make a choice, my friend. Please choose recovery. Remember please that alcoholism is a 'down-only' elevator. It never goes up if we don't get off. We can get off on any floor.

Jonibaloni