| No Alcohol Beyond This Blog! |
Hello All. My name is Lee Mitchell and I would like to take
this opportunity to Welcome you to my Giving up Alcohol Now Blog. I can only guess that you have arrived at this page because you feel you have a drink problem and need to know how to quit drinking, or maybe you are not sure. Maybe you are still in the denial stage and just trawling through the internet anyway? who knows. What I can tell you is that I Myself have been an alcoholic for about 24 years, and have a good Idea what implications alcohol brings to us, and how hard giving up alcohol really is. I have also learned a lot about the effects of alcoholism both short and long term.
As a recovering alcoholic, I spend most of my time dissecting my past, constantly asking myself why it got to the stage it did, why did it happen to me? why did I let it happen? why was it me who ended up hurting my family? whilst I had an alcohol addiction, I felt lost, I felt alone, like it was just me this was happening to. I had to sink to my lowest of lows to make me stop my destructive path I was venturing on. What I did was inexcusable but more on that a little later.
When you think about it, how can anyone really identify the real causes of alcoholism, is there any? what turns a good family man/woman into a deceitful lying scum bag? (in reality that's how people around you perceive you), It doesn't happen to everyone does it. Now when I refer to the word "Everyone" I mean "the normal person", by that I mean the kind of person that can go out or stay in and enjoy just one or two drinks and then stop, then wake up in the morning bright and fresh and ready for the day and not think about drink again for weeks after. I always wished I could be that person. I am 10 months sober now and to be honest I am loving every minute of it. Stopping drinking was honestly the best thing I ever did, not just for me but also for my dear family. You see, putting the drink down is easy, its staying off it that isn't, so I started to read ebooks on how to quit. I wanted to learn about alcohol recovery, so I purchased an ebook course. I have a link to the site HERE if you would like to look at this, my mind is clearer now and I've finally gained the trust of both friends and family that was once in total ruin. Of course this wasn't easy for me, far from it in fact. I had to really knuckle down and earn that trust. When I finally gave up I had to change as a person. I had to change my way of living, and the way I handled every day problems, and my overall outlook on life. Yes it was really difficult after what alcohol did to me. I was set in my ways, but I knew if I carried on down this road I would end up either killing myself or someone else, or both. Click HERE to read what damage alcohol can do to your body, it really is quite shocking.
My lowest moment came a good few times during my days of alcohol abuse, but I still carried on pouring Stella artois down my neck. I was a bus driver and that is the worse occupation anyone with a drink problem can have. Usually driving buses for a living requires you to get up early in the morning, so if you were drinking the night before then it was lethal if you had alcohol in you blood whilst driving passengers around. Unfortunately I went one step worse, I started drinking at work! yes you read that right, I started to drink on my bus, passengers or no passengers, school kids or no school kids, I just had to have that drink in my hand. I got really sneaky with it by pouring cans of stella into empty bottles of lukozade, (pretty much the same colour) so the passengers didn't suspect anything. I knew what I was doing was wrong, yet still carried on. Needless to say in the end I got caught by an inspector after he smelt it on my breath. May 13th 2011, I lost my job, and nearly my wife and family. Back in 2005, I did the same thing but crashed my bus into another bus. That was a moment I did lose my family and my licence. I was banned from driving for 2 years. I am just fortunate this time that I have a very understanding wife. At first I felt I didn't deserve another chance because I'd not learned a damned thing from the first time it happened. But now with nearly 10 months of sobriety behind me, I feel now I do deserve that chance to get my life back together. You see, alcoholism is a disease, a disease that will be around for as long as us humans are, and anyone who is suffering as the alcohol takes hold, deserves the help and guidance adequate enough for a full recovery, but only, and I mean ONLY if they accept the help they need and have the willingness to change. These are vital ingredients you need to start you on that road to recovery. I can't emphasize enough to you how important these first steps are.
When I first put down the drink, I had That Willingness to stop, and that took a hell of a lot of self discipline and hard work. To much had happened. I'd put myself and my family through enough. I didn't want to lose my family, friends or my self respect for that matter. I finally had determination to set goals and stick with them. My feelings were that my family had been there for me through thick and thin, and now it's time I repaid them for all that tremendous support they gave me. I decided to look around for good alcohol counselling, so I found and enrolled on a free D.E.A.P course ( Dependency Emotional Attachment Programme). Now this was three times a week 10 am till 16:00 over 12 weeks What it does is it gets to the root of why we use alcohol to deal with the problems we face in life, and teaches us different ways to cope without picking up a drink. It goes through your feelings of resentments that you may have bottled up over the years, and still got hold of these feelings without ever letting them go(talking and dealing with them). It kind of strips you down and builds you back up again. I had to write my life story and read it out to the group. I actually enjoyed writing and reading that because it taught me a lot of things about myself. It was like an alcohol rehabilitation crash course. I also bought Ebooks to give me more hints and tips to get me through. You can have a look yourself at some of the popular ones HERE, I wanted to make sure I had all the help and support available, so giving up alcohol would be that bit easier. If I got urges, I'd sit and read my ebook or phone a group member. I had things in place to fall back on, and this was important.
Over time it does become easier I promise. I'm not fully recovered, and as an alcoholic I guess I never will be, but once you learn to deal with everyday life, and learn to deal with those urges, then that's the silver lining you start to see, the benefits of giving up alcohol will start to shine through for you. It was actually fantastic that as the weeks of sobriety went by I could see the little breakthroughs of progress I was making. My wife started to trust me to go to the shop for things like bread and milk without worrying that I might sneak beer down my neck, or bring them into the house and hide them. My step daughter started to talk to me in a more trusting way. It was things like this that spurred me on. I feel now that I've come to far in my sobriety to through it all away. I've had a good taste of the good life, and can now feel emotions that I never felt before. I love family life now, and its nice to spend time with them without getting agitated and restless wondering when I can sneak off to get my fix. I am finally free and loving it, and you too can share my success! if you would like to leave comments then please do!! I would love to hear from you. You can also give my giving up alcohol squidoo lens a visit to get even more tips and tricks.
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