Mechaman's Great Sobriety Thread

[Mechaman]

I'm an alcoholic.

I know, that's not the best way to start this off but it's really the only way I can think of stating the obvious to everyone.  I mean yeah, this has been a pretty well known fact for several years now and I have in fact bragged about it in the past.  However, recently I'm starting to realize that unlike a lot of frattards and other casual people, I am a cerebral chronic alcoholic.  I had maybe two hours of sleep from last night and I feel like, well, f***ing murdering everybody.  I mean, really, anything comes up at work and I feel like driving down to wherever the hell the other person lives and just shooting them.  I mean, it's like the littlest thing pisses me off to no end and I'm a walking example of a character who is prone to rant inducing slights.

I've tried telling myself over the past few months that I can get for a little bit, that I can go a month without drinking and that afterward I can take it easy.  I never really felt the need to tell anybody about this, mostly because of pride and arrogance, but I mean I really need some help guys.  I'm going to be an uncle someday soon, and I want to have a good relationship with my future nephew/niece.  I don't want them to remember me as some. . . . . asshole.

Well that's it.

[Mechaman]

Changed the name on this thread to something more relevant sounding.

43 hours sober so far.

Also thanks everyone for your support.  My goal here is a year.  No less.  To quote Travis Bickle:

Travis Bickle: June twenty-ninth. I gotta get in shape. Too much sitting has ruined my body. Too much abuse has gone on for too long. From now on there will be 50 pushups each morning, 50 pullups. There will be no more pills, no more bad food, no more destroyers of my body. From now on will be total organization. Every muscle must be tight.

[Mechaman]

THanks for you thoughts everybody.

I guess I'll contribute more to this.  ANd I believe that some of my words won't surprise many of you who have had this same problem, namely that this isn't my first attempt to stop drinking.  I'm one of those people who saw the movie "Flight" a year and a half ago in the theater and thought that it pretty much summed me up to a T.  The first time you decide you want to quit you feel like you are on top of the world and can do anything.  You go into your kitchen, open that fridge of yours, and then pour down every single drip of alcohol in your house down the drain.  MISSION ACCOMPLISHED AMERICA!  FREE AND SOBER FOREVER!!!!!

ANd then you find yourself, maybe a month down the road, just driving around town doing your own thing when you decide that you are just down for some nice pub food.  If you're anything at all like me the pub feels like a second home and everybody there, no matter if you've known them for five seconds or five years, feel like your family.  There is no place that feels more natural than the bar, and nothing comes more naturally than a nice drink to help you reflect.  You drink maybe four or five drinks (I had a pretty good tolerance, haha) before speeding the twenty minutes home and watching some It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
The next thing you know, you are coming home every night with a bottle of rum and Dr. Pepper, drinking yourself until you can barely walk straight.

Rinse and Repeat this thirty times over.  I've probably spent more money on booze than bedstuy has on his dinner, haha.

Even with all of that said, this time it feels different.  This time, whether because now I see that this is clearly a matter of life and death or because it is now starting to actually affect my day to day functioning.  Sometime this past month I just started hating everything and wanting to kill everybody at my workplace.  I also got real disillusioned about my life, my place in it, and what hopes I have for the future.  Eventually I realized that if I continue on this path, if I consign myself to this reality where quitting is a fruitless goal that will never happen that I would not only live a failed life, but that I would die well before it's prime.

So yeah there's that.  I don't know how I"m going to do this but I will.

[Mechaman]

A statement:

I am by no means doing this because of prudery.  I am doing this because I am basically an alcoholic version of DaveMI or whatever his name is.  I don't believe that there is anything wrong with a non-alcoholic person having a drink.  The problem is that I can't have just one drink, I have to have five.  I have to have seven.  I have to have ten.  And I have to have them every freaking day.

Just making that clear.

[Mechaman]

Update: Woohoo, one week sober!

It's a bit maddening, tis is.  I feel like killing everybody and half the time I feel like I'm about to have a sugar crash.  I got some beets today to help me detoxify my liver.  I made the mistake of eating two raw ones, one after the other.  Ugh, don't try this at home kids.  Feels like my stomach is exploding.

I mean, you can have one beet, but try to put at least a meal between the two.

At the same time though, now I feel very high.  So I guess it has some benefit.

[Mechaman]

Rock on, Mechaman I quit smoking one month ago and I feel great. I know they are different beasts, nicotine and alcohol, but I think the psychological tools needed to combat an addiction are probably similar. I've had many cravings for a cigarette and daydreams about a good smoke. Just one! Ahh, how nice! But that's a lie. We can never have just one. Always keep in mind what led you to give up. Slipping up will cause you to feel just as bad as that, if not worse, and is potentially lethal.

Wow that was way darker than I intended. I wish you the best. Stay focused and kick ass. And if you're feeling defeated and want to give up, remember you'll only end up even worse. It fixes nothing.

Thanks Comrade!

Yes, I quit smoking a long time ago.  That was a real bitch.

[Mechaman]

Please tell me your "Death to the Forum" thread wasn't you falling off the wagon.

Seriously, bro, keep it strong a day at a time.

Nah, that's just what Creative came up with this morning due to a concern that my BENGHAZI ACT! was getting stale.

[Mechaman]

13 days guys!  13 days!

Kind of got a bad headache right now and can't go back to sleep.  I've taken it slower on the beets.  They do help calm my nerves, but they kind of make my mouth and throat sore and make me feel a little bit too high sometimes.

I have to admit, this is going smoother than I thought.  I guess I should consider that a good thing and more of an incentive to continue to stay sober for the indefinite future.  I know too many people who ended up in the Emergency Room trying to go suddenly sober, so I should really consider myself fortunate that the worst symptoms I got were homicidal rage and shaking hands.

Anyway, thanks for your support guys.

[Mechaman]

19 days.  Still sober.

Still haven't hit the gym yet, but I plan on starting this week.  I just spent all day boating on one of our many manmade lakes.  I was with some good friends of mine who drank Dr. Pepper and Pepsi.  So yeah, there was no temptation around for me.  Like any pale paddy, I brought some high rated SPF 70 with me.  Of course, some noobs commented that anything above 50 is unnecessary.  Well, after getting third degree burns in Galveston one year after applying SPF 50, I stopped taking chances.
But even with SPF 70, I still get burned!  And this is even with me reapplying it every three hours.  When I was a kid I couldn't even do yard work without putting on sunscreen, no matter if it was just mowing the lawn or if I was working all day in my parent's flowerbed (they paid me, don't judge).  I have to say, after living in this state for practically my whole life, I'm still not used to the humid summers where I feel like my skin is melting every time I step out of a building.  Today we had more dry heat, which isn't so bad, though I still would never live in Phoenix (unless somebody offered me a million dollars or something like that).

Tomorrow is a big day.  I'll be moving out of the renthouse I had been sharing with a good friend of mine for the previous nine months.  It was located out in the country, which was very nice for about the first three months or so.  However, there are some things about rural life that are just inconvenient.  Like driving twenty minutes to get to a Wal-Mart (awaits Atlas wrath) or thirty minutes to get to Gold's Gym.  Hell, the local gas stations close at midnight, so if I'm low on gas and I want to fill up my car I have to drive twenty minutes just to fill up. . . . if not just wait till morning if it's almost empty.
So yes, with weather permitting (hopefully) I'll be moving back to civilization.

Admittedly, I have gone thirty days and longer without a drink before.  I've even managed over a hundred days before.  I know what it takes to get in the kind of mindset where refraining from drinking is easy.  It's really easy to stay in that state of mind for the first month or so after I decide to go sober, it's the months after that where it gets harder.  For me, when things turn to absolute sh*t is when I'm most likely to resort to drinking.  So far I've done really well on that front, as no matter how maddening my day has been or homicidal I feel I've denied myself booze.
It always helps to say, out loud "no damn it no, I do not want this.  I do not need this.  F*** this."  In my car of course.  Not at work where somebody can hear me.

I got a juicer for Christmas.  I think it's time to start using that instead of soda or "fruit juices".  I always heard that natural was better for you anyway.  I tried juicing green grapes once.  It was pretty incredible.  As was juicing strawberries.

That's it.  Mecha 5/26/2014

[Mechaman]

I believe it has now been 46 days.  And counting.

[Mechaman]

Well, here I go again:

I might as well call this my update thread, but I thought that I would share some personal thoughts lately.

ANyways, I had this really weird dream last night.  I dreamt that I woke up in this backroom at my workplace in a bed.  I went to the men's locker room and had a shower (though in real life said showers don't exist) and got ready for work.  I then leave the locker room and go to clock in for the day.  I go to my desk and I open a drawer and shoot myself up with heroin before starting work.  Suddenly my boss calls me and I go into his office.  He says that he knows what I'm up to and that there were cameras watching me inject that sh**t into my arm.  I freak out and insist that it was insulin.  He doesn't believe me so he calls the Nazis.  The Nazis get to his office and they pull out their German pistols.  They show up and aim their guns at me and demand that I strip down naked and make my way to the front of the building in full view of the office.  I do what they say, crying bitterly as they follow me with their Nazi guns.  I get out the front door while the whole office is clapping and laughing their asses off when the Nazi guards tell me to lie down on the grass and start eating it.  I start eating it, like a goat, and the next thing I know I'm actually in an underground medical lab shivering like a junkie crying "save me lord, SAVE ME!"  But the Lord never hears me.
And then I woke up.

SO yes, pretty extreme dream.  My former roommate used to think he was such a crackshot at interpreting these, but I think this one is kind of obvious.  And that is that in a way I feel naked and alone without my alcohol habit and am wanting to placate that need with something else.  I feel as though when I admitted my problems to my friends and family that I had in a sense "terminated" myself from drinking alcoholism and that I feel like I have put myself in a position of "shame" (hence the naked parading in front of the office).  By the grass I presume it means cannabis, which the Nazi guards delivered me free and willingly to.  However at the end of the day if I give into substance abuse I'll be right back to where I started: in a sphere of emotional abandonment and loss of hope for the future.

I feel like such a Narc after saying all of that, haha.

I know, deep sh**t, but I had to post this cos it was so out there.

[Mechaman]

Long belated update:

Well I'm turning into a nervous wreck lately.  I'm going to stay off most of the forum for the indefinite future.  I'll update some of my timelines and (if I win the ME Assembly race) do stuff in Atlasia.  But most other stuff I'm going to stay away from in the hopes that I can get a life and get my mind off stressful things.

-Mechaman