Alcohol and drug abuse is all to common but it does not have to be there are places to get help again these are things i am just finding out. I know the feeling of being lost in the darkness, the stress and worry of the police statements the pain that the nightmares and flash backs bring will still be there when you wake up, you'll go through a range of emotions from anger to depression and everything in between on the road to recovery and it is so easy to reach for the bottle. I know i can buy four cans of shot cans basically these are 150ml cans rum and coke, vodka and coke or vodka and cranberry for £5.00. A bottle of cider 3 litres depending on where you go could be anything from £2.00 to £3.00, and coffee liquer could cost £4 if your a binge drinker like me then you soon realise that your drinking well over the units recommended.
you might not be drinking every day, it could be once every so often and in large doses. I tended to do it every time i got my money you see in many refuges it is a case of too expensive to pay rent when your working. So because of the service charges plus rent, council tax etc. So i'm on benefits currently surviving off for example 90.00 every two weeks once i have paid service charge, debts out of that and travel money plus council tax im looking at possibly 30.00 for food. Its not a great amount of money but its enough for some fresh stock so i can cook it up and freeze it all up. At times i was drinking i would have 20.00 food and the rest would have been on alcohol. Through the help of CGL (change grow live) I have managed to see just how much i am drinking and how much precisely i'm spending on the drink and what i listed above would have been what i drank. In one night i would drink the four small cans and the bottle of cider or most of the cider. With daily tipples of the liquer it was well over what i should have been on but it seemed to help or so i thought.
If it wasn't for a local domestic abuse group putting me through to cgl I would probably be drinking heavy now but with the worker i was working with ive managed to bring it down. I feel better although I am facing the flash backs the nightmares, the police statements and my entire situation without drinking I feel better in some ways. I can now plan what i want to do and face the future with a smile on my face, I know now what i need to do and one thing is to continue to work with CGL on both my alcohol recovery and to become a peer mentor for others in my situation. I know they have many other aspects from youth work through to work in prison, but I know myself my life has led me down the path i am on well it was even darker but now there is light in the distance.
Alcoholism just like taking any other drug is a version of self harm, it can be even more dangerous leading to organ failure. Lets face it if you ruin your organs then all i can say is welcome to the postcode lottery of organ donation I have seen someone go through that and trust me it was one of the most horrendous experiences i have had to go through. Watching two people i knew go through the dialysis was one thing the other was constantly being on edge waiting for the phone call to tell us they had kidneys waiting for them, the heart ache when they became ill and had to be taken into hospital the stress. May i add to this that the renal failure only one was caused to an addiction the other was caused by some virus in the 1980s when my ex was a child. One a good friend of my families died while he waited for a transplant they couldn't find a match while my ex had an almost perfect match.
The times i found my ex on the floor because hed collapsed, he was a big person so it was often hard to pick him up. I will never forget the days when i was reminded he needed someone there, and i was the person to help him, his family was no where to be seen so i dred to think what would have happened if i had not been there perhaps this was one reason why I never left. You see now my head is not buried in the bottle I can see or try to rationalise some if not all of what i went through. I can utilise my feelings more than i could before and plan a future. When my daughter told her teachers mommy looks after daddy, many of the teachers looked over and went well i could see your mom going into caring for people. She was always a nice kind girl that was how school saw me until the later years at school.
I know theres other organisations which deal with Alcohol and drug abuse but this is the best one i have come accross. Trust me from the age of 16 i have been through many organisations like this one and had stopped drinking. i wouldn't say i was tee-total because i would have a tipple of liqour in a cup of coffee. But nothing stronger than this from the moment i found out i was pregnant, i can remember being arrested for drunk and disorderly and held in police cells, walking seven miles from the nightclubs back to the town, i lived in totally smashed out of my head or waking up in woods due to being drunk. i am not proud of it but i know the pain many people go through you see as ive said before my when rob died my life was destroyed, especially after my relationship with M. I could not see anything good in me still now at times i can't see anything good in me, but people keep telling me i didnot deserve the stuff that M and my ex put me through.
It takes time to get used to the thought that I didnt do anything to deserve, what they did and people who i talked to on the internet had been right. He was using my good nature my illness a lot of the time to get what he wanted as a form of control, manipulation and that hurts deeper than when he hit me or put me in the headlocks. Do i want a drink when i think of the hell my ex put me through yes who wouldn't but do ? but do i need a drink?? you see need and want im learning are to different things, what i lack in my life is social interaction my body does not need the alcohol that is my dependancy which is putting that thought there. I do not need a drink but would like one therefore it is easier to deal with it has been proven that those who are on the road to recovery from any addiction does better with those who are going through it or who know what it is like. The more social interactiom you have the easier it is to give up the drink and drugs, but I will say that if your partner is abusive due to the drink and drugs please seek help.
Next time you reach for the drink or any drugs try asking yourself the stuff i do and see what your answer is.
Ask yourself is it a need or a want? your body does not need the drugs we pump into ourselves or the alcohol we consume in the long run our bodies will tell us that and sometimes this can be disastrous consequencies.
Try to identify what it is I lack, what is it I do need? Sometimes if your suffering domestic abuse or domestic violence even from coercive control it is to get out of the situation you are in the negative hold the other person has on you. If it is to forget something then drinking and drugs wont help you forget you the need here is to face what it is and seek help on it. Talk to people friends, family and even professionals talk about the issues causing you to drink or take the drugs.
Is it a medical issue or not? Well i used to say no its not but I have fallen off the wagon more time than I have had hot dinners. So yes without the right help and sometimes this is medication then you wont be able to break the vicious cycle of drugs and drink addiction. But the real medication you need is to get help in becoming more social, i know this is hard as the other blogs will show I am not very sociable but this is something i need to work on. I want to be the old me no more drinks no more drugs no more lacking confidence.
The next question i had to ask was does my drinking affect others? I had to answer yes, affected the case work i had to do with my dv worker and the statement with the police really you cant give a statement if you out of your head on something. Although i didnot want it to it had affected my daughters and my relationship so she started talking about a friend of hers whose mother was an alcohol and had caused a lot of problems for the family . I told hetr i was not like that and once i had assertained this it came to a clincher that something needed to be done. She is too far away to deal with the stuff cgl has to do with the family unit I am glad to say im not drinking ive stopped and wont be buying another bottle of cider.
Yes I had problems where i collapsed when i tried to quit it out right they no longer believe you should just stop. So i had to work through the issues now cgl do group sessions but ive not been able to go to them, but i am intending to turn up to some of the sessions next year no matter what stage of recovery your still able to turn up to it. Thwres a lot of stuff they do which helps you in the road of recovery, from group sessions to menorship, theres always someone on hand to talk to. I know the one here has a cafe where you can turn up and have a coffee or tea for free and just enjoy the social interaction. I'm too far from my nearest one so mainly turn up for my session with the keyworker and perhaps a chat to some of the ones i met when i first went.
Positives
I no longer smoke the cannabis, i no longer take drugs rhis stopped when i ws pregnant and working on being teetotal to improve the relationship between me and my daughter. Something i cherish to do i can understand her being worried and frightened but i have never put her in harms way and want to prove to her im still the mommy she loves. I told her i want to help others through my experiences and shes told me it was cool for me to do that. As well as this I want to start engaging in the new year with the sessions CGL do and perhaps go to college, I wish to restart courses on openlearn to do with various fields and will be looking at publishing a book to do with my experiences. I'm going to start taking home cooked flapjacks into CGL because i tend to cook too much for me, an i would like to hand some to the homeless. I am also finding myself praying and looking at going back to church something ive not done for years.
Thank you to Valley house for taking me to get myself into CGL, but really any organisation can refer you or why not take the first daunting step and go into talk to someone. In my experience CGL is a friendly and warm environment where everyone understands and isnon judgemental towards both drug and alcohol addicts. It is a shame im so far away from my local one as i would love to take part in many things they have going.
Thank you to CGL for helping me with my crisis.
Comments
Post a Comment