Wanting to stop
I have tried and tried to stop drinking.
There is a tremendous urge to cease forever yet I have found it impossible.
This is the battle: this utter inability to leave the booze alone, no matter how much I try.
I know I cannot drink normally.
I know that for sure.
I have known it for most of my life but chose to ignore it.
The thing is I have no off button once I start to drink.
Once I have a drink I am done for. Abstaining is intolerable and makes me miserable… That is because essentially I like the effect produced by alcohol. It makes me feel normal: that initial buzz but also the feeling that I can cope better, blot all the shit out and forget.
Without it I don’t know how to feel or live.
Tragically what happens is I get too drunk as I have that craving: Once I have a drink I want more and more. I make myself extremely unwell.
I have had too many shameful, dangerous and embarrassing drunks; woken up in compromised places and with people I have no business to be with; thinking this is no way to die as I lay wasted in gutters and thinking that this is no way to live either.
I believe I have tried all methods to stop or reduce. The idea that somehow, someday I will control my drinking is my obsession.
I have tried every possible means: only drinking after 5pm, only drinking wine or beer, not mixing whiskey and wine, no booze in the house, changing my routine, moving job, moving country, moving house, changing friends to only have friends who can keep up, joining AA, going to rehab, unprescribed and reliance on benzos, speaking to psychologists and psychiatrists, etc. But it hasn’t worked and I have lost faith.
I am hopeless and know I will die so I am desperate to know of any other treatment which could ease my craving. I don’t mean the physical withdrawal as I can tolerate that but the longer term obsession that I need booze to be okay.
I am interested in what apomorphine could do to help re-wire my brain to feel more at ease with the world without the need for liquour and manage the utter urge and desire to drink.
If there was a way to make living feel normal without having to get shit faced then I would leap at that chance.
Lea, April 2018.
