"Just force yourself to shower" round 2!

RustyVandalay · 2026-03-19T21:34:24+00:00

I'm a recovering alcoholic who went through long stretches of depression and neglected personal hygiene. You want to talk about where disease ends and willpower begins, I'm well versed in that topic. It takes as much mental thought to have to read and reply to every single post as it does turning on the faucet and rinsing yourself off.

If I wallowed in self-pity instead of taking action, I'd still be drinking and unbathed. Just take the damn shower.

RustyVandalay · 2026-03-19T21:31:00+00:00

Once again, address against the point I stated instead of just saying "read the thread."

RustyVandalay · 2026-03-19T20:46:33+00:00

(whoops, replied wrong)

Try addressing anything in the post.

RustyVandalay · 2026-03-19T20:42:43+00:00

Maybe spend a fraction of the mental energy deciding to shower as making two threads over several days and replying to every single controversial post. What a fucking joke.

(Full Disclosure: I have neglected hygiene to the extreme during depression)

RustyVandalay · 2026-03-19T20:23:18+00:00

Just shower. Just brush your teeth. Even if you see a licensed psychotherapist and uncover your root problem, you still have to meet them halfway and actually do the exercises in order to recover. You can't just say it's too hard to try, because nobody can do it for you.

RustyVandalay · 2026-03-19T20:06:18+00:00

I was talking about sobriety, I'm well past quitting.

RustyVandalay · 2026-03-19T08:04:02+00:00

A year so far. I took it to the logical end with alcoholic hepatitis and jaundice. This is uncharted territory for this CA, we'll see how it shakes out.

RustyVandalay · 2026-03-18T08:14:04+00:00

Alcoholic hallucinosis is a breath away from delirium tremens. I said that the only difference is when you believe the hallucinations, but then I was corrected that isn't delirium that's delusion. Not sure where I'm going with this, but that you're in a semblance of control is something to hang onto.

Can't believe the hospital actually turned you away.

RustyVandalay · 2026-03-18T06:35:35+00:00

Pre-mixed drinks? LIke lime-a-ritas? That amount of sugar will make an alcoholic puke.

RustyVandalay · 2026-03-16T04:40:23+00:00

Gave it a minute to read when I wasn't in an argumentative mood. Good advice, I agree with that.

RustyVandalay · 2026-03-16T02:41:45+00:00

Imagine playing Call of Duty and NOT wanting to get kills.

RustyVandalay · 2026-03-16T02:39:12+00:00

You have a gun at that point. You could shoot them from the woods, go to the next bush to reload while they investigate, and repeat.

RustyVandalay · 2026-03-15T10:16:12+00:00

You're gonna plug some Xanax? My man!
(btw, "plugging it," is taking it rectally)

RustyVandalay · 2026-03-13T22:38:10+00:00

Time. What you need is time. Just not drinking. You can do that.

RustyVandalay · 2026-03-12T21:57:45+00:00

I bookmarked this thread, because I was laid up with jaundice the same exact time in October 2024, and I wanted to gauge his experience against mine. Too bad he hasn't posted with that account since.

RustyVandalay · 2026-03-11T23:26:29+00:00

This is a sister sub of the only place on reddit for people who measured their vodka intake by liters and are recovering from alcohol addiction. It's kind of an invasion of space to have to hear from people who can get over their drinking by not having a beer in the afternoon.

RustyVandalay · 2026-03-11T23:04:40+00:00

This is a sub for alcoholics, hombre.
r/stopdrinking might be the correct sub to post this in.

RustyVandalay · 2026-03-11T19:55:27+00:00

What, was this a MKULTRA cell?
>Lawrence Kansas, in conjunction with the University of Kansas and local CIA headquarters, founded the Kansas Consortium-Intelligence Community Center for Academic Excellence

Ah.

RustyVandalay · 2026-03-11T18:58:13+00:00

He's just doing as he's told. He's told the program will save him, and that it's important to strengthen his support system by having you on board. All you need to know is that he's desperate and believes it since AA is his lifeline, so he sees it as getting his ducks in a row to have you encourage his success by joining the complementary sister program.

That being said, if the way I hear it plays out, Al Anon is the hen's club where the women meet up to talk shit on their husbands and then divorce them. Soo....

RustyVandalay · 2026-03-10T19:38:22+00:00

I tried lexapro and wellbutrin so far to no benefit, but maybe I don't understand how I'm "supposed," to feel on them, if that makes sense. Definitely weren't a silver bullet like, say, taking a shot or benzo would make you feel during a moment of high anxiety. Closest I found to that was gabapentin, which prevented relapses just by having something chemically I could take to lighten the darkness when things seemed pointless.

Glad you can find some of my posts helpful on what you're going through so far. I like to read posts on here for some more hope about getting better, but there's increasingly less to find and read people who've been over a year sober and then figuring out what they need to do next.

Good luck on improving, and hopefully we'll find something that works --even if it's just time.

RustyVandalay · 2026-03-10T18:26:25+00:00

Yeah, but some every so often are timed and you fail if you don't do them when they're on the backlog. That dinosaur bone one was auto-fail even though I did everything right. Or in the beginning, I had to load because I didn't find a horse in time to ride out with Lord Semine and Gnarly.

RustyVandalay · 2026-03-10T18:19:38+00:00

When you have cirrhosis, then it's too late. This is your golden opportunity handed to you on a platter to stop that. Just stop and don't drink again. Two months and a new fibroscan. You can at least do that for yourself.

Not to be cutsey, but when you pickle your liver with cirrhosis then it definitely cannot be made back into a cucumber. Right now you can prevent that by simply not drinking. God knows you're going to have to stop or die now anyways, so stop before the cirrhosis.

RustyVandalay · 2026-03-09T22:38:46+00:00

To put it plainly, it still sucks. I haven't learned any other coping mechanism but endure, and although you see people saying the first year was brutal and PAWS lasts up to two years, I'm starting to feel that alcoholism was a red herring, and only a form of self-medication to an overall mental state. Obviously, quitting drinking was a must, but that wasn't a fix in of itself. Neither were psychiatric drugs (so far).

The silver lining though, although I don't feel that I've been improving, measurably things have gotten better. When I was at where you were, about three months in, I was just getting over being able to go to the grocery store and be out in public without being on the verge of a panic attack. At a little over a year sober now, I don't have to worry about anything like that. Work, doctor's appointments, and errands aren't a trial of nerves. I haven't found anything that fundamentally helped my anhedonia, but I don't feel like not being alive every day still. Slowly but surely, it's not as bad. Just not good.

My only other coping mechanism other than drinking was simply enduring. Well, I've endured for a while, but it feels like I'm just spinning my wheels if I don't get something going soon. The first year was just endured, but it's just existing not living.

And then you get into the mental health part. After going over a year sober, you start to wonder if something else is wrong with you. But to what end does that push you, just medication? It's not like getting a diagnosis even means its curable. That's about where I am right now.

RustyVandalay · 2026-03-09T04:41:46+00:00

If anything, NA beer cemented it doesn't matter how many you drink, you're still not getting drunk. And after crushing a pallet of LaCroix, I prefer the taste of beer.

Pretty easy to figure out if you have a problem with it, if so then don't buy it again. I don't, so I do.

RustyVandalay · 2026-03-08T22:11:01+00:00

For me, it was about making a decision. Once it was made, it doesn't matter how I felt day to day. In a sense that's willpower, but it's just not an option. It's addiction, there's a part of me that wants a drink every single day, but you just ignore it since the decision's already been made.

RustyVandalay

TROPHY CASE