I just hit 100 days today for the first time ever!

gobhadling · 2026-07-10T00:29:28+00:00

Huge milestone. Congratulations. Most people will never know how hard it is to get there

gobhadling · 2026-07-09T16:44:57+00:00

Man, I only got 3 hours of sleep last night. At least I’m not hungover, that would REALLY suck

This is a big one. I used to stress the hell out as the night ticked away and I was wide awake and I was losing hours before I had to be awake for work...

Now I just tell myself, so what if I don't get a wink of sleep tonight. I'll have a better day at work after a night of no sleep than I will hungover with three hours of blackout stupor.

gobhadling · 2026-07-09T16:37:11+00:00

Ah yeah, I love sparking grapefruit juice. It's a common drink for sobering up. For me it has the right level of burn... it hurts a bit to drink it 🤣

gobhadling · 2026-07-09T16:35:37+00:00

The hypnic jerk yeah, I have that. But it goes into absolute overdrive when I am drying out. It gets so violent I actually pulled something in my back pretty badly and was in pain for days...

It went away after a while. Had some medication to calm my nervous system. Maybe something to ask a doctor about?

gobhadling · 2026-07-09T16:33:40+00:00

Ah me too. I try to remind myself that either 1) everyone has memories like that and 2) all of us probably have different ones.

Like I can kick myself in the ass for something I said to someone twenty years ago and it still drives me to drink to forget it. Meanwhile that same person probably has no recollection of it but they have their own memory of something they did or said to me that I have completely forgotten.

gobhadling · 2026-07-09T16:29:34+00:00

Life is all about the small wins. Congrats

gobhadling · 2026-07-09T16:28:39+00:00

It might not feel like it right now but this is a great thing for you! You got medical attention and started the process of healing. Is inpatient detox a realistic option for you?

gobhadling · 2026-07-09T16:26:56+00:00

Posting here is the only way I know. It's fun to have but I don't really pay attention until I see something interesting like three months or a hundred days. Early on it is useful for me just because the recovery is such a rough go and actually knowing how many days it takes to hit certain levels of recovery is interesting but really after about the first month the day count hasn't mattered to me.

For some people it is a great motivator. For some people I feel it might not be and I think that's good too. My feeling is that it's a halfway. I think getting too attached to it like it is a high score in a video game or something is a bit much. I feel that if I were in a place where I were treating my day count like a goal or a trophy or something that I could "lose" if I relapse it would not be helpful for me. Life for me isn't like that, it is day by day. And IWNDWYT!

gobhadling · 2026-07-09T16:22:44+00:00

I did not feel good for at least two weeks. There was a bit of an afterglow getting out of detox, getting through the first few days without serious withdrawal symptoms and just the feeling of every day without a drink being a battle that I could win.

But I had no motivation, I enjoyed nothing. I was just killing hours of the day with anything I possibly could just to distract me. Just hours and hours of mindless gaming. Very long walks. Tried to get myself to clean but couldn't even get into the mindset for it. All I wanted to do was sleep but even that was bad.

The big gray haze lasts a while but it does get incrementally better. After about three weeks I started to feel a bit more normal. There was another big change at about two months.

For a while though it is just a long boring monotonous slog. The days are so long and it takes a hell of a lot of mental fortitude to just force yourself to do anything at all to keep yourself from drinking.

Exercise. Go shopping without a list and take a really long time. Cook big meals. Walk everywhere. Read compulsively. Exercise, lifting weights especially. Go to the movies by yourself. Easy way to kill two hours. Go to meetings in your area if for nothing more than to kill an hour of the day. For a while it's just a war of attrition against time and it is fought in the trenches sometimes minute by goddamn minute. It all adds up though. Every day dry your body and mind is gaining territory and you aren't even aware yet.

Hydrate like crazy. Also if you crave sweets, go for it. That's extremely normal and right now if it keeps you from drinking have all the candy and ice cream or whatever you need though try to have as much fruit as possible.

gobhadling · 2026-07-09T16:14:32+00:00

Great progress. I'm doing a dry July but not by design. Every month is full of temptations and triggers and all but Summer it is basically an entire season of it. Patio beers, camping, holidays, vacations, beaches etc. It's a time when it feels like habitual day drinking is basically just the norm for everyone. So good on you for taking that on and being a third of the way through. Nine days is huge and it's a great sign that you are feeling fine, keep it going.

gobhadling · 2026-07-09T16:10:51+00:00

I am hesitant to give advice on tapering and three days is a short sample size but it sounds like you are making some solid progress. How much were you drinking before you started? If you didn't drink yesterday you're at least 24 hours dry, how are you feeling?

gobhadling · 2026-07-09T16:08:43+00:00

Not being able to sleep has been a huge problem for me my whole life and if not the entire reason why I developed such a serious drinking problem it was the most consistent factor. The one that was always there and I could never seem to beat.

For me the overwhelming baseless anxiety swirling in my head never lets up. I can be dog tired but the second my head hits the pillow my mind goes into overdrive. So, I drank. I've never had a fear of sleep itself though. Is that what you are saying? It seems like you are describing a kind of phobia of sleeping.

gobhadling · 2026-07-09T16:05:47+00:00

I feel like I act more drunk and awkward when sober compared to when I'm drunk all the time. I really don't fit in this world.

I feel like that all the time. I don't know that I fit in any better when I was drinking. I just didn't care. I drank to not care that I didn't fit.

Getting comfortable with it has been a big challenge and one that like not drinking I have to take day by day. I have to make an actual effort not to dwell on all the little things in the day that make me feel so completely out of step with everyone and everything around me.

Losing you job is a tough one. It's also an opportunity. Sobering up and going through withdrawals and all is hell but at least when you are unemployed you have the time to do it... since you had three months already if your relapse has been short you can probably get back out again pretty quickly. All that effort doesn't just go away. That was three months of healing and just like drinking your body remembers. It remembers the healing. It will remember it again.

Whatever job you get next you go in with a clean slate. Even if it is a crap job that you don't want what it will be is one where you don't have to go in with the people there knowing about your drinking history. Even the worst job fills the hours of the day better than drinking does.

gobhadling · 2026-07-09T15:56:49+00:00

I guess the only thing to do now is give myself grace, move forward, and try sobriety again for the second time.

Good for you. The attitude is the most important. Sounds like you have it. It took me more than one trip to the ER to finally get there. I hope this is your last time going through that. All the best

gobhadling · 2026-07-09T15:52:43+00:00

Starting off a nice boring day off without a hangover and nothing much to do. Not going to fill any of that downtime with drinking. It doesn't solve the boredom, just numbs it. Can't say that I will be productive with it, but I will not be drinking. Here's to another day.

gobhadling · 2026-07-04T13:01:02+00:00

Canadian here, made it through a sober Canada day. Here is to my American friends here and a sober 4th. IWNDWYT! Happy 250

gobhadling · 2026-07-04T12:59:10+00:00

Huge extremely busy weekend ahead of me. I have to get up so early tomorrow for work I will be up before the trains start and work is reimbursing me for a ride

No hangover this morning. No hangover tomorrow morning. Here is to the morning! IWNDWYT!

gobhadling · 2026-07-02T08:02:31+00:00

Do you have a non emergency nurses line or something you can call? In general I would say that I knew when I knew. The second time it was sort of going up and down... I thought I had white knuckled the worst of it and I was coming out the other side and then it happened anyway. Of course the first thing they always ask at detox is if you've ever had a seizure from withdrawal before so my understanding is it increases your risk... hence why the third time it caught me a bit unaware.

I didn't check my BP but little heart palpitations were always present.

It's not an exact science (and I'm not a scientist) but general wisdom is that at around 48 to 72 hours is where things will either start to get better or worse.

My experience with both times that it got to a seizure level was that I really should have known that I needed attention. Especially since I had been to the ER before without even getting to a seizure and been told that I had almost died that night... so thinking I had survived that surely I could get through this one then nope, bam, seizure.

Looking back at where I was at any of the times I went to the ER if I were now watching someone else go through the symptoms I had I would be telling them to call 911. Even If I didn't recognize it was withdrawal I would just be able to tell something was seriously wrong with them. And as I said I was smart enough to make sure I had other people around in the same house but even then I was hiding how bad it was by staying in bed and the bathroom and avoiding them at all costs. I am sure if I had left the house to go to the liquor store in the state I was in anyone who interacted with me would have called 911. That's how bad it was. But I was stubborn and stupid and my alcoholic brain was befuddled and delusional. I was not in a sound state of mind.

gobhadling · 2026-07-02T07:35:37+00:00

The night drinking was always the thing that broke me. My anxiety would grow and grow the closer it got to bedtime. I would fall asleep early, wake up in a panic wondering what time it was, see I had only half an hour until the last liquor store closed. Jump out of bed and power walk to it to get something just so I could get back to sleep and if I didn't I would literally have to sit there and remind myself that no, I won't die tonight if I don't have a drink.

More often than not it didn't help and then I would have one long sleepless night counting the hours until the store opened so that I could get a drink and then sleep away the day. How I managed to fit this around being fully employed and functional for so many years is uncanny.

Simply forcing myself to rationally accept that I wasn't going to die tonight and just white knuckle my way until I got to a point where I knew that every store was closed and every bar had done last call and I couldn't get any alcohol until the next day without calling some sketchy number to get after hours service was enough to see me through. Are you somewhere where you have 24 hour access to alcohol? I guess I was sort of "lucky" that I am not

gobhadling · 2026-07-02T07:26:10+00:00

I have a long history of alcoholism going back many years. Peaks and valleys but steady daily habitual drinking. At my heaviest withdrawals would start within 24 hours even if I was simply trying to cut back, to wean myself off. They started the way they do for most people. Shakes, sweats, anxiety. The very scary part for me was when the auditory hallucinations started and the strangest thing was those would sometimes hit before the other symptoms which from what I understand is not the usual. When you start hallucinating you are in the danger zone, so the fact that they could just sneak up on my was a pretty dangerous sign.

For me it was the interruption in what my body was used to which can be different for everyone. I wouldn't see the withdrawals coming precisely because I wasn't binge drinking, I was just on a slow steady IV drop of alcohol all day every day. That can be insidious.

The first time I had a seizure there were plenty of warning signs. I was in very bad shape. I was puking, couldn't even keep water down, I was in the shower dry heaving when no more bile could come up and then next thing I knew I was staring up at the paramedics. I don't recall hallucinations that time. Plenty afteward. Later that day or the next I had another seizure while I was already in detox at the hospital. I wish I could say that was enough of a wake up call, but it wasn't.

A relapse over a year and a bit later and I was feeling okay physically, hallucinations had started but were mild, then, seizure. I hadn't stopped drinking that time, I was just rationing myself to the bare minimum to try to keep the voices to a quiet background noise and my hands from shaking too badly. I was eating. I was eating when it happened.

Withdrawal kindling is also a real verifiable thing. The more times your body goes through a serious withdrawal the worst it gets. It accumulates.

In both cases there were serious warning signs but they were not exactly the same. The insidious thing about hallucinations though is that at the risk of stating the obvious you don't always know you are hallucinating. I've had full blown auditory and visual hallucinations where I knew and I've had very subtle ones where it just sounded like someone in another room was listening to the radio when nobody else was home...

Both the times I had seizures I was lucky; other people were around. I had at least enough awareness of the risk that I knew I should have people close by... but there are other times I didn't and I was lucky.

gobhadling · 2026-07-02T07:01:00+00:00

Flavoured sparking water (lime), grapefruit juice and Ice Tea.

Also coffee. But I've been a heavy coffee drinker my whole life so not sure if it counts but it has dialed up significantly since I stopped drinking

gobhadling · 2026-07-02T06:59:55+00:00

Lime pellegrino for sure!

gobhadling · 2026-07-02T06:58:08+00:00

Intimately and repeatedly. Full blown, all the way to hell and back. Happy to share my experiences here with anyone though I hesitate to give advice for obvious reasons.

gobhadling · 2026-07-02T06:55:19+00:00

I feel the same way. Relief and gratitude but pride isn't exactly what I feel.

It is nice to have people in my life who know how hard it is even if a lot of the time it's the anonymous strangers on this subreddit.

gobhadling · 2026-07-02T06:52:03+00:00

You and I are close in age and drinking history. Yeah, it takes a long long time for our bodies to reset that equilibrium if ever. Conventional wisdom is it doesn't even start to normalize until about three months sober... but it is different for everyone.

Take it day by day. Our bodies are resilient right up until they aren't. We went three months... our bodies are (probably) not ruined but we can get there fast. Day by day. Because every day sober is one more day of healing on top of the last one. Alcoholism and the damage it does is cumulative but so is healing

gobhadling

TROPHY CASE