My Confession to You

I am needing to express this somewhere but I'm unable to do so with anyone in my personal life. Anytime I'm sick or unwell at all I have a 'prey animal response'. I immediately shut down and refuse to talk or explain anything due to a fear of others judging, shunning, or forcing me to seek treatment. I would rather crawl into bed and sleep it off.

Now, recently I have been congratulating myself on how well I'm doing. This time last year I was a wreck and going downhill fast and that hasn't been the case this year. Sure my husband has been gone all the time but I'm fine! I'm even drinking all types of alcohol without any problem at all!

Except I'm not. Eight days ago I drank a bottle of wine and three glasses of beer before blacking out. I don't remember anything, but I husband says I called him with an emergency and when he arrived home I was very aggressive, shouting at him, and totally out of control. So I have apologized and he has said all is well and he would never hold anything against me. The lead up to this has been coming for a while now and I've had that nagging voice telling me I was heading to a bad place but naturally I ignored it. For the last eight days I have been completely sober and also ill. I've had a headache for five weeks but now I'm having cold symptoms too.

The larger problem is that now that I've stopped drinking my mind is out of control. All the issues I was so happy to have overcome were being masked. I'm becoming irritable, depressed, jealous, anxious, and generally blah. Basically a copy of last fall, but delayed. I am worrying constantly that I've caused this, even though I know that before this summer I had been sober for three years and still had symptoms. I can rationally understand that I need to return to my doctors and explain what's happening but I'm afraid that because of the drinking I've derailed my treatments and no one is going to believe anything.

TL;DR I slowly descended into alcohol dependency to alleviate my loneliness and symptoms the melted down in a blackout. Now I need to return to treatment but can't allow myself because I feel like an idiot. Plus I'm concerned that I could be going through some type of withdraw, even though I can logically say that I have a cold with a long term sinus headache but I'm in a panic and nothing is certain.

Sorry for the blowout it had to go somewhere.

Why don't you make an appointment with GP for the cold/sinus issue then deal with the mental issues. Can your husband be home more? Do you have any friends?

Check to see if there are hospitals/clinics that work with dual diagnosis. I've been in a couple and they help out quite a bit.

And you're not an idiot. A lot of people have self-medicated with alcohol. You're not alone.

I've recently came out of blackout drinking that was escalating night by night. The alcohol seemed like it negated the stabilizer effects which launched me into a Prozac hypo fed drunk.

I quit drinking and it took a few days for me to stabilize. It's been about 2 weeks, and I'm still not all that stabile, but doing much better than before. I'm feeling down tonight though.

I've been coming clean and telling everyone that I was drinking. It means that my meds were off, so I was self medicating to feel alright....that can't be helped.

I hope you get to feeling better hon.

Okay, in order:
I'm really trying to hold out on unnecessary doctors visits because I always end up paying for lab work or something in addition to weekly insurance payment and copay and its stupid. Husband will be home more soon he's been working 15 hour days plus school two nights a week for the last month. Hopefully after this week he'll go back to a normal schedule. And no, no friends.

Thanks for being able to relate to this. I have been telling my family for a few weeks that it was getting out of hand they just didn't believe me. Today I'm just tired, I came here intending to write a nice well thought reply, but its just not coming.

Alcoholism and addictions is an illness in its own that needs treatment also. I failed to say that I've also been taking a proactive approach to my drinking problem by going to AA meetings.

Sinus issues can make one feel like crap also, compound hat withdrawls and bipolar symptoms.....yes I'd be miserable, too.

I hope that you find your relief.