The long winded abridged version..

[sauer_kraut]

I am usually not one to do things like this but I was reading some other peoples posts and feel that maybe I should put mine up...

I grew up as an only child. I never had any peers to hang out with so I never knew what socializing was. I only basically knew my mother and father. Mostly my mother. My father worked all the time and I never saw him so I never got to know him really. So, I was close to my mother. My friends were mostly the elderly people in the neighbourhood. Made no difference to me.

I actually had a very good childhood. My family loved me and did all they could to make life good. I never knew until years and years later that my parents had issues with their relationship throughout most if not all my life. They hid it well. To this day I am still not sure what happened but it is not my place to ask.

My home life as a child was great but when I went though school..whole other story. I was made fun of an awful lot. Every day, every new school year, every new school. All up until graduation. I must admit that looking back I can kinda see why but it does not jusitify the actions and how the actions affected me.

Moving on.. I began getting into drugs and alcohol at age 18. Just pot. Never drank til I was 20. I really did not drink that much either. Then as the years progressed I experimented and did all kinds of drugs. Anything to get high.. well not everything, there are some things I would NEVER do. I liked pot, cocaine, dextromethorphan (in the form of Coricidin Cough and Cold) painkillers..

Soon the addictions took over my life. I had to get high or drunk every day. I struggled with this every day. I began seeing a therapist and pdoc due to the fact that I was depressed and self injuring. I was off and on meds for years. I have been on quite a good majority of meds. Nothing helped I just kept self medicating. I developed an eating disorder as well and had to work with that for the past years.

My mother passed away in 2006 and it was really difficult for me. She had been on a steady decline in health since 2004. No one really knew what was wrong. She had struggled with addictions as well. I found her dead in her bed. She passed in her sleep. They said it was a heart attack.

I moved out of state a few times afterward. I was still struggling with the eating disorder and addictions. I was actually kicked out of the second place I lived (in April 2008) because I stole his bottles of 10mg Vicodin and took all 90 of them (not at once of course) I knew that I needed help but did not know what to do so I kept trudging along.

By that time I had taken to drinking Listerine to get drunk. Every day. Over the summer this slowly became a 24/7 thing. I had to drink. Then it got to that physical dependency part. I HAD to drink. I started messing things up. Making mistakes like being locked out of my room. I would lock my room up so no one would find the mass amounts of bottles I had.

One day that all came crashing down. My family stepped in. My family being my dad and my step-family (my father re-married in June of 2008) They knew I was not acting right and they intervened. This is the best thing that ever happened. Though of course at the time I was upset and angry and did not wanna comply and take my meds, which they insisted I start taking. I did do it though. I had no choice. The alcohol withdrawal was hell. I should have been hospitalised.

I had to do what they said. They took total control. It was difficult because I had to actually face my crap and learn to deal with it without turning to a substance to block it all out. Then as time passed and I worked with my pdoc and took the meds, I started to get better. It was nice to actually feel content with life and to be clear headed. Though there were some bumps in the road along the way as far as leveling my bipolar symptoms (I was dx'ed with that during one of 2 hospital stays at the beginning of 2008)

I was still angry that I could not just have one drink on occasions. The holidays were especially difficult for that. Then it seemed to make sense to me WHY I cannot drink. I knew one drink could screw my meds up and make me sick again, and the fact that I know I cannot have just one or two. All or nothing. I asked myself if screwing up all the progress I had made was worth it for one drink. The answer was no. After that, things became easier. I was glad to feel well and for the first time in my life I did not need a drink or a drug (aside from prescriptions of course) to feel decent. I have now come as far as to not even want it at all. Others can drink in front of me and most of the time I am not bothered. Though sometimes that depends..and if I am left alone where there is an opportunity to sneak or steal alcohol like when the bottles are out and no one is around, I leave em be. I do not want it. I know that if I were to try alcohol again, I would revert back to that feeling of wanting it and having to start all over again. Best to leave it be.

So, now I have been clean and sober and stable on meds for nearly a year. In August it will be one year. I am slowly but surely making progress with wellness. It takes time and is a hard road to walk. Full of broken glass and sharp rocks on hot asphalt with bare feet. As the trek gets longer there are less and less glass shards and cooler pavement. It is not impossible. Difficult yes, impossible, no. This is what I hope for people here at DU. To keep fighting and never give up. One day you will get there. Sometimes still, I come across a few scattered pieces of glass in the road. I accept it and move on and not let it get to me. Everyone has bad days here and there. Nothing wrong with that.

Not sure what the future holds for me but I take things a day at a time. Sounds cliche but that is all one can do. ..and no I never went to AA! I feel lucky to have support from family and my friends here at DU. I only wish the best for everyone here. I hope that I can use what I have learned to help others struggling with their own issues.

[Warmsoul/Jeanie13]

(((((((((((((((( sauer_kraut )))))))))))))))))))))))

Oh my! What a life you have dealt with, but look at you. A shining example that you can make it, turn your life around.

I see your support, care and concern daily in the room for others. You are giving so much of yourself there. This I believe comes from the determination of your family to be there for you, You drew on their strengths and now you are sharing that with others.

My heart aches for you with the loss of your mother. Have lost both my parents so yes, I do understand that void you now deal with.

I feel it took a lot for you to be able to sit down and type all this out, to share as you have. Thank you for the trust you give us and I truly hope you hope I am in turn returning loads of respect to you.

Here for you, and again, thank you so very much for this.

Jeanie

[aim]

Sauer_kraut - thank you for sharing your story. Be soooo proud of yourself for not only kicking your habit, but realizing it was a problem and facing it. My father is a recovering alcoholic... I know how difficult it is to stop and stay away from it. Good for you!

Your analogy of walking barefoot on glass is brilliant. You are right; there will always be glass for us to get through - we just have to learn how to do it without getting cut up.

You're an asset here, Sauer_kraut. And a person to be respected. Glad you are around - you can help many people.

[sauer_kraut]

This is really in need of an update so here goes.

About two months after posting this, I found out I have DID. That is Dissociative Identity Disorder for those that might not know. Ironic how everything seemed to be falling into place for me and things just spiralled. The emergence of the alters and the radical dynamics of the disorder came to a head due to extreme stress, which is very common, however this is something I had been dealing with for ten years or so. It just was not outwardly aware to ME. It was the LAST thing I would have thought to be the case, actually.

I will spare a lot of details because this would be keeping me up all night.

The thing with DID is that it is very controversial and people claim it is something that comes about in therapy and is "created" by the therapist and such..I can assure you that is not the case here. I had been in therapy off and on for years but nothing like that was ever suggested. I have had a TON of misdiagnoses over the years and have been on and off all kinds of meds, and no one really knew what to do with me, I guess because when drugs and alcohol are also a factor, symptoms and following through with anything is all skewed. So, being sober and clean allowed me to actually have to DEAL with life and all my crap. I had to deal with things naturally. So, when things in life came about that were new and stressful, I found out in a very harsh way that I was more than fragile, I was broken..literally.

There is much amazement in how I never knew I had this. Looking back at journals I kept 10 years ago, it was so obvious. The extreme handwriting changes, the beautiful poetry that there is no way in hell I could have written..alters that even introduced themselves! All this stuff before I even got into drugs and alcohol. I was still a goody goody that hated all that.. It makes me sad that I chose to escape through drugs than to actually use the help I had at hand to work on my issues. However, that was not the case.

Life is so unpredictable now. I have a long way to heal and recover but I am doing the best I can with it. Its not easy to progress when you still live in the same (relatively) environment that caused so much trauma and stress over the years. A lot of people that have DID know the source of their traumas however, I did not understand WHY I have this with NO trauma..I thought life was good growing up. I am unsure of anything happening before a certain age and am not ready to even think there could have been something really horrible happen to me..it was more of a lifetime exposure to a lot of different traumatic experiences, namely being in the middle of my parents arguing and the alcohol abuse and whatnot. Then the ridicule I had to deal with in school among my peers and it was a LOT of negativity. Too much, too often. Then when my mother passed that was a HUGE trauma in itself. Seems some people just are not "by the book" cases of ANY mental issue...

I am grateful that I had a way of coping and that it served me well enough through all my "formative" years but now, its sometimes so incapacitating and unpredictable from one day to the next how things will turn out. Personal relationships/friendships have suffered a LOT from this. There was a good span of a month that I had NO idea WHY one of my longtime friends was giving me the cold shoulder...they showed me logs of an alter "tearing them a new one" and I had no idea. That was months ago and still am trying to set that right..

Anyway, I think I have rambled on enough for now. I am going to use the forums here more to help update people on things and to express things that are more than one can say in chat or other means of communication. It helps as a peace of mind thing to keep in the loop with everyone here. =)

[Obayan]

I'm so sorry that you have had to live thru these experiences.

I know you are a strong and capable person even if you don't always see it in yourself.

I hope you keep letting us know how you are doing. I do worry over you.