How Low Can You Go* (before Seeking Help)

[The Albatross]

@Anarchy - personally my bottom was carefully gauged so that I was not beyond assistance, and was able to recover my footing and reasonably good health without hospitalization, further addiction/substance abuse, jail, divorce or wet brain.

 

[The Albatross]

@ghotiff ... what's not to like about "rock bottom"? Rock bottom is the place where you've stopped slipping, sliding, falling, careening... crashed and survived... and realize that it's time for you to endeavor to do life differently than you've been living it.

 

[Friday]

Realizing I may have been less than forthcoming above (since I just used the same line elsewhere), here's a short list of some of the places I've gone to when I gotten dark. Most of these were during my first tailspin 15 years ago, some are frequent-flyers

Oblivion : Drug abuse, Alcohol abuse, Sexed up and ran with it, Partying
Violence : Fights, killing, hurting people, hurting myself, dangerous work, suicidal behavior (recklessness), outbursts, inappropriate reactions / not commensurate with the level of provocation
Relationships : Walked away from amazing ones, got into abusive ones, burned countless bridges / lost friends, refused to enter into any kind of relationship (romantic or platonic)
Basics : Unable to feed, dress, or otherwise take care of myself in any meaningful way
Misc. : Homelessness, Joblessness, Total isolation, serious isolating (2 different things)
Other Symptoms : Damn near constant anxiety attacks, flashbacks, nightmares, insomnia & sleeping round the clock, total loss of all of my emotions, no emotion but anger, trusting everyone/trusting no one (2 sides of the same coin), constantly on the alert unless I was numbing out / oblivion seeking in order to get a break from my own mind & senses.

Plus probably a bunch of others, feels like I'm forgetting stuff, but thinking about all of this has made my head very loud. No. I never sought help the first time around.

 

[ghotiff]

What spurned me to get help: I really should have died and almost did.

What I consider rock bottom happened months later when I reached a level of hating myself so much death was no longer an option as it would be too merciful. I think I consider this more rock bottom because I broke my own bones and majorly screwed up my life

Moonbeam clearly articulates why I hate the notion of "rock bottom". That is, there is ALWAYS further down to go.

I also think that maybe some of my very strong reaction to this concept is that my on going traumas were always minimized with "it could be worse".... Yes it could. Even the most abused person here could have been abused WORSE.

I'm more than happy to engage in the concept of a "wake up call".

Sorry if this post is unclear. I pushed myself to post because I'm trying to share and not ignore/supresd my emotions (ie, my standard ignore it and walk away approach)....but it has taken 12 hours to build the courage to post.

 

[The Albatross]

Contrary to what thoughts and feelings tell me, I know the resilience of the body. How hard it will struggle to live and survive. To me "rock bottom" was always a question of the consequences of the actions I took or failed to take and whether or not I could live with them.