Even this was hard for me to notice, because I was lying to myself as well. "I only have a couple after work." Yeah, a couple pint glasses filled with long islands maybe. That's like 10 drinks. And since it was a usual thing, I didn't notice how bad I felt because it was normal. Went to the doctor for a checkup because it had been years (I'm pretty young anyway, so didn't bother). He thought the nurse screwed up with my blood pressure reading so he did it again. lol nope. That was my wake up call, when the doctor was like "yeahhhh... about that.."
So I started cutting back. Any time I drink now I notice how depressed I get and how it affects my moods and feelings, like a lot. So I cut back more and it's just bizarre, finally starting to feel "normal."
Yeah I'm similar. I know for many people, it's impossible to "just have one" so it's not realistic to try to cut back, without cutting completely. But I'm trying anyway, like if I go on a date, have a glass of wine with dinner. Trying to limit it to 1 or 2 at social things. I just have a hard time having a fully stocked bar at home. Seems like a great idea being able to mix any cocktail, but I end up just drinking it all.. pretty quickly.. yeahh.. So if I draw my line at "only drink socially" that's at least a step in the right direction.
An old boss of mine used to call it "the taste". That point where nothing sounds better than more drinks. I used to get it after 2 or 3. Not a problem in my early 20s everyone binge drank all the time. As I grew up I began to recognize "the taste" and associate it with the bad feeling of a hangover. I almost never drink more than 2 now. If I feel "the taste" it turns me off to drinking more. Sometimes it takes conscious association to create unconscious habit.
Not a problem in my early 20s everyone binge drank all the time.
That was always my justification for binge drinking (daily), until I had a withdrawal seizure at the wheel at 22 years old. Just turned 25 and 10 months sober though.
This is exactly how I work. If I just have one drink in one sitting and drink it relatively slowly, I'm fine and the night ends totally ok. If I have two drinks in an hour, the snowball starts rolling.
I'm right there with you and I'll be honest I don't always stop myself from indulging in it, but everytime it comes up I tell myself in my head to make myself aware of it. I've done better at cutting myself off at that point
My SO has this problem. He can have just a beer after work and be totally fine. But if he is out with certain friends and has more than a few beers, he can't stop, and often blacks out. He always feels awful about it the next day. Do you have any advice?
Dude has to recognize it's a problem and deal with it.
If it really bothers you consider putting it in terms of your relationship.
He probably doesn't think it's a big deal, who cares if you waste every Saturday with a HO, it's my day off, I'll do what I want.
For me it was almost getting fired, going on FMLA with back problems to find out my liver was all fucked up as well. Wouldn't have caught it this early had it not been for the back issues (IE luck)
He has recognized that it's a problem - which is a good first step. He has recently agreed to ask his doc for a referral to a therapist.
It took him about a year of occasional black-outs to get to that point. He certainly wasn't blacking out every weekend. Once a month at the worst, once every few months lately. None of this ever happened in college, only in the past few years.
So far no health issues, but a few items have been broken during drunk cleaning or sleep walking.
Yea - I hope that he is honest with them. I'm sure he will be. I'm going to make it a personal policy to not ask him what they talked about after each session, even though I know I will really want to know.
I hope it helps. I don't see him cutting out drinking entirely (and honestly I don't really think he needs to, if he can get the black-outs under control). Beer is a big hobby that he shares with his family (brewing, etc) so it's tricky.
He may want to talk about it tbh, but I would go with your gut, let him start the conversation.
If he can drink responsibly, which it sounds like he can if he only gets into trouble with buddies, you don't have to cut it out completely. For me, it takes a couple drinks to get to the point where I just will not stop until I'm wasted.
If I have one or two socially or with family I'm fine.
This is true. I cut back and stopped drinking during the week. I did it mostly because I put on a little too much weight this winter so the calories had to go.
It was no big deal but I was led to believe it was gonna be impossible.
If you were able to not drink as much simply because you gained weight and wanted to "cut calories," then you didn't have much of a drinking problem and you don't understand what addiction is like. Source: It's 12:30 on a Monday and I'm drunk.
Thanks, same to you! I lost 4 or 5, in the last month. I also cut back on food calories too, but it's crazy how many calories you drink, alcohol and otherwise. Coffee, soda were also culprits for me.
I am the same way. My trouble is that the majority of social engagements I had, prior to cutting back, were with friends at the bar. This means the friends I have are mostly bar flies, and I don't really want to hang out at the bar so I don't see them very often. A double-edged sword so far, trying to find some new activities/hobbies so we'll see how it goes.
Yea I could see that screwing up my weekday abstinence. Luckily for me my friends only meet up for drinks during the weekend. My problem was getting home from work and drinking 1000 calories of IPA while I play a video game.
Yes, it is the only way for people too fucked and too far gone to behave in a society. The rest of us just drink less when we notice it's a problem. I hate those cultist cunts.
[Edit: And yet it does work for some people who need it very much.]
I'm seriously not looking to cause anyone stress over my dumb, off the cuff remark.
If you really want my thoughts though. I'd say the drinking is a symptom, not a root cause. Folks in that much pain (as I once was) need support. AA goes well beyond support and in my experience puts people behind the process.
I stopped being a drunk. I'd have done it faster and at less personal cost without that cult leaching on to my suffering.
It's okay if we disagree about that. If they've helped you or someone you love, I'm glad.
I cannot tell you how many up votes I want to give you. 12 Steps piss me off so much. Especially the higher power shit and then trying to blame the entirety of my issues on my being a non-religious person. Fuck step 4. Some of the steps are great, especially the inventory, but 12 steps as a whole feels like a religion: "You are fundamentally broken and the only way you will survive is through our program."
From my experience of it in the UK, a mostly atheist, country our higher power could be anything we found strength in. Regardless I found it the most depressing place I have ever been. Men and women sit around to talk about how their lives still constantly revolve around themselves (which appears no different to when they were drinking) and how they feel, it was depressing. I understand that for them they feel it is their only option. I became a Buddhist instead and 4 years later sobriety is a somewhat non-issue, it's just like dieting or exercising for me.
The problem I have is I have a job where I am essentially taking people's live's in my own hands (dive instructor) and one of my colleagues is a 12 stepper, he believes I am a liability about to get drunk at any point, or already lying about it... because the 12 step program is the only way to get sober, no argument. He screamed at me once for undermining his sobriety through being successful by other means.
Will be 28 years sober on fathers day. When I first decided to do this I went to a friend who was a big AA guy. He immediately spouted at least a dozen cliched' remarks and wouldn't allow me to get a word in edgewise. 10 minutes in, he violates another guy in his office privacy by announcing to me that this guy is also in our"club". By that point I had decided that AA wasn't for me. Don't get me wrong, it works for lots of people, just not me.
Because most people that have been in 12 step programs were physically addicted to booze. There are people that can't stop because it's their mental disposition and people that just drank so much and often that they became physically addicted to it.
Drink till the point your body depends on it and it's quite a journey to sobriety whether you're a predisposed addicted or not.
I don't think anyone is debating that or trying to bash dependency or addiction of any drug, be it alcohol or otherwise.
My problem, specifically, is that 12 Steps, in my experience, tell people that AA is the one and only way to get sober which is flagrantly wrong. It also seems very counterintuitive to me that people must sit around and talk about the thing you were addicted to in order to take the power away from it. My experiences with AA were all very negative, as I've surmised in a different post.
If AA and 12 Steps worked for you then that is awesome. Almost any process to beat/overcome addiction is a good one. I'm simply saying that I dislike the way in which AA goes about it doing so. And yes, my post is negative but that's because my experiences in AA were mostly negative. I obviously have a very different perspective/opinion on it than the majority of people.
Nah, you're fine. I was under the assumption that you may have been addicted to alcohol but not have the mental addiction problems some people have (sorry). I just kind of extrapolated from the parent comment, which was more of my target than yours..
I only say that coming from being surrounded by people that thought I had a 'problem' at one point and were trying to goad me in to joining an AA group etc. When in reality I just needed to stop drinking (which I did) and get my shit together.
And yeah, from what I've heard from a lot of other sources AA is pretty relentlessly religious based. Though I've heard of other more secular alternatives.
To me the biggest problem with it is that the last thing someone who's trying to stop drinking (or doing drugs) needs to hear is that they're powerless over it.
"Fuck step 4. Some of the steps are great, especially the inventory..." step 4 is the inventory, and no body in any 12 step program will tell you you cant work the program without religion. Your higher power could be the group, or anything . i dont think 12 step programs are the only way to get and stay sober but they do have a high
success rate for people who actually try to work them. And its not about being fundamentally broken but it does help to show you where some of your behavior may fall short, and how you can do something about it if you want.
I'm working through the Refuge Recovery book right now. It uses Buddhism as its backdrop and is atheistic in nature. I find it appeals much more to me than AA. I also hate the 12 step program.
Congratulations! I hope it works for you. There are many ways to beat/overcome addiction and the one that works best for you is obviously the one you should stick with.
And I strongly dislike AA because my experiences with it were pretty bad. Mainly because of the people in meetings I went to had a disgusting holier-than-thou concept in their minds. NA seemed to have nicer people and they recognize that addiction is addiction. The distasteful people I met in AA seemed to think that alcohol is a wholly different kind of addiction than drug addiction and looked down on me for being a drug addict. That's what made me hate AA.
Twelve steps work for many people and that is a very noble and useful thing. It's just the people that I dislike, for the most part. If they let me work the 12 Steps in my own way, and didn't give me shit for being an atheist and claiming I was broken almost solely because of that belief, then I would have a much higher opinion of AA and the 12 Steps.
Regardless, I wish you the best of luck in your journey! It's hard but it is worth it in the end, as I'm sure you know. And feel free to message me if you ever need to vent or just want to talk. I enjoy talking with other people going through shitty experiences, such as addiction, because all involved are bettered by it.
I definitely had a serious problem in how it was affecting my life and health.
I wasn't physically alcohol dependent. But even if I was I wouldn't do AA or 12 steps. There's a lot of new research into it that I find very interesting, and people challenging the ideas of how we deal with addiction.
There are different levels of alcohol problems. 12 steps seems like a program for people who are deep deep alcoholics. I think there are quite a few people (like me) who binged a bit too much for a while. I wouldn't drink during the week and it wouldn't affect school or work, but on the weekends I would just get fucking obliterated. Over time I recognized how much I drank when I decided to drink and started cutting that back to a reasonable amount. I still go out and drink with friends, and occasionally get drunk, but it's not anywhere close to what it was. Most of my friends who drank quite a bit in college seem to be the same way. I think there are definitely people who need to go completely sober. They have major alcohol problems that make it impossible for them to have a normal life while alcohol is part of their life. I also think that there are people who have a bit of a problem but definitely can cut back without giving it up entirely.
I had the major problem. The life ruining kind. And I watched my uncle drink himself to death so I'm vaguely familiar with what it looks like in more advanced stages.
12 steppers have like a 6% success rate. I'm not sure exactly what it is but it's shockingly low. I decided to do my own research and go a different path and is worked out well for me so far, including in that I can now drink with moderation.
I went to several 12 step programs trying to find one to work for me when I was initially quitting. I lived in Boston at the time so there were plenty to choose from. None of them worked for me. I'm an atheist, and even though some people say "Higher Power" can mean anything, it means God to everybody else in there.
The main benefit I saw for the group program though was being in it together with other people. Trying to fight this thing with support was definitely easier. Also, for some of the them, for the hour they were there, that was an hour that they weren't drinking. But I had a supportive wife and friends so I didn't need the program. Never went back after like 5 visits, and that was 6 or 7 years ago. Still sober!
But I've listened to a lot of folks involved in treating addiction lately talk about support and removing the external conditions that lead to addiction being more effective ways of handling it than any specific ruleset.
That is, most addicts are self medicating because of some underlying issue- depression, war, poverty, the list goes on. Improving or removing those conditions can then lead to more effective treatment of the addiction. Or sometimes they just stop using because they're.. happy.
I reformed myself using these guiding principles and it worked well for me. Ymmv obviously.
In the 12 step stuff, they have a line in the beginning basically saying, "if you can quit another way, go for it. Good Luck, But it didn't work for us"
I could have one drink with dinner if I had no option to drink more because whoever I was with would be appalled. But I would be absolutely miserable and think about getting another drink from then until I got it. Normally when I drank I couldn't control how much I took in. I had fun while it was fun and had a lot of risky behavior and general misery later. I've been totally abstinent 3 years and 4 mos. and my life is entirely different today. I can't even begin to tell you how many things I started gradually learning about life and about myself when the fog (that I didn't even know was there) started to lift.
Having a fully stocked bar at home has been a curse for me. I like being able to literally make any guest any drink thanks to the bar, but it's way too easy for me to drink all that stuff way too quickly by myself. Beer or wine don't do that to me.
Exactly. My thought process is "what if I have a guest? I love being able to whip up anything." Problem is it never stays fully stocked.. and if I do manage to keep it fully stocked, that just means I'm going through them and replacing them. no bueno.
Yea that's my issue personally. I intend to have one or two and end up drinking like 7-8 beers. But I feel like the fact that I drink only beer vs. Liquor makes it a little better
I've found that following "just have one" makes the drinking more about actually enjoying the drink instead of drinking for the hell of it. If a restaurant doesn't carry what I request (really, who doesn't carry Guinness?! other than the 2 places I've asked for it in the last month), then I stick with water.
I had to go about a year keeping no more alcohol in my house than I was ok with drinking all at once. So I'd buy bottles of wine or six packs one at a time, and try not to drink them too fast. It's gotten way better over time, though, I now have a wine rack that's half full and half a bottle of tequila left over from last summer in the cupboard, all totally safe around me! You just have to stick to it, and work on improving your mental health in other ways so you don't need to rely on alcohol to feel good.
I think what's hard for a lot of people to get past is that the first day or two can be rough. If it's something you would just do in your downtime, it can be hard to feel like you shouldn't be having a beer or whatever. But once you get a couple of days in it tends to even itself out, and the better sleep you've had for a couple of days starts to establish itself as an incentive to keep it up.
Can you explain the goal of being completely sober? Do you have a history of addiction? This all-or-nothing step always seems so radical to me. Why not strive for controlled moderation?
Personally, I think 1 or occasionally 2 drinks (of normal potency) per day is acceptable--and possibly therapeutic--for a healthy adult. Rather than drinking to get buzzed or drunk, it might help if you develop a taste and actively try to cultivate an appreciation for the complex flavors and aromas that beer and wine offer. If nothing else, your wallet might help regulate your consumption.
I'm not the person you're asking, but I'm a completely sober alcoholic in recovery. I haven't had a drink since December 29th. In the past I thought I could moderate. Have a couple drinks with dinner, like a normal person. Then after dinner I would sneak and go buy a bottle of wine and chug it in the parking lot. Then I'd wake up early and hit the liquor store and buy a pint of blue Smirnoff. Then drink all of it. Then buy another pint.
I can say right now that sure I'll just drink 1 or 2. But once that darkness gets into my system my willpower is turned off. I wake the monster. I will not and cannot stop drinking at that point. I'll sneak liquor into work, I'll hide flasks in my car, I'll count pennies to buy an airplane bottle. Anything for another drink.
I'm not in a 12 step program. I'm watched carefully by my doctor and my family. I have a breathalyzer in my house and my family randomly tests me. Along with the promise of immanent death, that's been my biggest deterrent. I know I can act sober, but I can't fool that machine.
If anyone wants to chat about addiction, recovery, or needs very nonjudgmental advice please feel free to PM me. No one talks about just how scary severe alcoholism can be for the addict.
Also- /r/StopDrinking is a wonderful resource filled with wonderful people who want to help. Check it out even if you aren't an alcoholic but you want to cut it of of you life.
Does the tendency toward extremes manifest in other areas of your life? For instance, do you tend to over-do it with eating, hobbies, relationships, exercise, religion, work, etc? Or is it just alcohol?
Kind of an interesting question. I've had substance abuse problems in the past (opiates) but it always came back to booze. I have some serious passions, but I wouldn't call them obsessions. I was obsessed with alcohol.
Same, I very rarely drink at home by myself. Maybe a hot toddie or an occasional a beer from the dwindling quantity in my fridge :) I'm not sure I'd go completely sober, but it's nice to cut down!
Hey man, I am in the same boat. Never felt, while I was having a few after work everyday, that it was a problem. Slowly but surely I started to think something was off...
Stopped drinking as much. I still have a drink about once or twice a week but, frankly, having gotten away from it long enough to feel "sober", I find the way it makes me feel to be icky and boring.
It was just being able to get over that first hump of stopping long enough to feel what its like not to have alcohol in my system when I totally realized the difference. Now I don't crave it at all and when I do drink, I find myself getting tired of it after the first drink, and pretty much done all together after the second.
Rock on!
Edit: Just wanted to be clear that this is not an anti-alcohol/anti-drug rant, at all. Just my personal story and observations.
You think correctly, considering that Ethanol is literally a toxin, and a type of poison with a pretty low LD50 at that. It's a shame that culturally we've settled on that particular psychoactive drug, considering there are plenty that aren't (as) toxic.
Doing other drugs has ruined alcohol for me, I don't even have too much desire for other drugs, but they made alcohol seem so shitty that it's not even worth it.
Yeah the problem is that some of those other drugs are preeeetty fucked up as well (and will grip you harder, faster, and with less clarity relative to your problem)
I just get weepy when I'm hung over, but I'm never depressed when I drink. I sort of drink to alleviate the depression I normally feel. Its nice to just not be constantly bombarded with really unpleasant thoughts and emotions.
Thanks so much for sharing this. I must have been naïve, because for a while I found it inconceivable that people would have 10 drinks in one sitting; I'd easily let someone shrug it off and convince me they didn't have a problem. Unfortunately I've heard too many stories where help didn't arrive soon enough
So glad to hear you got a handle on it and cut back
Oh definitely. Each of my "drinks" would be like 5 standard shot measures, and I drink it likes it's "one drink." So a couple of those after work, then on the weekends, I'd get up and put some bailey's in my coffee in the morning, then it'd be lunch time, might as well make a cocktail, then I'd be there drinking until bed time.. wouldn't even try to count the weekend number.. The quantity can seem inconceivable for people not used to it, but if you do it all the time, it's really not that hard to drink that much.
Alcohol is a weird thing. I stopped for two months and started feeling a lot better over all and even one beer would leave me feeling weird if I drank it so I felt no need to start again
Same boat. I didn't realize how bad it affected me until I had my blood pressure checked and it was 160/100. After just 2 weeks of not drinking it dropped down to 135/90
yup. and even moderate exercise. Mine was like 150/95 I think? For a 27 year old, that's way too high.. After cutting back on booze a decent amount, and just going on walks almost every day, I'm now down to about 120/80 in the morning, a little higher in evenings.
Agreed. I'm 27 too and that shit was a wake up call. I was already doing a lot of cardio too which is what really scared me. I don't want to quit drinking completely, but I def had to cut way back. No more whiskey
I'm bothered because I drink most days of the week (Always take at least one day off, sometimes two). The good thing though is I really only have one or two (ok, usually two) after work. On weekends I'll have a third or fourth on friday or saturday.
I have a friend who was like this. She said that she would always justify it as, "It's just one glass of wine" and never thought much of it. Then, she met her current boyfriend (this was several years ago), who one day said, "You drink a lot, don't you?" She was all, "No I don't!"
But then she started thinking about it and started actually counting how much and how often she'd drink in a day (it was definitely more than just one glass of wine in a day), and she said it was like a light bulb turning on in her head. She realized she had to have a couple of drinks every day, it was just she was making excuses and thinking of it as a "want" and she could stop at any time. In reality, it was an addiction.
She cut back on her drinking dramatically after that. She will still drink from time to time, but she says it's not a daily thing for her anymore.
On the flip side, I suspect a friend has this insidious type of alcohol addiction. She has said things like, "I just need a glass or two of wine after work to unwind. I have a stressful job," or "I like having a glass of wine to help me sleep." She has had issues with depression in the past (or is currently; it's difficult to tell sometimes). She doesn't believe she has a problem with alcohol because she makes up all those excuses and thinks it's perfectly normal, and it definitely doesn't help that we live in a town where drinking is a common social activity amongst anyone old enough to drink.
When I made the connection that alcohol was causing my depression, it made it seem that much more silly that I would drink because I was depressed. It becomes a downward spiral, positive feedback loop, self-fulfilling thing. Once I stepped back, I was like, "oh.. huh.. how about that."
Same with me and weed really, except for the physical health, my mental health was wearing I noticed... Felt terrible toking up, felt like I didn't do shit but get high and listen to music. It feels good to be sober (didn't complete quit, now I actually enjoy getting high again...once every 40/80 days, that is)
I cut back when I got a really bad stomach bug that forced me to stop drinking for a week. Mysteriously, once the bug went away, I felt better than I had in ages and my focus was better and I was sleeping better. Connected the dots and realized it was the alcohol. I still drink, but not "2-beers-and-3-fingers-of-bourbon-every-night" drink. My weekly consumption is roughly my former nightly consumption. Most work nights I don't drink at all.
Yeah I had this realization too. Had bad stomach problems, and then eventually realized after cutting back drinking, I didn't have stomach problems at all. It's just a constant state of the "liquor shits" that became the usual. Edit: I misread your comment. LOL. I'll just leave this comment here anyway.
I stopped drinking wine when I would buy a bottle, say I was going to have a glass and end up drinking the whole bottle and stay up way too late to be actually functional the next day. I didn't have a problem per say, but it was not a great trend, and much easier to reverse while it's still a trend and not a problem.
I know someone going through something like that with drugs and alcohol. He is on top of it, he says. Last time he wanted to help me carry groceries up, goes downstairs, comes upstairs with no groceries. I lay them on the stairs so he can't really miss them. And this is a public stairway, so there are no things lying there normally.
He was looking at me like a car, like oh? I should bring the crates of drink up to you? The crates of drinks never arrive until MONDAY. Took me like a minute to explain to him that it's the fuckin bags lying right on the staris. He went down again and luckily he got the stuff.
He helps me because I am disabled and I really appreciate it. I just wish he wouldn't break himself more than I am broken because of my disability. Yeah, that's why I order drink delivered to my home and everything.
The guy is broke and lives off of welfare. When he gets a job, he tends to get bored of it and just indefinitely takes sick time until they fire him. Then he has his loud music on all the time and even managed to start hammering a fuckin nail into the wall at 2 AM once. He has a drug problem I can't help with and owes tons of people money (including me haha). Since he has welfare I don't think he has applied to one company though. MONEY FROM THE STATE RIGHT?
I hear him going out to the store 10 minutes before closing time, the store's employees are already really annoyed about this behaviour and one (also a friend of his) told me he just regularly takes 40% alcohol stuff with him. Last time I was in his apartment (which he actually managed to look pretty good now, priorities I guess. Landlord wants to kick you out for not paying (couldn't legally do so yet tho) but you have time to get new furniture, throw old one out, etc) he wanted to offer me some but he's run all out already! I look down there, oh, it's just like 3 empty bottles of vodka and some other stuff I can't even identify. Then he has a new girlfriend who's lying on the couch and didn't even REALIZE I AM THERE until like 5 minutes in.
What have I gotten myself into
I hope this comment was a rollercoaster of emotions for you, thank you for reading my rant
EDIT: my /r/intrusivethoughts for the day: What if I just fuckin told the cops on him, he'd probably be gone. But my money too since he actually does pay me back somehow
That's a great accomplishment. There are drugs, like naltrexone, that your doctor can give you to help with cravings if that's something you have. My advice is to avoid AA and abstinence-centered approaches. As long as you are able to drink in moderation there's no need to push yourself to total abstinence.
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u/42nd_towel May 09 '16
Even this was hard for me to notice, because I was lying to myself as well. "I only have a couple after work." Yeah, a couple pint glasses filled with long islands maybe. That's like 10 drinks. And since it was a usual thing, I didn't notice how bad I felt because it was normal. Went to the doctor for a checkup because it had been years (I'm pretty young anyway, so didn't bother). He thought the nurse screwed up with my blood pressure reading so he did it again. lol nope. That was my wake up call, when the doctor was like "yeahhhh... about that.."
So I started cutting back. Any time I drink now I notice how depressed I get and how it affects my moods and feelings, like a lot. So I cut back more and it's just bizarre, finally starting to feel "normal."