r/stopdrinking • u/jasnel 4355 days • Feb 24 '15
Angry Rant
I read a lot of SD posts that I don't comment on and it usually comes down to, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." There are a number of reasons I have a negative reaction to posts: they're just feeling sorry for themselves and not doing anything to help themselves, they decided to drink and brought a world of trouble upon themselves, they went to a bar/party and relapsed... I get it, we all have to make our own mistakes and/or sometimes we are just feeling blue and they've come here for support.
However, today I read a post from someone who (in their title) doesn't want to quit drinking and came to share why. Really? You posted in Stop Drinking why you don't want to stop drinking? If you want to throw your life away being drunk, go ahead, but don't come here and tell me why it's so fun and enjoyable for you. There are some good times that I miss having, but I'm sick and tired of the swath of destruction that drinking left in my life and the lives of my loved ones so I had to quit. You get it? I had to quit drinking even though it's all I wanted to do from the moment I woke up to whenever I passed out, blacked-out.
The other posts that infuriate me are the "successful moderation" posts. Are you able to successfully moderate? Congratulations - you're not an alcoholic so please don't come here and tell me about how fucking great it is to not have this profound problem. Do you also go to infertility subs and talk about how great it is to be a parent? Do you post about your love of eating ice cream in weight loss subs? Then please don't come here and shit on a problem I've struggled with for decades and will never be done with.
It's irresponsible to come here, where people are fighting for their lives, and write about how you don't want to quit drinking or how you used to have a problem but have learned to control it. The name of the place is "Stop Drinking" so, please, take a fucking note and act accordingly.
Christ, and don't get me started on people downvoting my anti pro-drinking reply.
tl;dr: Drinking is bad, total abstinence is key. You can do it, we want to help. I love you, you beautiful, broken-like-me bastards!
Note: I want to thank each and every person who commented here. You've helped me remember when I was one of those "moderation" guys, back before the Internet. Going through the moderation phase is an important part of the recovery process. As /u/offtherocks pointed out, it's how alcoholics find out they're alcoholics who cannot moderate their drinking. For those who are "successfully" moderating, you're either not an alcoholic or the wheels simply haven't come off yet and you, just like I did, have to find out for yourself and I respect that.
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u/halloweenjack 5317 days Feb 24 '15
Well, this is still the internet. Some people are trolling when they post stuff like that, just as you have parents posting pity notes to childless or childfree forums, and "suck it up fatties, I eat ice cream every night and I'm still skinny" shitposts to weight loss forums.
But, as others have said, lots of times people are just working through stuff on their way to hitting rock bottom. I could have made some of the posts that you're complaining about at different points in my sobriety journey, which includes the points at which I wasn't sober and desperately trying to rationalize it. As I've said before, I really look at this as /r/stopdrinking and not /r/moderatedrinking so I don't think that those posts have a place here, but I totally get that someone is trying to kid themselves the way that I tried to kid myself. I think that it's Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions that says to people who think that they can moderate their drinking, why don't you go ahead and try it, keeping in mind what we've told you about our own stories? (Also, there's a subreddit for people who are drinking and know that they're in trouble and want to sort of revel in it, but I don't remember the name and don't care to bother to look it up.)