I hesitated to post this because I have never really posted anything personal before. But I would like to get some feedback from people with no axe to grind with me.
For the most part I live a pretty healthy lifestyle. I get lots of exercise playing a sport at a fairly high level. I eat decently. I am not overweight and I don’t have any health conditions.
However, every few weeks to a month I seem to go crazy drinking. Unfortunately for me binge drinking includes smoking cigarettes. After three drinks or so it’s pretty much a given I will buy a pack of smokes. It happened again Saturday night. I was out til 4:30 a.m. in a seedy bar surrounded by a lot of bad behavior that I won’t go into. The next day I felt horrible physically and mentally. I was supposed to hang out with my sister’s family for Easter but I canceled saying I was sick. So a lot of the feeling is guilt.
When does this sort of behavior become a problem? Or can it just be considered blowing off steam now and again? I work full time and am in a full-time grad program so life is sort of stressful right now. But I was doing this before I was in the school program. I can’t use that as an excuse.
After a binge like this I typically go the other extreme for a while. No drinking at all, swearing I won’t do this again, etc. But I probably will in a month or so.
I don’t mind at all. Yes, with friends. This time started at a bar to watch a game. When the game ended others left and that was when I should have as well. But by then I’d had a few drinks and the “train had left the station.” Two friends who make a habit of this sort of night remained. I guess the obvious answer is to not drink around people who influence me into bad things.
As I understand it, there are two kinds of problem drinkers; those that need to drink all the time, and those that drink less often but can’t limit their intake. In my observations, your type is much more dangerous. Getting really really drunk seems like a much more high risk behavior (at least in the short term) then getting sort of drunk on a daily basis. I don’t see a problem with a night of drinking now and then, even if you end up at a bar at 4:30 a.m. Such behavior can be fun. I’m not even that concerned that you smoke a bit when you do it. But, if you’re feeling “horrible physically and mentally” the next day, you might have exceeded your limit. Doing that now and then is part of the learning process, but failing to learn and still engaging in that practice raises a red flag.
I wouldn’t say that. There are always going to be situations where other people are going to encouraging “bad things.” You have to find your own ability to keep the drinking to limits your comfortable with.
That is the part that concerns me too. Why do I keep doing this when I feel so bad afterwards? It’s fun at the time, but not worth the risk I am putting myself in on nights like these.
So what is the answer? No drinking at at all? The majority of the time I can have a couple and call it a night. But maybe everyone with a problem says that?
Actually it’s much less frequently now than it used to be. The severity thing is about the same I guess. I understand your point that it could likely increase in frequency.
Back when I used to binge-drink, sometimes I didn’t plan to do it - it just sort of happened that after a few drinks, I’d get a little drunk and I had the idea (maybe I thought it was a good idea, or a funny idea?) to drink even more and have even more fun, not realiziing where the tipping point was.
After last December, where this sort of thing happened (me getting trashed) at, of all places, my office party, I decided not only to not binge again, but to stop drinking altogether, because I’d proven time and again that I couldn’t often control my drinking.
I’ve since been able to hang out with friends and avoid alcohol even when they’re drinking.
Anyway, OP, I’m not sharing my story to hijack the thread and make it about me instead of you or anything, but I thought it might be useful to you.
Honestly, it seems like a very important early warning sign. It would be best to quit and get help now before it becomes a problem - screws up your career, your health, your family relations, your finances, then you have to spend lots of money on rehab, maybe legal fees. But you probably won’t do that. You’ll wait until things get so bad that it forces your hand to do something about it.
I recently found out that one of my college classmates died at the age of 34. She was a very nice woman who was probably an alcoholic; I would say that repeated hospitalizations for alcoholic gastritis, in her early 20s, would indicate a problem. I was unable to find out her cause of death, but I bet this had something to do with it.
You sound like you have a dependency on alcohol, especially if you think it’ll happen again in a month. Yes, I think it is a problem and you need to seek help
Thanks to all who have replied. I am giving each response a lot of thought.
Quick question. For those who are saying I should get “help,” what do you mean exactly? It’s not like I need detox or something. I don’t have a physical dependence on alcohol. Do you mean something like therapy to help determine why I drink too much occasionally?
Going out and having drinks every few weeks? I’m 30 and hang out with 25-35 year old young professionals. If that is alcohol dependency, apparently everyone I know is dependent on alcohol.
Yes. Therapy, maybe a support forum. Detox and physical dependence on booze is way in the deep end of alcoholism. Don’t use that as your base-line for alcoholism. All drug addiction is mostly psychological. Physical matters, but honestly not so much with booze.
Going out for a few drinks every few weeks is not the same as binge drinking. Also, alcoholics tend to hang out with other alcoholics which makes their growing problems normative. Not a great argument to make.
Change my statement to “drink to excess every few weeks.” I guess it’s possible that nearly all of my friends are alcoholics. But, I think that weakens the definition of “alcoholic” to the point of including so many people as to be pretty meaningless.
Many people drink to excess every once in awhile. I don’t buy the argument that indulging in a binge occasionally means someone is an alcoholic and can’t ever drink again.
That’s sort of why I made this thread. Do I have some deep-seated issue that needs attention or am I just having fun once in a while? The fact that I feel guilty about it the next day and that it has affected my life (slightly) before leads me to think it is indicative of something going on.
But on the other hand I am not sure I need to give up drinking for the rest of my life as I drink responsibly the majority of the time. I am wondering if I should instead focus on avoiding certain places/people/triggers that has led to this behavior in the past.
She was a very nice woman who was probably an alcoholic; I would say that repeated hospitalizations for alcoholic gastritis, in her early 20s, would indicate a problem. I was unable to find out her cause of death, but I bet this had something to do with it.