I like the taste of beer. Any ‘real’ beer person would scoff at my preferences, but I don’t care. Budweiser, Sam Adams Light, Harp, Pabst. I enjoy beer with dinner, a few beers with friends, etc.
I also like to get a buzz sometimes. Then it could be beer, long island iced tea, fruity shots, or screwdrivers. I rarely get past a light/medium buzz anymore.
About once a year (since age 16) I tend to overdo it and get sick. It’s never like “OMG I’m gonna get so schwasted tonight ahhh!” it just turns out I drank too much. This year’s has already happened. Last weekend, me, my boyfriend, gallon of OJ and one whole bottle of vodka between us. He’s got 50 pounds on me and I didn’t know I overdid it until way too late. Went from goofy --> sick with no warning. Why I tend to almost always drink beer instead - much much easier to keep track. I don’t like the feeling of being drunk. It makes me feel stupid and lame and I don’t like the spins when I just want to go to sleep. My drinking Friday night ruined my whole Saturday because I still felt crappy. And since I don’t get a lot of time with my boyfriend, you bet that was enough to keep me from drinking like that again for a looong time. Some of my friends still get really drunk when we go out and it is very embarrassing. Luckily we always have a DD.
Thanks. Will give melatonin a try. Sorry, I haven’t responded earlier --haven’t had internet connection. Sorry about the highjack. I’ll open my own thread on insomnia if some of these ideas don’t work.
I don’t drink at all. Got drunk in high school once, didn’t like the taste of the beer but I was with a bunch of older kids, and have tried various kinds of alcohol over the years. They all tasted the same, lousy. Went to a dinner in Ayer’s Rock Resort in Australia in 1999 (The last time I had any alcohol.) and was served sparkling wine, red wine, and brandy. According to the others at the table with me, all of them were very good, but the only difference I could tell was the bubbles in the sparkling wine.
Turns out this is a good thing, I have a liver condition and if I drank like most of the people in this area I would probably be needing a transplant about now. Instead I have another 25 or so before I will need it.
I may be one of the only people around who actually set out to try and drink more! In the past, I averaged about one drink per week. It tended to make me sleepy and I had a low tolerance and didn’t participate in too many social situations with drinking. I basically could take it or leave it.
In the wake of my divorce last year, however, I decided that drinking a little more would be good for me. I was seeking the side effects of relaxation and (to some extent) lowering of inhibitions. Also, I enjoy the types of social occasions where moderate drinking occurs.
So now I average maybe 3-4 drinks per week–beer, wine, or mixed. I rarely drink more than 2 in an evening, and always in a social setting. Some weeks I drink more, and some I don’t drink at all. I still could take it or leave it, but the effects are salutary at this point.
A couple of months ago, however, I suffered a bout of insomnia, and did try to self-medicate with alcohol. After a couple of weeks, I noticed I was starting to drink something almost every night, and by myself. Also, I was wanting more and more. Naturally, this worried me, so I quit doing that.
Oh yeah, and last night I got pretty damn drunk. (Bass Ale and shots of Jameson) I hadn’t been drunk in a hell of a long time! It was sort of fun, but I don’t really like the feeling of not quite being in control of myself. Unfortunately for the guy I was with, the drunker I get, the less likely I am to put out!
Hmmmmm… I know that overdrinking causes sleeplessness, but a small amount of alcohol before bed has often put me to sleep. I sometimes get a little, how shall we say, overenthusiastic about projects at work, and lie in bed at night running through various coding scenarios. If I have a glass of wine before bed, that goes away, and I sleep like a baby. Works with Mr. Athena as well.
Edit: looked at your previous posts with the cites. All I can say is that it’s worked for me!
I tend to only drink red wine anymore. I can’t take more than a beer without severe consequences in terms of stomach pain and I just don’t like the taste of any hard liquor I’ve tried. Wine is the only thing I can drink and not be bothered by (stomach-wise or hangover-wise). I prefer the dryer reds (the Pinot Noirs, Cabs, some dryer merlots, and I also enjoy a nice Chianti…no fava beans), though occasionally I’ll enjoy a good sauvignon blanc or a pinot grigio. I can go for a couple of weeks drinking a bottle of red a night without problems, and then stop for 2 weeks without a craving. I drink it for the taste, not for the buzz (which I don’t particularly like…I honestly wish there was a good tasting non-alcoholic wine).
Given that my biochemistry days are long gone, I may be getting this wrong, but my understanding is that when ethanol is actually ethanol in your body, it’s triggering all the same GABA receptors in your brain (and other receptors in other places) that drugs like phenobarbital do–thus the sleepiness, suppression of the respiratory drive, etc.
But ethanol is metabolized in your liver first to an aldehyde and then to acetate–the chemical precursor to the Kreb’s cycle (glucose metabolism), as well as being able to be reversed and used as a source of new glucose, and used to synthesize fatty acids. Thus, you get an energy spike sometime after you’ve imbibed heavily, offsetting your sleepiness and actually potentially waking you up.
So yeah, alcohol in small quantities may help with sleep short term, but in larger quantities, it tends to promote less-than-ideal sleep.
Recently I’ve been drinking a lot more than normal because I’m self-medicating for tooth pain. I don’t have insurance and I need root canals and crowns, and can’t afford it right now. There is a dental school here but a) it’s not that much cheaper and b) that’s where my boyfriend goes and even THEY told him “don’t come here for anything more serious than a filling–trust us” and so I’m not going to go that option.
I am taking my son to the dentist on Wednesday and they said they’d talk to me about payment plan options, so there may be a light on the horizon.
