In reading the thread linked below I was wondering about this because I’ve seen several threads over the years in which a doper mentions they are “100 days sober, 6 months sober, 10 years sober” etc., from posters we (mostly) never knew had a serous alcohol problem.
Has an explanatory thread like this detailing the daily ins and out of being an alcoholic ever been offered by a practicing or current alcoholic?
I did some searching and couldn’t find one. Does anyone have a link to the archive of “ask the…” threads someone made a little while ago. I was trying to search for that too and I couldn’t find it.
Are you looking for a thread by a recovering alcoholic, a drunk, or a I might be an alcoholic and I’m at the beginning of trying to stay sober?
Someone who is currently a “practicing” alcoholic, and is not currently pre-disposed to change that status or behavior.
I imagine those who have quit would be able to give you a pretty good accounting of the day-to-day life of an alcoholic. Bearing in mind there’s a ton of individual differences and experience.
The perspective would be quite different to someone who is currently using and doesn’t want to quit, though.
There’s a little thing called denial – many (most?) practicing alcoholics don’t think they have a problem with alcohol.
Most (or at least many) are quite aware they have a problem. They just won’t let on to the general public that they know. Because then they might be compelled to actually do something about it. 
Yeah, drunks know they’re drunks a lot of the time. It’s kind of hard to miss, frankly. The way you want alcohol when you’re an alcoholic is like the way a junkie wants heroin. Eventually your body just needs it. You might drink away your worries about it, but it doesn’t take too many blackouts before you make that first clumsy leap from “I have a problem” to “and I have to hide it at all costs”.
Eh, the thread would likely be pretty boring most of the time, with moments of intense hilarity and horror thrown in for good measure!
Although most people would probably be shocked at how much we are capable of getting done in the course of a day, considering what we have to deal with “on the side!”
OK, now that I’ve had my four double Bloody Marys for breakfast, I’m ready to take on some questions.
What? I use V8, it’s a vegetable.
I agree with that completely. One of the common points of wisdom is that people with a drinking problem are in denial to themselves. Some in the early stages may be but it is pretty obvious when you have to drink every day and sometimes all day and most know that. I speak from first-hand and experience and hundreds of other stories from others.
The real phenomena is that they are scared to admit it to people because it will result in consequences. The stigma is real and some may be afraid to ask for help or may not want to be helped at all. Any idiot (even a drunk one) knows that admitting he or she is an alcoholic is going to be met with some consequences.
I don’t know why the mental health profession hasn’t cued into those lies because lots of behavior centered around alcoholic behavior is centered around lies and deception. Even if someone is a known heavy drinker it is still wise for him to hide much of it.
Me, I was completely in denial – because I hung around with a lot of people who drank as heavily as I did, and had grown up in a family where it was also the norm. My first reaction to the question “do you think you’re an alcoholhic” was “I might have the potential to become an alcoholic.” Seriously. 'Cause doesn’t everyone drink a six-pack a night?
I might have been able to be in denial when I drank a six-pack a night but when it got to be 12 and then 14 (within a two hour period before my wife got home) every night, I was think “Oh God help me get out of this alive”.
After my first detox, I knew exactly what was up and the risks but I started drinking again. AA and the doctors know what they are talking about when they say you will just pick up right where you left off. Within weeks, I was up to 16 and then 24 drinks a day, sometimes more. This was every single day and I was terrified of going into withdrawal out of the hospital. I had a job through most of this but I mainly drank at night and I never got hangovers.
I gave been sober for almost two years now and although it usually feels great, sometimes it doesn’t However, I know that I will be dead by the time I am forty if I start drinking again.
I am lucky that I never got a DWI or any other citation and I still have my family. I could drink and absurd amount of alcohol and appear to be perfectly sober so many people never caught on at all.
Don’t these two statements contradict each other? I mean, if someone is actually in self-denial that they have an actual problem, they wouldn’t be scared to admit it to other people or to ask for help. Because to be really in denial, there’s nothing to untoward to disclose, and no reason to ask for help.
Anyhow - Shagnasty - I’m not at all denying your personal experience, or those of many others. I’m sure that’s typical of those like twickster who lived in a drinking-is-the-norm environment.
Just saying, there’s certainly plenty of people who know quite clearly there’s a problem from the early stages. I did, and have talked to plenty of people who say they did too. I knew, from the day I started hiding both the amount and frequency of my drinking…I didn’t ever dispute that privately, though I was good at lying about it to others. :rolleyes:
Of course it was ultimately a failed experiment & my comment above was tongue in cheek. Sober 10 years this month.
I sure miss being able to have a glass of wine with dinner out, or loosening up and getting silly with friends once in a while. But I can’t. As the saying goes, one drink is never enough…
Hmmm…I once had a roommate who was an alcoholic or at least heading that way, even though we were only in our 20s at the time.
Her thing was, “Who’s been at my beer? I know I had more.” She would accuse me of having drunk it (no) and if the situation was such that I could not possibly have done it then somebody must have broken into the house. Yeah–stole the beer, left the stereo. Right.
What she couldn’t seem to get her mind around was that she had drunk all that beer herself. She really didn’t seem to believe it.
No, I am saying that many people that have a drinking problem that crosses over the line know for a fact that something really bad is up but they may still completely deny it to others because a) they are scared what they will lose by admitting it b) scared about treatment and what not ever drinking again would mean c) simply do not want help. I have heard that story many times in the AA meetings that I attended when I first got sober.
I was so incredibly good a hiding drinking that it scares me what I could pull off. I always had a plan and a backup plan and a fallback plan on top of that every single day because I knew that withdrawal would be very bad if I couldn’t drink enough every day. It ranged from alcohol premixed in the fridge in a soda that only I drank to water bottles to special camouflaged holsters that I made hidden in the engine compartment in the hood of my car in case of real emergencies. I had some buried around the property as well and could get drunk easily just saying I was going to rake leaves. I could literally drink the equivalent of 6 drinks or alcohol saying I was going to pee and pull it off day after day.
Again, almost know one including the police or my mother could tell when I had been drinking. I showed no outward behavioral signs except I got less fidgety and this was after much alcohol. I got stopped a few times for unrelated crap when I had huge amounts of alcohol to drink and no police officer even suspected.
Even when we traveled abroad, the first thing I would do is coordinate drinking plans. I could produce alcohol like it was magic.
My wife has always been furious about my drinking but, if you ask you to this day, she only knows about 1/3 of the amount that I drank and has no idea about the frequency and she was looking hard for it.
Ah. We are in complete agreement then. 
Funny, I was like that too - very good at hiding the amount and location of the insane amounts of vodka I could down in a day. Mind you, I always kept it absolutely seperate from work. But there’d usually be a bottle (Skyy vodka) under the truck seat for the drive home. And I rarely felt hungover, and have never in my life missed a day of work for anything other than rare things having nothing to do with drinking.
I’d go out with friends, and drink wine at a regular pace. But had vodka in my purse and chug it on bathroom trips. Gah. I got to where I blacked out on a regular basis, but people who knew me well wouldn’t even suspect.
It got awful. I couldn’t begin to count the number of mornings I woke up with zero memory of the previous evening, and I got pretty good at pretending I recalled things I had utterly no knowlege of. I would take business calls at night and learned to write copious notes, otherwise I’d have no recollection of the call.
Gawd, I can’t believe I carried on like that for years.