I think I'm an alcoholic

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

I think you have a big drinking problem. I’m less clear whether to call it alcoholism or not, because I don’t know how much of alcoholism is the addiction part and how much is the other things, and don’t know how addicted you are.

But a big drinking problem is a serious thing, which I think you have to deal with, and which I think is reason you should never ever drink. It sounds like you could kill people, and ruin lives, and all sorts of evil. Drinking is not worth that chance, not at all.

By the way - twickster - congratulations! I’m just at the 24 year point myself now, and zero months and days. I found AA helpful.

42

There are non-smoking AA groups - I know two people who have attended such. Granted, that was in Chicago which is large enough to not only have multiple AA groups but also sub-groups like non-smoking or whatever. But they do exist.

43

“If you have ever gotten a sunburn on the roof of your mouth, then you might be an alcoholic.”
-Wino Joe

44

Guess what – in the rehab center, you’re going to be going to AA meetings.

45

Which I’m sure works in no small part because while you’re checked into a rehab clinic you’re undergoing enforced sobriety.

46

I don’t know the difference between an alcoholic and a problem drinker, but I do know that I have a problem with alcohol.

One thing a person said in the tread has stayed with me

It’s like that for me as well.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to drink again, because I don’t know that I can stop each and every time, and I can do really stupid things when I drink. Not every time, but it only takes one real stupid thing do screw up your life.

It’s tough. My thoughts are with you and I hope you can find the strength.

47

Actually, I think many, if not the majority, of rehabs–except the cosmetic celebrity rehabs–employ 12-step (social model) programs. While you’re in, you attend group meetings, which are pretty similar to AA, meetings, but I think they also have “education” classes. They also, of course, have a doctor on hand to throw in some prescription drugs, like benzos, and counselors with CADCs, many of whom–I would bet–have used the 12-step program to get sober.

And rehabs will only keep you sober while you’re there (30 to 90 days, typically); I’ve known people who have gone to as many as six rehabs. I wouldn’t be surprised if rehabs had the same “success rate” as measured for AA above.

I think the real difference between AA and programs like SMART or Rational is mainly rhetorical. Many people just don’t like the word “God” and references to spirituality (they confuse it with religion). AA also stresses intersubjectivity, but its nuts and bolts are similar to CBT, and obviously stem from the emergence of popular and group psychotherapy in the 1930s.

In this way, Dangle, if your anger is the real issue, AA or SMART will address that–consider it like free psychotherapy. (AA is just a lot more ubiquitous.) Many people will say, “When I drink, I get angry,” when actually it’s their anger that makes them drink.

Rehab centers, though, start at $10,000 a month. The idea, I guess, is to pull you out of your normal environment, and have you focus on being sober. It doesn’t seem to me like it’s your family or neighborhood that trigger you, though.

48

A thought:

To say AA doesn’t work because people relapse is sort of like saying heart surgery doesn’t work if the patient has another heart attack.

The questions are:

Did he want to be helped or just patched up to continue with his former unhealthy lifestyle?

Did he follow the physician’s advice about lifestyle changes?

Was he consistent and thorough in his pursuit of health?

Or was he too far advanced in heart disease to be helped?

49

You’re right. My rehab suggestion was worse than suggesting AA because of the cost.

50

But the point of AA is to cure them of their alcoholism, which AA hilariously calls a disease. If they relapse then they haven’t been cured of their disease. It’s supposed to help you beat addiction, which is what causes you to make poor lifestyle choices. But it doesn’t help the vast majority of people. Yet again: The success rate of people in AA is the same as the success rate of people not in AA.

51

You won’t find alcoholism called a disease in any literature which is AA sponsored. It hilariously calls it an allergy. It was the American Medical Association which declared alcoholism a disease in 1956.

The point of AA is to cure alcoholics of alcoholism? Where did you get that information? Someone has misled you.

My understanding is that alcoholism is incurable. It is treatable, however, and AA, in their own words offers “a daily reprieve” not a cure.

52

Oh, excuse me. So I guess they’re not failing at all. They’re just not accomplishing anything.

I’ve already provided facts. I’m not going to argue about what exactly their goal. If the same amount of people in AA relapse as the amount of people not in AA I view the entire thing as a pointless dog and pony show. Not to mention a religious program that many nonreligious people are sentenced to every year by judges across the country under the threat of jail time.

53

That’s not what AA claims to do. According to AA, alcoholism is an “allergy,” a psychic reaction to alcohol, which is never cured.

Addiction, according to AA, is never “beaten.” It is a life-long condition. And studies of the changes in dopamine and serotonin neurotransmitters caused by long term alcohol abuse (studies conducted after AA was started) have generally supported this.

In this way, it definitely is a disease, and I believe addiction is in the DSM-IV as a mental disease.

However, more recent studies show that communication in these neurotransmitters has a better possibility of repair than previously thought. I think that some new drug is being tested to actually curb cravings brought on by the brain’s inability to naturally produce dopamine though long-term drug and alcohol abuse.

54

You still seem to be confusing AA for some kind of medical treatment. It’s not as though it can have an effect on you against your will, like a medication that’s been injected into your arm. How do you define someone who is “in AA?” Or rather, how does that research you cited define it? A lot of people who go to AA for up to a year–probably most–don’t really want to stop drinking–they just go because someone else has told them to. Or they think it’s a one-time deal, and that, after 6 or 12 months, they can drink socially again without problems. (Which is rarely the case.) It’s pointless to include these people in the kind of “facts” you cited, so the research isn’t very helpful.

AA isn’t going to “work” on anyone against their will. Instead of asking, “How many people don’t stay sober,” the research needs to ask, “How many people–everywhere–who have stayed sober attribute that to their involvement with AA?” But if you’re taking a sample only from people who have gone to AA, or only people who have relapsed, you can’t do that, so the conclusion you draw from that research is disingenuous.

If you’ve been court ordered to AA meetings in the past, I can understand your petulance, but it’s not as if AA is some kind of money-making racket, like Scientology. It’s free, and the people I know in AA or NA go maybe once a week, and they go voluntarily. I’m pretty sure if it didn’t help them, they wouldn’t do it. They’re not brainwashed–they’re not even religious, either. Moreover, they’re sober, productive people, who once were broke, miserable, dysfunctional and even living on the street. If AA is “all in their head,” doesn’t that mean it’s working anyway? What does it matter?

55

I don’t see anything wrong with regarding alcoholism as a disease. Sure, it’s self inflicted, but there are real neurological changes that can be treated with medication.

And I’d say you are an alcoholic if you can’t obstain completely. There’s no fixed amount necessary. It’s simply a matter of whether you are addicted or not. And the only way to know is to abstain. I’d try a month or two.

56

George Vaillant “an advocate of the standard hospital and AA treatment program, reviewing his own studies of his own program in The Natural History of Alcoholism”:

It’s precisely the same as a judge prescribing you to go to a Church every Sunday morning for a year or face jail. Separation of church and state and all that.

57

Guizot - I really DO NOT appreciate you taking someone else’s words and slapping my name over the top. I did not say that, it does not represent my views, and I’m a little ticked off about it.

Be a lot more careful quoting in the future, please - the fact you can’t go back and correct that attribution just makes it worse as far as I’m concerned.

58

Dangle Your Modifier, I have no idea if you’re an alkie or not, and nor does anyone else here. Call yourself one if it focuses you, don’t if it doesn’t. Just find some way to deal with what is clearly a problem. If you’re firing guns around your family and crashing cars, that’s a problem, and given that you wouldn’t have done it had you not been drinking, I guess it qualifies as a drink problem.

I spent a good long time failing to deal with my own drinking problem as I enjoyed paddling around in these debates about the difference between spiritualism and alcoholism, or disease and allergy, or AA’s data collection or lack thereof… meanwhile, I was still drinking and getting worse. It is very easy to mistake talking about recovery with working at recovery. ‘Balls to this,’ I said to myself, and I went to AA AND Rational Recovery AND SMART AND the soberrecovery forums… none of it cured me, but all of it helped me to ‘cure’ myself.

You need to talk to someone qualified, either academically or through experience of the problem, I’d suggest. Counsellors are good if you get a good one, online forums are easy, AA is free and widely available, doctors have dealt with this problem countless times . Basically, you want to talk to people who can help you to help yourself. All of those people can help, but you need to get up and go. Choose one or two and get started. Oh, and quit drinking while you’re getting started. It’s not THAT hard (piece of cake compared to quitting smoking…)

59

[OT]guizot, when you used the nested quote, you ended up attributing the quote to the wrong person. Please make sure that you don’t strip out the wrong name when you’re only using part of a nested quote.

Thank you. [/OT]

60

I think this is it for me. I don’t know when it’s going to happen so I shouldn’t be in a position to do it.

Sorry about not replying until now. Trying to catch up to a 2 page thread. I’m unfortunately on the other side of the world to most of you so the timezones are a bit screwed up. Also had some issues to resolve :). Thanks for all the advice and input.