Again, I didn’t mean to knock AA, which has obviously helped many many people. But I’m still confused about the difference between a dry drunk and a sober person. Is the BS people talk about specific to addiction? does it have to be dealt with through 12 steps, or are other forms of therapy effective? What is the difference between a dry person and a sober person?
Also, sorry for bringing up President Bush, but he seemed to be the most obvious example of someone who quit drinking without AA and went on to a successful life. Whether you love him or hate him you have to admit he’s done OK for himself.
A lot of my BS is about drinking, directly or indirectly – so counseling with someone who’s aware of those issues could be helpful. OTOH, you can deal with a lot of this stuff through AA at a hell of a lot less than $100/hour. Not all of my BS is about drinking, so I did do about a year and a half of therapy starting when I’d been sober about two years.
Re: Bush: We really should just leave him out of it, or you can start another thread if you want to. I will say that I’ve had conversations with friends of mine who are in recovering in which the words “dry drunk” were bandied about.
My father was an alcoholic. He’d choose to drink pop at the occasional function just to demonstrate to his disbelieving family that he didn’t need to drink alcohol.
That’s not normal. A normal reaction is turning down the booze because you just don’t want it.
Thanks for the responses to my posts. It just occured to me that I’ve hijacked someone’s very personal thread with my questions so I’ll bow out. Maybe I’ll start a new thread.
Priceguy, best of luck. You’re getting some good advice in this thread. I hope you think about it.
I wanted to pop in and just say that I am taking notes . . . for myself. I’ve known for years that I’m genetically predisposed to alcoholism, and I’ve noticed a few trends on my own, and seen a few posted here that make me think “Hrm. That sounds familiar.” Thanks to my two cousins (a pot/cokehead and the other is a bad alcoholic), I never touched anything except coffee ‘n’ beer.
I did quit once on my own for about six months, and it felt good. I dropped 20 lbs. and looked damn good. I started lifting again and playing hockey after work–it was something to do after work that got my mind off of it and me just not wanting beer or alcohol. But then, as time went on, the job took me to other places, my routine got somewhat disrupted, and I found myself with a lot of time to kill (Typcially, you get a week or two off after coming back from the Middle East. What do you do in the dead of winter in North Dakota? Yup. Drink like a Walleye!). Hell, even my ‘work culture’ is kind of a place where buying a beer for someone is a form of currency. :rolleyes: This past January, I lost someone close to me to cancer, and I had a few rough, self-medicated nights. And that was a ‘trigger’ that held me beer-bound for a few weeks. Now that I have sunlight again and can get out and enjoy the outdoors, I’m finding that I might be able to just not want alcohol anymore.
Have I hit bottom yet? I don’t think so. I don’t drink in the mornings, I don’t need that first drink of the day, but I notice once I have a cold beer, another, then another, and then another follows. I think I recognize some patterns here, and I might need to take some proactions before I do hit anything. . .
So, Priceguy, I think I’m right there with you. And I thank the rest of you guys for your helpful comments. As a matter of fact, shoot me an e-mail if you want. We’ll start our own little “group”.
Ok all I heard was a bunch of experiments with alcohol. Skip this friday take a drink on the second tuesday of every bla bla bla… I am scared of alcohol, I love alcohol, Alcohol,alcohl, alcohol…
I dont know if you are an alcoholic but you are obsesed by it I can tell you that much.
Do you have any alcohol related problems? I dont care about your fear of someone telling you you cant drink anymore. I am talking about real problems.
Wouldent you love to be free from all that worry? and not have a highly complex drinking schedule to bog you life down with?
It looks to me that your ability to chose how and when you drink has diminished.
Sober(no drugs or alcohol)7 years 5 months
Cig free 20 days
So you’re saying that you don’t fully trust the OP, or take him at his word because his turning down alcohol might in fact show his dependence on alcohol?
I also find it almost perverted that some, as well meaning as they are, mention (to the hour) how long they’ve abstained from any sort of indulgence in a drink. That alone shows that they’re probably obsessing (perhaps seeking affirmation) and thus, incapable of offering others advice on such a dear subject.
What if a person is what as termed as a functional alcoholic? Then what? What if they drink exorbitantly but can abstain at will, all while keeping the esteem of their employers and their family?
What is this alcoholic behaviour? Everybody thinks I’m an alcoholic, including several sober alcoholics and a doctor, and perhaps I am. But what in my story was it that persuaded you? What is it in what I said that screams ALCOHOLIC to you?
I am aware of that, and I’ve stopped it, mainly due to the feedback in this thread. I acknowledge that I have a problem. I just don’t believe that I’m an alcoholic.
I very much hoped you would pop in here. I have the greatest respect for your knowledge and experience. I’d very much like to know what in my posts here that sounds so much like an alcoholic.
scott evil, I appreciate your participation in this thread. As I said in my first post, I truly admire you for doing what you did. It must have been enormously difficult for you.
Does alcohol consumption make me more intelligent?
Does alcohol consumption make me more attractive?
Does alcohol consumption make me more pleasant to be with?
If you answer no to any one of them and that’s something to which you aspire, quit. You don’t have to do it alone, I have met really good people in AA (sober 18 years). I’ve met some real dicks, too, it’s just another cross section of life.
Looking back on my life, I see many things that I fucked up because I was drinking. Minor things and some major things, stupid things, it doesn’t matter. I chose to stop. I didn’t go it alone. My father was the best, most impressive man I ever knew. He didn’t generally drink and drive, no one does, but when we drink we often do things we don’t normally do. He died drinking and driving in 1982, aged 41, he was just drunk and didn’t know what he was doing. The last moment I ever had with him was in the morgue at Vero Beach.
I didn’t have a problem, though, I continued to drink for five years. One day I woke up hung over and broke and had to live with a personal mistake I had made and I realized that I didn’t have to die in order to find out if I was an alcoholic.
Earlier someone said that if you ar asking if you have a problem, then you likely have a problem. You are at an important crossroad in life right now, be advised that people that make the wrong choice often die. Choose wisely!!! Good luck.
Priceguy, you’re not an alcoholic.
Quit taking “drinking days”. Also, don’t do the “3 days off, 4 days on” tactic, as I think that kind of justifies having a binge on the On days, if you know what you mean. Go and find a hobby that could take up some of your free drinking time if feel you drink when you’re bored.
I appreciate the AA advice from everyone, but it feels like me going to AA would be like someone who got hit once in a bar brawl going to a meeting for torture survivors, if you know what I mean.
Look, I’m not denying that I’ve been drinking too much. That’s why I started the thread in the first place. And I now know I do have a problem. But that doesn’t mean I can never get back to a place where I can have some wine with dinner sometimes, have a couple of beers at the pub every now and again, and yes, even occasionally getting really drunk at a party, because it’s fun and feels good. Does it?
I’ll never do the French thing and have a glass of wine a day, because I know that it’s just too easy for me to turn the one glass into two or three, but you know what? Sometimes having three glasses of wine with dinner is OK too. Plenty of people drink like that without being alcoholics.
Why go to AA to talk to a bunch of drunks about drinking? Because we’ve crawled out of the pit that you’re sinking into, with the help of others like us, and because we’re happy to extend a hand to you and to give you the tools that you need to live a happy, sober life. Whether to pick up those tools and use them is totally up to you.
Re: never drinking again – when I first got sober, I definitely had it in mind that I could foresee a time when I’d “deserve” a drink for a special occasion – what if I ever get married, etc. After I’d been sober a few months, I realized my thinking was no longer “I can’t drink any more,” but rather “I don’t have to drink any more.” (That, BTW, is probably the easiest way to think of the difference between a dry drunk [the former] and sobriety [the latter].)
Rooves – re: knowing exactly how long I’ve been sober – I can – and do – go months at a time without thinking about it at all, but if you ask me, I can figure it out – just as I can figure out that today I am 50 years, 3 months, and 27 days old.
So what? You’re obviously concerned about the issue and having trouble dealing with it – that’s the acid test, not whether your functioning despite the problems. The torture survivors will be happy to have you – half a dozen of them have already said so in this thread. What do you have to lose by going to AA except admitting that you have a drinking problem? Well you’ve already admitted that. So you’ve got nothing to lose. That’s true even if you’re not “really” an alcoholic. The next step is to get better.
To me, Priceguy sounds like one of the millions of college freshman I knew who started drinking for the first time in their lives, and one month later (after they got blitzed a few times) were convinced they were full-blown alcoholics.
Yeah, one fateful day after two and a half years of sobriety, I decided it would be fine to have a couple of coolers.
I remained drunk pretty much 24/7 (no exaggeration) for the next three years, and things got far, far worse than I could have ever imagined.
That’s just my experience. Whenever I think back to the days when I could drink without getting into trouble and wonder what I can do to get that life back, I have to remember: You can’t turn a pickle back into a cucumber.
If someone worries that they’re too fat, does that automatically mean that they ARE too fat?
If someone worries that they’re a slut, does that automatically mean they are a slut?
If someone worries that they gamble too much, does that automatically mean they gamble too much?
If a lapsed Baptist worries that their once-a-week beer is sending them to hell, does that mean they’re an alcoholic?
In our country, there’s plenty of guilt running around, over food, alcohol, sex, gambling, and so on. I very rarely drink more than two drinks in a 24-hour period, and only have two drinks at once maybe once a week. But I still feel twinges of guilt every now and then, just as I feel twinges of guilt over eating fast food every now and then.
I don’t think my McDonald’s guilt makes me obese, though, and I don’t think my drink-twinges make me alcoholic. I just think that our culture encourages people to feel guilty on these subjects.
How bad an alcoholic do you need to be to justify going to AA?
Bad enough to want to not be one.
If you drink alcohol for any other reason than an immediate desire for the taste of the alcoholic beverage of your choice, that is alcoholism. Unfortunately, our society tends to manufacture social reasons for us. We have an alcoholic society. We are judged for declining a drink. We are not judged for declining a glass of milk. What is the difference?
If you feel at all different, even a tiny bit different about deciding whether to drink a beer, or drink a glass of water, the decision is an alcoholic decision. The difference is the drug. You don’t need a reason to drink peach juice, or to decide not to drink cola. You either want one, or you don’t. But you, and everyone else want a reason for not drinking a pina colada. Why? Because we live in an alcoholic society. Not all of us are alcoholics, but the social conventions we have are alcoholic.
Genetic predisposition toward alcohol addiction is real. It doesn’t cause immediate drunkenness. It just makes it very easy to become strongly addicted to alcohol. You can still become addicted without the genetic predisposition. You can break the addiction even with it. But denying that alcohol is addictive to everyone in some degree is not reality based. It is alcoholism based. Not every drinker is an addict. Not every addict is socially impaired by the addiction. Personal levels of chemical response are wide, and social coping methods are varied as well. There are many social groups in which not drinking to excess is stigmatized behavior. That doesn’t change the medical facts of alcoholism, it just makes it easier to function within that group.
But, there is no international association to help people stop drinking lemonade. No one counts your drinks, when you drink lemonade, or plans days without lemonade. No one offers to help you deal with going without lemonade. And no one posts to a message board about how much or how often they drink lemonade. No one gives a damn if you drink lemonade. Lemonade it isn’t addictive.
You are addicted to alcohol. Maybe not much. Maybe you won’t ever loose control of your life because of it. But you are already addicted to alcohol. The help is there, and they don’t mind if you are not ready to die from it. You are addicted.
Tris
I’m not an alcoholic, but I had to give up drinking to find that out.
In my opinion, when it goes beyond the occasional, passing “Hmmm, am I [whatever]?” or “Hmmm, do I [whatever] too much?” and becomes an issue that you start to seriously consider on a regular basis, weighing all the factors and consequences of the potential problem, then it could mean there might be a problem. Could. Might.
