Thoughts about starting drinking again

In My Humble Opinion
1

Sometime this month it will be 6 years since I last had any alcohol. I drank pretty heavily from late high school to my early 40s. Unsuccessfully tried to limit my drinking for a couple years, and then decided to stop. No AA or other program.

Lately I wondered if I might - at some time - try drinking again. I posed this to my wife and a couple of close friends, and was a little surprised at the reactions. So I figured I’d toss it out here as well.

Figured I could either make this OP pages long, or provide the info you consider important/interesting by responding to questions as they arose, but being the lazy s-o-s I am, I chose the latter route.

A little to start off tho - I drank heavily, but never had significant work or legal problems as a result. Married 25 years this fall, have had a secure job for 20+ years, earn a comfortable living, and have 3 kids in college. In the past my wife and I fought about my drinking, but I can’t say we’ve been argument-free these last 6 years. And this is almost certainly purely theoretical - I’m extremely unlikely to restart at any time in the near future, as my wife’s reaction was “I’d divorce you.” (Unless of course, I decide I want a divorce. In which case I need only pick up a 6-pack!) :stuck_out_tongue:

I’ve never bought into AA, so if you wish to preach it, knock yourself out, but I highly doubt I will find it persuasive or even interesting.

2

starting drinking again

Why would you want to?

3

Poll for yourself: What can Dinsdale live without?

o - Wife
o - Alcohol
o - Both wife and alcohol

Please note that this is a public poll and other users can see how you answer the poll.

4

My $0.02 worth: not just no, but HELL NO!

5

You say you had no significant work or legal problems as a result of your drinking, but based on your wife’s reaction, I’d say you had some significant marital problems. So my opinion is that this seems like a bad idea.

6

Hey Dinsdale - it’s been a while…

I think you know that what you describe [wife, kids, home, job no major problems + drinking] is a good definition of a functional alcoholic. NO judgement, no name calling, but in the realms of alcoholism that is what it is called. One does not need a paper bag a 40 oz. beer and be living under a bridge to be an alcoholic.

All that being said, the only person in the world you are culpable to ultimately is that man who you see when you close your eyes at night. When you are staring at the back of your eyelids, who is it that you are culpable to? To thine own self be true, basically asserts that you need to be honest with yourself first and no one else.

I have no problem talking about this here, as you may remember and as some others may remember I quite drinking right around the same time you did, granted I took the AA route, but I did quit. For the better, I began to work on me, I went on a wilderness solo in Utah, began sitting meditation daily, and eventually got divorced from an amazing woman, but not the woman I will call my partner for life. We are still close, but simply not married.

A year ago, maybe less, I had the same questions you did. I thought that I could have a drink with close friends and that I would be ok. With much thought and many, many, many inventories taken on myself, I did. I had a beer with friends. I was told in meetings that I would end up worse than I was when I entered AA, so my anxiety level over it was very hard to overcome. With time, I realized my relationship with alcohol had changed and I was no longer seeking it to mask emotions, cover feelings, or get me through the night. I was simply having a beer with friends.

AA has helped me tremendously understand my relationship to alcohol and my relationship to my true self, with the 12-steps and doing a shit load of inventories and making amends for any wreckage I have caused in the past, I feel very good about who I am as a man. If there were any criticism and I know you are not asking for these, I would say I really and truly did not like the label of being called an alcoholic for the rest of my days. For me* I was not comfortable with being labeled or feelign the guilt and shame over wanting to have a beer with friends. My daily meditation practice and understanding that I am in fact being honest with myself has helped this tremendously. I have not been drunk once since deciding I could have a beer, or class of wine a year ago.

*This is an extremely, EXTREMELY sensitive subject for people in recovery, and I do not want anyone to think what works or is personally acceptable for one person will work or be acceptable for another. AA and the like help thousands of people I include myself in those numbers. If it were not for AA, I may not have been able to discover how dishonest I was being with the man in the mirror.

7

Drinking what, exactly? Did you drink everything in sight, or were you partial to certain alcohols?

8

Because I really REALLY like drinking! :stuck_out_tongue:

And I’m wondering if now - after 6 years of sobriety - I could enjoy drinking moderately without getting drunk. And if the worst occurs and I start drinking more and more heavily, I’ve proven I could stop drinking for 6 years, same as I stopped smoking 25 years ago, so I have no reason to think I couldn’t stop again.

When it comes down to it, probably any combination of the two if I needed to. I’ve certainly shown that I can continue to live just fine without drinking. I just acknowledge that I am not the same person I was 5-10-20 years ago. So just because a certain decision was definitely the right decision at one point in my life doesn’t convince me that it will necessarily remain the only option for the rest of my life.

I find it curious. I think it a good thing that I “take stock” of who I am and where I’m at at this particular point in time. Not just about drinking but about interpersonal relationships, diet, exercise, work habits, hobbies, and countless other things. WRT this issue, tho, I’m a little surprised at the folk take my even considering such a thing as unthinkable.

And ya know, in one respect it kinda is bothersome to think of making a decision based so strongly on what others think is right for me, rather than what I think. I don’t “not drink” right now just because other people think it a good thing, but because I know it is/was a good thing for me. It kinda pisses me off to think people would think worse of me if I occasionally sipped 1 or 2 beers.

Like I said, I don’t personally buy into all of that AA “One is too many, a million isn’t enough” crap.

I guess what sorta surprised me was that my wife’s first response was entirely about herself, rather than in any way reflecting what was best for me. Yeah, of course my decision affects her. That’s a big reason why I would never make a change without consulting and informing her ahead of time.

I am not dying for a beer, and I am not planning on drinking at any particular point in the future. Instead, I’m just considering what possibilities exist for me at the present, or may exist in the future. And to assist in this assessment, I sought the advice and counsel of some of the people who knew me the best and whom I thought would offer me intelligent input.

9

One more person who knows you well and would offer intelligent input is your doctor. You should have an honest assessment of how much physical damage has been done by past drinking, and of the likely effects of starting again.

If your liver’s at the tipping point, wouldn’t you rather know it before you belly up to the bar?

10

My dad has been drinking for 40+ years. Always had a great job, was a great dad, never a mean drunk, very few drinking-related problems. Except for the one DUI where he almost killed himself and 2 others.

That’s when he quit, and it was all hunky-dory. Then he started again, slowly. I think he was depressed his whole life, and self-medicated with beer. Someone he worked with, who was around his age, died and all of a sudden he had found a new reason to drink.

This was about 15 years ago, when I was 15.

Anyway, we’re grown and out of the house now. He’s retired. Still drinking. Still functional. A total pain in the ass. Mom is unhappy. Me and my brother don’t like to be around him. Still a wonderful man at heart but…geez, what a chore to be with.

I don’t know if you really can just “have a few” anymore. I honestly don’t know. I bet my dad thought he could. Then he just turned back in to an alcoholic and everyone in the family had to go back to pretending it was ok and feeling bad about it and having bad thoughts about him. And really, nobody’s happy. Except maybe him. That’s not fair to anyone.

11

Hey back atcha. Was thinkingabout you when I was recently interviewing for this potential job out in Arlington Va. I listed pretty much the entire east coast from NH down to SC as relo possibilities.

I appreciate your acknowledgement that everyone makes their own decisions. I’m pretty certain that at least right now, continued sobriety is still the best thing for me. But I had perceived that my attitude towards drinking had changed somewhat over the past year or 2 without my realizing it. For the first few years I KNEW that if I had a single beer today, at some point in the relatively near future I would end up shitfaced and puking in a toilet. Which is not an entirely pleasant prospect.

Now I’m not entirely sure that is the case. I could imagine drinking - and enjoying - a fine beer with dinner. Say a Harp’s on St Paddy’s Day. Or a pint after a round of golf. Or maybe even a stiff G&T and/or a glass of wine to help me make it through dinner parties. (I’m generally pretty antisocial, and find most social gartherings somewhat painful. Being sober makes them no less so.)

Pretty much just beer and gin. I really like good heavy beers, enjoyed attending and hosting beer tastings, and considered brewing my own. At my heaviest I was putting down a 6-pack as a primer before going out. For a stretch of probably 10 years of consistent maintenance drinking I was drinking a case a week, strictly Friday through Sunday.

In college I developed a taste for gin, and it still is my fave. At the end of my drinking I pretty much stopped the gin, as I would easily lie to myself, just pouring a stiffer and stiffer drink into a taller and taller glass and calling it “one drink”! :stuck_out_tongue:

I like red wines, and would like to share in with a glass or 2 on the occasions that a bottle is opened at dinners.

No whiskey. I’d enjoy a rum drink or daiquiri if they were being mixed, but 99 times out of 100 I’d prefer a nice beer or my Tanq.

I enjoy some of the better NA beers. And my wife still drinks (tho not much), and we almost always have beer, wine, and bottles of gin and scotch in our house. No temptation whatsoever.

12

If your wife’s response was “I’d divorce you,” I have a feeling your remembrance of your lack of problems with alcohol and hers are two different things. I have to echo others and say, why would you want to start again? I haven’t drank in, jeeze, I can’t even remember how many years (beyond sips of my husband’s beer), and I have no reduction in quality of life.

13

Usually I’d say if you can handle it, and drink like a normal person, go for it. What makes me suspect you can’t drink like a normal person, or at least didn’t, is that you and your wife fought about it. Who has fights with their spouse over something that doesn’t cause problems? Also, that it was (apparently) so problematic that she’d leave you if you restarted the habit, makes me suspect drinking is not something you’re good at. So don’t do it, unless you’re certain that you’re in a different place now, and can enjoy moderate drinking, without it causing issues, like everybody else.

14

Also, like others are saying, keep the lines of communication crystal clear with your wife. Make sure you are being honest with her and your motivations.
For me I had a complete change of life - from my career, geographic region, [I’m in Colorado] and marital status - but as the famous addage goes, “You can change the wallpaper but in the end you are still you” Thats where the work came in.

I’d say talk with your wife about it, don’t just have her walk into the living room to see you with a G&T in your hands. That would be bad.

15

I see MsWhatsit made the same point I made - sorry about that. :slight_smile: (Reading’s hard!)

16

Maybe think about why you were drinking, and whether there was some buried issue that remained unresolved after you stopped drinking. If you and your wife are still arguing a lot, maybe there’s some underlying conflict besides your drinking.

17

My wild-assed assumption, based on not knowing this couple at all - Dinsdale took A LOT of goodwill capital out of the bank of their marriage with his drinking, and it has coloured everything.

18

This pretty much hits 2 things I was going to respond to several other folk. I readily acknowledge that I didn’t drink in the manner I did simply because I was so terribly happy within my skin. I feel as tho I never learned how to drink “responsibly.” I’m wondering if I could try to learn such habits now. Some people think that if a person drank heavily at one point in their lives, then they are forever precluded from drinking moderately at any future point. I’m not so sure I think that universally applicable.

I don’t think my wife and I argue “a lot” - but we have had huge blow-ups as recently as last December. Was closer to moving into a hotel as ever before, and boze played no part in it.

In some respects, I feel drinking makes an easy target. In my experience in very many situations, when folk are disagreeing about something, they will grab onto any easy targets available. Not sure if I am making myself clear. But I think it - at least my wife and I can tend to use past transgressions (real or imagined, major or minor) as scapegoats.

19

You know, that would probably be close to her perception. Mine might be that she magnified any problems that existed, and attempted to control and change my behaviors. Not sure whether either of us would be entirely right or wrong.

And what sucks is that there is very limited ability to change one’s present perception of the past. She can now remember me as having been some horrible sloppy drunk, and I can recall things somewhat differently and think my recollections accurate. And neither one of us will be able to know which of our views more closely comports with reality.

Sometimes - at least in our relation - it seems that we get tied to one particular interpretation of past events - whether entirely accurate and objective or not, depending on how that interpretation serves our present purposes.

20

And you’re so curious that you’re willing to risk your marriage? I don’t know your relationship, but you don’t sound fantastically happy with it. If your curiosity overrides your desire to remain espoused, go nuts.