When will you learn, Badtz?

You stupid drunk, you almost fucked yourself over for good last Friday. I can understand wanting to have a few drinks last Friday, it had been a long week and you thought you had something to celebrate. Lately you have been doing a pretty good job of handling your alcohol, you should have listened when your wife told you that you should stop drinking after the six ciders and the giant can of ale, but NO, you thought drinking more would make you feel even better, so you make yourself a giant martini and proceed to make stupid posts on a couple of message boards while totally inebriated, making a fool of yourself. Then you have to have a glass of wine while bitching about your wife and marriage to a friend from work on AIM…AND you were so stupid you forgot to close the window when you went to pass out, leaving it for your wife to find when she got back from her babysitting job that night. THEN you react to being awakened by a distressed and crying wife by defending yourself about things that she didn’t even know about, digging yourself in even deeper. How could things get worse? Well, of course you found a way.

You stumble from the bed later that night, and fail to make it to the toilet before you start spewing a vile mixture of salad and assorted alcoholic beverages from your stomach, slip in a puddle of your own vomit, and fall over backwards, knocking yourself unconscious on the side of the tub. Your poor wife thought you were dead, but unfortunately you came to, spewing more vomit, and managed to make it to the toilet in time to get the last of it in the proper place. That wonderful woman (that you do not deserve) was kind enough to help you clean up and get back in bed, and forgave you for the cruel things you said.

You’re supposedly a smart guy (though maybe not as smart now, perhaps the dizzy spells and inability to tell left from right indicate brain damage), but you seem incapable of learning that you have a problem with alcohol. It makes you stupid and mean, and you need to take into consideration that now you DO have things worth keeping in your life, your self-destructive ways hurt more people than just yourself now. But will you learn? I have my doubts. I’m really starting to hate you.

Ya, all you said sucks, but dude, you accomplished something! You’ve indentified and acknowledged the problem. Work with this. The only thing that would make you an asshole is if you decided to blow off the problem.
Seems from what you said your sweet lady deserves better from you.
Good luck man !

All I can say is read what you just wrote over and over again. You realized you fucked up but the next step sure is a fucking hard one. Doing anything in moderation that you’ve become addicted to is a fucking hard thing to even think about man. I’ve enjoyed your posts and you seem to be pretty damn intelligent. I think this is something you can beat if you put a honest effort into it and reading what you posted makes me think you will. Good luck man. If you ever need anyone to just shoot the shit with feel free to e-mail. I’m not that good at giving advice but I make a good listener.

Badtz. Way to identify step one! Sounds like you have a sweetie of a wife, Do something super sweet for her sometime soon so she knows she’s appreciated.

And you can deal with this, you are, at heart, a very good guy and the fact that such behavior disturbs you means you won’t miss being an asshole.

well, Badtz you’ve joined the ranks of the multitude of folks who’ve realized that they can’t do ‘drinking in moderation’.

Now, don’t let the current self-loathing get to a point where you decide you’re not worth saving, please.

Some folks are helped through AA. Some folks are helped through counseling. Some folks are helped through church. Please find the path that’s right for you.

my best to you.

While AA isn’t my personal thing, I’m aware that one of the most valuable things they offer is immediate support in real time at the moment someone is about to binge.

Gamblers anonymous has online support meetings and if you give me a couple of hours, I’ll check into whether AA has them also (I’d be extremely surprised if they do not) and post the details. If you have a tendency to go online when you’re binging, something like an AA irc channel may be very helpful.

I would certainly recommend saving your OP and making a contract with yourself that you will read it fully before you take a sip of each and every drink - most of us do have a lucid moment when we’re binging where we contemplate the wisdom of having any more, we just don’t always act with wisdom in that moment.

You’ve taken a big step already, and I’m sure that the combined knowledge and experience of your fellow posters will give you a wealth of resources to assist you with the next steps.

Good luck and take care.

As I expected, both AA and Al-Anon do indeed have online meetings.

This link will take you to the About.com Alcoholism forum. They have scheduled chats, plus have one chat room reserved 24/7 for people needing online support. About’s resources are fairly exhaustive, so it will take me a while to check out all the links and come back and post the best ones, but I just wanted to let you know that there is online help available and give you a starting point.

Here is a listing of the various AA online meetings/resources.

The menu on the left hand side of that page has links to other resources, including non-step ones, and the home link at the top will take you to an even broader menu giving you other options.

If none of these prove useful, please let me know, as a search of the Delphi/About fora alone came up with 157 hits and I’m happy to continue searching.

Again, good luck!

Last summer, I was privileged to spend my vacation in Minneapolis, at the International AA convention’s cyberspace suite, introducing online AA to the world.

There are tons of AA groups out there, both real-time and via mailing list. You can find a list here. There is a fairly good bunch on Undernet, where I hang out. Join channels #odaat or #alcoholicsanonymous.

The URL for Alcoholics Anonymous is here. I’d also advise getting into some local face-to-face meetings, as well.

Please feel free to get in touch with me. (I can be reached through the board, just check my profile.)

Robin
Sober since March 12, 1993

You don’t know me, and I don’t carry the American Express card–

But I feel for you, and my heart does go out to you man. Grew up with alcohol in the family with heinous, and I mean heinous stuff kids/teens just should not see in the home.

Done almost every kind of drug (couldn’t ever find peyote–but PCP, yeah, found that) and am acutely aware of the phrase ‘addictive personality’ and what it means, and the war against the rain of self-deprecation and frustrated rumination.

My friend, if I may call you that, know one thing first and foremost of all:

You’re not alone.

Plenty of good men and women are engaged in this struggle right now.

Many have just entered the battle.

Many have fought day to day for a lifetime.

Sad thing is, some don’t fight at all.

Fight, brother. And in the fighting, know that it is a war well-waged, hard fought for, and ultimately rewarding.

I, like the others here, offer an ear if you need to scream.

Take care man.

Jason

Thanks for the words of support. I don’t think I could ever accept the AA way of thinking, however. I also don’t think I qualify as an alcoholic.

I probably drink no more often (on average) than every other week, sometimes going far longer between drinks. I hardly ever drink more than a 6-pack in a night these days, since I’m over 280 lbs. that doesn’t get me very drunk at all. In my teenage years and my early 20s I almost always drank to excess, and drank about any chance I got, but I thought it was something I outgrew. The last time I got falling-down drunk (the day before Easter last year) was actually pretty unusual for me by that time.

But every now and then, I won’t stop drinking. I’m not sure why this is, but it happens still. It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with availability of alcohol, because I have been living in an apartment with enough alcohol to kill me available for almost a year without overdoing it. It doesn’t appear to be related to my mood at the time of drinking. It’s apparently totally unpredictable, and that’s why I have decided to stop drinking altogether. If it was an availability thing, I would just limit myself to drinking when all I had on hand was a reasonable amount, if it was an emotional thing I would just avoid drinking when depressed.

I don’t think it’s an addiction-related thing. For one thing, as I mentioned above I probably drink less often than most casual drinkers. Secondly, I use other drugs (marijuana almost exclusively these days, but I was a fairly regular user of cocaine and whatever else was around in the past) and have NEVER had a problem with overdoing it with those, in fact I was almost always the voice of reason saying ‘Maybe we should save some for later’ among my co-users. I just occasionally don’t stop drinking when I get to a certain point.

What you’re describing is binge drinking - I could get a degree in it.

On the menu on the left hand side of the About resources page I linked you to earlier, you’ll find links to binge drinking resources and also to non-step (ie non-AA) resources.

Please don’t give up looking for resources because one particular model doesn’t seem attractive to you - there are many more options out there.

Again, good luck.

BTW there’s usually someone in #straightdope if you need talking through a potential binge and would be more comfortable among people you know. (yeah, I know I’m not supposed to mention that place, but I offered it as a resource and will make the relevant disclaimer that it isn’t associated in any way with the Chicago Reader or the SDMB)

I really don’t need any help, now that I’ve decided what to do. I should have no problem avoiding drinking, so as long as I do that I am in no danger of going on a binge. I’ll just stick to good old harmless pot from now on.

Badtz, if you change your mind, e-mail me. If you live in Southern California, check out this site.

This is the (probably stupid, probably oversimplistic) way I see drinking, and binge drinking.

Beer point 1: you feel the effect of the alcohol. You feel a nice buzz.

Beer point 2: Once you have passed this point, the alcohol has affected your ability to make sensible decisions about how much to drink. Beer point 3 is all but inevitable.

Beer point 3: All sorts of bad shit goes down.

The trick is not to get to beer point 2.

Or in the alternative, you can move abroad and join the expat community, where quasi-alcoholic bad behavior is not only accepted, its the norm.