I'm an alcoholic

thanks y'all, appreciate it

the only book i've read about being an alcoholic is drinking: a love story but it's v good. <3 to you sleeve

Take care, sleeve.

yeah, thoughts with you

Second vote for This Naked Mind. Also good rehab. SMART and Refuge Recovery are good AA alternatives. Getting sober is a pain in the ass but beats the alternative by a LOT. Also gets a hell of a lot easier with time. Good luck and keep posting; you never know who it helps.

Leslie Jamison’s The Recovering is excellent and somewhat out of the usual quit-lit model.

all the best, sleeve.

as a fair problem boozer meself sleeve I hope it works well for you pal.

echoing calz here. good luck.

One of the biggest problems is really accepting that you can't drink again. It's impossible to imagine life without. This sense of impossibility is what the phrase "one day at a time" is supposed to combat. It's like someone has brought in all the food you're going to eat in the next year. It's filling up the room, piled high to the ceiling and after being told you'll be consuming all of it a certain feeling of despair is natural. At that point you need to remember that you've already eaten several rooms full of food. Our relationship to the present doesn't call for imagining 30,000 barren days of no drinking. And when you do imagine your future that way you're leaving out some very important things you cannot know: all the good things that will fill up those days, things you are completely blind to now.

When you get sober you're going to start appreciating things you've been completely numb to. You'll be raw, like a newborn. Your senses will come alive. Emotions will resurface. You'll have to relearn how to do things you learned while drunk. Be patient with your new incapacities (usually things like socializing). It takes a long time for your brain to heal. The way you feel for those first six months or the first year is not the endstate. That's why you can't draw conclusions like "so this is how it's going to be from now on." That kind of thinking is going to make you miserable, and it will make you relapse. Your brain has stopped making certain chemicals because you've been bringing them in from the outside. Those areas come back online but it takes awhile. So, there's depression at first. You can outlast it.

As mentioned on another thread, I am struggling with booze. I never struggled until I tried to cut back/quit! Then it became weird and insidious, the drinking. Saturday night I brought a bottle to a friend’s bday party and got through half of it on my own. Didn’t drink last night and don’t plan to again.

What is hardest for me is just the sight of normal folks enjoying a drink... a patio with pints is the nicest thing to see on a hot afternoon. I tend to tell myself “they are drinking poison”, act (correctly) as if they are doing something that I myself am allergic to. I don’t have any serious allergies but I just think it: “you cannot do that thing”.

I’ve been very successful in staying off the booze. I think a lot of it is that my body reacts totally differently nowadays. Might be the meds I’m taking but I just end up feeling bloated and crappy when I have more than one drink, none of the electricity of the past.

good luck, friends

my drinking was a bit problematic earlier in the summer. like having one day off the booze in the space of a week, being hungover as hell at work day after day. i fell out out my bed one night and my gf had to rouse me from the floor because i hadn't woken up from the fall and just was content to sleep there. i didn't drink for 4 weeks this month. got drunk on saturday to break the fast. i can find an equilibrium sometimes, between too much and abstaining. like - just at weekends, just a bit drunk not shit-canned. but then invariably things will eventually get worse. of course when i abstain i also feel bad, but as del's quote says, id probably feel better further down the road.

Best indeed, sir.

sleeve, maybe check out lifering? Or rational recovery (Buddhist based). I’ve found NA meetings to be a lot better than AA meetings, in my limited experience.

No book recs, apart from like Pema Chodran and stuff not directly related to addiction

<3

Good luck, sleeve.

I had a much longer post that I deleted. But after reading del and flambo's posts (which have been posted since I last looked), I wish I had kept it. Main point is that I didn't think I was an alcoholic back when I was drinking, but I'm two years mostly dry and I'm realizing that the life choices I made and habits that I ingrained under the influence of booze are still having ripple effects for me now.

^^^ bingo, and thanks dude

I quit for a week in early July and seriously cut down, I lost ten pounds. So hey that's at least something under my belt. Then I had too much at the Mekons show in late July and partially blacked out the end of the evening :(

I'm sure my reduced consumption had a lot to do with that, but wow that's happened like 2 times in my whole life, the other was when I was a dumbass 17-year-old on cheap white wine

just out of curiosity how much were y'all drinking on a day to day basis?

I don’t have any serious allergies but I just think it: “you cannot do that thing”.

this is me and romantic relationships -- but at least i am fairly able ~now~ to drink in moderation -- sometimes i slip up (like Friday night). Anyway, best wishes!

xp 3-5

oh and since I have Aimless killfiled I would like to request that he not respond here

Best of luck, sleeve.

thanks pom

hey sleeve, sending good thoughts your way....take care and good luck w/it

Good luck! I've heard good things about AA, actually, even from people resistant to the program. Regardless, we're here for you!

^^ yeah that's what a friend of mine said, she leaves the stuff she hates and takes the stuff that works. All the tools in the toolbox.

Until this past March, I typically drank 3-4 drinks a night, five nights a week. Every couple weeks I’d have a party night.

March/April, I moved in with bf and the most notable change was “liquor cabinet”— I haven’t kept liquor in the house since my 20s, when I noticed I had a habit of, like, drinking much more when it was there to drink.

For the first two months I was drinking lots— on average, 8-10 oz of liquor a night. Then I was like “wow I feel bad a lot these days”. In May I made the resolution to cut down/stop entirely.

And that’s when things went REALLY weird. Drinking two/three nights a week, but insanely heavily. Invariably, if I have a pint with friends, it turns into three, and then I’m home and sneaking swigs behind bf’s back. At this point I’m not-drinking most days, but completely off-the-rails when I do.

I’m a great drunk! My only bad habit is I tend to express spicy opinions when I shouldn’t, and that’s only very occasionally. Otherwise, totally functional, fun, my cooking even improves. I have whipped up mapo tofu, pad thai, steak with bearnaise sauce while completely hammered and it’s been... no biggie.

But the mornings are bad. Mostly with the emotional stability stuff. I don’t feel especially guilty or upset about it, I’ve had a seriously traumatizing couple of years and some resultant alcoholism is to be expected, I love being sober and have no issues with social anxiety or anything, so yeah I’m sure I’ll be ok.

There’s just something weird happening that keeps me falling off the wagon. Lack of discipline? Need for a sponsor? I just have to keep fixed in my head “it is poison”, that has had the best results for me in the past.

sneaking swigs behind bf’s back

HI DERE

I interviewed Steve Earle once, and he told me that even a couple of decades into sobriety he sometimes still needed to call his sponsor five times a day. There was also that really moving Russell Brand essay he wrote after the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, iirc, kind of a sort of what-if scenario had he been unable to reach his sponsor one night at 2:00 in the morning. What might have happened.

sneaking swigs behind bf’s back

HI DERE

Oh, no, there was one night after he went to bed when I realized I'd finished a bottle of gin. I filled it half-full with water so we wouldn't notice the next morning, and replaced the bottle the next day. It has been brutal! I even have at least three times smoked half-a-joint before he got home so I could pretend to be "really fucking high on weed" instead of what I actually was: plastered.

I've had times in the past when I've been like "uh oh" about my drinking, and they've always been in times when I've been anxious or stressed about other stuff. There was one year-long tour I was on with a band, and they had a plush rider and there was consistently a nice bottle of something fancy there, like a Chateauneuf-du-Pape or a Morgon I knew was tasty. It would be a shame to not have a glass, I thought. I'd open it with the intention of sharing with others, but then I'd get through half-a-bottle myself and feel like shit the next day (my tolerance back then was pretty low). After a few months of this, I remember being in Paris and walking up Montorgeuil to a wine store I really liked with the intention of bringing back a couple of nice bottles for my then-bf. As I approached, and the wine bottles in the window came into focus, and the price tags adjacent to them, I remember feeling "I would pay that money to NOT have this bottle in front of me". I took a good year off drinking after that happened. But that was years ago.

I know that in terms of volume I don't even come close to several of my friends who've gone to AA. A close friend of mine was packing away 12-20 beers a night, and/or a 750 mL bottle of liquor. I'm glad I'm not in that boat. But still, the weird sneakiness is just out of shame... I cannot control my intake after even a single glass of wine. I have been saying I'm a zero: zero drinks is a perfect night.

yeah I am very thankful for the ability to be able to 'turn off' after 3-5 drinks and just sip on a Miller Lite or something. I know a lot of people don't have that switch. Having kids helps, because if you think a hangover sucks now, wait until you have to deal with small children at 7AM. or worse, when they wake up at 3AM and won't go back to sleep easily. that's a nightmare.

I know its not quite 'getting sober' but once you cut out shots & those prestige beers with like 8+% ABV you don't really miss them

The sad irony is that I've always been the responsible person in my social circle and my relationships. I've historically been the DD, the person who cleans up somebody's puke, the person splitting up a fight. I've been the annoying one who's been like "hey could we maybe get up to some sober fun this weekend" or chastising my friends the next day when the night turns to cocaine-- which, thank fuck, I've never even tried. There is a kind of grim comeuppance that me, with all my sanctimony, is the one who has had the booze start to have the traits of an addiction.

good luck, sleeve

good luck sleeve.

i'm proud of the fact that i only had two drinks last saturday and the saturday before that, after a few weeks of not drinking at all. but honestly even that was too much. i'm definitely one of those people for whom it makes the most sense to cut out alcohol completely.

Ya best of luck sleeve, sorry I didn’t say so right away!

aw geez no problem, I'm really looking for reading recs not sympathy, and thanks del griffith for that great quote - where is that from?

I don’t have a reading rec but this summer I didn’t drink for 2 weeks bc of a health issue, which I realized was the first time I ever attempted complete teetotaling for that long. During that time, I played 2 shows, my dog died suddenly, and I had to go on an overnight retreat w my coworkers — all situations in which I’d have gladly been drinking — and it was definitely hard! I drank inconceivable amounts of flavored seltzer and noticed that I did indeed feel different after about 10 days. Much less depressed, for starters, in spite of the dire circumstances.

Since those two weeks, I’ve been thinking that maybe alcohol just isn’t very good for me. Not terrible, but def not good. Not-drinking is way more appealing than it used to be. You’re not alone sleeve! It’s crazy seltzer time.

AA was very important to me for the first many years of my sobriety. I eventually dropped it because after the initial help, I actually found that it made me think more about drinking than not. Which is part of the philosophy but it was also making me profoundly depressed. That's just me though and I still know plenty of people who are very involved. Whether you go to AA or not, the Big Book is extremely helpful to read and it's very well written.

I like your post La Lechera

also akm I never heard of the big book before

I wish all the best for you sleeve

xpost sleeve I believe that is David Berman (the quote)

the 'big book' is the book "alcoholics anonymous".

you can read it online here: https://www.aa.org/pages/en_US/alcoholics-anonymous

cool, thanks

and thanks UMS, unbelievably I have never gotten into the guy's work even though we have one degree of separation via Charlottesville friends

oh thanks to brimstead there as well, I don't even know what "lifering" is!

thanks akm

hey sleeve--hope you get to where you want to be. best of luck.

oh thanks to brimstead there as well, I don't even know what "lifering" is!

― sleeve, Monday, August 26, 2019 5:10 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

it's like aa/na but secular and more laid back, no twelve step program, etc.

(Obviously IANAD and i don't know what your health insurance situation is) but if you're struggling, it may be helpful to check out a substance abuse programs from a legit health provider. that's what really helped me in any case. best of luck.