thenewguy

Yeah I just realized that. Just because I'm sober doesn't mean I'm incapable of monumental brain-farts here and there.

SoberD

Jay,

Yes, I get it - I had all the "highs" of the booze, partying, picking up hot women, bars, clubs, drugs, whatever for over a decade. Same as you, it was a weekend thing for a few years - it then evolved into Weds - Sun with as much excess/hedonism as possible accompanied by even greater suffering/guilt/problems. If it hasn't caught up to you yet, I guessing that it will...

Hope you nip it in the bud before that happens! Best of luck.

SD

desypete

your right in one way

when i look at how i am today and how grateful i am for what i have i know i had to lose it all first, and get things back into my life slowly again for me to really apricate just how much difference there is to living sober and keeping what i have to have never have lost anything and just have to cope with not drinking

i believe its harder for people who have never lost there wifes and familys or been to jail than for those of us who have
as we know its real and its a truth there is no doubt in the mind that maybe i am not that bad

trachemys

I think sex is better sober.

least

I have been sober five years. I am bored sometimes, but will gladly take the boredom over feeling bad.

mistory5

Jay37 iv seen a couple of posts asking why do you want to be sober, maybe I missed it, but I haven't seen you post an answer to that question. Defintely not saying you have to, that's your right not to. However its hard for people to give you answers or opinions when the story/ question you are telling/asking is missing the main ingrediant. If drinking is not causing any problems for you... then why stop? Also sounds like you need liquid courage to talk to HOT GIRLS. No mention of just girls. If you just want to not drink why can't you do that and still go to the bar and talk to the hot girls? When. I use to go to happy hour there were always one or two coworkers who came along who did not drink and seemed to be having an awesome time...danced, joked, ate, talked to people who weren't in our immediate group.
I wouldn't be saying this to you if it didn't sound like from your post that you don't have a problem with alcohol. Are you quiting for a physical healthy lifestyle?

ubntubnt

Jay, you are EXACTLY at the stage in my drinking career that I would like to be able to rewind too. Drinking to excess and having fun with it but it hasn't yet descended into a major problem. The best advice I can give you is to read through this site in real detail. All the patterns are here and all the answers too. Spend 100 hours reading it not 3 or 4 hours. You are not unusual, you are following exactly the same behaviors that many here did. You see, every time you drink, especially to excess, you feed your body's addiction to alcohol.
Consider these two people:

Person one:
- successful businessman, has set up multiple companies and charities, managed thousands of people and touched the lives of many more
- happily married (second marriage) two kids
- prominent respected member of the community
- life and soul of the party with a great social life

Person two:
- anxious and depressed alcoholic who drinks almost every day
- can spend three days at a time drinking literally liters of wine and dozens of beers at a time. Only eating once per day and only leaving the apartment to buy more booze
- lost first marriage due to drink, has a DUI, turned off the life support machine of best friend due to a drink induced brain hemorrhage, got run over when drunk breaking multiple bones and could have died
- has lost eye watering amounts of money via drunk gambling over the years

They sound polar opposites right? Actually they are the same person. They are me.
You are on this site and I am talking to you because you have the intelligence and awareness that what you are doing is wrong and the sense that somewhere down the road it will get you too. Trust me it will all happen in a way where you won't realise it until it is too late. Here is what COULD happen to you. I will give you my own experience:
1) getting drunk at weekends with friends. Having a great laugh
2) gravitate to friends who are a great laugh too (heavy drinkers you see). Means the sessions are longer and more alcoholic and we begin to lose our off switch.
3) get a good job, lots of cash. Begin to drink wine, nice wines, at home with dinner after work during the week. Nothing heavy. The very picture of happy married life
4) begin to finish the bottle of wine at home. Have a child. Stay at home more, wait until wife and child go to bed and do work late while drinking. Open the second bottle.
5) working from home more now. Drinking until 4am while working. Still very productive. Drinking huge amounts now 4 days per week. Quality of work still ok. Still going to the gym with hangovers. Still gave friends but see them less now. Drink approx 15-20 bottles of wine per week now.
6) hangovers getting really bad. Can't drink without getting drunk. Blackout almost every time. Can only manage a few friends now. Change job to an easier one. Can't sleep without booze. Panic attacks. Getting dizzy during the day. Then I quit.

None of this happens overnight in an obvious way. In my case these steps took 10 years. I have tried to cut down many many times. I have done hundreds of "are you an alcoholic?" Quizzes over the years. Make no mistake, the highs you experience are "addictive alcoholic fake highs" and in the end they will lead to an addiction that will kill you if you allow it to.

So let me make a suggestion to you. Make a firm commitment to yourself to go off the booze for six months. When you fail to be able to do this you can realise that the booze has more of a grip on you than you thought. Wait until you see....your addiction will always find a way to make an excuse for your drinking eg, it's xmas, it's my friends birthday, I am celebrating etc. It's all BS you see, that's just your addiction feeding itself and finding a way to whisper sweetly in your ear that it's ok. You addiction is a very talented seductive voice.
Be smart Jay, read this site in detail. My situation is not exceptional as you will see, everyone has their own version, and if you keep drinking you will too.
Learn before it's too late. You think any of us chose to be an alcoholic? You think we are low intelligence or just fell on bad times? This can happen to anyone and it can for sure happen to you. As a poster said here: "I though alcoholism was something that happened to other families" Why not stop drinking completely while to research this fully? That's a decent first step.

SoberLeigh

Fabulous, heartfelt, insightful post. Thank you, ubntubnt, for the depth of your care and concern.

ubntubnt

I remember watching one of those trashy reality shows and a woman on it was saying that she could not remember the last time she had sober sex. That struck me as weird because I much prefer sex sober. So the next time I was out with my drinking buddies I asked them when the last time each of them had sober sex. There were 6 of us. I was the only one who could remember the last time sober. And I was a raging alcoholic at the time. I remember thinking, Jesus, time to find new friends, have things really got that messed up?

Tamerua

I was a weekend binge drinker, no problems legally, actually, I had and have a good job, bought a house 6 months before I started recovery. I used to party and then as I got older, drank wine on my porch on the weekends, sometimes had too much (too much as in more than 2 bottles) and would act like an ass but nothing dire.

In the back of my head, I knew I had a problem. Now that I'm sober, I really see that I had a problem. I depended on those weekends to obliterate myself.

Four months is great, it took me a while to find out my new go to activities. What are you doing for your recovery?

Lovenjoy

Jay - no matter what direction you choose at this point i hope you can see that many of us had a point early in our journeys where we knew in our heart of hearts that alcohol was a problem for us. i, like others, ignored that early warning and proceeded to let our alcoholism progress... and i lost many years and countless opportunities in my life.

alcohol distorts. our thinking, our outlook and our actions. when i see someone address their issues early in the disease i see someone who will begin true growth. it is not necessary to live the horrors of this disease. i wish i could go back to the crossroads you are at right now and choose differently.

instead the growth i could have had in my 20s 30s and 40s is happening later for me. i am grateful to have woken up at all. i wouldn't trade the decision to live a sober life for anything!

choose wisely my friend.

Lovenjoy

Jay - no matter what direction you choose at this point i hope you can see that many of us had a point early in our journeys where we knew in our heart of hearts that alcohol was a problem for us. i, like others, ignored that early warning and proceeded to let our alcoholism progress... and i lost many years and countless opportunities in my life.

alcohol distorts. our thinking, our outlook and our actions. when i see someone address their issues early in the disease i see someone who will begin true growth. it is not necessary to live the horrors of this disease. i wish i could go back to the crossroads you are at right now and choose differently.

instead the growth i could have had in my 20s 30s and 40s is happening later for me. i am grateful to have woken up at all. i wouldn't trade the decision to live a sober life for anything!
for anything!

choose wisely my friend.
choose wisely my friend.

courage2

Yes. It's also preferable to have a sober partner. Really, really preferable.

BigShoe

jay, maybe you are not as far gone as the people on this forum. maybe you don't have a problem with alcohol. you only need it to feel excitement and have a good time. oops

my life is pretty lame most of the time with some rare exceptions that are pretty awesome. the other night I was watching a movie sober and I thought how lame and unexciting is this... what's missing? booze! to watch a movie? that's what I used to do.. drink a bunch and watch a movie. now that's exciting. well,, no. the only interesting thing about it is that I could watch the same movie more than once and never be quite sure I had seen it before.

I'm sure everyone here has at one time limited drinks to weekends or time slots or days or time zones or some such crap. we found out it didn't work for us. it would be hard to take our word for something,, I understand. best of luck.

markz

Yeah, its so exciting getting blacked out, its fun crashing cars, its a great time going to jail, beating your spouse and kids, its cool losing brain cells and pickling your body, its a grand ole time puking and prayer to the porcelin toilet gods or staining your clothing with puke or becuase you drank to much you cant control your bowels. Its fun having DT's.

I prefer to be bored thank you very much. However being sober does not have to be boring, not at all quite the contrary actually. See since you took out a part of your life that took up so much space and time, you have to fill that hole with healthy activites. See how that is plural? See we alcoholics and addicts have a problem. And it has nothing at all to do with alcohol or drugs. Those things have no part in our problem at all. See the problem centers in our mind, its the way we think. So just because you put down the heroin needled and bottle and now you are working out at the gym for 6 hrs a day. Nothing has changed. Nothing at all. Or maybe now you are working 16 hours a day at work instead of the usual 8 or 10 hours. Again nothing has changed. Perhaps now you are gambling at the casino and drinking your diet pop. Or going to kareokee every night and drinking your pepsi. I do not hang out at the barber shop and not expect to get a cut, or at the brothel asking for a kiss and not expect to hit the bedroom for some action. Addictive mind is an addictive mind. Its time to change the way we think.

I know I was there too thinking being sober is boring. Thats just another lie we alcoholics tell ourselves. One lie out of many. You are what you make of it. And to tell you the truth, sobriety is a blast, its so much fun, having real friends around you instead of fake drunk ones. When you are living life, you are having fun. When you are drinking, you are killing yourself. Both spiritually, mentally, emotionally. In all aspects.

Just puting the plug in the jug is not the end all be all. Its like that old saying goes, What happens when you sober up a drunken horse thief? Now you have a sober horse theif, that now steals 100 horses a week instead of his usual 1 horse theft a week, that he stole when he was drinking.

walkbeformakrun

Lots of good advice here about how just bc you have not had some serious consequences yet, you might want to still be concerned. I doubt you would have quit at all if you thought it was not a problem at all. Drinking twice every weekend to the point of great intoxication, that alone is a problem that is slowly causing some serious consequences to your health. I think you know that or you would not have quit and would not be looking for ways to have fun and stay sober.

As for being bored or thinking things would be better with alcohol, try to think of things you could not, would not, do drunk. Like fencing for example. Find more things like that. I took up ice hockey. Make your life incompatible with being drunk. Hanging out in bars with other drunks is not going to be the most fun you can have in life. Think about it. On your death bed, do you think you are going to be thinking you wish you spent more of your life in bars drinking with other drunks?! There has to be tons of things less expensive and more fun than that. Fill your off time with that kind of fun.

BTW - I was like you. No real consequences like DUI or blackouts or DT's. You don't have to get cirrhosis of the liver to know you have a problem and want to do something about it. It is not required. I suggest you don't go that route.

joyfullysober

What brought you here if it was going ok for you?

NYCDoglvr

I've been sober 23 years and boredom was the toughest emotion during the first few years of sobriety. Not depression, anger, happiness or loneliness, it was boredom that was a killer. I think it's part of getting comfortable being in your own skin. I suggest physical exercise, like long walks or going to the gym because you use up energy. Going to an AA meeting every day helped me a lot.

heartcore

You sound really close to drinking. You are changing your own history and memory.

You would not have quit if it was as fun as you are remembering.

I'm with Trach - the illusion of connection with a woman when drunk is pretty flimsy...it's a lot better sober. But dating sober is scary. Maybe you're just lonely...

I think you're balanced in that delicate spot between what you can become and what you were. Of course it is easier to turn back to the easy and the familiar. It takes a lot of courage to head into the unknown - like socializing and dating and having sex sober.

If it is really true that you "weren't so bad and didn't really need to quit in the first place," then I agree - go drink again, a little more research, you'll know when you're ready. A lot can go wrong with an experiment like that - from killing someone drunk driving to shaming yourself in front of others - but quitting alcohol forever if you're just a "regular guy" doesn't make sense.

You're the only one who can recognize and call yourself out on your own bull****.

I wish you good things whichever road you choose.

jay37

I think you are correct a lot of my problem is I am just lonely. I am a pretty shy and reserved guy so I guess I need that liquid courage to talk to women. I remember some pretty wild and fun nights picking up women when I was drinking. Cant seem to pull that off to much when I am sober. In a perfect world I would be able to just go up to any random women in the grocery store or whatever and get a date. But this ain't no perfect world as I think we all know.

I know a lot of people on here have mentioned turning there life over to God but I am not a Christian. I guess I would consider myself Agnostic. This also I guess takes away a place to meet people other than in a bar such as church. Went to an AA meeting once and the religion part kind of turned me off as well. So it kind of seems like my options are sit here at home watching tv alone or going to the bar where I could meet someone interesting at least. That's probably a little bit of a over simplification of the situation I do have other activites I enjoy like fencing and I took up indoor rock climbing as well.