Budfrog

I'm pretty new to all this and being a Brit some of the terminology that I use may seem strange.

My issues around alcohol abstinence are mainly around what I would term as being my own personal 'Pinch' points, critical times when either peer pressure or the situation itself will reduce my resolve to not drink alcohol.

My own personal 'Pinch' points are as follows:

1. Holidays or Weekend breaks
2. Christmas Social Gatherings (mainly work ones !!)
3. Trips to my local Pub (bar to you lot) to see my golfing friends

These are the times. for me personally, that abstinence is a problem and like meny others have correctly stated a couple here will lead to a couple there etc etc. Without wanting to shift the blame, the beverage industry and the UK government do not provide many cost effective alternatives to alcohol for the social non-drinker with non-alcoholic beer being sold at premium prices (and they wonder why the D&D figures don't go down !!)

I digress .... So what is the best approach. I would like to think that social behaviour can continue and possibly improve on a dry night out but my mindset finds this difficult to believe after so many years. And the peer pressure bothers me a lot, as if avoiding alcohol is almost an open admission to friends that there is a problem (I have no problem with admitting this to 'real' friends ... however with some work colleagues this is a differant matter altogether).

Perhaps I am over complicating the situation, however I trust that many posters here will realise that I am not.

CarolD

I can tell you what worked for me in early sobriety
I think most of us have to work thru this as the situations
present themselves.

At the end of my drinking career I had no activities that did not involve booze. I was even drinking at work...I had to to keep the shakes away. I was in a hellva mess!

I quit my job in a bar/restaurant. Went to work in an office.
I dumped my lover who was a heavy drinker and not interested in quitting.
I sold/gave away all my booze/glasses /bar/stools from my apartment.
I told my drinking buddies to leave me out of the parties and card games for awhile.
I started 7 an AA meetings...7 days a week and often went to other meetings as well.
I m made new sober firends in AA.
I began a daily journal//gratitude list.
I kept the Serenity Prayer and The Promises in my purse to remind me when tempted.
I also wrote down the horrid de tox I had and carried that with me.
I gave up bars and jazz clubs.

And I am so glad I did!!

Tazman53

Budfrog I am the odd ball from what I hear other alcoholics say, but then again my last years of drinking were spent drinking 95% of the time driving home from work, sitting alone in my garage drinking, or working in the yard drinking. I had retreated from society and family as well.

Once I got out of detox and threw my self heart and soul into AA I have once again started to socialize, I have been in a lot of drinking situations with folks drinmking around me and I could care less if they were drinking or not.

The only thing I can attest to you that may be of help is that for me the miracle spoken of in AA happened for this old sot very quickly, as it says in the Big Book... There is a solution.

There will be others along with a lot of excellent advice in how to deal with situations like what you mention, I have found that simply saying "No thanks, I don't drink any more." Is all that is needed to be said, if asked why I simply tell them that I do not like myself when I drink, which is an understatement.

stone

If it was me, I would avoid as much as I could at first then go to what I needed to later when I was stronger. If anyone asks just say your taking a break as you have an ulcer or something if you don't want to tell the truth.
Not earth shattering advice lol but it's all I have.

findingout

Hey BudFrog,

I had a counselor in treatment tell me that we can do anything we want to in recovery but that it is a mistake to do something just to prove we can do it.

I believe part of what he meant is that it's a mistake because it leads to an attitude which goes something like "Yes, most people with my problem who are in early recovery have to avoid pubs and hanging with drinking buddies when they are drinking, but not me. I'm the different one, so the rules don't apply to me."

For those situations which can't be avoided, the standard advice is to have an exit plan in place before the event starts and to use it if things start to get iffy.

paulmh

Hi Budfrog

I'll tell you how it was for me. I'm not telling you what you should or shouldn't do, ok?

Until I reached a point where not drinking became the most important thing in my life, I always drank. I could stop for periods of months, but I always went back, because picking up the first drink was always an option. Afer the first one I would drink and drink and drink - for weeks and months.

What can I say - I'm an alcoholic. One of my character traits seems to be an all or nothing temperament! I haven't had a drink for a while. But I remain as vulnerable today. If I pick up a drink - a single, solitary drink - I don't know when I'll stop. I don't even know if I'll stop.

So the most important thing - the factor which informs all my decisions - is "do I feel vulnerable to a drink?". If I do, I get the hell out, get to a meeting, call another alcoholic, whatever it takes. And I trust myself, after a few years, that I can go pretty much anywhere, but only because, like findingout says, I have a part of me that always knows where the door is.

Budfrog

Costco .... I hadn't even thought about Costco when I called in to buy a large bag of bird food but there I was not far from the wine section that (to be fair to Costco) stocks a very good supply of reasonably prices reds and whites.

Now wine drinkers are somehow considered the acceptable face of alcohol abuse. I remember my late aunt saying that my father's drink problems were in the past as he only drank wine. I enjoyed the film 'Sideways' which again seems to re-enforce the fairy tale image that wine has. Wine drinkers are referred to as wine buffs, they write articles in the Sunday Times ..... there can be no association between these people and the guy that sleeps rough outside my office in West London ???? Or can there, maybe the nature of the drink itself is totally irrelevant.

I will genuinely miss opening a weekend bottle of red with my wife as more often than not a glass would suffice for her but anything less than 3 glasses would be hardly worth the turn of the corkscrew for me.

Well the trip to Costco proved worthwhile, as I left with the birdseed under one arm and a pack of 12 33cl bottles of beer under the other (Ausie Branded Ginger Beer) ..... so until my next visit I suppose it's mission accomplished though a long weekend in Lille, France at the start of March is preying on my mind. I've even tried to work out a French phrase which goes something like "Une Bierre Alcohol Non, S'il vous plait !!" .... any advise with my language skills gratefully received.

Tazman53

budfrog I assume you have never seen a wino then. Wine seems to be a brand of alcoholism that is way beyond regular alcoholism in this old drunks opinion. Wine seems to fry the brain long before it cooks the liver from what I have seen. I have known men that were winos that lived in a state that most of your run of the mill respectable alcoholics would not live in.

One wino I knew within a year went from an intelligent gentlemen when semi sober to what is refered to as a wet brain, the man could not even carry on a converstion when he was semi sober any more. It broke this drunks heart to see Festus go down as quickly as he did. In a 3 year time frame he went from owning and operating a huge tree service company to sleeping beside a dumpster in the back of a grocery store wet brained.

CarolD

Yes....we often consider 'our' alcohol
to be superior
or we would mot be drinking it!

The sad truth for we alcoholics is
the delusion kills us.

JMO

Budfrog

Taz, Here in the UK the term Wino is not actually linked that closely with the drink from which the name derives as the poison of choice for most drinkers who sleep rough here is very strong beer (up to 9%) or cider of the same strength. Given their predicament they obviously will consume whatever they can get their hands on and I have heard that many have been known to drink methylated spirit as a last resort.

The American 'wine' Thunderbird did used to have reputation for being consumed by street alcoholics but that was a few years ago.

Tazman53

It is funny how even an old alkie like me see's a wino as something different then me, I know that Festus could be in the middle of DTs and if I offered him a beer he would turn it down, thing about it, he had more class then me, he stuck with his wine, when push come to shove with me I would drink what ever was around, cooking sherry comes to mind!