NOMOMERLOTMAMMA

Watched a movie last night. "A Good Woman". It was a good movie. Set in the 30's..beautiful costumes and the lovely Scarlett Johannson..

After about, oh, the 20th scene of rich people sitting around "the Club" looking glamorous I said to A.."hey, those people sure do drink alot". To which she replied "little jealous there are ya?".

Well, YEAH.

Since I was little, I thought that drinking was glamorous. Cool. Sophisticated. Dinner in a fancy restaurant, glasses of red wine. On the beach? Gin and tonics. If I did that, Erroll Flynn would come up and wisk me away to the Riviera. Good Lord I was playing at life! I was never glamorous while I was drinking. And lets face it, I just ain't a glamorous girl. Period.

I'm never gonna be Scarlett Johannson. I'm embracing my inner dorkiness since I've been sober. That's who I am..and there is nothing wrong with that.

Any thoughts on whether the media/films influenced your drinking in any way?

Karen

Max.J.Milton

Media coverage of rock-stars doing stupid sh*t and getting wasted made me think drinking was hardcore and cool, i used to drink a lot so i'd just lose my inhibitions and do stupid stuff and have people think i was cool. Well, the underlying reason is i was so completely miserable that when i was sober i just spent the whole time wanting to die so drinking was a short vacation from that, but yeah it all started reading about Guns N Roses.
Silly, eh?

CarolD

O My Yes! The movies taught me well.

Smoking with a long cigarette holder
Ever watch Bette Davis inhale?

Black cocktail dresses and tiny veiled hats...French perfume
Sandles with straps and black hose with seams.
A single strand of pearls...Kid gloves.. Evening bags

Cocktail lounges...smokey and dim...Jazz trios...
Men with manicures and expense accounts.

By golly...it was glamorous for me for years.
Me and Myrna Loy..

Then the fun bottles were gone
Addiction and depression were daily.

I drank in juke joints ...hair tangled ...Lipstick smeared
Jeans and T shirts...Pores oozeing stale booze..
I cried often and argued loudly
I had strange bar buddies with destructive habits.

I detested the woman I had become.
I was now 1 step away from
Fay Dunaways "barfly"....

Sooo...movies and I did travel from
Sophisticated to Sodden Slob.

dave47

Ads on the tv with an ice cold beer just out of the fridge were always impossible for me to resist,then again it didn't take much.

miss communicat

Carol

I LOVE that: "Sodden Slob!!"

Karen,

Movies really did influence me. I seemed to always be LIVING in a movie. My own little Universal Studios is in residence upstairs on the top floor of my brain. I had such a fantasy world going that I had a hard time distinguishing fact from fiction.

When I saw "Leaving Las Vegas" and "Sideways" I left the cinema hungover from watching so much drinking go down onscreen.

Now when I see glamour, I take to to the end. Either the end of the movie, which reminds me its a fictional world, or the end as in "sodden slob" (real world me with booze)

Pilgrim

Karen,

I nearly spilt my cup of tea!! I loved "Embracing My Inner Dorkiness".

I find it especially difficult to be glamorous if I try to dance sober!

NOMOMERLOTMAMMA

Ug, Pilgrim, dancing is sooo difficult sober. I miss feeling so free...even though friends have told me I don't dance any different now than I did drunk, well, minus the stumbling. I'm working on finding that freedom. I'll find it eventually.

Pilgrim

Hey Karen. I am ok dancing on my own and I feel freedom from the chains I used to have but I know what you mean. I guess embracing that inner dorkiness takes some practice.

My sponsor puts it so nicely. She says I'll get over myself soon.

Tazman53

I started drinking to be cool, that beer/whiskey always looked so cool with that cancer stick hanging out of my mouth as I blew smoke rings!!! Of course that first drink made me cool, I was (in my mind) the next coolest thing to sliced bread..... I WAS HAPPENING!!!!!

livenletlive

Well, great question. I always did see myself growing up and wanting to enjoy drinking like a gentleman as I saw in the movies. I can honestly say, the times I was able to do that, I had no fun. I was control drinking and was miserable. I drank like a pig and found I could only do that in seclusion.

mike_mass

For me it was my parents who set the drinking example, who in turn seemed to be mimicing the whole Sinatra, Dean Martin rat pack party crowd. So yes, I agree that the media in one form or another has influenced us.

GlassPrisoner

Retching from the dry heaves every morning, dark orange urine, wearing a pair of sweat pants to bed "just in case".

Yeah, glamorous alright.....People forget that the media is not reality.

Hi ! My name's Tyrone & I'm a nerd ! And DAMM proud of it too ! recovery allows me to be different, while still being a part of.

Steve58

From what I have read, and I am by no means an expert on the era, but I have read a lot about it, It seems a lot more people used to drink a lot more than they do today, same as we have seen smoking decline in our lifetime.

S

imbianco

I grew up in a religioius home that didnt believe in drinking and not really even having a tv in the house. When I could sneak and watch tv I cudnt wait to grow up it looked so glamourous, drinking on soap operas looked exciting as well.

CarolD

imbianco...Welome back!

imbianco

Thanks Carol. Unfortunately I am in a hot mess and have reading threads tonite feeling like many of the people that have written in.
I don't want to get into it now but I will. Bottom line I have to go to AA or else...

Will write more later.

CarolD

Ok....when you are ready
please begin a new thread
so we can support you.

Pinkcuda

Now I'm confused???
Why were you watching TV without a beer to begin with?

Bella_Fox

Such an interesting thread, since I was talking to my therapist about something very similar recently.

I used to work in the music industry (which is quite obviously chock full of substance abusers) and to this day, music is a huge, HUGE trigger for me. Certain types of music take me right back, and the next thing I know I'm craving the heady, pulsing sensation of being drunk in a club while a band plays. I always felt so sexy and free...

Also, certain films that depict people drinking or doing drugs trigger me terribly, too. Movies like Go!, Suburbia, Studio 54... they make me miss "the party."

I never thought of drinking as being glamorous, and it didn't influence me before I had the problem -- just since.

Nuudawn

Gosh, I love that. I was having a real problem with that very thing...I was meeting my terrified dorky insecure oversensitive fragile being in my 8 or 9 months of past sobriety. I was a coward and copped out...relapsed a few months.... now I'm back.

Gotta face the inner dork again.