Closedown

Hello all I decided to join here a week or so back because I feel like I've been having problems with alcohol and could do to cut down, and felt like I could do with some advice. I'm going to write a sort of background post below, but I'd just like to say that some of my descriptions might sound like they're glorifying alcohol, but they're not. It's just the way I feel.

Anyway... I'm an undergraduate student and I'm in the middle of my degree right now. I've had clinical depression for a long time and have always been socially awkward. I started drinking moderately when I was about 16 or 17 and, over the last couple of years, my alcohol intake has gradually started creeping up, which I think is what is making my depression worse, staining my teeth and giving me constant hangovers. Nevertheless I do have some sort of reasoning behind my alcohol usage. If I'm on my own nowadays, and it's, say, 6pm or so, and I'm not drinking, I really can't be bothered to do anything. I know that if I have something significant to eat, I'll just feel sick and angry, and if I try to write, I feel like it'll just be nonsense and then I'll get angry again. And I'll be too scared to leave my apartment because of the possibility of social interaction, and I fear it'll all be awkward, as it often is when I don't drink. Not to mention the fact that I can never fall asleep until after 2am when I don't. When I do, the night goes quicker, and I feel in a better mood, and although I get worked up it seems fun at the same time. Socialising gets easier and I can easily fall asleep before midnight. What's more, I'll actually be able to get up in the morning really easily afterwards, despite the fact that I'll probably have a sore head or feel slightly sick.

Nights out seem to depend on me drinking loads as well. If I go out, I'm always hellishly uneasy and wanting to escape until I've had 4-5 drinks. And after that, it doesn't take much more for me just to want to escape and enjoy the drunkenness on my own.

It doesn't help that my happiest memory of recent times was when I drank three-quarters of a 3-litre bottle of white cider one Friday afternoon last April and sat in a takeaway waiting for some chips in the evening, with the sun shining through the window. It was an utterly meaningless happiness, I know, but the distance that I felt from the world was incredibly comforting. Was horrible the day after, though, of course. And also the fact that I often seem to lose all knowledge of who I am when I'm completely sober, like... I'll wonder who I am, and I won't be able to think of anything, and I'll feel like some sort of biological computer without a personality, and I'll feel awful because of it.

So now that I've waffled quite a bit, I might as well get to the actual point: how do you cut down when cutting down just makes me feel unhappy, bored, frustrated and socially inadequate, no matter how slowly I do it? Thanks for any help.

walt55054life

I would suggest finding an AA meeting and a sponsor to help you become happy! I was misearable in my last 3 months of my alcoholism not answering phone calls and doorbells only going out to get another bottle my house was full of filth and I thought I was happy until it just got PROGRESSIVLY worse. Just as it has gotten progressivly better after 10 years of drinking I know that one day one week or on month is going to make me happy.

My disease of alcoholism wants me to be lonely and cut off forom the outside world. Alcoholism wants me to be happy in solitare until it kills me

Pam08

Ya know, i started drinking in my younger years for fun, well I say fun and it was, but the underlying reason at that time to drink was to fit in, be more social, to have courage, have fun, be more fun..i could go on and on. I hear some of that stuff from you. The only problem is that fun stop happening...I became a solitary drinker, took alot more for me to get drunk. I couldn't stop or even cut down..I would say okay today I will only have 1 or 2,,,and a 1/5 later i was smashed, passed out. If you can cut back and control it, then you are not an alcoholic. I am an alcoholic so that was/ is not a possibility. You have to figure that out on your own..I hope if you decide you are an alchy you can get ahold of it before you get to where some of us got before we found another way. God bless ..keep posting and reading here..lots of great info and support here for ya..

bob_sapp

My advice is if you've got a problem with drinking, quit drinking and go to AA. If you don't have a problem with drinking, then go drink. It sounds like you have a problem. Also don't get hung up on the term "alcoholic". The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking, doesn't matter how many years you drank for.

bugsworth

I can't give any advise on cutting down....tried and failed that one over and over.

Social situations can cause anxiety when you are are normally use to being buzzed...no way around you most go thru it. First thing first...a decision to quit drinking is in order.

CarolD

I know clinical depression can be treated by medical professionals.
Pouring alcohol on this disorder is fueling the fire that is already there.

Welcome to SR...

Closedown

Thanks for the replies. I haven't ignored any of them, but it's always difficult to reply to everyone in one post :P

About Alcoholics Anonymous: doesn't that require a belief in God? I admire people who can do so, but I just can't seem to. I've tried, but I just can't believe without the doubt creeping in and stopping me believing. It's like I'm stuck between believing and not believing, but being slightly closer to the latter. That said, there is an AA group a few kilometres away from where I live, although it's not an English-speaking group due to my location :brick

The depression thing is a bit complicated. It seems like after 3 years of various therapies and medication that nothing seems to work, regardless of whether I drink or not. I don't know how many times I've been to the doctor's about it. I'm going to get my medication changed completely in the New Year, though. You'll no doubt be right when you say that alcohol won't be helping it at all, but without it, although my mood is slightly better, I'm incredibly self-conscious and feel like everyone's laughing at me, no matter what I do. I know that can't possibly be true, but you know when feelings override reason so much that you can't help but 'accept' (i.e. delude yourself into thinking) that your fears are realistic?

Sorry if I'm being a bit of an awkward customer, but my subconscious is an incredibly difficult thing to please :P

walt55054life

You should read the big book chapter 'we agnostics' and I do believe in a HP whom I call God but my sponsor in AA is athetist and he told me that he believes in God because people in AA do and they say it keep them sober and it has so there must be a God FOR THEM

Also the only requirement for AA memebership is a desire to quit drinking NOTHING ELSE NOTHING MORE! I have clinical depression as well but AA has helped that trumendeously its really been a program of life since I got over the obsession to drink.

Also you can borrow my HP if you don't believe when your stressed just talk to Walts HP until you find your own!

Good luck one day at a time