lis79

In the morning's, I know I'm an alcoholic but by 5 o'clock I convince myself that I'm not - everybody drinks and I'm just like everyone else, so I may aswell have a drink..... But when I start drinking, I don't stop til I've passed out (unlike everyone else), I don't usually remember going to bed and I drink every night. Maybe just a few beers instead of the wine (this is often my rationale) but I'll have a bottle of wine on-hand just in case (plus it makes me feel better knowing there's more grog if I need it).

I'm just astounded by the grasp alcohol has on me and my ability to convince myself that I'm normal, so I can justify the next drink!

I really can't imagine NEVER having a drink again but there's a part of me that knows this is the only answer. It seems so unattainable! Every social outing and friendship I have, revolves around alcohol, so what does that leave?

ANGELINA243

There is so much more to life--than drinking. I, too, once felt just like you do right now...I couldn't imagine never drinking again...but now after being sober for awhile...I couldn't imagine voluntarily going to back to that lifestyle. I was a slave to alcohol...and yes, others could stop but I kept drinking until I passed out or ran out of booze--whichever came first. I was sometimes the first one of my friends to get to the bar..and was the last one to leave...usually when it closed.

lis79

Yeah, I know it's a real problem because I try not to drink in public anymore, I like to get drunk in the privacy of my own home, that way I can't embarass myself by acts I don't remember (and there's always plenty of those).....

oodvish54

I know it's tough, for me it took courage, to try other means of staying away from that first drink, till I walked through the doors of A.A. nothing ever changed. Most of all my thinking, that's what had to change for me, it was always the first drink that got me drunk not the 12 I had after that. I had to change the way I was living,cause my way surely wasn't working. Hang in and good Luck!

walt55054life

Not sure--but it sound like to me your still glorifing your drinking and remember you don't have to say you'll NEVER drink again just say for this moment, this day, sometimes this minute, that you won't drink

hollyce

Lis-

I know how you feel.
Quitting seems lame.
You're afraid you're going to lose your friends...
or miss out on the chaos and drunk baffoonary...
or not like going to the places you go to anymore.

Well?

It may totally suck for a while as you try to re-organize your booze brain, which clearly has control over your regular brain.

Get creative with your time.
Find things more productive than just hangin' out and getting drunk! ha! ( I say this because I totally want to hang out with my friends and get drunk... but have chosen the more boring, sober route)

Take a break, and see how you feel. How many days can you go without drinking? Make it a game? And reward yourself with things that make you feel good. Alcohol's thank you card is a hangover. What's your sober brain's thank you card like?

Mine is a pedicure!

psyk0

The mere fact that you go through that every day, that preoccupation with drinking I think is a sign...

I used to think "I'm not normal if I don't drink" but the fact is that I can't drink normally, and when I drink I'm farrrrrr from "normal". Because when I drink I like it so much I can't stop. Until I feel really really bad.
It's a cycle you've got to break Lis, and when you do, you'll feel so much better. I'm 9 months sober now, doesn't seem to long compared to some of the forum posters here (I'm jealous!! ) but it really brings some major changes.
I'm glad I no longer think about alcohol the way I did. It's such a relief, and I feel so much more stable.

You can do it!! It takes time to convince yourself but after a while you don't even entertain the thought anymore.
I try to "kill the thought" when it comes in my mind.
Wanting to drink is just a big red warning flag for me now.

Take care!

Kellye C

I cropped your post just a bit. I can relate to what you wrote. I did my best to convince myself that there was no way I was an alcoholic because I only drank hard for 3.5 years. Like you I woke up each morning without remembering going to sleep the night before. Sometimes I would have huge bruises where I had fallen and I had no idea about the circumstances. This is known as a blackout.

Also like you I woke up determined to stay sober that day. I would be so sick and hungover it was easy to make that vow but by the time the workday was through I couldn't get to the liquor store fast enough!

As far as the friends and social aspect of sobriet, I found a sufficient substitute in AA. Also through working the program the obsession and compulsion to drink has been removed so I can go and do things where alcohol is around and not freak out as long as I am spiritually fit. Does this mean I go hang out in pubs? Absolutely not. There is a saying, if you hang around a barbershop long enough you're going to get a haircut. If I hang around a pub long enough I may end up drinking.

So back to your social life. What types of things do you enjoy doing? Do you have something that you would like to try that you never have before? A lot of people do volunteer work at places that interest them.

I hope this has been somewhat helpful.

Take care,
Kellye

ElChupacabra

I know exactly how you feel. I am right there, right now. I am deeply afraid I will lose good friends if I become a teetotaler ans also lose the abilisty to effectively market on the social circuit with work......but it occurs to me that sometimes we need to make tough choices in life and I think giving up the booze might be one of them. For me, personally, I accept that there are plenty of people out there who are living normal lives and just enjoy themselves without boozing. My biggest fear is that I enoy a drink and that's the worst thing. I'm not yet at the stage where my drinking is just to deal with the bad effects of hangovers. If I still drink and it still breeds confidence in me that as a result I'll want to drink more. That's my biggest enemy.

Don't for one minute think its as easy as one day deciding to drop the suace, because its not. But, with time and gradual reduction, I believe that its well possible. I myself have done cold turkey and its hard. But I know, as a result of cold turley, I'll probbaly be looking for a drink sometime soon and I probably should have eased myself off the drink.

ElChupacabra

See now this is problem for me and I kinda understand where Lis is coming from. Most of my friends are the kind who meet in pubs, so if I don't go to pubs I stay at home with no friends. That's just not fair. I need to learn to go to pubs and find other things to drink, and maintain my willpower.

getr345

What does it matter if you an alcoholic are or not? You obviously drank (drink) too much, hate life because of it, and decided to consider quitting for your own good so don't wrestle with labels. Life is better without booze no matter how you think about it, so run with it...

And if you really want to convince yourself you're not an alcoholic, don't ever drink again. After 20 or 30 years, you'll be convinced...

Closedown

I think I know how you feel... I'm in much the same boat, except that your 5 o'clock is my 6 o'clock (not saying that that's any better, because it isn't, especially since I probably get up later than you do...)

I wish I could suggest something useful but I can't. I hope you do manage to take control of the drink and that though.

BP44

I can always identify with pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. This never happened while drinking. It always happened while I was coming to. I was completely baffled how knowing what another round of drinking would cause, I'd drink anyway. In the morning I'd swear off, by the time I got off work, I'd be lit up again. It is important to find out the truth of whether you are alcoholic or just a certain type of hard drinker. The only way I was able to find this out was to sit down with another alcoholic who had shared the same difficulties and armed with certain facts about himself, whose deportment shouted that a solution was available for me. You can find just such a person in AA.

lis79

Thanks everyone for all the useful advice. I think the likelihood of my being an alcoholic is pretty high as addiction runs in the family (my father, his father & my mother's mother were/are alcoholics and my sister is a former heroin addict now on methadone, valium & god only knows what else - sounds pretty miserable when I put it in writing!).
My dad successfully quit alcohol about 20 yrs ago and is heavily involved in AA but unfortunately we're not very close, I mean we get along okay, but he's in Ireland with rest of my family (although they're not that close either) and I moved to Australia 10 years ago. I think I've literally been running from my addiction for years. I start travelling when I was 18 and keep going till about 5 years ago. The backpacker lifestyle hid my addiction well, never staying in any one place for too long and being able to tell myself that it didn't really matter what I'd done the night before cos I was never going to see those people again!! But now that I've settled somewhere and have a regular income, I can afford to drink every night and so I do or should say 'did' cos I'm into day 2 now of not drinking, yay! At the end of the day, the bad far outweighs the good for me and I've just got to knock alcohol off this pedestal I've got it on. My friends will just have to get used to it. They'll probably appreciate not having to take me to the hospital at 2am cos I've fallen and cracked my head open on the way out of the pub (one of many incidences).

lisa t

hey lis...your post struck a cord with me...i NEVER thought i'd give up drinking...how could i have fun? how would i ever be able to socialize with people? would i have any friends left? all of these questions and more went through my head. but it came down to this for me...had my life become unmanageable...a big resounding YES!!!!!!!!!!
i lost control, many more times than i can count...i spent everyday thinking about how i was going to get a drink, where i was going to go, where i was going to get the money from, what story i was going to make up for my family, etc. etc. i told myself time & time again at the beginning of the day that i wasn't going to drink that night..usually after puking my guts out for the first several hours of the day, but by 5pm i had forgotten all of that and was at it again. i now know that i can't have one drink...ever...and for today i am a truly grateful recovering alcoholic!
as they told me at my first aa meeting...stick around for awhile and listen, if you hear something that relates to you...keep coming back...still here after almost 2 yrs.
i wish you peace & clarity!
Lisa

Tommyh

I know how you feel too,I been there.I remember feeling so sick in the morning and then make it to work feeling like I was going to die.Swearing this is it,no more.When quitting time came around I ran straight to get more booze.I would go into a bar thinking a couple would make me feel better and wake up somewhere hrs later wondering what had happened.
That happened for years.I thought of and tryed quitting and the thought of never drinking again or quitting for 30 yrs seemed unattainable.I kept going back to the bottle.Then a old friend who was a alcoholic told me about just not drinking for today,one day at a time.That gave me a new perspective and a attainable goal.I started taking living life one day at a time and it still works.I am still sober 20 yrs later.
I go to AA also,because my new sober friends replaced the old drinking folks that I drank with.

dennis72

I know what you are going through. You have avoid those people who are drinking!

Kimmers927

Wow, I could have wrote your post 6 years ago! I kept rationalizing that I was not an alcoholic, however I would panic if I did not have "backup" booze in the house, had to go to any kind of social function that did not serve alcohol and could not imagine life without alcohol in it. I was what was called a highly functioning alcoholic -- very typical in the business world. Thanks to a therapist getting in my face, I decided to give AA one chance. ONE meeting. I still did not believe it to be true that I was really an alcoholic. So, I went to a meeting -- and I still didn't believe it. I didn't fit in there, I told myself. But it was after the meeting when a woman asked me to go get a coffee that I began to really understand that I did not drink like a NORMAL drinker. It was amazing, she was a professional, sober 25 years, and could relate to all my stories as I could hers. She gave me a big book and said if I wanted to go to another meeting, just call her. If I didn't, that was okay too, but asked me to think about it. 4 days later I called and today I am over 6 years sober. I tried to hang with my old friends, but they really didn't want to hang with me if it wasn't in bars. Pretty soon, I had lots of new sober friends that I didn't want any part of my old group. They introduced me to parties w/o alcohol, great restaurants, movie Saturdays, dvd nights, fitness classes and hanging in cool coffee shoppes -- and most of all relating to each other in a real way.... talking, laughing and relating -- without any alcohol. I also actually began meeting people who, although they drank minimally, there life did not revolve around drinking... I did not realize these people even existed... they could take it or leave. And the best part of it all-- no hangovers, memory lapses, -- and real friends. The choice is yours...

Pam08

What a connection I feel, get drunk, feel guilty about it the next morning, say this is it..then boom, feel better, drinking again. I stopped drinking out in bars years ago, drank at home..didn't feel like I was so bad since I was not drink and driving..not making an A** of myself in public, and I was not spending every penny I had, I could get drunk on 15 bucks at home. BUt my life became unmanageable... blackouts all the time: lost my self esteem: relationship went down: i put on weight, which made me feel horrid: I became less social: I pulled back from my family: I was drunk at times when my daughter would call and want me to watch my grand daughter..whom is the most precious thing in my lie..and to say no I can't because I am drunk..at 1 pm...so sick. I felt like the biggest loser, why I couldn't be like everyone I knew and live a normal life. But now, I am feeling better, life is slowly coming back...I have major issues at home, but I am not drinking over it. I am thinking clearly of what next. I still think of drinking at times, but i push it out of my mind...AA and this forum is so keeping me going forward. I am the lucky one...I just have to keep the past in the past, and the future in my dreams ...Sobriety is a blessing

Boleo

Alcoholism is more about blind spots than it is about alcohol or drugs. If we did not have blind spots the " I convince myself that I'm not..." part of your post would not be a problem.

It sounds like the "grasp alcohol has on me" is your current Higher-Power. What you need is a new HIGHER-POWER in your life that helps you overcome your old higher-power.

If you need alcohol in your life to feel comfortable with "social outings" and
"friendships" then what you need is spiritual tools that can make you feel comfortable in your own skin without drugs or alcohol. Namely; humility, serenity and benevolence.

Abstinence is NOT DRINKING and feeling bad about it - Recovery is
NOT DRINKING and feeling good about it.