functioning alcoholic...or what was your pattern?
 

Just wondering about your alcoholic drinking pattern.

When at my sickest, i would buy a 1/2pint vodka and a six-pack of beer on my way home...most days of the week. I would finish 1/2 the vodka before going inside. When inside i would crack open a beer...mostly to mask the vodka on my breath. At some point over the next hour i would finish the vodka...usually in the garage...hiding it. One or two more beers before i was done(i thought the appearanceof only drinking a few beers was keeping my problem hidden...). I'd then proceed to act a normal, happy father and husband.
My wife would occaisionally make comments but not force the issue...(she is a social drinker)...and my kids were beginning to tune into the fact that dad was altered.
I regret that so much. That 'away' time in a buzz was time'away' from my children...even when i was with them. I'm still trying to come to terms with that...
This aspect of my drinking...the hard liquor and conealing it in my house...i did my best to deceive my family and did so very well. I was utterly alone in my illness...for a long time.

At any rate, did any of you have a pattern similar to mine? Hard liquor? Family? Hiding it? Hiding it well?
Is this the common tale of a functioning alcoholic?

Almost exactly

Yea, I spent a lot of time in the kitchen, “cooking”, I think most times I was already blotto by the time dinner was brought to the table.

Not so sure I was “hiding it well”, except from myself. Am sure everyone else knew exactly what was going on.

I would do hard liquor too if the wine wasn’t hitting me fast enough.

My pattern was the same every time I drank. I'd stop by the liquor store and get a 2 liter of hawaiian punch, a fifth of vodka and a half pint of vodka. I always got the half pint with the fifth because the worst thing for me when I was drinking was the thought of running out before I blacked out, pretty sad.

Then I'd dump out about 1/3 of the 2 liter of hawaiian punch and pour the whole fifth into the 2 liter. I'd go into the back bedroom close the door turn off the lights and turn on my Drinkin' music (The Doors, Hendrix, lynyrd skynyrd) and just sit there and finish off the 2 liter/fifth in about 5-6hrs. Somtimes I'd work myself about half way through the extra half pint, other times the fifth would do it. That was my entire life day after day. I wouldn't come out of the room but if I ever did then I figured no one would know because I was drinking out of a Hawaiian punch bottle. Like they couldn't tell I was drunk out of my mind...I can't believe the things I made myself believe back then.

I hate to even think about how I was just a couple short months ago but it's something I for sure don't want to ever forget.

Steve

For me, this was the typical day: Get off work, have 2 beers and 2 shots at the bar before heading home. Stop and pick up a 6-pack of 16oz beers and 1 24-oz beer, for the ride. Polish that off on the way home, start drinking the 6-pack, and pass out somewhere between beers 3 and 6. Wake up in the morning, count my beers to see how many I had left, and do it all over again.

While living with my fiancee. Yeah, I'm guessing she probably has some resentments built up toward me.

I hid rum in my desk (I work from home daytimes), or I'd sneak into the kitchen and have a slug out of whatever I could reach in the liquor cabinet.

I would stop at Texas Roadhouse right at 4pm. That's when they would open the doors for business. Happy hour was $1 drafts. I would drink $5 worth and head home by 5pm. Being self employed, I had no problem with starting early. I would get home and start drinking rum and coke till I would go to bed around 9 or so. My family had accepted my drinking to a point. Kids would ask if they could get me my beer. Wife would just work around me, but she was getting fed up with living alone. Not much of a husband when your drunk all the time. Weekends was sun up, sun down, non stop. A week before I quit, my 6 year old son wanted to drink beer and said he wish he could get drunk like his dad. That hit home. Still I fell harder the last week because of it. Trying to medicate the pain. Woke up the next Sunday morning thinking, I can't and won't do this any more. Sooo... two months later and not a sip. Many things I have screwed up in the past 6 years, but I'm sober with a clear mind to accept the problems and move forward. I don't have all the answers, but each day I can work on my family, finances... etc., with baby steps. I couldn't do that while I was drunk. Ya those years where a waste, but I use that to motivate me.

my 2cents

I don't think anyone knows i am an alcoholic, but perhaps everyone does.
I always thought of my self as a high-functioning alkie.

I hid my wine so well no one ever found my hiding place. But the kids knew I was drinking and would beg me to stop. At first I didn't see how bad it was getting, but when I started hiding the bottles I knew I was in a bad way. I 'thought' I was functioning just fine but I was only fooling myself.:(

I lived alone when my drinking slid me into alcoholism.

No reason to hide anything from anyone....excluding work.
All my friends were ... at best...excessive drinkers.
Family members were scattered many miles from me.

I consider my bottom was mental...not physical.
Drinking had made me depressed...I hated myself.

I often said..."I'm putting the fun into functioning alcholic"

I thought functioning meant holding down a job.
When my fun bottles were empty ...I continued to drink.

I was astounded to discover I could not simply quit!
The mental obcession was in charge ...:eek:

Anyway....back on topic....my drinking patterns changed
as my alcoholism progressed. External factors had
little to do with my drinking or quitting.

The past drinking me ....I learned how to deal with
by committing to God and AA's 12 Steps.

My new fantastic life began 20 years ago..:yup:
hope everyone finds their way into joy!

i'd much rather share about our recovery from that lifestyle.

"At any rate, did any of you have a pattern similar to mine? Hard liquor? Family? Hiding it? Hiding it well?
Is this the common tale of a functioning alcoholic? "

Yes very common, for me a functioning alcoholic is one that doesn't drink and works on learning how to live life in their own skin.. guilt, shame and deception is not functioning..

I functioned pretty well for a long time while I was drinking. Sticking only to weekends, and then only after work etc... I eventually got to the point I wasn't functioning at all, though. I just drank pretty much constantly and even just going to the store to buy groceries or other simple everyday things was difficult, because I was either sick or drunk. I always think of this when someone mentions "functioning alcoholic". I bet all alcoholics are able to function at first, but the longer you drink the more it takes over you life and the harder it is to function. To me that is very important to remember. It truly is progressive, in my experience.

Honestly, I think the term functioning alcoholic is a complete oxymoron. Yeah by all appearances I kept a great job, home, marriage, no duis.. many years ago I actually would mix vodka in my beer to make it 'stronger', from a hidden vodka bottle. I stopped that once hubby found the bottles. Fast forward a few years, add availability of hard liquor at a grocery store (its otherwise illegal), and I was hiding vodka again, but chugging it straight and chasing it with juice.

Then one weekend I got economical and bought a gallon huge bottle.. and drank on a @unday morning to chase the shakes. I woke up in the ER with my husband and parents crying at my bed. My bac was .568, and I should have been dead. This stuff is horrible, and progressive.

I started drinking again 3 weeks laster, deluding myself and huby that id never 'get like that again'. 2 months later I was driven home from work at 9am for being drunk at work. I don't even remember it. I haven't drank since.

My pattern as a binge drinker was hiding my cans everywhere and starting to realize this was not normal.
My bottom was like flutter, I went to work drunk. I was not functioning, even if I thought I was.
I quit then and there for over 5 years, then relapsed in July for 2 short days and have been sober since. I would not trade any of my sober days for a beer, totally not worth it 4 me.

Yeah I certainly had a pattern. If it was a weeknight it consisted of drinking either with dinner or stopping of at a bar on the way home with co-workers. Shots were always involved if I went out. Typically 3 shots and 4 to 5 beers in 3 hours. I would then get McD's on the way home and eat it in my care (gave me more time to drink at home). Once home drink 3 (quad shot Whiskey and Cokes). Once done with that, I'd eat again to sop up the booze, and then take a xannax. Wake up the next day, take another xannax. Then take another xannax at 5pm when I got home. Pray that I don't die in my sleep. Then wake up and start this cycle over...

What a crappy life I lead!!!!!!!! Good topic. I don't ever want to go back...

Yes, I agree with that, but we all slide into the abyss at different rates and with different styles. I didn't go chronic until my mid-40's.

But in retrospect, drinking seriously affected my life even before I went chronic.

I forgave myself for being too hungover to go to work or I went to work too hungover to work properly, I partied instead of making good grades in college, I risked VD/pregnancy/violence with unsafe drunk sex, I consistantly chose drinking buddies instead of real friends, I was constantly drawn to people and places who drank abnormally.

Was I "functional", yes, I suppose. But look at the term functional: it means it suffices, is "okay", passes the minimal requirements. It doesn't mean excell, or do above average or do great things or reach your full potential.

I look back at all my years of functional drinking and see how it negatively affected my sense of ambition and drive.

That was me... many years just getting by.

So much familiarity in these stories.

It always shocked me when I would be cleaning or putting something away in a closet and come across a bottle hidden in the back (sometimes empty, sometimes not).

For the last few years, my typical routine (every second day) was to hit the bar for a couple of glasses of wine after work, then hit the liquor store and pick up a litre of wine (until right before I stopped drinking, I had also added a bottle of vodka to the mix..to throw in the freezer, just to make sure I didn't run out before the end of my night).

I'd then proceed to drink the litre of wine, perhaps a little vodka. Then pass out, get up and go to work, totally hungover, come home feeling like ****, eat a bunch of crap and start the whole process over again after work the next day.

I'm 16 days clean and still finding empty half gallon empty vodka bottles around the house hidden (i'd hide them so I could get the trash up so the wife didnt catch me).. found around 8 today.... Then yesterday, I opened the trunk to my car, found around 12-14... Keep in mind, they could only be from december on, because that was the last time I did a clean sweep..

Jeez...