milwaukeeguy85

So I had been doing so well. My career is going better than ever, getting a new place soon, summer is an arms length away, and I decide it is ok to have a "couple drinks" since I have been doing so well and my mind has improved drastically. My stability, consistency, everything is where I was hoping recovery would lead me. So lets once again revisit what a "couple Drinks" really means. It means you are putting yourself in a terrible position and making yourself absolutely powerless. It makes you defenseless, and it will never go away if you drink. Lets take a look at where "a couple of drinks" lead. A couple of drinks turned in to a non stop 3 day drinking binge, tons of money spent, and a very very miserable withdrawal on my least productive monday since..... last time I had a couple of drinks. Pins and needles, malaise, a bad mood, and lost potential income over a "couple of drinks".We all have our own version of this terrible behavior pattern, and I am sure others on this board may be in the same position. I thought I would post this with hopes that someone who is maybe on the fence about having a couple of drinks will be reminded where it leads them. Good to see everyone and I hope at least a few of you remember me... i haven't forgotten any of you.

TheTinMan

That's the mystery of alcohol. Things are going great, why change that with going back to our old ways? Glad you made it back to SR!

GettingStronger2

I remember you! Hope this is the last time you need to experiment with a couple of drinks. We cannot do a couple of drinks, and you seem to now be well aware of that.

Glad you made it back!

milwaukeeguy85

Its not experimenting when you know the end result. It really comes down to having too big of an ego and not fully embracing that you do not have control over your actions after that first drop enters your system. We are definitely powerless over drinking... that is 100 percent fact.

susanlauren

We "remember" until we don't "remember" anymore. Then it's back to wanting to give it another try at "a couple of drinks" because "this time it will be different". The experiement continues over and over again until we stop and it stops. Susan

keithj

Maybe, milwaukee, it's time to consider whether or not you have control over your actions when you are NOT drinking.

This is what AA means by a mental obsession over which I'm powerless. It doesn't feel like an obsession, it doesn't feel like anything is making me pick up that drink. In fact, it feels just like a choice, doesn't it? But time and time again, stone cold sober, I'd pick up that first drink. Now why would I choose to do that when everything seemed to be going so well?

If you have a choice in the matter, why did you choose to pick up a drink?

Supercrew

Because your mind still found it pleasurable in some way.

CarolD

Welcome back....

I sure hope this will be your last ride on the misery go round.

Ethos23

Yes, this is one of the factors I'm trying to accept. My mind finds it pleasurable, then puts me through Hell with feelings of guilt and anxiety.

I'm just trying to view the whole thing differently. If someone has a peanut allergy, they stay far far away from peanuts. Nothing wrong with that. Working to stay far far away from alcohol.

Supercrew

But peanuts don't make you feel like alcohol does. Alcohol gives you a buzz and it releases feel good chemicals in your brain.

SSIL75

I remember you! Welcome back.

aasharon90

A couple of drink was never enough. There would never
be enough alcohol in this world to satisfy my cravings for it.

Supercrew

Mere abstinence from alcohol does not treat the disease of alcoholism.

That's why I don't like to think of it as a disease, because it's an addiction/compulsion. If drinking is your problem, abstinence will fix it. If you have other issues in your life that you are unhappy with and you are an alcoholic, abstinence will solve your drinking problem, but you still have to cope with the issues that make you unhappy.

Alcoholism and issues with your life are not the same thing, yet many people like to group the two together as if they were one. Alcohol might cause many of the issues, and might solve some of them for the short term, but they are not the same.

susanlauren

Supercrew,
I'm very glad that abstinence is solving your drinking problem. I hope that can be your solution for as long as you wish for it to be. You may not be an alcoholic. Maybe you are a heavy drinker or a problem drinker. Maybe all you need to do is not drink and you'll be fine for the rest of your life. Of course, only you can decide that. I know that I am an alcoholic, and I've tried abstinence as a solution to my drinking problem. It doesn't work. And it doesn't work for other alcoholics either. I've also done years worth (and thousands of dollars worth) of therapy and alternative healing arts to deal with other life issues. Individual therapy, group therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, EMRD, tai chi, yoga, heller work, hypnosis, relaxation tapes, self-help readings, exercise/weight training, diet/nutrition, etc. None of that has relieved me of the mental obsession around alcohol/drinking. None of that has relieved me of the physical craving for alcohol. Maybe I didn't try hard enough? Susan

Supercrew

Susan, having a mental obsession/ compulsion with alcohol, and acting on that feeling are two different things. Speaking for myself, I drank and continued to drink because I still felt it was enjoyable on some level deep in my subconscious. It was ingrained in me for 27 years, and I also had the luck to have the physical craving for more once it hit my lips. It was a 10 year process to finally lose the obsession and get serious about it.

If you continue to drink, yet you tell me abstinence doesn't work, are you really abstaining? If you were you wouldn't be drinking.

I had to start looking at it this way, I never thought about alcohol before I ever drank. It was not a factor in my life. Even for the first 17 years of my drinking, I could basically quit anytime I had to or wanted to. I went for months without it a couple of times, and I quit for a year for the courts before I became obsessive about it and before I became physically dependent upon it. So why now when I reached the apex of my drinking and I knew it was killing me, couldn't I quit? It was in my head. I couldn't imagine life without alcohol, and I was at a point where I knew it was forever, so my "human brain", who likes the feelings of pleasure started telling me it was impossible, until I did day one. Then I got through day two. When the pain of drinking finally outweighed the pleasure is when I was able to quit.Then I was able to see that I could live without alcohol on a daily basis. I am a full blown alcoholic, but it came down to being a self control issue for me.
I had to mature and learn self control.

Dee74

Lets not forget the OP - and lets leave out the 'digs', guys.

thanks
D

DayTrader

Perhaps when you were here before you never came to the conclusion that you shouldn't ever drink again......maybe you planned to get sober for a while and then go back out. ........probably not but we can go that way to cut you some slack.

Now though.......THIS TIME Milwaukee, you've learned that you can't EVER drink safely again, right? (I suspect you already knew that though....). The deal is, now that you know it, can you just not drink no matter what forever? As Keith asked......can you control your life from here on out, knowing full well you can't ever afford another slip up? No "temporary forgetfulness, good reasons, bad days, good days, got the job, got fired from the job, etc" excuses forever?

I didn't eeeeeeeven have to give that a test. There was no question for me I couldn't pull it off "forever." Give it some though.......as Keith asked......as to just how controllable your life is when you're sober! Cuz if you're an alkie, THE dumbest/craziest thing you'll EVER DO you do from a state of being completely free from the effects of any alcohol ---> you believe it's ok to pick up that first drink. That's FAR more insane than anything you'll ever do "under the influence."

CarolD

Some posts have been removed as they were way off topic
which is.......
Others that quoted them are also gone.

Please use PM for personal converssations
and legal/political statements
rather than disrupting the flow of threads.

SweetThing

This is very interesting to me - I posted in the Under 2 weeks thread earlier.

I am trying for the first time to go alcohol free for an extended period of time - that's all I know right now. What is extended?....not sure, 30 days for now I guess. More importantly, if I am unsuccessful I will realize I must not drink at all.

My difficulty is the weekends - always after a series of weekdays alcohol free I feel good and see no reason not to drink again. Then, after a couple of nights of drinking and hangovers I decide - too much feeling bad in the mornings - this should end.

So, to the OP, 'having a couple' for me either becomes have none or have a bunch.

milwaukeeguy85

I sort of liken it to the ex that you thought you had a terrible relationship with, but thought you were absolutely in love with. You know you shouldn't answer that phone call, but for some reason you do. I guess the idea for me was I didn't go out to "get drunk etc" like I used to.. but rather let my ego dictate that I was generally above the problem, (which is clearly a flawed and idiotic way to think about it). Part of my newest difficulties hinge around the fact that I need to recognize that years of Abuse have left their imprint on my soul, my thought processes, and sometimes my resolve is simply not strong enough, eventhough for my safety and the safety of others it NEEDS to be.

The more I have looked about this it really comes down to different types of alcoholics. For instance I am a binge drinker, i dont get cravings like many do, I dont even think about drinking on weekdays or If i have a bad day etc. It never really crosses my mind, in fact I regularily turn down people that just want to have a "couple of drinks" because I know where it will lead.

I guess where the justification in my mind comes from "well hey it used to be 24 beers in a night so its ok to have 2" which I think is a bit different than the bottle of wine a night alcoholic. That is not to say that either needs help more than the other. It just seems to me like a bit different of a thought proccess, and overall type of drinking. We all have the same problem, but it can manifest itself in different ways, and we all have different triggers, drinking patterns etc. But i think one cardinal rule that we can all apply is that there is no such thing as a couple of drinks.

Its just hard to explain, or even understand why we think a couple of drinks is ok despite all the pain it has caused in our lives, and how it has hurt others around us. Maybe there is something deep down inside that is bothering us without our knowledge, even after we have made substantial progress. I dont really know. I just hope someone was able to read this post and I was able to remind them of what would most likely happen to them if they decided to have a "couple of drinks". I feel it would be disrespectful of me to ever post again complaining about the sadness, despair etc it leads you to. Many of you have already shown support in those regards, and it is not fair to repeadetly get advice that you are not following. All those feelings are there trust me.. but that undermines the purpose of why i wrote this long article.

side note- I also apologize if this thread caused any division between people.. I didn't check it again until today and apparently it got a bit off topic and some posts were deleted and it appears a couple members of the board were at each others throats a bit. I also apologize for the length of this post, its really hard for me to find the right words when talking about the subject of drinking.