JackGolfer

Hello Everyone. I'm new here and I have a question.

I don't know if I would classify myself as an alcoholic, but I certainly have exhibited signs of problem drinking in the past. My drink of choice is Scotch and water. For the past several months I would come home from work and wold start drinking until I went to bed. As I'm sure many drinkers would say, it helped me to relax. On the other hand, I can have a beer or two and stop. I simply don't care to have more than that. There have even been times where I've started to drink a beer and didn't even finish it. My wife drinks wine, and I don't care to touch it, not even when there's no Scotch or beer in the house. I realize that the amount of Scotch I was drinking was unhealthy, so I have backed off and haven't had any in about two weeks.

So, my question is this- is it safe for me to have a couple of beers as long as I avoid the Scotch? I supposed we grow up thinking that "true alcoholics" will drink anything, even mouth wash if it has alcohol in it. I hope this makes sense. Thanks.

suki44883

Welcome to SR, JackGolfer! The thing to realize is that alcoholism is progressive. No one starts out drinking mouthwash. There was a time I wouldn't drink anything other than beer. Wine gave me a headache and I just had no taste at all for hard liquor. The occasional margarita was all I could stand, and even that had to be made so I could not taste the liquor.

By the time I decided I had a problem, I had in my fridge, a 12 pack of beer, a bottle of gin, a bottle of vodka, and on the counter was a handle of Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum. I guess the beer just didn't do it for me after a while and I searched out things that tasted fairly good and it just went from there.

As far as your brain or liver is concerned, alcohol is alcohol. My dad never drank anything other than beer and died from cirrhosis. Again, alcohol is alcohol.

Only you can decide if you are alcoholic, but if alcohol has caused problems for you in the past and you continue to drink it, that may be something to stop and consider. The fact that you have sought out an alcohol recovery forum says something in itself.

Again, welcome to SR. I don't know if I answered your question or not, but I'm sure others will be along with additional information and opinions.

aeo1313

Welcome...this is a great place!!

If it helps you any, I am an alcoholic and I won't touch red wine, scotch, or whiskey no matter what!!

KnowHope

Dr. Bob's words from his story "Dr. Bob's Nightmare":

"For the benefit of those experimentally inclined, I should mention the so-called beer experiment. When beer first came back, I thought that I was safe. I could drink all I wanted of that. It was harmless; nobody ever got drunk on beer. So I filled the cellar full, with the permission of my good wife. It was not long before I was drinking at least a case and a half a day. I put on thirty pounds weight in about two months, looked like a pig, and was uncomfortable from shortness of breath. It then occurred to me that after one was all smelled up with beer nobody could tell what had been drunk, so I began to fortify my beer with straight alcohol. Of course, the result was very bad, and that ended the beer experiment."



Dr. Bob's Nightmare
Big Book quote first edition

JackGolfer

Hello Suki and thank you for your kind words! My father was (is?) an alcoholic and his drink of choice was gin. I never saw him drink anything else. Yes, alcohol is alcohol, but if there just happens to be that one drink we can't handle, but can handle the rest, is that ok? Maybe it sounds like I'm trying to rationalize my continued drinking...? In college I used to drink a LOT of beer, but as I got older I switched to Scotch, and I just don't enjoy drinking copious amounts of beer. Funny you should mention rum, b/c my wife bought some the other day, and I haven't even given it a second thought. I just don't like it. Scotch on the other hand... :-) Maybe I can continue to have an occasional beer, and monitor my intake to see if I begin to replace the Scotch with the beer...again, maybe that sounds like a rationalization. Thanks again!

hypochondriac

I get your question Jack...it even got me thinking...is there a safe drink I can drink...?!! But then that is the alcoholic in me.

My experience with this...

I 'tapered off' alcohol over a few weeks with red wine because it was not something I ever drank alot of. But it didn't stop me from occasionally thinking '**** it, I'll just have a few beers seeing as I am still drinking anyway'. Even small amounts of alcohol were keeping the addiction alive and I was only a few thoughts away from a full on drinking session.

Oh, and beer was my drink of choice and I am an alcoholic. I've been sober 4 months and there has been half a bottle of whisky, baileys and sherry in my cupboard the whole time. And I used listerine and spat it out My drinking career was a bit backwards. I started off on vodka but had to give that up due to blackouts. But like Dr. Bob, I did start supplementing my beer with gin and whisky and wine in a haphazard way so that I had no idea how much I was actually drinking.

Don't worry about the 'true alcoholic' thing. Just think about your own relationship with alcohol and what you want to do about it. Do you even like beer? Is it really worth all that effort trying to find something you won't go overboard on? How much effort is it worth to keep alcohol in your life? There is no way of telling how you will respond to just drinking beer. Maybe you will be fine, maybe not. But it might be worth throwing in abstaining as an option too

Best of luck and welcome to SR x

suki44883

Okay, just thinking out loud here...Why did you switch to Scotch just because you didn't enjoy drinking copious amounts of beer? Why not drink a beer or two and be done with it? Are you trying to reach a certain plateau and you couldn't get there with just a couple of beers? You don't have to answer here...just something for you to think about.

In any case, I'm glad you are here and I hope you will continue to come here and read about the struggles others have had and many of them started out by asking questions just like yours. You very well may not be alcoholic, but if I'm satisfied after eating one steak, I quit eating.

P.S. to add: When we have alcoholism in our family, it increases the chance that we, ourselves, will have problems with alcohol.

CarolD

Welcome...

The Center for Disease Control says that moderate drinking is no more
than 2 drinks a day for men...1 for women.

A drink is considered by them to be ...12 oz. beer...5 oz of wine or
1 1/2 oz of spirits.

They all do the same damage internally ...alcoholics process toxins
differrnly than most drinkers. All who drink risk damage
All alcohol is a toxic liquid...tho some taste better than others
to the palate...it's not the "vehicle" that is the problem.

Another way to look at this is....Why are you drinking?

Sapling

I'm not real sure what that sounds like.

JackGolfer

@hypochondriac - thank you for your response. You definitely make some good points. "...keeping the addiction alive..." Beer may just very well do that until, like you said, I just say **** it I'll go get some Scotch. Yes, I do like beer, but I no longer enjoy drinking beer after beer after beer. I'm definitely a one or two beer guy, especially after a round of golf on a hot day. I don't think (key word think) I'd ever decide after one beer to keep drinking beer until I got hammered. But it very well could lead to a Scotch relapse.

@suki - good question! I switched to Scotch after a co-worked turned me onto it. He mentioned the oak casks and how it was made. I was intrigued. I had had it before and thought it tasted like well water. :-) I then had it with water on the rocks and I was hooked. I think I liked it because it was so cold, and I like chewing the ice. Also, I could get a buzz faster. I'd get tired of drinking beer before I got a good buzz off of it. Thanks again for your support!

suki44883

I think you are asking honest questions. Many people think that alcoholics are all dirty, jobless, homeless people who live under a bridge somewhere and do nothing all day but drink. Nothing could be further from the truth. Alcoholism knows no boundaries. It affects the wealthy, the poor, the professional, the CEO, the attorney, the politician, and every day folks like you and me. There are alcoholics who go days or weeks, and sometimes even months without a drink. But, when they do drink, they lose control of how much, and how long it will last. These are called binge drinkers.

Again, I am glad you are here. Please come back and let us know how you are doing. We do care.

Sapling

I'd put it like this Jack...If you could line up all the different packages that alcohol comes in...Beer...Wine...Scotch...Rum...Coolers...Spritz ers....Whatever....And squeezed the alcohol out them....Could you handle that?....Why don't you give yourself a little test...Go 90 days without drinking anything...No alcohol 90 days...If you are fine after that...Name your poison....If you can't do it...Or you can't live in your own skin without it...It might be time to look into some kind of recovery program. That's a good way to ease your mind.

Someguy23

I can relate to this. Beer is my drink of choice but I only ever got obscenely drunk on beer when I wanted to get obscenely drunk.

It's vodka, straight and room temperature, that I have occasionally not been able to handle. I'm not saying I got wasted every time I drank vodka, but I've never blacked out on anything else.

I think this is more a question of habit and taste than addiction. Inability to control how much or how often you drink is what indicates addiction in my opinion.

davaidavai

Why do you want to drink 2 beers? To relax? I could never relate to this notion of relaxing over 1 or 2 drinks. The idea, the deep pleasure, was the anticipation of at least 5 drinks which generally progressed to 8 or 9, sometimes 12. Why do you want one can of gross canned beer? There is certainly pleasure within a pint of bitter on a hot day after walking a distance, perhaps along a Roman Road, but the pleasure isn't nearly intensive enough to afford this constant and weird negotiation with one's self, the draining efforts at foisting a bizarre satisfaction at 'only having one', the risk of having many. Wouldn't it just be more interesting to simply have a nice seltzer water and focus on the conversation? Not to say you are exactly like this. Maybe though there is a germ of similarity.

hypochondriac

I'm not sure being able to 'handle' any drink is a good indication of alcoholism, or proof that you are not. I had blackouts on vodka so had to stop that. I had to be very careful with white wine because I drank it like beer and got wasted very quickly. In a way I was very good at controlling my drinking because I never got out of control more than a few times. I carried on mainly on beer because it was a 'safe' drink. I could handle it. But I still ended up physically dependent on it. I was probably only really physically dependent for the last year or so of my drinking but I still thought I was an alcoholic a decade before that because I really liked drinking. That was the psychological dependence. Which in a way has very little to do with alcohol and more to do with using something external to ourselves as a coping strategy.

Sapling

Alcohol is alcohol...Bottom line...You drink enough of any of it...And it will screw you up...Beer was safe for you?...It almost cost me my life.

KnowHope

Jack, after I got sober I started seeing my thinking differently. I began to look at the way I had switched drinks to my new "favorite drink." This usually happened after a drink stopped working for me - that is, I was getting sick from it because I couldn't control the amount I drank. I tell you with all sincerity that when I completed the list and counted how many "favorite drinks" there had been it came to 110...

hypochondriac

Totally agree Sapling...the quote marks were supposed to convey irony. Beer gave me alcoholic neuropathy and anxiety which nearly took over my life x

Jfanagle

People for whom alcohol is not a problem don't seek to "control" their drinking.

That statement brought more clarity to my world and gave me a measuring stick to offer when asked questions about how much, what kind or when a person should be concerned about their drinking. I am only sure about one person in this world who has a drinking problem, he is the guy I shave every morning.

As to other people's drinking habits I have settled for the statement at the top of the page. It usually gives who ever is asking the question something to think about.

Hope this helps, regardless, best wishes,

Jon

Sapling

I guess that falls under the "How many normal drinkers post on a recovery site"? Good post Jon.