bumble

I have been struck by what, to me, seems like a radical notion: that there is NOTHING INHERENTLY IMMORAL ABOUT DRINKING ALONE.

In my 5 years of increasingly-frequent binge drinking, 99% was done at home, alone. And I have felt incredibly, deeply, painfully ashamed of this. So ashamed I never wanted to see anyone ever again because I was sure I was less than dirt, that I was pathetic, that I was absolutely, completely, permanently worthless.

And then...several weeks ago, it occured to me that I had not once - not even ONCE - gotten drunk and kicked a puppy, nor had I ever gotten drunk and shaken a baby, nor, really, done anything THAT BAD. I have not, in many, many years, done anything while drinking other than sit at home, passing time until I passed out. By myself. If I was hurting anyone at all, it was just me. Drinking was, for me, just a way of passing time until I passed out.

Despite this, I was ashamed of myself...my parents cried when I told them...my sisters were ashamed for me when I told them...the man I loved couldn't even look at me after I told him (then quickly dumped me)....Yet, I hadn't actually, ever, done anything, to them.

A waste of time, to be sure, but why all the shame?

PaperDolls

I don't think I felt shame for drinking alone per se .... it was that I wasn't living any kind of life and I was tired of it. I was ashamed because I said I would stop but I didn't. I couldn't.
And mostly, I was ashamed because for so long I was sure I was only hurting me and I was WAY wrong. I was hurting everyone in my life that loved me.

Busby56

I guess I was ashamed to have to hide my behavior from my family. I was sneaking something around them. Yeah, I was down in "my" workshop in the basement, a place where a guy can, well, be a guy...but looking back, it was not a very noble thing to be doing.

bumble

Those that loved me were obviously hurt, but I'm not sure why. I wasn't drunk around them. I didn't say anything unkind to them. So, in light of that, if I had taken up knitting alone, and didn't say or do anything unkind, I wouldn't have felt ashamed, and they wouldn't have been upset. What's the difference?

ABSOLUTELY there are better things to be doing - cooking, photography, reading, cycling, etc. - and I have picked these up bit by bit instead of drinking and it is a HUGE improvement in terms of time spent. Now that I see drinking as a (morally-neutral) complete waste of time, I have no desire to drink. I'm just not sure why I have to feel so badly about having chosen to squander my time drinking as opposed to some other harmless activity.

Bubovski

I used to drink a fair bit alone as well as in company.
I think you answer your own question; by drinking and passing out you were certainly hurting yourself.
Also, when intoxicated you never know what you might do, given any potential situation.

Dee74

by looking at the number of qualifiers in that sentence sounds like maybe you recognise it wasn't that good either Bumble?

I don't know what you did and personally, I would never impose my concept of morality on others here.

But I know what I did.

I look back at what I've done over the last 6 years sober.
I contrast that to what I did for the six years plus before that, drinking at home.

I did a lot of hurt, to myself - I did a lot of embarrassing things that altho noone else saw, still bought me shame and damaged my self esteem.

I hurt my loved ones too - I was emotionally unavailable for a lot of the time. Sometimes I was cruel cold and selfish, even if just a phone call interrupted my drinking.

I lived a selfish, enclosed, and totally self indulgent lifestyle.

I dunno about you, Bumble but that was not the person I wanted to be.

D

PaperDolls

My mother's alcoholic drinking effected me deeply and I can't say that she ever kicked my dog or called me names. What hurt me the most was watching her health decline quickly and I could do nothing to save her. She wouldn't listen to me when I told her I was worried. She nearly killed herself and I'm not exaggerating. She's been sober for nearly 10 years now and it still effects me today.

bumble

Aww...PaperDolls! I'm sorry! That's awful. And thank you for sharing - it really does help me see why they were so upset. Guess I didn't think they should care that much...


Good, catch, Dee, as always...And you're right, it is pretty embarassing to be stumbling around your house black-out drunk, even if no one saw. And it's embarassing to wake up to a "surprise" home-made tomato/celery/cheese pizza (celery? I know - who puts celery on a pizza?) and a band-aid on your thumb because apparently your fingers were stumbling, too, and you don't remember making pizza. At all. Even if no one saw, it IS a little shameful.

I knew I could count on SR to help me make sense of this!!

Anonym0us

Not sure. I drank alone and watched movies tv etc because it made it more interesting funny etc and it was a good way to zone out and escape.

Never did anything bad to anyone. I'm not really sure how this version of an alcoholic is worse than people who are out every weekend bingeing and inflicting their stupidity on other people and/or potentially drunk driving. It's just a foolish stigma of society really. Apparently if you drink alone you must be deeply depressed and want to end your life. Apparently for people who smoke weed alone they are 'not hurting anyone, let them be' but any booze consumption must suggest suicidal intentions. I'm not exaggerating, for some reason in the US this mindset is common.

Neither is 'good' or 'healthy' and you really ought to not be doing either but the stigma, more so in North America, persists. I would just ignore people's ignorance though - it's not worse than going out and drinking excessively, both are alcoholism as bad as each other. Oh, one drawback I see, and I think a huge problem with drinking alone is it's so much easier to overdo it - in public at least you can't act too foolishly without getting in trouble, arrested, kicked out etc - at home you can do as you please. Much easier to build up a tolerance that will eventually damage you on a physical level that way. It can quickly become a nasty habit.

TNGal

I was an alone drinker, too. I have never seen why it's any worse than going out and drinking in public. As others have said, both are harmful. But I know that one of the reasons I quit (day 5) is because I realized that I had become a person who would rather be at home alone drinking than out with friends or family without drinking. It wasn't because I was trying to hide anything. Anyone that came to my house would see that I was drinking and I wasn't particularly ashamed of it. I just simply decided to stop letting my life pass me by without being an active participant.

bigsombrero

Alcoholism is a mental illness that is very evident when we are drinking. Just like a crazy person who rants about "FBI stalkers", or those people who hoard garbage all over their house. When we hide in our homes and don't socialize, it's clear that something is wrong with us mentally. People see this. It's cause for concern.

I too did most of my damage at home. Alone. I spent almost 2 years on my couch drinking as much booze as I could. I didn't hurt anyone. Well - unless you count my family, my colleagues, and my friends. I lost my job. My health was poor.

I am ashamed of it. And I'm glad I am. I'm not that person anymore, it was a scary place and I'm not going back. If being ashamed helps me avoid it, then I've got no problem with that. The bottom line is that I'm sober, and that fact overcomes all shame anyway.

Tamerua

I'm going to take a stab here... I preferred to drink alone. When you drink alone, there is no buffer, no filter. There is very little attempt to have fun, you are in it for one purpose. To get loaded. For me, it was the end of the line... I could not make excuses anymore that I was having fun, or using drink as social lubrication, yada yada.

I don't think anyone should be ashamed. People might be scared because it is very, one purpose and one purpose only.

caboblanco

I was never told that personally. I heard from movies and books that drinking alone was a sign of alcoholism. I don't know.... I think you know when you have a problem and It doesn't specifically have to do with drinking alone.

soberlicious

When I drank alone, I intentionally disconnected from others. I wanted to be left alone so I could be drunk. I did not want to do anything else that did not involve drinking. I put drinking before everything else.

Drinking to blackout alone is a little different than wasting time some other way. Some might say that reading all day alone is a waste of time, or watching movies, or just twiddling my thumbs...but in those activities I am not disengaged from myself. I might be doing something that others consider mindless, but I am fully engaged with it. Drinking to blackout...I have no recollection, I don't even know if I had fun. I am completely disengaged from myself. Blanking out hours that add up to significant chunks of my life is not a hobby. Yeah, it's weird, in public or in private.

tate9685

Maybe you weren't hurting them directly because they were unaware, but if you became physically ill with liver or kidney problems and had to go on dialysis or worse you died of this disease, dont you think that would hurt them? Also, I'm wondering if you were 100 percent present in their company if you were nursing a hangover while spending time with them. Just speaking from experience. I used to feel the same but I realized that by hurting myself I was robbing my family of time with me and by sleeping off a hangover I was also stealing time from my child.

Black Bird

When I began drinking it was to be social and have fun. When I knew I was an alcholic is when I prefered to drink alone. I did nothing with my life but drink. I didn't want to go anywhere or do anything but stay home with no distrations and drink to get as drunk as I possibly could. That hurt those who love me because they care about me. That behavior to me is not normal, and is a bigger problem to me than someone having a few drinks on a Sat night with friends. That is only my opinion and how I felt about me.

As for not hurting anyone...anyone who loves and cares about you is going to be hurt by any problem drinking their loved ones do. My mother is a home alone drinker. She sees her grandkids once a month maybe. We don't go shopping, out to eat, anything that doesn't involve alcohol. She prefers to stay home and get drunk. This hurts me very much. I guess when I saw myself doing the same, I knew it was the end of the road for me. I knew all my isolated drinking alone was my bottom.

Threshold

Nodding along with what others said, and now a couple of thoughts of my own.

Is it YOU who are ashamed, or your family?

I truly have never heard people classify at homes drunks as any worse than bar drunks. In fact I would say that I've heard it the other way round, people saying "at least they weren't out making a fool of themselves, fighting and putting people in danger by drunk driving"...so that is why I am wondering where the shame is coming from.

Second. When our families find out we are alcoholics, it challenges their sense of security and often we get a strong reaction. They wonder how they missed it for so long, what else were we hiding. There are believed to be genetic tendencies towards addiction...so are THEY at risk? How many other friends and family members might be hiding such addictions...A lot of the static might be coming from that.

And, honestly, if your family found out that you'd been sitting home alone knitting for years, and that you had a two car garage, attic and half your basement full of sweaters...as opposed to bottles and cans...I will bet they would be seriously weirded out. Wondering what was up with it, why you were so obsessed, why it was that knitting is what kept you from engaging socially, being avaliable, having...well, a LIFE.

Knitting, drinking, watching movies may all be neutral in and of themselves, but when used compulsively to shut out the world...THAT is the issue, not the activity itself.

doggonecarl

I think you know, inherently, that drinking isn't some other "harmless" activity. You can pretend it is, but inside you know you are capable of so much more. There may be some guilt and shame. But if you are currently sober, it's a more of a waste of time than drinking.

Time to move on from the past.

fini

it really doesn't matter if drinking alone is inherently shameful or not.

what matters to me is that i was deeply ashamed. which is related to my inability to control it/myself around it.
i believed this was a matter of self-discipline, and that clearly i was lacking.
self-discipline was highly valued in my upbringing and family, and so this immediately led to hiding.
hiding in and of itself felt shameful.

preferring to drink instead of being around those i cared about felt shameful.
worst of all: wanting to be left alone by my kids, ultimately being more concerned with unimpeded drinking than with being "here" with them was shameful.

i'm not ashamed now.
the shame started lifting as soon as i knew i'd quit.

Michael66

Bumble you say you drank "passing time until I passed out".

If we put shame to one side, I am sure you can see there is something wrong when we're drinking until we pass out. Something inside of us is in need of healing. When our drinking is on that level it's also likely that we are causing pain to others who care for us. I don't think getting drunk alone is worse than getting drunk with others, but it's still something worrying. Perhaps one reason people point to drinking alone is that it's a clearer sign of drinking problems as we don't have the "excuse" of a social occasion to mask our problem.