bigsombrero

I see a posts every once in a while that say "I wish I could drink responsibly". I never wished that. Sounds like a downer, just having one drink and stopping at that. I drank to get DRUNK.

For me, it broke up the boredom of what had become a pretty predictable routine. Getting up, taking a shower, taking the train to work, sitting at my desk, and going home. That was all I had in life. And my brain was restless. I needed some stimulation - and for me, getting wasted was a pretty easy way to get it. Pretty simple, really. I was bored. I wanted dull things to seem fun. I wanted to feel that giddiness inside my heart and stomach when the booze started taking effect. After all, it was better than just sitting in front of the TV sober.

Is this the general reason behind why most of us drank? Or, the bigger question - is "regular life" just not exciting enough for us? Do we simply need a little bit of extra zip in the tank? And why can't we just be happy, like normal people, with the day-to-day grind?

I am certainly happier and more successful as a sober person - that's what the facts and data say, anyway. Did you all drink for the same reason? Does this problem stem from the fact that we are just not as easily satisfied with life as the rest of the general public?

ru12

I drank because it helped stop the constant chatter in my mind. I could drink and stop thinking for a time. I found that I now have other tools to accomplish the same end and that don't enslave me.

Grungehead

I think when someone says "I wish I could drink responsibly" they really mean "I wish I could drink like I want to drink without the negative consequences". I know for me I didn't want to change my drinking habits, I just wanted the bad stuff to stop happening. The only way I could get the bad stuff to stop happening was to put the plug in the jug. I think most of my drinking was to quiet the noise in my head. I felt normal when I drank and abnormal when I didn't drink. Outwardly it may have felt like boredom or lack of excitement, but inside fear ruled my life. I think fear can manifest itself in a bunch of different ways including the things you listed. If I look back at my drinking career there seemed to be different motivating factors for me to drink at different stages in my life. I believe the underlying motivation for me was fear. I still have a lot of fear going on inside but I'm trying to deal with it in a more healthy manner. Just recognizing it for what it is helps.

MeSoSober

A similar question prompted me to start a thread here a few weeks ago asking whether others felt there drinking was rooted in a psychological issue or trauma of some kind. I don't believe mine is.

I drank alcohol because, as George Mallory famously said of Everest, it was there.

To the best of my knowledge and recollection, I've never been molested or beaten. Perhaps the single most traumatic experience of my childhood was falling off a runaway pony. I don't suffer from chronic anxiety or depression. I had a great middle-class upbringing with parents who loved and cared for me and footed the bill for my college education. I've had what you could actually call a "career" as a writer and editor. I never had a husband and kids who drove me nuts or exhausted me. In a way I suppose I drank out of boredom. In another way, even though there were a million other sober things I could've done, I drank because it was the easiest, most convenient (what's more convenient than holing up in your apartment?), most pleasurable, and often cheapest option of all. I also feel as though in part, I drank because as a single person living alone, I had no witnesses (actually, when I shared a house with roommates years ago, I kinda had witnesses, but no one to whom or for whom I was really responsible).

A harder question for me to answer is why I drank AS excessively as I did for as long as I did. My drinking went from one-night binges to days-long benders. Of course my tolerance grew, and the time came when I knew sobering up meant facing withdrawal hell, so that was one thing that kept me drinking for ever-longer periods.

Curious as to others' responses!

SoberChristy

bigsombrero–I think we live parallel lives :-) Wake up, train, come home, gym, drink.

I'm currently taking steps to figure out the underlying issue of why I am so bored in life. My therapist thinks I'm attempting to fill a hole left by relationship issues (having reached the age of 26 and never being privy to view a healthy relationship). I'm using the "excitement" of alcohol to replace the desire for solid relationships. I'm sure those of us who drink for what we think are boredom reasons, have something deeper going on.

Drinking makes me want to dance, makes me want to sing–makes hanging out at home seem a lot more fun. And it sounds weird, but I get WAAAAY more cleaning done when I drink.

Nevertheless

I'm pretty sure in the beginning I drank to fit in. I was an "only child",and I just had a hard time making friends.
I must have wanted to fit in pretty bad,because I was addicted in 2 or 3 years.
Back when I went to school doing stupid stuff,and not remembering what you did the night before was being part of the "gang". And I will be the first to admit,some of that stupid stuff was actually a lot of fun. I'll also be the first to admit I'm lucky that stupid stuff didn't get me or someone else killed.
So to answer your question,I did it quite a few years to be part of the cult. I did it a hell of a lot more years because I couldn't stop.OR had no real desire to stop.
I say no real desire,because most of my drinking career,I knew I had a problem. Most of my drinking career I wanted to quit from morning right up to an hour or two after lunch. By 5 o clock I didn't want to quit anymore. That part was addiction.

artsoul

I think we can, but we have to work at it.

One thing that made me feel a little better when I first got sober, was reading about what alcohol does to the brain. When we drink, there's a surge in dopamine and that makes us feel good (temporarily). When we drink repeatedly, our brain adapts so that the normal dopamine system is out of whack. That makes it harder to feel good in a natural way, so we drink again to bring our dopamine levels back up and it becomes a vicious cycle.

Then, when we get sober, we're cutting off our supply of dopamine and our brains have been altered so that they don't produce it normally. So, I don't think it's just our personalities to be bored and lack interest in things..... we've actually changed the chemistry of our brains. I think that's why everyone says "give it time," because it takes a while for our brains to recover. I felt tired and unmotivated for several months after I quit drinking and I tried to remember that it wasn't all "just me" and things really would get better, and they did.

I don't know if the brain goes back totally to normal dopamine production or if some of the changes are permanent (it would be interesting to read some more on this), but even if it doesn't, I think there are things we can do to increase our sense of well-being and find a purpose in life.

fantail

In support of your point, that is probably the most adorable-sounding trauma I've heard of!

caboblanco

yes I too drank because of boredom. In the end I drank to escape or procrastinate moving forward in my life. I had a couple bad breaks and I didn't know how to get my life back together so i just said screw it, if I can't get what I want out of life I might as well be drunk. It was easier to pass the time that way.

I believe everyone needs some purpose in life and it's not good to feel stuck in a situation. Day to day life can become boring. You go to work, you come home and your tired then all you want to do is to get buzzed. You need that something. You want to enjoy yourself. You are not going to do something meaningful or productive. Its hard to find time for hobbies or interests. If you are stuck in a job that isn't your passion and it takes the passion out of your life I think it's best to change your career if you can.

fantail

I think boredom was part of it, but for me the boredom was itself a symptom of something larger. "Existential angst"? Unlike a lot of people, I never lied to myself about my drinking. I would lie to myself about how well I was or was not concealing it, but I never tried to believe I wasn't an addict. I knew it ran in my family and I knew what I was walking into and didn't care. Drinking was like a wimpy suicide for me. Before I could drink I smoked pot, before I had access to that I was a cutter, before that I would take extra aspirin?! I've been trying to renegotiate the terms of existence from the time I was a kid. Or at least register my disapproval, I guess.

I'm not proud of this although I know this paragraph kind of sounds like I am (ah, print). It freaks me out. I wasn't traumatized, I don't really know where it comes from. I really, really hope I can reign in this temper tantrum and learn to accept life.

As for: "And why can't we just be happy, like normal people, with the day-to-day grind?" ... I think that question presumes a whole lot of similarity between different people's ways of experiencing the world. I don't think people love the daily grind, but I imagine that it feels entirely different. Like the way that some people are claustrophobic and others are afraid of open spaces. Maybe we're claustrophobes living in a house built by agoraphobes, or vice-versa?

allears

I drank because I had a lot on my mind. When I drink all of my thoughts come together or at least they seem to. I said things that I wouldn't normally say otherwise. I thought that the things that came to my head were clever. I also liked the fact that I made people laugh but were the laughing at me? I don't know.

silentrun

It was just a lot of fun at first. I didn't have any underlying depression or anything. It wasn't to cope it was just to get feeling better. Little by little it just lead me further down the progression. Toward the end I wasn't even enjoying it. By that time it was just the way it was. I drank because that was just my life and I didn't know how to change.

Soberpotamus

I can certainly relate to this, BS. I drank away some boredom, restlessness and stifled my creativity, procrastinating writing and making some life changes, etc.

I'm naturally a free spirit with the drive to create (write) and travel. Those things are difficult to do when you are binge drinking, recovering... and in that crazy cycle. It was a subconscious way for me to avoid success and failure... and to avoid the anxiety that is a natural part of creating anything.

alphaomega

It depends on which stage of my life I was at. I had a reason and a season for every drink I took.

Adolescence was to fit in and curb the sorrow from losing my sister.

College was because it was mother-loving fun as all get out and we were adults after all (ha).

Freshly employed it was because I WAS an adult now and things were getting, interesting. Bars and clubs meant booze and men.

Married was because I was confused and trying to make sense of how to navigate my future.

Motherhood because that was insane. I had no clue what that entailed and it threw me straight off my rocker for a while. Eventually, I settled into it. And drank because of boredom, stress, lack of sleep, lack of food, shower, etc. (((shudder)))

Then life throws its typical curve balls, aging parents, deceased parents, marriage ups and downs, financial concerns, friend issues, neighbor issues, not living the life I wanted, not living my dreams, in laws, holidays. I could go on and on.

Recently, teenagers, aging in general, boredom, sensitivities, blah blah blah.

Point being, give me any single reason. Anything.

Happy, sad, joyful, angry, busy, bored, sick, well, lonely, tired, over scheduled, PMS, sore muscles after working out, the dog has diarrhea, I stubbed my toe, the hose is broken.

I'm an addict.

EndGameNYC

I tend to identify with alphaomega's description of things. And I think about such things very differently than I did when I first got sober.

Everyone one on the planet -- including nondrinkers -- suffers through childhood trauma, adolescent identity crises, anxiety and depression, abandonment issues, death, divorce, loss of love, medical problems, panic attacks, severed psychopathology, major disappointments, problems associated with aging, PTSD and other psychiatric conditions...But only a few use alcohol as a solution.

Capturing a specific event, series of events or recognizing pathological behaviors as the cause of our problems appears to give us comfort. Knowing what caused a potentially fatal condition in which we are actively involved for more hours of each week than any other pursuit helps us to make sense of a state of being with which we feel completely out of control. A condition that has resisted effective treatment since the beginning of mankind.

We like to make sense of things, particularly when we're afraid, and despite the fact that there is often no "sense" to be had beyond our own subjective responses to what we experience. Alcoholism, psychiatric conditions, even our dreams, feel like things that are happening to us rather than things that are a part of who we are. And we're hardwired to press for a reason, a cause, an explanation, no matter how much violence our explanations do to the truth or to the immediacy of a clear and present danger.

Reminds me of a story one of my supervisors shared with me when I was in training as a psychologist: A young man was traveling by foot from his village to another. He was suddenly struck by an arrow, the head of which was clearly covered with poison. There was no archer in sight. He quickly returns to his village where his friends meet him, offering medical attention. The young man declines treatment until he knows the archer's intentions and motivations, race, gender, social status, his height and weight, and a long list of other personal characteristics. He further declines treatment until he knows the type of arrow, length of the bow, what each is made from, and everything else one can know about the equipment. So the guy dies from the poison, never knowing any of the things he thought were important for him to know before he died. (I heard this story many years ago, and have since learned that it's popularly referred to as the "Parable Of The Arrow," which can be easily Googled in its original form.) If you're waiting to figure out why you drink the way you do -- or that doing so will, by itself, bring you recovery -- it's probably a good idea to get treatment first and worry about the causes of your alcoholism later on, if at all.

Before I first got sober about thirty years ago, I habitually analyzed my own thoughts, feelings and motives to death, drunk or sober, usually to bad effect. I analyzed other people's motives, intentions and behaviors in the same way. Alcohol was a way for me to shut down my racing thoughts. It also helped me to not feel my feelings, always a problem for me, whether they were good, bad or otherwise. After years of sobriety in AA, thousands of dollars spent on therapy and personal growth, I was able to respond to my own feelings in ways that worked for me instead of against me. Though my mind is still very active, it's also quiet now when I need it to be quiet.

There are plenty of people who can pinpoint the exact cause(s) of their alcoholism; some even know the exact date liquor became a problem for them. And many of these folks remain unable or unwilling to get help. Being curious about who we are, why we (and others) do the things we do, what the meaning and causes of things are is both a noble and very human pursuit. This process has pretty much been what we know as "the scientific method" for centuries. Yet knowing who and what we are in the moment -- rather than making the time to discover first causes -- can quite literally save our lives.

In the moment, I know what I am: I am an alcoholic who cannot control his drinking after just one drink. What matters to me right now is what I do with that information, and has nothing to do with its cause(s). Knowing how I got to be who I am will not keep me sober at any particular moment. (There are plenty of other things I know about myself that both are and aren't life-threatening, but you get my point.)

In both my personal and professional experience, tracing the threads back to the causes of our problems may provide temporary relief or satisfaction, but such an enterprise rarely helps me to either heal or bring me to a better place.

wiscsober

Of course I drank for a host of reasons...the main reason was because I was alcoholic plain and simple

silentrun

I always appreciate your insight Endgame. I remember the exact day I crossed that line. I have always thought that people who come from troubled upbringings sometimes have the best coping mechanisms.

FreeDance

I relate to this a lot. I love that initial euphoria, and I'd save a dull task for 5:00 wine. On the other hand, I saved difficult tasks for 5:00 (writing a letter I didn't want to write, for example), and I'd save creative tasks for 5:00....

Seems like everything was easier from 5:00-6:00, but it pretty much went downhill from there... So many mornings I could hardly function.

Nuudawn

Yup yup yup!

MrTumble

this is the similar sort of question i ask myself just before i justify the reasons i need to go and drink - im special, different, i need to drink.