caboblanco

if the truth serum thing was true other people and I would have to believe everything that was said to us by an abusive alcoholic close to them. So I call bs on it all day long. I don't think there is a therapist alive that is going to tell you that a drunk person is just being completely honest with you.

KateL

I'm not sure but I think it's something like a devilish voice in your head that tries to convince you you can have a few without getting obliterated. Makes a lot of sense actually. You have to learn to recognise it's the voice of a blithering idiot. I just stole that expression from a poster above. Love it

Johnston

@katel,

Funny, walls tend to punch me in the fist when I'm drinking, but not when I'm dry. Very good post.

DoubleDragons

Such an interesting topic, KateL. I don't think my personality changed all that much when I was drinking. My mother is an alcoholic and she is a very mean drunk. She has told me that she hates me, screamed the F-word towards me more than a few times, sang a nasty birthday message to my son, called my special needs nephew a brat, etc. I don't think she would do these things sober, but I do think she seethes with resentment and anger under the surface. Regardless as to whether this is the "real" her or not, it still hurts like crazy and has caused a lot of damage.

LadyBlue0527

Wow, did someone put a hidden camera in my house during the last two years of my drinking?

Ptcapote

Many times when I drank, my personality would change so completely that people were literally stunned into fear over who would emerge. Not just fear because I was mean, which I was, but because my personality was so diametrically opposed to how I was sober, no one could believe such a 180 was possible, including me. I have never acted that way again sober so, no, it was not the real me.

However, towards the end of my drinking days I was completely apathetic. Flat-lined emotionally and spiritually. I felt nothing and would chase any high (including trying to get others riled up) to see if I could get a reaction. To see if their reaction would make me feel. How incomprehensibly selfish is that? I never did things that the drunk me above did, but I certainly did things and treated people in ways that were not at all true to who I am now and who I was before I started drinking.

Sorry to throw another twist into the discussion but that was my experience. Kind of think it tracks with what Dee and silentrun are talking about too.

Thanks KateL for the thread!

RobbyRobot

When I drank, I was the real me as much as a reflection in the mirror is the real me. My sobriety and alcoholism are both inside jobs. I drank to be something/someone on the inside that I wasn't able to be sober. This is what in part made it difficult to quit for good and all time. It required massive changes for me to stay quit, and so, this means to me I was different of course when I drank, goes without saying, yeah?

Still though, I don't believe alcoholism created inside me something that wasn't me. Yeah, I absolutely suffered with alcoholic insanity and illness in body and spirit. Robert Louis Stevenson's novella "Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" is a great anology for my alcoholism. Drinking allowed for me to be totally imprisoned within my delusions. My version of Hyde was as real to me drunk as my Jekyll was when not being Hyde. What a lousy way to live and die.

I spent times in hospital, jail, street life - surviving by existence, really. All but dead inside and yet alive enough to still keep dying more. With or without alcohol, such living is unworkable with chronic alcoholism.

I think asking the question being my true self around drinking doesn't mean all that much to me, because for more then half my drinking years, my truest self was my insane deluded want to be anything but my true self living my true life. In this I was successful in when drinking, and yet because I was successful, I was also being my true self. A paradox, no less, lol.

Today, decades after finally quitting, I'm everything that I ever was while drinking. I'm also everything that I ever was while not drinking too. I am both the reflection in the mirror and the reality outside of the mirror, all at the same time. Of course the mirror reflection is not a proper inside job, and this makes all the difference obviously, lol.

I think something that needs to be said for me about me is I would have been a failure at life even without alcoholism dogging me. I was already destined for such failure by my early child years, and my upbringing, and by my choices before my drinking years. I started my drinking at 12, and without doing so, without drinking and drugging, I most likely would have made good at being a suicide in my teenage years. Drinking brought me oblivion, and this oblivion ironically bought me time enough, experience enough, to find a new inside way and a new inside life. Drinking really was a solution for me. Until it wasn't.

I understand this thread for most people is black and white when they look at their drinking experiences and their life when not drinking. For me though, and likely for some other alcoholics, the "real me" was also the drunk me back when as much as the "real me" is now the me who is sober. My understanding alcoholic experiences in this way keeps me true to myself, and besides all that, we each in ourselves gotta do what we gotta do to make a life for ourselves. I know this too - I've never been better at being myself when sober, and never worse then when drunk.

steve76453

Very well put, Robby. I've made the Dr. Jeckyl/Mr. Hyde comparison to my drinking as well. I also do understand what you mean. I did the same thing as a teen. Had my first drink at 12, had a kind of ****** upbringing, and used booze to get me through. It, like it did to you, kept me from becoming another statistic and now the charm of it has worn off. Unlike you however, I was always the drunk that no one could tell was drunk. It was "man, I can never tell when you're sober and when you're ****** up, you act the exact same!". One day my brain decided that this wasn't going to fly anymore, and the real beast started coming out. I think it was once I got to the point of drinking myself into a blackout every night that some really ****** sides to me came out, that would never have had I been sober. What inevitably lead me to stop was kind of what you said. I didn't need it anymore, and the self-medicating aspect of it had dried up and died. I was just left with the drunk, useless, lifeless, depressed and dying ailment known as alcoholism. I'm happy this is happening now at 26, and not when I'm 45.

EndGameNYC

I gotta say it Robby...I love references to Jekyll & Hyde.

I also love your personal narrative. To the extent that we deny parts of ourselves, we will always be at their mercy. You can't have the Yin without the Yang. And we can't run out of a room fast enough to get away from parts unwanted.

For me, alcohol is the delivery system for parts of myself that I'd prefer not to acknowledge, and sobriety allows me to nurture the better parts of who I am.

Great post.

Kissimee54

My intentions were always to just have fun. However, that wasn't how it would end up. I was a total whack job and ended up harming myself mostly and others. It was a nightmare. Not me but some kind of manifestation of monster.

Mags1

Booze for me made every day a holiday, I was happily in euphoria, until I passed out on the sofa, if I didn't pass out there could be the transition from happiness to hate in one swift move.

Hell! Thank goodness that isn't me now. If I did have any doubts, Kate, after your post, no way I will drink again. I just remembered the dark side. Brrrr, it's cold and sad and empty there.

Brian316

I think this is a great topic and I have read alot of good posts here on this thread. For me, its definitely not a black and white thing. I halfway agree with the statement and I don't. When I was a practicing drunk, I used to say and half believe a drunk man says what's on a sober man's heart. Not so sure I believe that today. For me, much of the time, alcohol acted as a mood enhancer. If I was happy I became goofy, if I was sad, I became depressed, if I was mad I became raging. Like it was my mood with the volume turned way up. But if I could analogize that to say music and speakers. If you take music and turn it up way too loud, the speakers get distorted. Some to the point you don't recognize the music anymore, the song doesn't sound good. So as the alcohol numbed my brain and slowed down and distorted my receptors, I was no longer the same. But I agree with a good point that was brought out earlier, my thinking was pretty effed up. Booze didn't create the thoughts in my head necessarily but it brought them out of me. In that instance, booze was the amplifier. So alot of the things I said and did while drunk I may have thought about sober, but had I been of my right mind, I would have brushed the thoughts away or expressed them in a different manner. But, sober, I would never put myself and other's lives at risk over something selfish such as my own boredom. I wouldn't urinate on my own floor. I wouldn't fall down walking into my house and we could go on. This is one of those threads I could take something from many posters here and agree with it. Basically I don't believe a drunk man's tongue equals a sober man's heart, but I believe a drunk man will act on a mentally unwell man's thoughts.

wolfpackfan45

I totally agree. When my son was actively drinking he became a person we didn't even know. He was always so sensitive, kind, and caring growing up and then when the addiction set in he was totally different. When he first got sober he told me that he had become someone he didn't even know and had done things he would have never thought of doing. He was so cruel to his family and friends. I'm not an A, but I don't drink much because when I do have a couple I end up crying and arguing which isn't really my nature at all.

pmarch12

I'm struggling to respond to this, because I'm trying to figure out where I stand. I feel most tempted to say that it is always the real me. I used to say it was a different person before, because it helped with the guilt and my identity, but if handcuffs were to be slapped on me while I was drunk, and I woke up in the slammer sober, it'd be the same dude.

I have the power. I know the risk I'm taking when I drink, so when I am sober, I have the opportunity to decide if I want to take that risk.

I've only stopped drinking a few days ago, and I'm just beginning to reach out about it, but I thought this would be a good place to start.

Thank you to the poster for bringing up the subject. Glad to meet you all.

Brian316

Glad to meet you pmarch12! Welcome to this site. Lots of information and good people here. It's been a very valuable tool to me so far in my most honest attempt at sobriety. Check out the 24 hour club in the newcomers section. It's where we can make a commitment to sobriety one day at a time.

Dee74

Welcome pmarch

I think some questions are better answered with a little bit of time.

The main thing in the initial phase of recovery is to keep sober - that's enough for anyone really

D

GracieLou

I know, right!

This was written in 2003 (don't ask me why I have an email that old) so I drank another nine years. At the time it was just one more resentment to add to the pile. I have been told that while I may not use a physical knife that I can cut right through someones soul with my words.

I was so very angry and it would just sit and boil until it spilled over. When I was not drinking the anger was still there. I just said "I hate you" in my head rather than out loud, but when I drank the inhibitions were gone and all bets were off.

In some cases I agree that there are things I have done drinking I would never have done sober but then there are things I did while drinking that were just a release of what I wanted to do but either I did not have the guts or my conscience kept me from revealing.

I also have to remember while some of the things I have said while drinking were how I saw them or how I felt the whole scenario had played out. I think we can all agree that what we thought at the time, while drinking, can be so very far from the real truth. So I based many of my outbursts on irrational fears. It does not mean I did not really feel that at the time, I did, but they were warped by alcoholism. I was under the influence.

That does not mean I can discard them though. I had no problem owning the bottle. Making amend means, to me, that I am owning my recovery.

alphaomega

Thank you Kate for this incredibly insightful thread. And thank you Robby for nailing something I was never able to articulate. Partially because it scared me to think alcohol may of actually saved my life at various points in the inexplicable darkness that I witnessed. Oblivion, and the promise if it, kept me alive many times until I could love myself and life enough to truly embrace the shadow side.

Until it no longer did.

And that's when I had to go into those cracks and recesses. Because I couldn't numb out another day without actually killing myself at my own hand. What a strange concept this all is. At times I ache wondering what my life would have been like without the salve. Could I have faced it on it own terms ? Would it of been better without the booze ? I know I wasn't that strong. But yet I was strong enough to face most hours hung to the toes and sick ?!?

I'll never know if it ruined me or saved me. But one thing I know for sure, is that it's over.and everything I have attempted to run from never really goes anywhere. It waits until we are ready (or not) to face it.

RobbyRobot

Well said, alphaomega. So true about going thru hell to get anywhere else worth while in life. Glad to know your getting it together for YOURSELF. Awesome!

RobbyRobot

Yeah, I quit at 24. So grateful I did!! I'm happy too you're doing this at 26! Awesome share, steve. Thanks.




Well said, EndGame.

And thanks for the insights you give all of us here at SR!