boris

My other half has always said i drink to be centre of attention. That im an attention seeker.
Now this i found hard to believe as when i was drinking i used to hide it. Best i could.

my question is. Are alcoholics just attention seekers.

what do you lot think

dwtbd

Like the country song, "It takes all kinds of kinds"

The one commonality with alcoholics is drinking, there may perhaps be others but I can't wrap my head around there being an archetype, as if all are so similar to be classed together in a specific category other than alcohol.

readerbaby71

I was a total drama queen when drinking, which to me is attention-seeking.

biminiblue

Who doesn't like attention?

Oh. Wait. Maybe I answered your question...

EndGameNYC

Many of us shrink from the spotlight, creating our own personal, air-tight cocoons while drinking; others step out of the shadows in dramatic fashion.

At some future time, it's possible that the virtual entirety of our lives will be recorded in video form. Imagine watching yourself drinking in solitude for decades, night after night, in the same otherwise empty room. Or ripping off your clothes while screaming something unintelligible in public, ruining a reliable succession of holiday dinners, physically and/or verbally assaulting loved ones, being drunk at work, vomiting in the street, passing out and then waking up on your neighbor's lawn, driving while drunk, and the rest of it on multiple occasions.

I have some strong opinions and theories that I generally don't comment on here about things we do while we're drinking, but I'm fairly certain that these types of behaviors do not represent the things people want to do in order to attract attention.

Aellyce

Attention? Oh yeah...

Well, heavy drinking put me OFF the limelight very successfully. I hardly ever wanted to get out of my apartment and be seen in public, including my workplace.

In the virtual world, however... I will save you from details, maybe just say that I was very successful at messing with the mind of many people online, gluing them to their computers/phone, and getting them addicted to madness (my drunken emails and essays, and what we called "interaction"). People that had never experienced that before. I definitely received the title "the most interesting person in the world" many times. Then after a while I got bored with them and would drop them and look for others, but often I could not lose the "attention" for months, or in some cases, for years. The ultimate "connection", right?

aasharon90

I'm 24 yrs. sober and I like attention.
In fact my husband calls me Princess
because I like red and

What can I say....all my life I have
felt like family has tried to hush me,
hold me down, cut me off and I drank
due to those resentments of not allowing
me to be me.

I like me and I don't pay attention to
what others say or think about me. I
want to be who I am. A kind, caring,
sober person who enjoys life, being cute,
making people laugh, wearing many pretty
tattoos and bling bling on the top of my
motorcycle helmet.

If others don't like it that I wear my
hair up most of the time with sparkle
barrettes or that I wear southern slyle
long lady like dresses, then that is not
my problem.

So many in my family tried to dictate
who and what I should or shouldn't be
or do and that is definitely not right.

Being sober for this many yrs, it's not
the appearance that matters so much
as does what is inside me. The way I
treat people, my honesty, care, love
and kindness.

God made me who I am and I try to
the best of my sober ability to live like
He would want me to live.

Soberwolf

ADHD and Substance Abuse - Adult ADD/ADHD - EverydayHealth.com

oak

I used to worry that I had 'made up' addiction for attention or drama, even though I hid my drinking and drank alone at home. I think it was part of my denial that I really was addicted.

Could their comments be denial or simply not understanding addiction?

AlexThedude

I don't think so, because I usually drank alone.

Bostonsportsfan

No, but anyone who knew my drinking habits/patterns knows that I wasn't looking for attention and did a lot of my drinking alone or with 1-2 people. Most people don't know and never will know about how bad my drinking was and I never looked for any special attention because I was an alcoholic.

PurpleKnight

Depends on the person and type of drinking.

But for me, I drank alone, on my sofa in front of the TV, it was hardly the centre of the party, I was always the only person at the party!!

Bostonsportsfan

I did a fair share of partying, but everyone was drinking so I wasn't out of the norm. Most of those people didn't know I was drinking daily and mostly by myself when I wasn't at those parties.

tornrealization

Oddly enough while isolating and hiding my drinking - I was also capable of some pretty dramatic scenes.

I believe I am the person people at parties which I stopped going too where people would think well gee, I'm not as bad off as HER. . .

I was more than embarrassed when things started involving outside parties, ER staff or cops. This drama didn't thrill me, lots of tears.

Hearing what I did didn't thrill me. Bragging about being passed out didn't happen.

So I hid. I still love attention and yes I have RED smartphone, but drinking attention has only hurt me and made me regret things.

bunnezjp

[/QUOTE]My question is. Are alcoholics just attention seekers.

what do you lot think[/QUOTE]

If called that, I'd say,"Well, it got YOUR attention!"

Bunnez

GracieLou

I don't think I drank for attention. In the beginning it was to relax, have fun and let loose.

Being drunk may have gotten me attention because once I had a few I was out there more, talked more, danced more etc.

At the end I drank alone with the curtains drawn.

I can't recall ever thinking "can't wait to drink tonight to so I will get noticed".

I craved love and attention one on one though. I was always looking for that relationship. The "one". The one that was going to love me, save me, take care of things...the so called knight in shining armor but my expectations of what or how a relationship should be was not reality so they always ended and then I drank that away too.

KAD

Does attention-seeking behavior necessarily mean those allegedly seeking it don't need it? Maybe the problem is, they're seeking it from the sort of people who they know will either be shocked or, worse, justify and reinforce more of the same self-destructive behavior, instead of seeking it from those who are actually able to help them.

Just a thought. I've often asked the same thing regarding people who claim that threats of suicide are attention-seeking behavior. Is it ever really safe to just dismiss it as such?

Like Haennie, I did the bulk of my drinking in seclusion and anonymity, but the online world felt safer and I would say and do lots of things in that relatively invisible world that definitely brought (often unwanted) attention my way.

EndGameNYC

This is not a simple process.

Many people who attempt suicide and fail report that they truly did not intend to die. We have little way of knowing how many people who were successful felt the same way. Suicidal gestures are often not just a cry for help, but for love and care that they've learned to sabotage throughout their lives, has never been offered to them without strings attached, never truly experienced or simply don't know it when it's been offered. So stifled are they in their ability to ask for such things, they resort to extreme measures in order to get it, not understanding that these efforts only make it increasingly difficult to get what they want and need.

In my work, I'm ethically and legally bound (as well as personally) to do whatever is in my power to ensure as best I can that patients do not bring harm to themselves. With multiple claims of suicide, this often means having the patient brought to the ER on more than one occasion. If -- and this is a very big "if" -- the patient has motives other than death that drive such claims, they typically find or create other ways to get the attention they seek without putting their freedom at risk. Here the problem lies in the clinical reality that people who intend to die by their own hands also learn to be secretive about their suicidal thoughts and impulses, anticipating that they will be brought to "safety" (confinement) involuntarily before they can commit the act.

As far as I know, I've never treated a patient who committed a successful suicide, but I also haven't worked with a lot of patients who've threatened to kill themselves, outside of my work in residential treatment programs and inpatient psychiatric units which typically have their own organizational protocols for such cases.

Aellyce

I was personally quite desperate for attention during my worst drinking times, especially because I isolated myself so much. But I wasn't interested in the "real world" at that point (still dealt with it at minimum but it felt like a painful chore). I lived in my own crazy fantasy land fueled by alcohol and my mind, and tried to pull others into this mental fantasy land via taking advantage of all sorts of virtual media. Even people I knew well in 3D, I did not want to talk with them in person, but via email. I think this was in part, on one hand, being trapped in my own mind and madness, and on the other hand a very pronounced insecurity and self-consciousness that blocked me from getting out of this and interacting normally, also from asking for help.

The shocking factor, for me, was how successful I was at pulling others into this crazy land (as I said in my first post on this thread). That's all true. But here comes what you pointed out, GMO, what I've put in bold in the quote: most of my mates in these crazy fantasy exercises were people similarly ***ed up or otherwise unhappy, isolated, insecure. Even if they did not appear like this in their 3D world (I was also able to keep up appearances more or less) - internally it was a pretty dark shared virtual reality. Well, sometimes not only virtual reality but I won't get into that here. And these connections truly tended to be obsessive and addiction-like, mutually.

Of course I did not dare to seek the attention of mentally healthy and happy people, and I did not even want it back then. I was looking for people like myself. Of course they would most often justify and reinforce the whole thing, so obviously pretty hard to break it.

For me, if I look through my history of personal relationships, there is a very strong pattern and correlation between my mental health, focus, and perspective and those of the people I tend to be in touch with. Always looking for similarities, often unconsciously at first. "Like-minded" people. It's basically mental projection. This has been a very difficult habit to break for me, drinking or not. It may not sound like a bad thing, but in practical reality it can be very limiting. Just one example is asking help from people that are able to help because they are better off than myself!

jdooner

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