Soberintexas007

My former sponsor told me that every alcoholic will eventually drink and drive if they continue drinking? Is this true?

ScottFromWI

Sounds like an opinion to me. No one can predict that "every" person of any category will do something. I am sure a lot of alcoholics drive after drinking (I did), but you cannot predict what everyone will do.

Soberintexas007

I just don't understand why I never drank and drove because most alcoholics I meet in AA did this. My therapist asked me where I get my sensibility from, just because I don't drink and drive (I guess there are other things too). I just was raised to NEVER drink and drive, and it STUCK. I have always been so fearful of going to jail, and I never have been, nor do I have any criminal record. The most I have is a speeding ticket when I was 16.

Mags1

We had a health and safety meeting at work and brought up safe driving. He pointed out , if you drink and then you drive one day you will get caught if you don't do something more drastic first. He also said it of speeding, if you speed continuously , you will get caught , hopefully before any harm is done. This was based on statistics.

Whether it's right, who knows. I know I drove to work in a morning having drank night before , probably over the limit .

Soberintexas007

I don't really speed anymore. I tend to go the speed limit.

Mags1

Me too, there's too much traffic on the roads over here.

Notimetoloose

It is an opinion..
Alcoholism is progressive and we end up doing and justify things we said we would never do...I could never imagine drinking in the morning but I did!!

MelindaFlowers

I did things in blackouts I thought I would never do and never would have done sober so I'd say it's not out of the question. For whatever reason, I never drove drunk.

How about changing it to:

Every non-drinker will never end up drinking and driving and they will never get a DUI.

Soberintexas007

So did you ever actually get a DUI? By definition, a nondrinker does not drink, so I could not see a nondrinker getting a DUI.

MelindaFlowers

I have never had a DUI but if I continued drinking I would not put it out of the realm of possibility. I had some insane blackouts. Luckily they never involved a car. One of the many reasons stopping was a huge relief.

Soberintexas007

Yes, that is true.

I guess the real question is whether an alcoholic is ready to deal with the uncertainly of drinking and driving versus the temporary high of alcohol. Which one means more?

Erikst

Certainly seems true to me. I have never met an admitted alcoholic who hasn't. Even if they 'think' they haven't. I mean...who among us hasn't gotten into a car the next morning and drove? I remember one incident where I crashed at a friends house because I knew I was drunk. Slept on his couch and woke up at 7am and knew I was still drunk. I could feel it. So I stayed at his place til noon and then felt ok. I was driving home and I was trying to open a CD case on my passenger seat when I looked up and traffic was stopped dead...I smashed into the car in front of me. Nobody was hurt and I got ANOTHER DUI....!! I blew a .26 at the scene. Mind you, this was at noon. I stopped drinking around 1am the night before. Can you imagine what my BAL would have been had I taken a breathalyzer at 1am??? My point is....I was driving legally drunk even though I thought I wasn't !!!

ScottFromWI

To an active, drinking alcoholic the temporary high can mean more than just about anything. Look at some of the things you have done in your own life while you were drinking. That's really the textbook definition of alcoholism...drinking more than you plan to, when you don't plan to - despite the consequences. Driving drunk is merely one of those consequences, there are many more.

ArtFriend

Generalization by your sponsor. I have never driven drunk. Never!

gaffo

I drove drunk thousands of times and never got a DUI. I was a good drunk driver, I guess. I heard some lady from MADD on the radio years ago talking about how the average drunk drives thousands of times before getting caught, if ever. It sounded like a flagrant exaggeration at the time but it really stuck with me because, the more that I thought about it, the more I realized that it was probably true.

Erikst

I believe you actually think that...however....with an alcoholics high tolerance levels....and the fact that you probably didn't blow into a breathalyzer everytime you got behind the wheel....how could you really ever know that for sure?

ArtFriend

I know because even if I had a sip of booze, I would not drive. Too scary.

Erikst - I am a former metro Detroiter. I am from the northern burbs. Hail!

greens

My first therapist told me to be wary of saying :
*All
*every
*always
*never
words because they set you up for failure

Anna

How on earth could that be true?

Not everyone who drinks has a driver's licence or access to a car.

Be careful when you hear blanket statements like that. It's likely that many people who drink frequently will drive drunk, but to say every alcoholic will drink and drive is just not true.

JensDestiny

I think that is a load of crap. I also think that you are playing a game with yourself called... "at least I'm not as bad as____" *fill in the blank. I know of this game because I played it for years before I finally got sober.

"At least I don't drink as much as my dad". "At least I don't drive drunk". "At least I am able to hold down a job". "At least..."

Well, my dad died of alcoholism in 2003 so yeah... I guess you can say that "I was never as bad as him". But that certainly didn't make me any good either. I hope someday that you are able to find whatever you need to finally stop the madness.