g7801130

Understanding the effects of alcohol is important for anyone who is interested in taking on the lifestyle of consuming alcohol. Alcohol may bring pleasure to the individuals who decided to consume alcohol, but the long-term negative effects of alcohol outweighs the positive effects of alcohol. When an individual is addicted to alcohol, they form the problems of alcoholism where they cannot control how much they drink in a daily basis. Alcoholism will lead individuals to long-term health problems, uncontrollable need for alcohol consumption, broken relationships with family and friends, and in worst case, coma or death. For individuals to become more aware of the negative effects of alcohol, it can give them a choice where they can live a healthy life where alcohol doesn’t control every aspect of their lives.

MelindaFlowers

That pretty much sums it all up. I'm pretty sure that everybody knows about the negative effects of alcohol though. About 15 years ago I even took an alcohol safety class to become a server in a restaurant that served booze. We learned about DUI's, alcoholism, how many drinks hit your system per hour and alcohol levels, all of it.

The only way to describe it is the frog in the boiling water.

"The boiling frog is an anecdote describing a frog slowly being boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death."

Logically, nobody should become an alcoholic. Why would they? It's so illogical it's weird.

For me it happened very gradually. My "norm" kept changing until it was normal to drink a twelve-pack on a work night. Make that every work night. Totally normal. I didn't even give it a thought until the physical and mental torment became too much.

I try to see that glass as half full but I really do think that our brains are wired to always think Not me! Won't happen to me! I used to watch Intervention and drink as I watched. Not me. Won't happen to me.

When the drinking isnt't that bad there's not enough reason to stop. Once it gets really bad then it's really hard to stop. This is a tough one. The Big Book explains this really well.

Rio97

I like that boiling frog analogy. I don't know exactly when I became an alcoholic. I showed signs of it as early as high school, but my daily heavy drinking really didn't start till my mid-20's. And my alcoholism then was simply masked by the facade of "wanting to party". It was a conscious decision, and one I rationalized in this way. I drank socially, in bars, but in no way was I a social drinker. I always got drunk. It's as I got older that I became more isolated. I drank at home now.

It's funny, er alarming, how early stages of alcoholism can be masked by the concept of "partying". Getting wasted for the sake of a party is socially acceptable, even celebrated, at least when we're young. Most people outgrow this phase and move on. We alcoholics are bitten by the bug and to continue to carry on our drinking habits, sometimes for many years.

bigsombrero

Wow, you just described my experience. In my mid to late 20's, I rationalized that I was the fun, popular guy who was always game for a good time. But I began to show up to meet friends at the bar already drunk from "warming up" at home. After one too many embarrassing moments in public, I took to drinking alone in my apartment. I rationalized that this was cheaper, and also a "more mature" way to enjoy alcohol. Of course, things just got worse and worse. At the end, I found myself pouring vodka in my morning orange juice...and at that point I had to face the problem. That said, I continued to drink, because I was a "healthy guy" and I could live like this "for a while".

These rationalizations continue on for many of us, until the ambulance shows up and they pick your unconscious body off the floor. That's what happened to me. Funny thing is, it took 2 of those ambulance rides for me to actually finally give sobriety a shot. Unreal.

Dee74

Welcome g7801130

D

MelindaFlowers

Great point. In my opinion, Heavy drinks are from mars. Alcoholics are from Venus.

They are vastly different situations and yes, the age thing has a lot to do with it. In a few of the alcoholic biographies I've read, one sign is that we never want the party to end. It's 3 am, your friends are drunk and going to bed (heavy drinkers). You're drunk, looking in the fridge for more beer (alcoholic).

The heavy drinker won't drink for awhile after that wild night out (heavy drinker). I cured the hangover by drinking the next night (alcoholic).

Good point about the age thing too. I was downtown on New Years and the only people I saw stumbling, clothes disheveled, shouting out, crying, laughing, vomiting were all under 25.

ZetaP38

Hi, g ~

The bolded is typically not the case. Being given negative warnings often makes Ego giddy in anticipation of experimentation. Sex education in school has been a roaring success...just not in the intended way.

The negative affects of alcohol have been known for thousands of years. Same with STDs, inadvisability of crime, too little exercise, etc..

If one has Awareness, a simple check of motives before doing/saying something would usually suffice. However, when Ego is at the forefront, the following is often the case:

"The motive before an action is often quite different than the one told after an action."

Ego deception; the 'switch' happening in an instant so that very quickly I actually believe the latter ascribed motive, and would swear to it. (Yes, after learning this 'mind tool', I've caught myself covering up the original motive into something more socially acceptable.)

I am convinced that all worldly ills stem from spiritual problems/lack, and require a spiritual solution.

AA didn't give me a course in 'reasons to quit' because I forgot the 'reasons not to start', they taught me how to begin filling the 'hole in my soul' using spiritual tools, rather than trying to do it chemically.

Anyway, that's part of what my "new AA glasses" have shown me, thus far.

Still trudgin',

PJ

dwtbd

I had a very similar progression in my 'career', blackout drinker as a teen to early twenties, never got caught with DUI but did wreck a car or two and managed to burn up a few couches , thankfully never a house fire. Thought I had matured out in mid twenties. I had gotten married started a family and drinking stopped being an everyday thing, I don't remember it being that difficult a change at the time. But the weekend sessions ramped back up , coupled with six packs during the weekdays and cognac at night ect, so strange that for so long(until 47 for me) that you can talk yourself into the continued blackouts and daily hangovers as being 'doable', almost normal. Until you no longer can. Things can seem managable and then abruptly turn, never thought I would drink in the am, come home earlier and earlier just for those first few, near constant anxiety, the feeling of having a mental breakdown on a weekly basis, thinking the only choices left were to continue drinking 24/7 or give in to a deepening depression and just end it all.
Somehow I had a few days of near clarity two years ago, found this place and learned of RR and AVRT and realized a third way: get and stay sober. Why that struck me as almost a novel concept or plan is beyond me,well not really, I now see what being addicted does and how it plays out. The progressiveness of alcoholism, I get it first hand.
I also get that quitting is possible , I did , it is possible. What seemed in the past as doable, endurable ,managable, I now see as insane.

JeffreyAK

I had a similar history, drank a lot as a binger in my teens and early 20's (also smoked enormous quantities of weed, and snorted lots of coke), but around the time I got married, moved across country, and started graduate school, I stopped all that except rare social drinking. And it wasn't hard to stop, I just decided it had gotten in the way of my life and I stopped. It wasn't until I was around 40 that alcohol reared up as an increasing problem that went far beyond the heavy binge drinking I did when I was younger.

I read a study a while ago, I don't have the reference, that concluded people who drink heavily in their teens and early 20's have an easier time stopping than older drinkers, but set themselves up for a higher risk of falling into addiction later in life. That was exactly my path.

dwtbd

Very similar, the pot stopped right around the same time as the drinking back then.
A few years ago I tried to quit , found it difficult and in about thought substituting a little pot here and there would help get past the drinking. That lasted a bout week with weed by itself, a few beers starting seeming like a good idea to round out the pot high, much different plants today then when I had used it when younger. So basically that was another year of heavy drinking and pot smoking. Ironically quitting smoking tobacco (I now vape), meant the cigar /cig smoke no longer masked the pot smoking I was doing 'secretly', so back to alcohol alone and that just got worse.
Stop and Dont once it gets bad, it can't get better.

gaffo

I got lots of alcohol education while I was drinking, mostly from working with 12 steppers. Some of it actually stuck, some of it was useful to keep me from even worse self harm. This thread reminds me of how hopeless the idea of quitting seemed, it was just so hard. I guess I'm a pretty strong guy, I would quit for a month here and there but man o man it was so hard. It was like putting cross hatches on the calendar, shaky "X"s until the day that I could drink again. I remember scaring my wife that I would really dive into the deep end as soon as my 30 days was up. It really impressed my drinking buddies, like I was lifting up a car or something. One of the great revelations of early sobriety was that the first month was the most brutal time, that it just kept getting easier after that.

I try not to have any regrets but I do feel twinges now and again that it took until I was 46 to quit. I lost a lot of time. I continue to be amazed at the awesome things that I did put together in an alcoholic haze, my little family, house, my job (self employed!!!) and my race cars. Now I can really enjoy them without being drunk or hung over. Yay!

ZetaP38

What a truly stunning post, for me. I identify fully with "how hopeless the idea of quitting seemed, it was just so hard".

But what boggles my mind is how you would do an 'alcohol fast' for 30 days, over and over again...with getting to 30 days being the only goal. UGH. I had masochistic tendencies (self-punishing Ego), but the 'tyrant' in your mind was brutal.

Where you have a twinge of regret for not 'getting out from under sooner', I see a miracle having had to unfold in order for you to escape at all.

Whatta story. Thanks for sharing it.

Working so those sober 24s keep coming,

PJ

ZetaP38

P.S. Not saying a miracle didn't unfold for all of us who got sober using the AA Process. There's just a particular twist to this story that makes me appreciate the Power of AA a bit more today.

PJ

Mountainmanbob

The Big Book on page xxiv (The Doctor's Opinion) says that an alcoholic has an "allergy to alcohol". An allergy is an abnormal reaction to any food, liquid or substance. If nine out of ten people have one reaction and one out of ten people have a different reaction, then the reaction of the one out of ten is abnormal. It also says on page xxvi that "the action of alcohol on an alcoholic is a manifestation of an allergy; that the phenomenon of craving is LIMITED to this class and NEVER occurs in the average temperate drinker." (A phenomenon is something that you can see but can't explain). "These allergic types can NEVER safely use alcohol in ANY FORM AT ALL".

A.A. History - The Phenomenon of Craving

ZetaP38

There were several things I came to see differently further along in sobriety. One of the first 'switches' was changing:

"Alcohol is baffling, cunning, and powerful" - to - "Ego is baffling, cunning, and powerful".

In Phase I/Kindergarten of sobriety, the first way was useful in the fog as I had no *working* concept of Ego. Arriving on the 'crime scene' in AA, alcohol stood out as the primary culprit. That alcohol was an inanimate object and could not be guilty of committing any bad acts, didn't occur to me until later in the investigation under "getting down to causes and conditions".

Phase 1: "Don't think. Don't drink. Go to meetings." "My best thinking go me here." "Take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth."

Phase 2: THINK THINK THINK. Think through the drink to the drunk. Share your story, what happened, what it is like now.


In Phase 2, I also came to question the 'allergy concept' - because it didn't fit my experience of alcoholism.

The only 'allergy' experience I had was medically typical: I was allergic to rum, in particular: the red-faced, total-body warmth, increased heart rate effects.

I didn't have a physical allergy to alcohol, except where rum was concerned. And I didn't have a mental allergy to alcohol, say, like someone trying to get me eat liver.

It was *in* AA where I developed this mental and physical allergy to alcohol:

Where AA got, and held, my attention was in coming to see:

1. (mental) The mental obsession of alcohol: Getting it, looking forward it, planning times to drink it...every day, if possible.

2. (physical) That amazing craving - how could I have missed something so huge - and it didn't jump out at me until someone shared what it had looked like on them. How the first gulp set in motion a compulsion so great that, when I couldn't have more than one, added quite a singular torment to my life until I 'finished the drunk', sometimes a day or two later.

3. (spiritual) Being told I was spiritually deficient or spiritually bankrupt. (Didn't take long to figure out which one of those applied to me. <g>).

I've read "The Dr.'s Opinion" and he equates the phenomenon of craving with 'allergy'.


However, this concept doesn't jive with the mental/physical/spiritual model of AA, to me. My understanding of allergy is that the body is *rejecting* a substance - be it pollen or poison. Quite the contrary, my body insanely craved alcohol.


So, in pursuing 'the missing link', I've come to the likely candidate of "lust for pleasure" as the underlying cause of alcoholism; which fits 'all 3 legs' of addiction (of any kind).

Once I saw the connection made, I've seen a lot of support for it in writings/quotes. But the quote that kinda sums it up is:


Anyone else see the connections?

I still have more questions about Who Lust/Ego Is, but think my next 5th Step will be from this angle: Lust for pleasure: lust for power (sex), lust for prestige, lust for recognition, lust for .... (I'm sure there's more of 'em. <g>)


Best to All,

PJ

tomsteve

Very true. However, how to get individuals aware that are in denial isn't very easy. Many poeple said," that won't happen to me" or " I've got control" or "I can stop any time I want" and knew the consequences yet denied it.