Not Drunk In One Year; Am I An Alcoholic?
 

Hello everybody, just thought I'd post in here.

I last had an alcoholic drink on 7th July 2015. I was travelling through Europe and I had a red wine with my meal at an Italian restaurant in Budapest.

Prior to that I had cut down on my drinking because I felt guilty when I drunk. Usually when I went out I would just had soft drinks, occasionall I would drink.

I didn't like the things I did when I was drunk, I don't like the way I acted, I didn't enjoy the hangovers or heart burn.

This is why I made the conscious choice to stop drinking. I never decided it would be permanent. It was just for the moment.

Now seems like a good time to dig into some of the negative experiences I had involving alcohol that led me to make this decision.

Flashback:

It's the winter of 2014, I wake up in hospital, dazed and confused. What has happened to me? What am I doing here? My family surround me. They tell me I have been head butted by someone. I have no recollection of it happening. I was drunk so I don't remember what happened. I am not a violent person who starts fights. The guy who did it has got a track record for these kinds of things. I was just unfortunate. Because I was drunk and concust I don't remember what actually happened.

I had an MRI scan and everything was fine, which was good.

Let's rewind a little.

I look up at the doctor, in disbelief that I have got genital warts. I don't remember who I got them from and I hadn't had sex in many months so I was confused why they suddenly cropped up.

To be fair, they could have come from a partner I slept with when sober but a lot of my sexual encounters were when drunk.

This was the second time I had an STI. The first time I had gonorrhea and that was likely from when I was drunk.

After that I did take precaution when drunk but I didn't realise oral could transmit diseases that readily.

I had several experiences waking up next to guys I didn't know the name of. There was one unattractive creepy guy with a paedo voice and that was a massive cringe.

Also when drunk I used to just say silly things to people or do things that were "silly"

I much prefer being sober and controlling my actions and what I do. Also I can remember everything which is good.

From the ages of 17 to 21 I binge drank a lot, in uni I went out every night for a month at one point.

My drinking was nearly always social but I did use it as stress relief and to unwind.

There was one experience when I was going through a break up and I was on a street corner drinking a pear cider, but other than that it was social, occasionally I would have one or two drinks before meeting others but this was only a few times.

All my friends drank a lot so it seemed normal, in fact it is normal to drink lots in our culture and people usually are happy to talk about the stupid stuff they do when drunk and they see it as a good thing but I see it as negative experiences.

When I was drunk in my second year of uni I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life. I was really drunk and I got with an ugly boy and he wanted to bum me, I didn't really want him to but because I was drunk I eventually gave in. He put his **** in me without a condom. It was only in for about 7 seconds. I was so sore the next day.

When I woke up I was horrified. I immediately went to the sexual health clinic and I went on emergency HIV prevention treatment, I took it for a month and thankfully I didn't get HIV.

The other guy wouldn't even get tested, WHAT A ************* ******** NOB!

While in uni I also experimented with several drugs including weed, cocaine, ketamine, mushrooms, MDMA and methedrone.

I never felt addicted to them though, although I was a heavy cannabis user for a while.

Anyway my question is, am I an alcoholic or just a problem drinker?

I binge drank a lot but I wasn't dependent on it.

I have had several patches of time where I stopped drinking for a few months before this current time.

What do y'all think? Does it even matter? It is just a label

Currently when people ask my why I don't drink I usually tell them it is because I had bad experiences or because t created problems in my life. I haven't used the word alcoholic and didn't see myself as one for the last year but in the last few days I've started to accept that maybe I am. What do y'all think?

Also there is one more experience I would low to share.

It was in my third year of uni, I went out drinking. When I woke up my phone, laptop and wallet had gone.

I don't remember what happened that night, if I went home with anyone, if someone followed me home, saw I was drunk and then took my stuff, I don't know if I went back with a boy or a girl or what.

Anyway, that is all.

Thanks for reading and get back to me :)

It matters if you are thinking about drinking again.

As my drinking progressed so did the debauchery. I was grateful to come to an understanding I am an alcoholic. This may have saved my life.

I don't take the first drink and never have to worry about the consequences of the results of more field research.

Grat's on a year sober - keep it up.

You are right - it doesn't matter a whit, but only on the condition you never drink again. If you resume drinking, it matters a great deal.

I try not to think about what I am or what I'm not, I've been sober for over a year and I like being in control. I'm allergic to booze, when I drink I break out in handcuffs!!

Zam, why do you ask? Sounds like the hard drinker type, who can stop or moderate given sufficient reason - but many of whom do become alcoholic.

Progressive, fatal loss of control over the amount taken once begun to drink, coupled with irresistible inexplicable obsession to do so, surrounded by trivial excuses for taking just one, or two, or comforting notions of handling ourselves this time, or, no thought of the almost certain consequences whatsoever. If they occur, they do not crowd into the mind with sufficient force to prevent us from pouring one anyway.

Complete failure of hand-on-hot-stove defense which works normally in other areas of life.

Progressive *loss of control over the amount taken once begun*. Heartless obsession, destructive, ravaging, medically hopeless, and terminal, despite random periods on the wagon.

Cheers!

ZamZam, thank you for posting this. Wow, I needed to hear it. I take it you are in your 20's? I was a scholarship tennis player in college. Growing up, my first drink was my freshman year in high school. You only know in hindsight what things meant at the time. It was on the way back from a tennis tournament and I could not yet drive, and the guy driving stopped and I got a quart of Miller High Life. Will never forget it. It is after playing for a few hours, it was an hour drive home, we were hungry and dehydrated. I remember the comfort I got from the first sip. It did not take long to finish that quart. I was a zombie and in Lapland.

From them on I was a binge drinker. I only drank at weekend parties, never drank at tennis tournaments. I was very dedicated to my sport. But when I drank, never was I a sipper, I was a gulper. One time going to a concert my friend and I bought a six pack each on the way to a concert and had 15 minutes before we got there. Yep, downed six brews in 15 minutes. Easy Schmeezy. I am 54 now, back then, the worst fake ID's worked. I can't tell you how much I drank that night.

In college I was mostly a weekend drinker, blackouts had not started yet, but I was a heavy drinker, like you said, we all were, drinking a lot was the goal, it was 'fun' it was what we did. Work hard, study hard, work out hard, party hard.

The seed was planted.

After college, I really was still a weekend drinker. But pretty soon, after getting married, dealing with 'life', 'finances', 'having children', the 'ups and downs of married life of a dual income couple', I started dropping by the local dive, for 'nostalgic reasons' I would buy a Lone Star Longneck (living in Houston Texas) and play pinball. I started leaving work earlier and spending more time drinking more longnecks before getting home.

See the pattern developing?

My wife was similar to me in college. We had kids early after marrying. I was a beer drinker, she was a wine drinker. Yep, I started drinking wine too, since the lady of the home needed wine after her hard day at work. We never really got hammered at home. So, at some point in my late 20's to early 30's I increased my drinking at home. NEVER ,was I a sipper except at the dinner table. But ALWAYS, I was the dinner table cleaner so that I could finish other peoples wine. Gross, but hey, it's what some of us do. Another hindsight red flag.

Fast forward to my early 40's, dad passed, family problems with the estate, moving our family, lot's more "****" that we all have to deal with at times, but my way to deal with the ever increasing stress was to drink. NEVER during the workday, yet. But I became a late night wine drinker. Then, probably fueled by my alcoholism I developed severe anxiety and fears, and my excuse for finding a way to get to sleep was to chug red wine before coming to bed. Yep, very easy to go downstairs for a few minutes to "check the doors and make sure they are locked" so I could chug from the bottle. Yep, that only got worse.

Then I started to drink to blackout. At first, not drinking more, and I don't know how it REALLY works, and it might be different for everyone, not a problem for some, but for me when it started it never stopped. This went on for several years.

One night after a big fight at home, I had to get out for awhile. My drunk logic was to take a bottle of wine with me, but not drink and drive (lol, I was already drunk at 9:00 pm) and simply drove to an adjoining neighborhood with my laptop and internet hotspot, and drank my bottle of wine parked in the street. Someone called the police about 'a strange car'. Yep, DUI. I was doing so poorly on the field sobriety test that the police wanted to (I guess) film me under better lighting, transporting me to a convenience store (that part I did not remember, I only remembered up to the part of concentrating on the dark street trying to walk a straight line), then I lost memory. My wife bailed me out. Lot's of co-dependency there, she was not even mad. Being an attorney herself she was proud to be able to show her bar card and immediately get me out. I got deferred adjudication because the police ****** up by unlawfully transporting me to the convenience store for better lighting. Apparently the video was quite the watch. My attorney, a good friend of my wife, asked if I wanted to see it. I said no. He said it would be a good thing to not watch, but he gave me a good scolding, which did not good at all. I was no where near "my bottom" (and we all have one, for some of us it is something very small and unique to us, for others it comes with killing ourselves in one way or another from our drinking).

I got two years probation. Meeting with my probation officer once a month, could be asked to pee in a cup at any time. I had left my successful commissioned only sales position ad started my own company, selling the same type products. It was actually easier to be a drunk, a high functioning one, being in sales where you only get paid on what you produce. And if you hit your numbers, and I always blew them out, you were left alone, which fit perfectly for my ever increasing volume of drinking. I found I could work harder and faster to end earlier, then pick up my tall boy, which became a 24 ounce can (just one can though) which became a six pack, that I would drink down the street in the shopping center parking lot, coming home on time, seeming normal since I was not hammered yet. I was good at hiding it, and it helps when your spouse is a high functioning heavy drinker. But then, and to this day she can still stop and leave wine in her glass, which still defies logic to me how people can do this, wasting perfectly good wine because they had enough. I never had enough till the bottle was empty.

So I became a math wizard and calculating when I could stop drinking to avoid detection "should" I get that pee test. But one Sunday night I drank, within the positive testing range, and yep, Sharon asked me to pee in a cup. I faked it, that I could not pee. I pissed off the guy who watches you to make sure you don't pour someone else pee into the cup from a container on your person. I told him I had stage fright, anxiety and was trying as hard as I could. For hours I waited them out, and they said to come back the next day. That would have resulted in me losing my driving license in breaking my probation, which would have been the end of my company. Nope, not yet a bottom.

My bottom came when I hiding a six or twelve pack in my spare tire compartment in my car, had a jug of wine in the garage, and I would later find when I got sober, empty and full bottles in other very creative hiding places that I would find to hide my stash (like some of us do). I was at my end. I was drinking in the morning, either before or after throwing up (my morning routine) downstairs, and I got to where I could do it quietly. Then drink some wine to calm me down. I was still working, still driving, putting myself and others at risk. And when my wife would go to bed it was on for me. Waking up at 7 or 8 am was waking up still drunk for me. So I was pretty much drunk in one way or another 24/7.

I had tried ONE AA meeting a long time before. I went to the baddest part of town to have the lest chance of being recognized, and no, I did not enjoy the experience. Fast forward to a particular Thursday morning, drunk, wife off to work, and I had my moment, I had clarity, I would have another drink and die, or I would go to AA in my neighborhood (since I was too drunk to risk a long drive). I no longer cared. I really did not want to die. So I took went to a noon meeting, drunk, and that was the start of my sobriety. It took many tried to get 90 days. I finally put together 2.5 years till April 2015 thinking I could drink socially. It did not end well. It took till July 10th to start over and I am sober today, one yer and 2 days.

ZamZam, I liked your historical blow by blow. It compelled me to do the same. Hopefully it helps you or others, I can tell now that it ended up being really good for me to do. Every time I go through my history in one way or another like this, it reshuffles my deck a little, and I think a little differently, in a different and good clarity.

As to your question as to if you are an alcoholic, if you aren't, you sound like you are well on your way and you know it too. Reading your post was in a way reading about myself at your age. Lot's of similarities, which is why I wanted to go into detail about what happened to me later in my alcoholic life. NOT that this will be your future, yours could be better or worse. This one was just mine. All of ours are different, but also all the same.

If you are asking the question you probably know the answer. Blackouts are a good indicator that you have a problem with alcohol and addiction, maybe with other types of ways to get numb or high.

For me it was not chasing a high, it was escaping, checking out. I had lots of abuse growing up, lot's of "excuses" to drink. I got a lot of therapy for my past and now just accept my life as it is. When I drank my problems never went away, they were still there. These days, when I have bad days, riddled with fear and anxiety, I say a prayer to my HP, just take a moment to myself, and move forward, doing little things that were on my list to do for that day, for work or for family, so that when I recovered from my anxiety, I had cleared away lots of things to do. It works for me. My good days and good periods seem to last longer now, and my bad days and periods are shorter and fewer. But they are still there. I just don't drink because of my fears and issues anymore. I deal with them. Fun? No. Do I wish I COULD drink? Yes, honestly I do. It would be fun ad I am envious of the people who can come home ad pour a glass of wine, or have a beer or two, then stop. Yes, I envy them. But I am very grateful for my clear head now. I love my sobriety and embrace it. But I still have those moments and those days. I think we all do.

Sobriety for me just became a way of life, because for me the alternatives were death. Last April when I took that first drink on the guys golf trip, I knew it was not going to work socially for me. It was on. I tried and know I am just not a social drinker. Kinda funny that after all my history, that I would think I might be able to be one. But our alcoholic brain does this to us. It is tricky. I just know I can't have one sip. It is no longer a saying or an exaggeration, I really can't have one sip. For me one sip and it's on, and I don't think I have one more chance in me at getting sober. That is my good fear, my daily fear, sometime my moments fear. It's just me.

Thank you for your wonderful and honest post. Keep posting. :)

Also, what what I hear in meetings and have witnessed, it appears that we are alcoholics for life. I only say that having heard so many old timers in AA, or the periodic person with 5-10-30 years sobriety come in to say they 'went back out', and it was never a good ending when they started again. It seems the this truly is a progressive illness or whatever you want to call it. Is it age? Who knows. We can't live in reverse now can we......I do know in my relapses that each one was worse then the last. So, I am a believer that it is progressive. At least for me.

So I think that answers your question. For me I was sober 2.5 years and was certain that I had done my time, deserved to be a normie, and convinced myself that I was, and certainly if I wasn't then while on that trip I would immediately stop drinking for the rest of the 4 days, having known my experiment had failed. Yet I was certain that I was home free and could now go to cocktail parties and drink with my wife, not be the fizzy water or diet coke drinker, and I could have one or two when I got home, like the normal drinkers do. Nope, I had one sip of my gin and tonic, it was what was poured for me, and I knew there and then that I would not be stopping on that trip. I convinced myself I could stop when I got home. Nope. Toughest 2 months of my life but grateful for them because now I really do know. For me, and for most of us, there is no amount of sober time that gives us normalcy back. You will hear stories (and I have in AA) of people who did just what I did, and they were able to stop, reinforcing in their minds that they could now drink again. They end up back in AA to tell their stories of it not ending well.

What I don't know is that when familiar faces are no longer in my home group, did they move? Are they out drinking? Or are they dead? Interesting now that I think about it, it hardly ever comes up that anyone will ever ask during a meeting about so and so. It must come up in idle chit chat before and after meetings, but I am not a chit chatter. I am not a good sharer either. I get in and get out. I am pretty anti social. I am very protective. I don't trust people really, and I know why. I'm not happy about that and continue to work on it, but my goals now are to stay sober, and live.

Carin - "BOOM"!!!

Lots of good feedback for you here ZamZam. Rest assured you are not alone in having these thoughts/doubts about whether or not you are an alcoholic or whether or not you could return to "normal" drinking some day. Just about all of us have or have had them over the days/months/year that we have been sober. And man of us have acted on them, only to return to the same destructive drinking habits once again. It's tricky to - because sometimes you can "moderate" for a while - a few weeks or even a couple months...but the bad habits always return.

I have not drank in 2 years 4 months and 7 days. I know damn well where starting to drink again would take me. RIGHT back to the chaos and shame that I left behind. Because I am an alcoholic.

What do you think would happen if you drank again tomorrow? I suspect that if you are here and asking it's because you know that once you start drinking, all bets are off, and your life will become unmanageable again. If so, then you too are an alcoholic.

Being alcoholic doesn't mean we can't stop drinking and stay stopped. It means that when we are drinking, we have an alcoholic mindset that leads us to destroy everything good in our lives, and in ourselves.

Glad you are here, Zam.

I think you may have answered your own question.

Thanks to Whodathunk also for sharing in such detail.

I don't do the kind of things sober, or suffer the levels of consequence, that I did when I drank.

Who wants that chaos and garbage back?

I sure don't.

I hope you don't drink and that you hang around here with us.

I don't know how to do the quote thing, but I wanted to quote what you just said Sober CAH,

"I hope you don't drink and that you hang around here with us."

And I really liked your message. You said it in so few words, I really wish I could do that instead of writing so much like I do.....but that's me...

But what you said really resonated with me, hoping we don't drink and will hang out here with everyone. I realized that one of the things missing in my life is having a place to go, people to be with. I don't do it well in person, just not something I am good at. But I am very comfortable online, I can be honest and not be judged, or if I am who cares? I like it that way. We are a very honest group here and I am so glad I found this site and returned again, I was a little lost during my last year of chaos and feel the clouds lifting. And this is a great place to share the good and bad, get feedback, help others and be helped by others.

Just wanted to say that. Thanks for your really sincere and honest simple and very deep comment. :)

I haven't drank in several years.

But I know what will happen if I start again.

I did "research" for years and kept getting the same results.

I had 3 years sober at one point in my life. I couldn't stay stopped and returned to drinking.

Today I have a little over 5 years sober and I don't want to drink any more.

Hi, I'm an alcoholic!

How easy is it for you to stay stopped?

From the AA big book, doctors opinion, paraphrased.

"These alcholics have one thing in common. They cannot start drinking without developing the phenomenon of craving. This phenomenon cannot, by any means known to us, be permanently eradicated (still the case today). The only known solution we can suggest is complete abstinence."

A friend of mine drank after ten years sobriety. He was dead in three months. For an alcoholic of my type, there is no return to drinking safely.

ZamZam, you were very honest and open in your post. I wouldn't be that open in an AA meeting if you go to one.

I just wanted you to know that there was nothing in your post that I haven't done or thought about doing. What you were talking about is just normal run of the mill alcoholic behaviour.

This disease takes us to some awful places, but there is a way out. In AA I found people just like me who showed me how to recover and I was no longer alone. You can recover and you can have a better life.

ZamZam,

no one can answer that for you.
your chosen title seemingly alludes to a connection between length of not drinking and absence or presence of alcoholism.
there is no such connection.

i've not had a drink in quite a few years, and without a doubt am an alcoholic.

hm...you're here, after a year of not drinking,, and after 16 posts in an entire year, and that makes me wonder what brings you to this question. does it relate to the idea of "ah, see, no drinking for a year, and wasn't all that hard, so i can't really be an alcoholic and therefore..."?
something like that wiggling around in your mind?

Wow thank you so much for sharing your story and how things progressed over the year. I am happy that you have found sobriety now :)

I haven't read all the replies, I apologize.

I have one quick question that may bring some clarity...its one I've asked myself when I debate the importance of alcohol in my life.

You describe in much detail your time in the restaurant in lovely Budapest. I can imagine it in my head, I can see how the wine fits clearly...and yes, as described it sounds very normal. Not just normal, beautiful.

WHAT if you'd had a glass of Peligrino along with that meal. Would that have taken away from the experience? Would it have changed your time in Budapest?

My point is: If alcohol plays an important role in your life...even if you are no longer doing embarrassing or dangerous things...BEWARE. Do we really NEED a lovely red wine to enhance an already beautiful experience? NO. The only people who do have a problem with alcohol.

I know I had a problem with alcohol but I didn't think I was a full-on alcoholic then in the last few days I feel like I accepted I could be alcoholic but I wasn't sure