Weird reaction (but a good one) watching someone drink
 

I was watching Narcos - although the details don't matter - where in a scene a lead character starts to drink heavily. Close ups of the whisky. Another one. And all I could feel was ... a headache coming up, nausea, the feeling of being locked up in my own head. Just like back then.

What once would have been a trigger, or at least give a pang, now just gave an unwell feeling. And this wasn't my mind talking, this wasn't my rational me. It came from deep down, almost like an anti-trigger.

I don't know how I got to this stage (well, I know all that I did, all my plans and backup plans, sure, but I don't know how this particular "click" came about), and I know it doesn't mean I'm cured or home free or anything, but it sure is a promising reaction. It's not just thinking it through, it's feeling it through. Wonder if this sounds familiar to some of you?

I think that's a good sign for sure. As active drinkers we would go right back to the bottle after feeling the bad effects for real, much less simply witnessing them. A sign that our sobriety can grow stronger as time goes on too I think, thanks for sharing!

I have a similar experience, too, Chief.

In addition to a wave of nausea when I see drinking on TV, I experience it in real life. I am fortunate in that liquor can only be sold in liquor stores in the state where I live. However, in my bordering home state -- which I visit frequently -- it can be sold pretty much anywhere. I often stop for gas at the same place in my hometown and have to walk by the liquor section. My stomach turns, everytime. Even when I drive by the place, where I used to by booze on Sundays to take home (also something prohibited in the state where I live).

Nausea isn't fun, but in my case, I'll take it!

I don't know if it's exactly similar, but given the amount of time I spend here discussing 'not drinking', I've been happily surprised to realize how much less time (mental time, effort) I spend on 'not drinking' on/for myself.
Lately there have been issues/circumstances that have been to varying degrees difficult to deal with. And more then once , after the initial 'dust' has settled I realize that during the 'dust up' neither drinking or having to focus on not drinking wasn't part of the focus. Obviously It's there , else the absence won't be missed, but it sure feels good to notice, if that makes sense.
I suppose my subconscious is finally starting to bow to all the time spent being conspicuously conscious :)
Glad you guys feel nauseous, from time to time :)

I get the same unpleasant reaction just thinking about drinking. A revulsion. :(

I sometimes get that, too. I strongly recall how I felt in the morning after I drank too much the previous night. Ugh, that hungover feeling sucks. I feel so much better these days.

It's kinda funny isn't it, how now the thought of a drink is repulsive instead of compulsive.

I'm 30 days sober. The commercials of people having a great time drinking is a trigger for me. It doesn't last long but it's still there. I try and remember the last time I drank and had a hangover for 2 days after and that does help with the cravings. I'm getting there. ��

I completely agree. Seeing someone in a heavy drinking scene gives me a bad feeling. Even seeing a character drinking normally gives me a bad feeling, since I'm imagining what it would be like I I drank, not them.

I watched the second season of "Narcos" over the weekend. It featured a lot of drinking ( I got the same feeling you did watching the DEA agents drink heavily).
The only thing I craved after watching a character drink was a really good coffee after watching the Berna character drinking a cup in that cafe.

kinda the opposite for me. while 90 something % of the time seeing people drink beer and all i'm like ugg yuck screw that noise.

But if i see someone drink whiskey say in a very alcoholic like fashion say right from the bottle in a tv show or something forget it I start really itchen to do the same.

the wierd part? I was never much of a hard liquor drinker. so maybe i dont haver that oh yuck factor built in to stop me like i do with beer say.

it can be bad too watching some scene where someone busts open a liquor bottle BAM the obsession is on.

Tho i was at a party once with folks alld rinking beer and smoking and such and i was repulsed i coudlnt leave fast enough!

I have noticed the smell of or sometimes even sight of alcohol or if I drive slowly by one of the liquor stores I used to frequent, I get HEARTBURN! lol That's okay, I'll take that little moment of psychosomatic heartburn than real and much worse heartburn from actually taking a drink.

I have always been one who gets worried in advance for the character who's about to get in a bad situation in a movie, feel bad for the person that's about to be humiliated, etc....now when I see certain kinds of drinking behaviors I get the same apprehensive feeling FOR them that I get around here when people post things like "I'm gonna try moderation" or "I'm eight days sober and going to a weekend festival" and such. It's like "noooo, don't go there!" In real life, too, I see the alcoholic "signs" in people's behaviors and I either don't want that person to "get there" or I want the people who still suffer to find what we have.

Sometimes I cringe at the FB posts and instagram pics and "witty" quotes or song lyrics about wine and girls' nights out or whatever whatever. I am happy that people who can, can enjoy that kind of stuff, BUT I often think - "huh. wonder if they'd actually enjoy their time with friends [or insert whatever here] without drinking more." I do.

Alcohol itself doesn't bother me. It registers of course, but it's simply not a factor in my life. I am ok being around people who drink - normally. I do not spend ANY time with people who are practicing alcoholics or just BB style "heavy drinkers." I only encounter those at work since I work in a restaurant! This is primarily because I am ruthless about who gets my time, and only healthy, positive, solid people get to share it.

Thanks for the replies, very interesting. GnikNus, you know exactly what scenes I was talking about! :)

Mind you, the feeling was very fleeting, say 5 seconds. Which is quite different from the real thing, which seemed eternal.

I have no problem with being around "normal" drinking - my wife is a normie and I decided very early on that I didn't want her to change her ways. It was particularly a reaction (and yes, there is a part of empathy there as well, even though it's just TV) to the kind of drinking that you know will hurt like hell, that will make a terrible situation even more terrible.

In this case the mood was already full of doom of the senseless killings, the cruelty, the corruption. Adding loads of alcohol to that... I could just feel the nightmare that would become a short while later. And you can't drink like that repeatedly and not expect to become an alcoholic at one point.

30 days is awesome, but just to be clear, I surely wasn't experiencing this at that stage. Like for you, for me it was a trigger, pretty much through the first few months. A trigger I tried to avoid as much as possible, but without expecting to be totally isolated from them (as that's impossible). I learned to ... ignore it is the best word. Like that stain on the carpet, or the ugly chair, you kinda "zone it out" and stop seeing it.

It's a process that gets easier - right now you are doing the hard work. I was just happy to notice that after this time (4 years and a bit) I seem to instinctively recoil from certain kind of images that touch the core of my addiction. Clearly not everyone experiences this, so please don't think of it as "failing" if you don't in the future.

And like zjw, I don't have that reaction in other situations, like seeing the "cold beer on a hot day" ones, probably because beer wasn't my drug of choice (like hard liquor for him) at all. There I still need to catch myself and go "wait a minute!". Nothing I would call a "craving", but proof enough I'll always need to keep an eye on my addictive self.