slipnslide

Who can relate and help? My style of drinking..... i can go without. And going without isn't hard. But when I do drink, I DRINK! I do what I can to "keep the buzz" until I accidentally drink too much and wake up the next morning regretful. It's embarrassing to wake up in my mid 30's and think oh crap.... is hubs going to b me mad at me? Was I sloppy? Did I make a fool of myself? So when this happens, I decide I really shouldn't drink.... so I won't for a while and that won't be hard for me at all. Until, I do drink again. Then it will be one here and there until that random night I need to "keep the buzz" again. It's a game of Russian roulette.....

But how? How do I fix this?

doggonecarl

Define "fix"?

Is fixing it being able to drink without the consequences? Or quitting?

Going without, as you put it, is different from recovering. We fix our drinking problems by sobriety, but more importantly, by learning to live without alcohol for good. Living and loving the sober life.

Mummyto2

I was the same, didn't bother me going without for a few days, but then omg I could drink, FIX = staying sober for me, I CANT drink, I am beyond that now, NO SHAME ETC = sober, DRINKING = unhappiness that's for me

clem24

As a man, you should learn to take a decision and stand firmly by it. Decide to quit and quit forever. Do not try to take little, not even a drop. STAY COMPLETELY AWAY!!!

clem24

And by the way, I use to be like that. But a friend accidentally made me to check my blood pressure using the blood pressure calculator. He did it because I don't usually like going to the hospital for fear of being disgraced. But after checking my blood pressure, I knew I was going to hit rock bottom. I just had to take a firm decision and abide by it.

Misc72

I'm spot on your kind of drinker. Never drank daily. More times than not there would be no issues. But when I would drink to get drunk it was quite a spectacle. Black outs started when I turned 40. Could see alcohol getting progressively frequent in nature. Having had a longer term sobriety of 18 months I was able to experience a happy fullfilling life without it and even grew to hate it. Then I talked myself into it with the illusion that I would never be a problem episode drinker again... That lasted about 2 months. lol Then I was back to the puking, obnoxious, black out drunk, multi day hangovers, regretful behavior drunk that I become. There is only 1 way to FIX this. Accept that you cannot allow alcohol in your life. Take Dee's repeated advice to everyone in this forum and create a plan of attack. It works if you work it. It won't if you don't. I'm not an AA'er but I am into SMART. Maybe check out different methods so you aren't in your 40s when you have this epiphany again like me.

Dave42001

Don't drink that first drink!!

HTown

Well, there are a lot of us here with various drinking styles and no shortage of those like your style. The fix is there is "no fix" and still be able to drink. I bet that sounds scary to you. No more alcohol ever. OMG, seriously? It is true.

There is no way to put that genie back in the bottle and drink normally after a certain point. No matter your initial stlye. I know that is not what you want to hear. I get it.

No amount of moderation or changes in types of alcohol or other methods of controlling your drinking exist. You cannot control it. And boy have we all tried. You have an advantage though, you are young and you are beginning to figure this out. Stop now. Read the older posts, post here too. You will find a great future awaits you without the alcohol habit. Too scary? Try a good 90 days free of drinking. See how it goes.

ScottFromWI

Welcome back slipnslide. Lots of good advice here already, I'd just reinforce that there is much more to being sober than just "not drinking". At bare minimum, you need to accept that drinking is not an option at all. Once we cross the line onto loss of control, there is no going back to "normal" drinkng . If there was you would simply do it and not be here seeking help like the rest of us did.

It really doesn't matter what "kind" of drinker you are either. How much, how often, what kind of drink, etc.....is not relevant if you are out of control at any stage. The solution is the same in all cases. Hope we can help you make that decision, and if you do decide to quit there is lots of support here.

feldknocker

For me it is like playing Russian roulette. I may not get smashed every single time. But that possibility is ALWAYS there. There have been enough times where I set out to have a little and things got out of hand. Also, as I got older, there were more bullets in the revolver when I played. Upon honest reflection, the only times I drank "responsibly" were when I was physically prevented from having anymore because I'd left the location where the alcohol was. But even then, all I did was obsess about it until I fell asleep.

For me, sobriety is the best path because it takes that awful possibility off the table. T

tomsteve

i used to do that,too. wake up full of fear of what i did the night before and i wouldnt drink for a bit- usually no more than a week.
but then alcoholism progressed. i couldnt not drink no matter how hard i tried.drinking became and every day event.when the thoughts of what i may have done in a blackout came up id drink again for forget. but then i didnt need a reason/excuse to drink.
for some reason, i havent had the problem of being concerned about what i did the day/night before since i stopped drinking.

"But how? How do I fix this?"
in what matter do you want to "fix it?
are you looking for suggestions on how to moderate or stop drinking for good?

SteelRes211

Slipnslide--I used to drink like you on and off until one day I could no longer control my drinking and went full time with a vengeance. Look at the number of posts by some of the folks who respond on this forum, some in the thousands, learn by their wisdom.

Berrybean

Well, if going without isnt hard, then I would suggest that you do just that.

My experience was that going without suddenly seemed a lot harder once it was off the table as my promised relief and solution to the stresses and strains of life. I was much more dependent (mentally) than I realised until I resolved to stop. And that is where Recovery comes in. Recovery isnt about GETTING sober. It is about sustaining long term sobriety by finding new and better ways of getting relief and dealing with life on lifes terms. And learning who I was without that drink in my life.

Wishing you all the best.
BB

Berrybean

I think perhaps it is worth reading through your first thread on here if you have not done so already... http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...7012-kids.html

a lot of us are held back from happy and healthy lives and relationships by denial and rationalisation (ie fibbing to ourselves, effectively minimising the problem except for when we get caught out by others and effectively forced to face the music, and making excuses for drinking).

I managed to drag out my sorry alcoholic existance by adding in a couple of no-drinking months (Sober October and Dry January if I remember rightly) which just served to convince me that I didnt really have a problem. What I couldnt see was that, NO I didnt have a problem when I didnt take the first drink. Of course, each time I resumed drinking, topped up with self-justification and feeling like i'd really earned the right to hit it hard for a while with my months abstinance.

Noone can tell you what to do. No even your husband. If you want to drink - guess what, you will drink. Perhaps it is worth thinking about why you would consider continuing to do something that causes misery in your life and is devisive in your relationships, if it is easy to not do it.

Good luck. BB

August252015

Hmm, I know lots of women who decide to quit too. Venture to say it has nothing to do with gender, that whole decision to stay sober part.

That said, whatever it takes for YOU to quit, if you are an alcoholic, is what it takes. And, what kind of drinker we were doesn't matter in terms of us being alcoholics. I bet 99% of us can relate to SOMETHING any other alcoholic says (I'd venture, again, and say that we relate to a good deal about each other) regardless of what "kind" of drinker we were.

I can tell you that for me...everything is better sober and I wouldn't trade my life for anything in the world, period.

Delilah1

I found attempting to moderate exhausting and unsuccessful. It was easier to completely remove alcohol as an option. You can do this!

NYCDoglvr

You're describing alcoholism. I can not drink, but once I pick one up I can't stop.
It's a progressive disease that can't be controlled except with abstinence. AA saved my life and today I hardly recognize the sorry person I once was.

FoleyUK

That's my problem. So far I'm handling it by avoiding being around alcohol and trying to change my habits. It's hard, but so far so good. I failed a lot in the past, but I've used that as experience to educate my decisions now.

It may be the simplest thing to say, but it's also the hardest, just don't pick up that first drink. It may take time to not do that, but that is what it all boils down to. Don't pick up that first drink and then make your decisions from there. If it means going home or not going out to begin with, so be it. For me not drinking isn't really the problem. It's changing my life style and thinking habits.

LadyBlue0527

Your post was me to a tee. Even towards the end I only drank on weekends, sometimes not even every weekend. I could also drink any number of times without incident but, I knew, the bottom was going to drop out from under me eventually. There was no way to know when that would happen.

I also discovered the reason it wasn't so hard to go without was because I knew eventually I was going to get to drink.

I'm convinced us "overdo it every so often" or "weekend binge" people are nothing more than alcoholics who would LOVE to drink every day but can't and are trying to make up for lost time. Still alcoholics. People who have no problem with alcohol stop without issue after a few drinks.

Once you've crossed the line that's it. Those episodes of overdoing it increase. The things you do while in that state get progressively worse. Nothing like getting up in the morning horrendously hungover, saying good morning, and being met by deliberate silence. It removes all doubt as to what kind of night you had. Worse to not even know why. Thank God I didn't have children in the house when I got to that point.

You want to "fix" this but something tells me you're asking how to be sure you won't overdo it. There's no way to do that because the decision to cut ourselves off once we've had a few isn't made when we're sober. There's a thin line between "I must be careful" and "Who gives a damn?". No way of knowing where that line is. I even set the number of drinks I could have. How alcohol affects your body changes too, at any given moment and without warning.

Here's one way to figure out if this is just a fleeting issue or if there's really a problem. Set a much longer term goal to abstain. Maybe 6 months. If you have absolutely no problem with alcohol the consideration of doing that shouldn't make you feel discomfort at all. If it does, that's a pretty good sign.

You're headed down a very bad road that will get worse. How much are you willing to risk in order to continue?

NYCDoglvr

In AA we're told avoid "people, places and things" that can trigger a desire to drink. And HALT: don't get too "hungry, angry, lonely, tired," which can also trigger a craving.