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- - What now? Am I an alcoholic? (https://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/alcoholism/426355-what-now-am-i-alcoholic.html)

Quote:

Originally Posted by ru12 (Post 6865970)

If you think that you are going to be deprived if you never drink you will probably find it difficult to find permanent abstinence. Perhaps read Allen Carr’s book about alcohol and see if it changes your mind about what alcohol really is. I don’t feel deprived at all. I’m thrilled I never have to drink that muck again!

Thanks Ru, will check it out. I think this is all just a bit new to me. I'm pretty confident if I wouldn't have taken things to extreme in that month and developed physical dependence, the idea of permanent abstinence wouldn't be on the cards at all. It's still a bit hard to wrap my head around it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nez (Post 6865984)

I know that I can't. Many attempts at exactly that, have proven to me that even if I can successfully moderate for a while, the inevitable result is that at some point, I will wind up back in withdrawal hell and with a feeling of pitiful comprehensible demoralization.

The withdrawals are terrible and I'm pretty sure I'm too scared of them to drink again. It just sucks because this is my first time going through them and they've totally changed the way I see alcohol now to something ugly where previously it was something I enjoyed and looked forward to.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yixi (Post 6866010)

Hi NA - welcome to SR and thanks for posting.

I hope that you don't mind me giving you my personal opinion - quite a few of your posts have most definitely rung alarm bells very loudly for me. The good people here have covered 99% of the clanging but the one that really jumped out for me;

I've had a chronic illness last few years which has kinda kept me from drinking at all. And when I think about it, shortly before starting again once I got better, I ended up here rather quickly. Just a taste for getting drunk again I guess made me do it more often

To me, this implies that you hit the drink again heavily as soon as you felt safe to do so. Then hammered it to the point of shaking, sweats and high blood pressure/heart rate. This worries me greatly because that's exactly what I would have done and I am a recovering alcoholic.

You may decide that you wish to take up "normal" drinking again. But before you do I would advise that you have a good long think before you poke that hornets nest as the fact that you approached SR also suggests to me that you already have your answer - you're just not very comfortable with it.

Take care and I wish you health and happiness. Yix

Thanks for the advice, Yix! Think it started as "making up for lost time" and enjoying drinking regularly after years of not, but that month was just ridiculous. I do regret it. I was so stressed and constantly sleep deprived and just relied way too much on booze to self medicate those issues. And here, I ended up!

Aw - thanks NA. You know, a lot of people assume that when you choose not to drink that you're depriving yourself of something great and you're "not having any fun". That's really not true at all - quite the reverse, in fact :) IMO, self medication using booze is like putting out a fire with lighter fuel. I hope that you're feeling better in yourself and considering giving life without the sauce a whirl - I think that you'll be pleasantly surprised at how that works out. Take care x