bcboy

So we are all are having so much fun with the how often we all used to drink I thought maybe we could talk about this.

How did drinking make you feel.

For me alcohol was a big time stimulant but very short lived. When I would smash back a pint of vodka it would start with a warm feeling in my stomach, spreading to a tingle in my hands.

I would then do anything that would involve very heavy exercise. I would hammer 40-50km on my road bike, Burn through the local trails near my area on my mountain bike or just go through a very intense workout.

That feeling would last about 45 minutes and I would feel like an absolute LION!

combine that with a few joints and I was unstoppable completely out of control.

But then the feeling would be replaced with the fact that I just drank a pint of hard liquor and crash supper hard at this point I would make my way back home all drawn out and exhausted.

Up, down, Up, down again and again...

Glad I am off that ride

endlesspatience

For me, one of the consistently attractive things was the feeling of abandoning inhibition. I think the first I got properly drunk (on cider) was when I was a teenager and I was with a girl I wanted to touch. On almost every other occassion when I wanted to reduce the discomfort I felt heading towards physical or sexual intimacy, I took a drink. It felt fantastic to release the ropes around my libido.

WhiteWave

I got the warmth in the belly and tingle in the hands too - but for me, those were instead the first signs that the heavy blanket of oblivion (which I so desperately sought) was slowly creeping up and over me. It made me feel at ease, and yet completely uneasy at the same time. It lulled me into black-out "sleep" which I thought was the only way I could rest. Looking back.... I have a hard time figuring out exactly what I felt, because more often than not, I was intensely seeking numbness and, like I already said, oblivion.

Glad to be past that tonight

MelindaFlowers

Hi bcboy!

That's really interesting that you say that alcohol was a stimulant for you. It was for me too. I think there is a certain type of brain chemistry that reacts this way.

For example, stimulants make me stare off into space and calm me down. Alcohol, a depressant made me think I had superpowers to get everything done. It made me happy, lively, engaged in conversations, interested in learning new information (wikipedia), participate in chat forums.

In those above situations it did help to a point. The problem was I could not stop. I always continued to drink until I passed out. Often that would be a 1, 2, 3 in the morning. During my last month of drinking I would often see the sun come up, drunk off my gizzard. If I didn't black out I would pass out and wake up anywhere from noon to 2 pm. Come 5 pm I would repeat the vicious cycle.

Wow, after reading what I just wrote I realized there was a time that I drank almost all day. The four hours I was awake I spent chugging water and feeling like a warmed up corpse. My day just happened to be from 1 pm to 3 am. Up until this exact moment I always thought I was a nighttime drinker. Wow. I guess the nighttime drinking ended when I stopped having to work at 8 am everyday.

I drank every single night for four years so I'm having to relearn how to do everything at night; relearn how to be content and watch a one hour TV show, check Facebook sober, carry on pleasant conversations sober. All of it.

How did drinking make me feel? Wonderful until I could no longer control my intake. I would say that three years ago was my heyday. I was happy with 3-4 drinks and would stop before bed to drink water, lay out my work clothes, and fall asleep happily.

In the past year I began passing out and would wake up, scurry around the house (hungover), in a mad rush, and show up to work looking pretty disheveled with really tired eyes.

Fandy

How did drinking make me feel? wonderfully relaxed until i could no longer control my intake.....I went from 2 glasses of wine to a whole bottle, to 8-10 glasses a night...for 20-25 years give or take....I consistently felt like sh*% every morning the last year....I used wine to solve the problems that never went away....I like being drunk more than I was sober...my physical health deteriorated rapidly in the past year, it was alarming, I was miserably depressed and I drank to relieve the depression, but it made it 10X worse....I hid in my house from Friday until Monday and then 1/2 the time I never even made it to work.

I never want to be there again...looking back, it's amazing that I didn't kill myself off.

Chops

It went from liquid courage to liquid despair.

Zencat

The effects that I liked when drunk was being outgoing, gregarious and playful. Of course the down side was all the hellish behavior I exhibited when drunk, just to name one of the multitude serious life threatening problems that came with addiction. The good news is I can relearn all those behaviors that I liked wile being drunk as a sober person.

sleepie

I too had more energy while inebriated. I felt "okay". And I made lots and lots of paintings... painting bores me to tears, actually- but I had what it took, while drinking, to sit at home for hours after work every day and do the practice and the pieces. I stayed up late into the night, drank coffee all day long at my job the next day and this went on for years. Eventually it really started to feel awful and I began to have periods of sobriety. I did not start drinking until I was 28. I'm now 36 and I have had more sober time in the last couple of years but I am still struggling with it.

NEOMARXIST

Better than when sober. That's why it's so dangerous.

At least for a while anyway. Then it just made me feel totally addicted and not wanting to ever feel it's effects leave me. I would always add drugs to feel even better and manage the alcohols negative depressant effects ie- general downer properties. They were good for using through drug comedowns but usually I would like to keep myself awake and alert when drinking to prolong the high of the booze.

Not worth all of the negative side-effects of drinking for the sake of the buzz, just too costly and damaging ie- prison, mental institution or death.

Grateful to be sober.

smacked

Like nothing, which for a while I thought I liked. What a waste of half my life. I like living now.

Severian

Happy>>>numb>>>nothing>>>thick>>>groggy>>>stupid

hendershot

Interesting, I was reading something the other day about how for addicts/alcoholics alcohol usually acts as a stimulant.

I guess it did for me too. Happy fuzzy feelings in my stomach and all that. But I tended to plow straight through the happy buzz and energetic drunk until I passed out, threw up, or both. The 10 minutes of buzz was nice though, I guess.

Draciack

Alcohol was my escape hatch: a few drinks and I was gone, gone from the pressure of constant expectations, gone from my personal insecurities, gone from my own skin. For just a few hours, I could be who I thought I wanted to be. But all shortcuts come with a price and I eventually became trapped in so many lies I didn't know which was which. Such a waste of a few years. But live and learn

least

Drinking made me NOT feel, it made me numb...

coffeenut

Drinking made me feel like I wasn't worth crap. Like I had no self control. Like everyone was out to get me. Like I couldn't be around people (family mostly) sober....or drunk. It made me feel ashamed of myself.

And yet...I had to have it. Couldn't go a day without it.

I am so grateful for my sobriety. So very grateful.

LibertyorDeath

I felt energized and invincible. Then I felt nothing. And then I felt guilty and sick.

sobermax

It started well, but ended up driving me insane.

The last few times I drank I had maybe three or four drinks then blacked out so have no idea how I felt!

loveon2legs

like somebody I wasnt....and that's exactly what I turned out to be.....proud to be almost 5months sober..love the REAL me!!

mercurial me

The Positives:
More articulate/charismatic/witty
More confident at times
Fewer inhibitions/sexier/awesome in bed at times
Less analytical at times
Could physically work harder
Dreary aspects of life were made more bearable knowing I could reward myself with booze
Better hand/eye coordination with the right mix of alcohol in my system
More artistic

The Negatives:
Paranoid about my health, people discovering my addiction
Super sensitive to any criticism
More thoughts of suicide
Paranoid while driving for fear of being stopped by the cops. You want to spot a true alcoholic? In my case spot the perfect driver behind the wheel
Tons of guilt
More worries about money

I'm on day #9 and my mind wages war on all of the positive/negative aspects all day long. The only constant is my damaged liver

tallcactus

Just plain NUMB and that was where I wanted to be.
I didn't want to feel a thing and wanted to escape. SAD!
Now, I have been dealing with all these feeling.., some pleasant and some not.
I rather feel then to not feel, no matter how unpleasant. I need to deal with all of it and deal with all my demons head on and come up with approatiate coping plans that work. Acohol is not the answer, it betrayed me.