SoberClean

I spent most of the holiday with my AM. She was drinking but it didn't bother me. She hid it in a fast food cup, I knew what it was at that point. My suspicions were confirmed when that cup spilled all over her tile floor and I could see it.

It was only a few years ago that I was the rebellious teenager who always hid her drink in a Sonic cup. It was only a few years ago that she would frantically go out driving at 5 in the morning because I had snuck out after she fell asleep. One time she heard the door close and called me just as I finished my first beer at a party. I came home and gave her a hug, my body was warm from the alcohol. She knew at that point I had tried coke, and suspected that was what I was doing. I assured her it was just from 1 beer, but I doubt she believed me.

I depleted her whole alcohol stash in a matter of months (I was too young to buy my own, she wasn't an A at the time, the stash took years and years to build up). I drank 3-7 times a week for almost a year after my first drink. I remember her finding bottle caps in my pockets when she did my laundry and just getting pissed. Luckily I didn't have physical withdrawals when I stopped.

I discovered a few years later that I don't like to sober up after I drink. I have to drink and drink and drink until I fall asleep. I just don't like to feel the tingling sensation of feeling coming back into my skin after a couple drinks.

If Alcoholism is genetic, which it is, I'm screwed. Although my mother is the person I consider my A, my father has told me he thinks he has a problem. from what I understand, my dad's drinking was pretty problematic during his and my mother's marriage.

So I sit here sometimes and wonder if I should consider myself and alcoholic, or if my teenage years were normal teenage stuff. I wonder how my mom would react if one day I just casually bring up those days.

Being AL, does anyone here ever feel guilty for drinking socially? Do any of us drink? I find myself getting upset when my DH drinks. He doesn't have a problem, and it shouldn't bother me, rationally, I know this, but it still does bother me, and he can tell. I don't see anything wrong with us drinking, we don't have the problem. And I won't drink around my A, but I just feel so guilty at the thought of it.

Thumper

I don't know what AL stands for?

I do not think that was normal teenage drinking. I didn't drink normally as a teenager and young adult either. Far from it. For whatever reason I did not cross the line from problem drinker to alcoholic - truly a miracle based on my extremes. I am a social drinker now. I take it, leave it, stop after one or two. It is not something I do to cope. It is not a mainstay of my fun times. It isn't something I plan. I don't think about it at all really. I have a couple (one or two) drinks on special occasions, at special dinners, if out to dinner with adults, once in a blue moon in the evening if I have company over. All that adds up to average about once a month or less for me. Only you can say if you are an alcoholic.

I no longer drink anything around my xah. It feels wrong because I do not except his drinking, even if it is one or two.

Social drinkers don't bother me at all - if someone has to much to drink, I'm uncomfortable. I dont' like drinking 'for no good reason' anymore. This is new to me.

The other thing that has changed for me recently is drinking around children. I do not have a problem with a drink at dinner, or on a special occasion, or even the one off drink in the evening with company, even if children are around. However, I can no longer tolerate the regular drinking around kids - even if the people involved are not alcoholics. Drinking when doing yard work, camping, after work, setting up Christmas trees, ball games, kids' birthday parties, etc. I used to drink like that and I have zero tolerance for it anymore. It causes me a lot of anxiety and sadness and I no longer will set that example. I never felt the 'need' to drink at those times but I also never said 'no' and I think that was wrong, especially for my kids because they are at such a high risk for problems with alcohol, but wrong for any kid. I used to consider this social drinking but my definition of social drinking has changed.

I have one friend now and her and her husband do not drink that way. It is nice, better then nice even. It is also sad to think that at 40+yo this is the first couple I've hung around with that doesn't. It gives me a clear direction of who I want to make friends with from now on . It also makes me think about the fact that maybe we would not be friends if I had a beer in my hand (or a husband with a beer in his) every time they poked their head in my door. The entire picture becomes more clear once alcoholism leaves my life.

We surround ourselves (by choice or by default) with the normal we choose to live. We create a normal for our children, which is why, IMO, I had such a alcohol heavy view of social drinker for so long. I grew up with a range of heavy social drinking to alcoholism. That was my normal - I don't want it to be theirs.

JenT1968

I looked very hard at my own drinking when trying to work out what the difference between my exAH's drinking and "normal" drinking patterns was. I came to my own conclusions about my own drinking, and I still drink alcohol. I drank alot when at college. As my life has moved on and responsibilities have grown this has naturally changed, much as other things have changed, without me having to conciously plan or make an effort to alter them.

I'm not uncomfortable around others drinking, unless their behaviour is something I don't want to be around and then I remove myself.

I discussed this all with a counsellor which helped crystalise my own thoughts about my own drinking and how comfortable I feel about being around other people drinking.

Thumper

Ceridwen managed to say in 7 lines what I tried to say in many more. Well said - as are all your posts I might add!

JenT1968

Ha! I write it out (at least twice the length of yours, and nowhere near as coherent!) and then I chop most of it out LOL. Otherwise It'd war and peace for every post (I have to do this at work too).

barb dwyer

I just go 'War and Peace' and be done with it. LOL

I am a recovering alcoholic.
I am usually ... deliberately not present when any drinking begins.

But I've been around it.

It makes me uncomfortable as well.

Not necessarily their behavior
(although sometimes it is)

but I don't like the 'smell stimulus'.

I don't see anything wrong with being uncomfortable around drunks.

I think that might be close to the mythological state called 'normal'.

SoberClean

Thanks for all the replies. I came to my own conclusion that al-anon means Alcoholic Lovers Anonymous. AL meaning Alcoholic Lovers. I have absolutely no idea why I think that. I did just look it up and find out that i am way off! Whenever I see an acronym I just sort of fill in my own blanks. Like I always thought DH means "Dear Husband." But I just found out it can also mean "D*mn Husband." Oops! *embarrassed*

I think that it isn't the drink itself that bothers me, but instead the behavior that follows, which is why it doesn't bother me that I know my mother drinks, but I cannot handle seeing her smashed. Ok, it DOES bother me that I know she drinks, because I know it eventually leads to another bender, but as long as in that moment I can act like nothing is going on I am okay.

I think obviously drunk people in general annoy me. And I think this feeling is normal, valid and justified. I will no longer feel guilty about it.

As far as my own drinking is concerned, if it makes me feel guilty/unhappy to drink, then I won't do it. But I won't make myself feel guilty for having a drink either.

This is how I feel today.