Schafer81

Is anyone afraid of following into your alcoholic's foot steps?

ichabod

No. I don't have addiction issues. I worry very much about my college freshman son following in his father's footsteps though. My son has alcoholic relatives on both sides of the family and it scares me.

Schafer81

I also get worried about my child. It's in our genes.

Schafer81

I just look back at my childhood which was great until about 15 when she started drinking day and night. Does it all of sudden start??

Hypatia

No, it doesn't just start all of a sudden. Instead, alcohol addiction is a slow, gradual process. Likely she had been building up her drinking over years during your childhood and you just didn't notice.

sugarbear1

I loved the way alcohol felt the first time I drank. It took years later to really have a problem, or so I thought. It's insidious....

CentralOhioDad

One I got married, my Wife was a much heavier drinker than I, though the heavy stuff just started occurring within the last year. She would have her 'episodes' where she got drunk and didn't remember much the next day.

Seeing how she was, how she acted, how she looked, etc., opened my eyes to "I don't want to be/look/act/ like that, not one bit." So, I started to drink less, even though I'm a purely social drinker.

The more she drinks, the less I want to.

Titanic

When I think of all the misery it brought upon my family, that makes me want to have a drink sometimes!

Ironic, huh?

Learn2Live

Yes, I found myself doing so. That is why I stopped.

Schafer81

She has not stopped drinking! Hasn't gone to work. I called her this morning to make sure she is alive. Same old crying doesnt want to live. She cant stop on her own so I will probably have to call 911 to take her to the hospital again.

owathu

Nope. I can take or leave alcohol. I like having a drink or two or three here and there, but to drink like my AH drinks? Would never happen, I don't need it. I like it when I do feel like one, but, sometimes, when out with friends or whomever, I just don't feel like one and will have water or soda.

Florence

Mmmm, this has a complicated answer. Like someone else pointed out, alcoholism has a slow progression that can last a lifetime. Frog in boiling water. It starts off innocuous, or within the bounds of normalcy, and burns a slow burn until the person you started a relationship with is nearly consumed.

There is some science that shows that addicts experience their highs more intensely than non-addicts (especially alcohol) and their memories of their early first highs are very intense and surrounded by nostalgia.

I highly recommend watching the HBO series on addiction to understand the mechanics of the disease.
HBO: Addiction
Several of the movies are available at that link under "The Films."

Tuffgirl

No - I've tried...it didn't work for me!

By that I mean I learned early on that I don't like drinking excessively. Hang overs to me are a huge waste of time that could be better spent doing something productive.

I don't like the taste of hard liquor much - the occasional martini is about all I can handle. I used to like wine, but now it gives me a sinus headache every time I drink it. I love a good microbrew, but after 3, maybe 4 on a rare occasion, I am full and bloated and can't drink anymore without getting sick.

Alcohol just doesn't sit well with my body, not in excess anyway. And I came to hate the feeling of being completely out of control anyway. That lost its appeal when I became a parent and had to be responsible for someone else.

Sungrl

I certainly have, it's all he did from morning til bed. If I wanted to spend any time with him, and I did cause we were " in love" I drank too. Had a few morning cocktails. Was able to stop myself from drinking allllllll day cause I knew both of us trashed was recipe for disaster. if I went over to his place without my wine he insisted I get some so I could "relax". I was so damn tense dealing with him. When I detached it was great. I still drink, I can control myself. The time finally came when watching him drink 24 /7 turned me off. I did not want to become that person and I never will. For him though I think it's his destiny. Sad.

lillamy

Not really.
I was sitting at home on a nice warm evening this summer, and thinking "it would be nice to have a glass of cold white wine right now."
And the next thought was "but that would require me to actually get up from this comfy chair, put on some clothes, and drive somewhere. Nah. I'll grab a glass of ice tea instead; that's only ten paces away."

So I think I'm pretty safe.

BlueSkies1

I drank heavily with him during our dating years and first years of our marriage. It was new to me. It felt so grown-up to have cocktails after work. But I was in my late 30's...I think I was or should have been already grown-up.
Then it turned nasty with the arguments. Alcohol lost most of its appeal.
I continued to try to relate using those cocktails after work, but it didn't feel good anymore.
I still have one or two sometimes, but I don't really get high anymore. Getting goofy fun on alcohol is not where my life is at right now, and most of the time it just makes me tired and want to go to sleep.
I suppose if I was hanging with a bunch of good friends who were grounded in reality I might think getting intoxicated on a camping trip or something like that would be fun...but perhaps my experiences have been soured too much to enjoy that type of drinking again, at least for awhile.
I think I was on the cusp of going down the alcoholic road when I was drinking heavily with him. I decided I have enough problems in life without adding that one too.

SoaringSpirits

I don't feel in danger of becoming an alcoholic. I'm good with a glass of wine, but if I have a second I feel sick to my stomach. Just don't have the capacity to abuse it.

When my AH lived at home I rarely drank alcohol. I felt like if I had a drink I was consorting with the enemy. Now that AH no longer lives here, I am enjoying having a really good bottle of wine on hand now and then (that always goes bad before I can finish it).

I do worry about our kids as they've definitely got the genetics for addiction, but I'm also trying to model responsible use of alcohol (they are teens). We talk about alcohol use and abuse frequently and they see that Mom can have a half glass of wine and things don't get weird, that there's a whole continuum of alcohol use, from enjoying a good wine like it's a fine food to just guzzling anything alcoholic you can get your hands on (dad) to get high. I figure that I can't change the genes but I can educate and prepare them.

Florence

We drank heavily together when we first got together. All of our friends were drinkers. Our families didn't think anything much of it (my mom worried, but she worries about everything). It was fun.

I was the first one to cut back hard. I wanted to lose weight, our finances were out of control, and I realized I got so much more done at night if I didn't tuck in to a bottle of wine. I could quit, he could not. Turns out he'd been nursing a nasty physical addiction by supplementing the wine on the side with bottles and bottles of vodka. If you'd told me a minute before I witnessed it myself, I wouldn't have believed it. I've had a really resentful relationship with alcohol ever since. Basically if you drink more than two drinks in a sitting, I'm sitting next to you judging you. I've made a couple of new friends who go out and get together at local pubs, and I'll have a glass or two of wine, but that's it.

The truth is that people's behavior around alcohol really scares me. That's my baggage. I know that a certain amount of freewheeling behavior is normal around booze and that doesn't mean someone is an alcoholic or a binge drinker. But I've been burned and I have no interest in reliving that.

BTW, I still feel like I get more done when I'm not drinking. When I do drink now, I get headachey and tired. It's really not worthwhile except as an occasional thing.

NWGRITS

I've found myself going down that road before, back when I was 21. I got pregnant and stopped immediately. I no longer have any desire to drink. I can have one with dinner now and then, but id be fine if I never touched another alcoholic beverage again. Part of it is just not seeing why I would want to feel like that again, and part is my love for my children and a fear of becoming my mother. I do worry about my kids, but I'll do my best to try to give them wings and hope for good lives for all of them.

m1k3

I had some issues when I was younger but it wasn't anything like addiction. It was more growing up in an alcoholic household and in the 50s and 60s where everyone in the neighborhood drank pretty much every day. Even if you weren't an alcoholic, it was just normal. My problem was I never had any boundaries around drinking and it took me a while to figure that out on my own. I never drank when I was responsible for the kids or anything like that.

Funny thing is I didn't drink for so long being around my AW and trying to set an example for her that when I moved out I kind of slipped back into some of my bad drinking behaviors again. Relearned my boundaries and now back to where I can enjoy a beer or two but that is pretty much it.

Thing is, for a while when I moved out I was concerned about my drinking but now it is something that just isn't that important. I guess I had to go through that rebellious stage again.

Your friend,