NedStark

My sister is going to finally get some help for her alcohol problem (finally!!), and I was to be supportive. However, a lot of my social activities involve going to bars with friends. I was a lot of sports, and we tend to make days out of that, or we have nights out clubbing. Someone has suggested to me that I should perhaps give up alcohol for the time being...

What are people's take/experience with this? Can I still go out to bars and drink alcohol? I know I don't have to, but I do enjoy it.

Thanks guys, you've all been so helpful so far!

LexieCat

Ned, you first posted on SR that you are a binge drinker, and you were posting because you were concerned about your OWN drinking--not your sister's.

Perhaps you should give alcohol up FOR GOOD, yourself. I didn't start out a daily drinker--I was pretty much like you when I was in college. I became a full-blown alcoholic in my 40s. You seem to be headed that direction, yourself.

Think about it--you could save yourself a lot of suffering down the road.

Recovering2

If you don't have to, and you want to support your sister's sobriety, then why not just not drink? If this possibility is an issue for you, and you don't see yourself socializing without alcohol, then I would encourage you to take a good look at your relationship with alcohol.

I realized early on that it wasn't helpful to my partner who was struggling with sobriety for me to go out and drink. So I never ever ever drink around him, in his company, or if I'm coming home and he's there. Never. Not worth it, alcohol is not that important and I do just fine without it. If you don't live with your sister, then I don't think there is anything wrong with you having a drink when you are out with your friends if she's not in the party. It's your life. Bur if she's part of the group, then respect how hard it is for her and be part of her support group.

NedStark

I know I did once. But my drinking habits have changed dramatically since then. The way I was drinking is very common here amongst university students and young adults, in fact most people in my town drink a lot

I know my friends would tell me if they thought my drinking was a problem. I tell them everything, and they've never once shown concern. If I ever find myself turning to alcohol for the wrong reasons, then I will quit

airwick

Can you still go out to bars and drink?
Yes.

Should you?
No.

Out of respect for her attempt to quit drinking it would not be beneficial.

CodeJob

Hi,

When I skimmed back through your previous posts, it sounds like you have personally identified problem patterns in your own drinking. I suspect this 'someone' may know your history and be hoping you see your sister's crisis as an opportunity to prevent your own course down that path?

New Year is a good time to evaluate and determine what is best for you. Good luck.

jjj111

I started off as a binge drinker in high school/college, and it got worse in my 20s. My friends never told me to quit. They all liked to hang out in bars, too. That's why we got along so well! In fact, they pressured me to drink when I started making efforts to quit. They were good friends otherwise, some of them very close friends, but on drinking they couldn't help me.

LexieCat

The point is, YOU perceived it to be a problem for YOU. There is a lot of unhealthy drinking among young people your age, and, frankly, a good number of those people will wind up with serious alcohol problems.

There's also a tendency to believe more people are drinking the way we do than actually do. IOW, a tendency to see what will reinforce our own drinking.

SeriousKarma

Once I identified that my XAH was an alcoholic I gave up drinking around him. We were around each other all the time, so that pretty much meant I gave up drinking completely. It was a no brainer, had to be done, and wasn't difficult at all.

.... And, yes, I very much enjoyed drinking. Loved my wine with dinner, my tequila at the club, my well stocked bar for guests.

I never craved it. I just enjoyed it when I had it. But I needed to stop, so I did.

Why don't you stop for your sister. Give it a go. See where it leads you. Maybe giving it up will be as easy for you as it was for me. If it is, that's fantastic. If not, then you've answered the question as to whether or not you have a alcohol problem.

FeelingGreat

Ned, if you don't drink in front of your sister and you don't keep alcohol in the house, if you share a house, then I can't see how your drinking would affect her.

Whether you should do it for your own sake is your decision. If you feel like challenging yourself to not drink for a while it can be an eye-opener, and if it's a challenge you don't succeed at, that tells you something as well.

Berrybean

No. They wouldn't.
Especially if you've surrounded yourself with other people who drink like you.

The fact that you're even asking whether you can still go out drinking makes me think that you know it's not just a couple of drinks you're thinking of, but going and getting proper pi**ed.

I found an old thread of mine that I started where I was asking if I had a problem with alcohol (not on this site, a more general one) and that was 7 years before I finally managed to stop letting alcohol continue taking me in the direction that I'd spotted all those years previous. But I talked myself into believing that if it was really a problem, my friends would take issue with my drinking (yeahhhh - those same friends who would later scheme and plan to sabotage my sobriety so I'd still drink with them, or the more sensible ones who only saw part of it and believed my BS?) and it was fine because that's what I saw other people doing as well (when I went to places that I knew they'd be people drinking heavily). If you want to drink, you will whatever. This probably isn't the best place to ask people if you're looking for someone to tell you that's a wise move. Anyway once you've had a couple you will probably stop caring what effect it'll have on your sister anyway. Until the next morning anyway.

I don't think it'll necessarily pose a massive risk to whether she drinks as long as you're not doing it in the house or coming back and breathing it all over her. But it might not be great for her relationship with you, as she's likely to want to surround herself with other sober people at this time, and she might feel that you're not being particularly supportive. Why not have this conversation with her, and see what she says?

saljay1

The first few years of my husband's sobriety, I never drank at home or out to dinner with him. On the rare occasion that I was away, like at a professional convention, I'd enjoy a glass of wine. But I never wanted him to see me drink, or smell it on my breath -- that seemed insensitive and unsupportive. So I simply didn't ever drink around him. Now, several years later, I will have an occasional glass of wine if we're at a social event. But he's been sober a long time, and is strong in his decision to remain sober.