Starting to wonder/declaration.
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Join Date: Jan 2016
Posts: 23
Starting to wonder/declaration.
I know I sometimes drink too much. I know that I abuse alcohol at times. I am 31 y/o and in a professional environment where many people (aged twenties and thirties) drink (and drink "too much" by most standards) in social settings. I'm not sure I have a colleague--except for the recovering alcoholics--that I have not seen drunk at the bar or party.
When I do get drunk, I can stop before the night is over or before things get out of hand for me (for example, on NYE we went from one bar to another, and I did not drink at the second bar because I knew I was drunk, just went home after an hour or so there, and also did not drink what I had in the house when I got home). I can stop--I won't just keep drinking if I feel too drunk.
But I think I do abuse it, because I like to be tipsy/buzzed, and one drink doesn't make me feel any different. They say only alcoholics get drunk, but I do not understand why anyone would drink if not to feel something, because otherwise, why not just have water and save the calories? Drinking feels good; it loosens me up, as I can be a bit uptight/closed at parties. It also helps me to get a little work done if I am procrastinating.
I have been wondering these past few days if I am in fact an early stage alcoholic, because I have it in my family, and I do sometimes drink more than I intended when it comes to hard liquor and wine (though not beer). If I buy whiskey for the house, I won't drink it everyday or need to drink it if it's there--there's some leftover in the house I'm not drinking tonight, for ex--but once I start drinking it, I will almost always drink 1/4 of the 750ml before stopping (4 drinks, I guess?). If I buy wine, I will usually drink 3/4 the bottle, which seems like a lot? That's how much it takes for me to get the feeling I like from it, it seems...
So it's a new year, and I have decided to stop drinking for a month, because I am hoping to lose a few lbs anyway. And then, after a month, I will do a moderation test to see if I can stop at one hard drink, because I have never actually tried to stop at one drink in earnest. If I can't stop at 1.5 oz, or can't do it without some great use of mental effort (what some of you call "white-knuckling"), if I "crave" another, then I will definitely stop drinking for good. If I can stop at the one without much issue, then I'm not sure what I'll do.
I guess I'm just trying to figure out if this is cultural/situational/avoidant or bad behavior (like, ordering a rich dish at the restaurant and eating all of it even though you meant to eat half because it's delicious, watching Netflix instead of studying, etc), or something to do with the hard liquor going to my head too fast and affecting my decision making (since one or two beers is always enough for me, and I drink those slowly).... or if I actually have the beginnings of a legitimate problem that need to be nipped in the bud now. Because I would like to be able to drink with my friends. But obviously not if it means I'll one day be the alcoholic my father is, and his father was.
Sigh...
When I do get drunk, I can stop before the night is over or before things get out of hand for me (for example, on NYE we went from one bar to another, and I did not drink at the second bar because I knew I was drunk, just went home after an hour or so there, and also did not drink what I had in the house when I got home). I can stop--I won't just keep drinking if I feel too drunk.
But I think I do abuse it, because I like to be tipsy/buzzed, and one drink doesn't make me feel any different. They say only alcoholics get drunk, but I do not understand why anyone would drink if not to feel something, because otherwise, why not just have water and save the calories? Drinking feels good; it loosens me up, as I can be a bit uptight/closed at parties. It also helps me to get a little work done if I am procrastinating.
I have been wondering these past few days if I am in fact an early stage alcoholic, because I have it in my family, and I do sometimes drink more than I intended when it comes to hard liquor and wine (though not beer). If I buy whiskey for the house, I won't drink it everyday or need to drink it if it's there--there's some leftover in the house I'm not drinking tonight, for ex--but once I start drinking it, I will almost always drink 1/4 of the 750ml before stopping (4 drinks, I guess?). If I buy wine, I will usually drink 3/4 the bottle, which seems like a lot? That's how much it takes for me to get the feeling I like from it, it seems...
So it's a new year, and I have decided to stop drinking for a month, because I am hoping to lose a few lbs anyway. And then, after a month, I will do a moderation test to see if I can stop at one hard drink, because I have never actually tried to stop at one drink in earnest. If I can't stop at 1.5 oz, or can't do it without some great use of mental effort (what some of you call "white-knuckling"), if I "crave" another, then I will definitely stop drinking for good. If I can stop at the one without much issue, then I'm not sure what I'll do.
I guess I'm just trying to figure out if this is cultural/situational/avoidant or bad behavior (like, ordering a rich dish at the restaurant and eating all of it even though you meant to eat half because it's delicious, watching Netflix instead of studying, etc), or something to do with the hard liquor going to my head too fast and affecting my decision making (since one or two beers is always enough for me, and I drink those slowly).... or if I actually have the beginnings of a legitimate problem that need to be nipped in the bud now. Because I would like to be able to drink with my friends. But obviously not if it means I'll one day be the alcoholic my father is, and his father was.
Sigh...
You can have reasons, or you can have results, but you can't have both.
Join Date: Dec 2015
Location: Syracuse, NY
Posts: 1,232
Based on my experience, you may very well have the beginnings of a legit problem you should nip in the bud. I drank like you, and it didn't improve or stay the same. It worsened over time.
One of the best things I ever did was quit for 30 days to see how I felt. I was sharper, healthier, more focused, no more drunken incidents. Then I went back to drinking and it was worse than before. It was still a long time before I was ready to quit, but that memory of how good I felt sober was a motivator.
After much on and off, and many sober experiments, I've decided sober is my best course. I want to perform at my highest level, and bar drinking and hangovers just don't fit into my storyline. I want to OUTPERFORM my drinking colleagues.
You have some risk factors. Weigh them. I think you know sober life will reward you greatly. Rather than giving drinking many chances to prove itself, give sobriety a good shot.
Good luck and please let me know how you make out.
One of the best things I ever did was quit for 30 days to see how I felt. I was sharper, healthier, more focused, no more drunken incidents. Then I went back to drinking and it was worse than before. It was still a long time before I was ready to quit, but that memory of how good I felt sober was a motivator.
After much on and off, and many sober experiments, I've decided sober is my best course. I want to perform at my highest level, and bar drinking and hangovers just don't fit into my storyline. I want to OUTPERFORM my drinking colleagues.
You have some risk factors. Weigh them. I think you know sober life will reward you greatly. Rather than giving drinking many chances to prove itself, give sobriety a good shot.
Good luck and please let me know how you make out.
Member
Join Date: Jun 2014
Posts: 1,909
Family history is a very strong factor. Also, " I have never actually tried to stop at one drink in earnest." - a normal drinker doesn't have to try and doesn't have to think about it. Most of us here learned the hard way that we can't moderate. I certainly tried...
Good for you for starting to question it before things got out of hand. I wish I did that and decided to stick with sobriety, instead of many years of experimentation and progression into raging alcoholism.
Welcome to the forum! Please continue reading and posting.
Good for you for starting to question it before things got out of hand. I wish I did that and decided to stick with sobriety, instead of many years of experimentation and progression into raging alcoholism.
Welcome to the forum! Please continue reading and posting.
Administrator
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Australia
Posts: 211,439
Hi Nora - welcome 
I think if it was a cultural thing you'd see great numbers of your fellow countrypeople here (wherever it is you're from), and I'm assuming you don't really?
I just wrote to someone else about stopping for a while hoping that that would reset me as a normal drinker.
It never died.
I know now I was never a normal drinker anyway.
Don't do what I did and confuse abstinence for control. They're not the same thing.
D
I think if it was a cultural thing you'd see great numbers of your fellow countrypeople here (wherever it is you're from), and I'm assuming you don't really?
I just wrote to someone else about stopping for a while hoping that that would reset me as a normal drinker.
It never died.
I know now I was never a normal drinker anyway.
Don't do what I did and confuse abstinence for control. They're not the same thing.
D
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Thread Starter
Join Date: Jan 2016
Posts: 23
You guys are probably right that I am fooling myself into thinking this is normal. It can be hard to tell when alcohol seems so entrenched in your subculture, but I think my gut is telling me that something is wrong with my relationship to it. I have been drinking since I was a teenager at parties, and drank at college parties pretty heavily (as did everyone), but at some point in my twenties I started drinking alone sometimes.
For awhile, I was living with a serious alcoholic and I think that may also make it harder to see if you have a problem yourself. I was wrapped up in his problem. It became apparent that on work days he was drinking in the morning to cure his hangover, and all day (while driving!), drinking inside the car, and glassy-eyed, weird gross body odor, always lying to me (gas lighting me) about his drinking even though I knew he was doing it--finally left him when he got a DUI, after years of trying to get him to get treatment. It was the last straw for me.
I have never driven drunk no matter what; those few times I drove to an event and had a bit more than was safe to drive, I always knew to Uber or walk home, but I also rarely need to do that. And I never drink in the day (just don't want to, and if I do have a hangover, hair of the dog always sounds really really awful). We go out often as a group to the bar or to dance and we all drink and sometimes we all have hangovers. So compared to my ex's behavior and its consequences, my drinking habits seemed pretty normal...
But I guess getting a buzz on by yourself several times a week isn't normal.
For awhile, I was living with a serious alcoholic and I think that may also make it harder to see if you have a problem yourself. I was wrapped up in his problem. It became apparent that on work days he was drinking in the morning to cure his hangover, and all day (while driving!), drinking inside the car, and glassy-eyed, weird gross body odor, always lying to me (gas lighting me) about his drinking even though I knew he was doing it--finally left him when he got a DUI, after years of trying to get him to get treatment. It was the last straw for me.
I have never driven drunk no matter what; those few times I drove to an event and had a bit more than was safe to drive, I always knew to Uber or walk home, but I also rarely need to do that. And I never drink in the day (just don't want to, and if I do have a hangover, hair of the dog always sounds really really awful). We go out often as a group to the bar or to dance and we all drink and sometimes we all have hangovers. So compared to my ex's behavior and its consequences, my drinking habits seemed pretty normal...
But I guess getting a buzz on by yourself several times a week isn't normal.
You can have reasons, or you can have results, but you can't have both.
Join Date: Dec 2015
Location: Syracuse, NY
Posts: 1,232
I wish I'd stopped when I was at the stage you are now.
A couple things were fooling to me into thinking I wasn't an alcoholic -- the fact that I'd never been arrested, lost a job, etc. And also seeing others whose illness was more advanced than mine. Focusing on these two things, rather than my own deepening and dysfunctional relationship with alcohol, allowed me to ignore my problem until I finally DID start getting into trouble.
I admire that you're taking a close look at this now, rather than later. You know you have some risk factors, and you can see this is progressing in your life.
A couple things were fooling to me into thinking I wasn't an alcoholic -- the fact that I'd never been arrested, lost a job, etc. And also seeing others whose illness was more advanced than mine. Focusing on these two things, rather than my own deepening and dysfunctional relationship with alcohol, allowed me to ignore my problem until I finally DID start getting into trouble.
I admire that you're taking a close look at this now, rather than later. You know you have some risk factors, and you can see this is progressing in your life.
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Join Date: Jan 2016
Posts: 23
Last night friends were sharing alcohol around me and I didn't feel some strong urge to have any with them, beyond the desire to participate in a familiar ritual, so I guess that's good. But I've been really thinking and now seeing troubling patterns of behavior. The weekend nights I go out with friends, I do mean to get drunk, and while it does seem normal for people in their twenties and early thirties to go out to drink with the intention of feeling the alcohol a *bit*, I almost always get drunker than I wanted. Some nights I have 1 drink without wanting another (though those nights do seem to be fewer than they used to be), some I have no drinks because the thought of drinking doesn't cross my mind...but some nights I do have 3 or 4 or 5 even though I meant to only have a couple. I don't have cravings...until I have 1 serving of whiskey (I measure it for calorie purposes, which is a problem in itself, I know...). Then I immediately want more, and drink until I feel it pretty strongly. This seems the reddest flag of all.
But, most importantly, certain memories are surfacing from these past years: the time at the work conference, at the hotel bar after dinner, when I got so drunk on whiskey I couldn't remember conversations I had had with some people, and also seriously considered sleeping with a colleague (at the hotel), and had to work hungover the next day. The time in grad school I got a little too drunk at a department Xmas party on wine and worried the next morning over conversations with my professors...including whether I had been flirting with one of them....and if I looked as drunk as I'm pretty sure I had been? More of these memories are surfacing--not of times when the goal was to "party," which is intentional and social, but those times when only 1 or 2 glasses of one were appropriate or "safe," and I still drank beyond that amount.
I know this happens to non-alcoholics on occasion, especially younger adults; it definitely does, because I've seen it happen. But I know it doesn't happen to them very often. And they get tipsy...not actually "drunk"...not the kind of inebriated that leads to worry in the morning. And while this doesn't happen every time I go somewhere with an open bar, or into a situation where I feel socially anxious and want to loosen up a bit, it has happened enough times--the mild hangover, the major regret and anxiety over how I looked or acted, if people noticed that I was drunk--to be seen as a pattern, and to make me think I may in fact be a true alcoholic in an early stage of progression. That memory of the work event is especially disturbing. A friend of mine said I didn't seem drunk when she left to go to her room, even though I most definitely was drunk. I obviously don't like having to ask this question. I have likely asked it of friends too often...
So anyway, at day 4, I am realizing that I should probably not drink anymore...
But, most importantly, certain memories are surfacing from these past years: the time at the work conference, at the hotel bar after dinner, when I got so drunk on whiskey I couldn't remember conversations I had had with some people, and also seriously considered sleeping with a colleague (at the hotel), and had to work hungover the next day. The time in grad school I got a little too drunk at a department Xmas party on wine and worried the next morning over conversations with my professors...including whether I had been flirting with one of them....and if I looked as drunk as I'm pretty sure I had been? More of these memories are surfacing--not of times when the goal was to "party," which is intentional and social, but those times when only 1 or 2 glasses of one were appropriate or "safe," and I still drank beyond that amount.
I know this happens to non-alcoholics on occasion, especially younger adults; it definitely does, because I've seen it happen. But I know it doesn't happen to them very often. And they get tipsy...not actually "drunk"...not the kind of inebriated that leads to worry in the morning. And while this doesn't happen every time I go somewhere with an open bar, or into a situation where I feel socially anxious and want to loosen up a bit, it has happened enough times--the mild hangover, the major regret and anxiety over how I looked or acted, if people noticed that I was drunk--to be seen as a pattern, and to make me think I may in fact be a true alcoholic in an early stage of progression. That memory of the work event is especially disturbing. A friend of mine said I didn't seem drunk when she left to go to her room, even though I most definitely was drunk. I obviously don't like having to ask this question. I have likely asked it of friends too often...
So anyway, at day 4, I am realizing that I should probably not drink anymore...
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Join Date: Sep 2015
Posts: 129
You could be my twin--check out my first post.
I am almost 100 days sober and feel infinitely better.
I told myself I would do 90 days and assess.
I feel so good I am going to keep going. I am not sure I will never drink again. But at this point I wonder why I would.
I am almost 100 days sober and feel infinitely better.
I told myself I would do 90 days and assess.
I feel so good I am going to keep going. I am not sure I will never drink again. But at this point I wonder why I would.
Member
Join Date: Sep 2015
Location: maine
Posts: 204
Nora - it's so great you are really looking at your drinking. I wish I had done so, but instead had to ride the elevator almost to the bottom floor, Lost job, daughter not speaking to me, DUI, probation and other nasty pieces of alcoholic behavior. Spare yourself that! The progression of alcoholism is frightening.
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Thread Starter
Join Date: Jan 2016
Posts: 23
Also, more than one person in my life has noticed that bourbon is my go-to drink. A couple bought me an expensive bottle for a celebratory gift once, instead of the more traditional champagne. Friends I spend time with know that I like bourbon.
But the thing is, I really....don't. I mean, it's okay, but it's medicinal tasting--not like eating rich chocolate or something. I can take or leave the taste of it alone, and HATE how it tastes with mixers like soda, so I only drink it straight. More than the taste, I like to feel a buzz at the party, and whiskey gets me there the most quickly.
Revelations! that should have been obvious, in retrospect...
Yes, beeme, we do seem similar! Congrats on 100 days!
But the thing is, I really....don't. I mean, it's okay, but it's medicinal tasting--not like eating rich chocolate or something. I can take or leave the taste of it alone, and HATE how it tastes with mixers like soda, so I only drink it straight. More than the taste, I like to feel a buzz at the party, and whiskey gets me there the most quickly.
Revelations! that should have been obvious, in retrospect...
Yes, beeme, we do seem similar! Congrats on 100 days!
One Day At A Time
Join Date: Feb 2015
Location: Midwest, USA
Posts: 2,054
Hi Nora-
I'm glad you are here and looking at your drinking.
I'm in my 40's, and if I think back to my early 30's I had very similar situations with work, conferences, travel etc. My part of drinking on behalf of business seemed harmless at the time, and wow, I wish I would have looked at it at that time like you are now.
Only you can answer if you have an alcohol problem. But if you do, I can promise that these sorts of situations that you describe will begin to get worse, happen more often, and unfortunately become cringe-worthy when you start to recall them the morning after:
....has happened enough times--the mild hangover, the major regret and anxiety over how I looked or acted, if people noticed that I was drunk-
In my experience, quitting drinking all together has all but eliminated those occurrences. The things I say and do now, are authentic and with purpose.
SR is a great place for support-
I'm glad you are here and looking at your drinking.
I'm in my 40's, and if I think back to my early 30's I had very similar situations with work, conferences, travel etc. My part of drinking on behalf of business seemed harmless at the time, and wow, I wish I would have looked at it at that time like you are now.
Only you can answer if you have an alcohol problem. But if you do, I can promise that these sorts of situations that you describe will begin to get worse, happen more often, and unfortunately become cringe-worthy when you start to recall them the morning after:
....has happened enough times--the mild hangover, the major regret and anxiety over how I looked or acted, if people noticed that I was drunk-
In my experience, quitting drinking all together has all but eliminated those occurrences. The things I say and do now, are authentic and with purpose.
SR is a great place for support-
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