smynthia

If you mentally crave a relationship, even if it's not physical, to me, that is an addiction.

But in regards to everything that you said, you've had detox symptoms physically, so wouldn't that prove to you that you also have a physical addiction?

If you "choose" to drink, then you can "choose" not to, right? It's no big deal. Just stop drinking for a month, make it your choice.

I thought like that - thought I could stop for a month, then re-train myself to drink normally. What I found out, was that if I could drink normally, I would have done it in the first place.

Now that I've made to decision to quit drinking altogether, guess what? I don't have to think constantly about alcohol. What would your life be like if you could give up the constant thoughts about drinking? How much time do you spend each day thinking about drinking? That's what got me.

lauraandersen4

I see some more similarities in the last few posts. Here is my main problem with AA. Please correct my misconceptions. I think ... I KNOW I am missing the big picture here. I'm a scientist by training (Masters in biology... cancer research for 3 years) and a future dentist (2 yrs more of a 4 yr program). To me, an allergy of the body = histamine and leukotriene release. I'm trying to get around my background to see the big picture here, but if the very definition of what AA is set up to do, defines an allergy of the body as being...not a true allergy at all, I'm already kind of lost

Anna

Laura, AA is not the only option for recovery.

I am not an AA person and there are many here who follow recovery paths other than AA. I also believe that stopping drinking is easy and that it is the mental aspect that is SO difficult. We need to find new ways to deal with life, its problems and ups and downs and that is what the journey of recovery is about.

tyler

I think you, and I for that matter, have a tendency to overationalize all of this. I have had a hard time getting my arm's around the whole "spiritual" aspect of recovery through AA, as I to tend to view things from a more "scientific" point of view.

More recently, however, I have decided that I just can't continue to to what I've been doing to myself anymore. Parts of the AA program I find helpful and make sense to me, so I have found a person who works a sucessful AA program to help me with these things. There are other programs that rely on a more cognetive behavioural approach, such as SMART or Lifering, to name a couple. I am also trying to use parts of these programs as well. Finally I see a theripist (or I will be seeing one soon, I just moved and need to find a new one) who will hopefully help tie all of this together.

My point is, you can always find a million reasons why AA or any recovery program, or ANYTHING in general, is NOT for you. Go to a meeting or two, see what you think, try not drinking for 30 days, check out some of the other recovery programs (there is an extensive list in the "sticky" posts in the Secular Connections forum), do what YOU need to do to help YOURSELF.

There is a saying in AA "take what you need and leave the rest behind." That one saying (and AA has a lot of them!!) helps me more than anything!! You will find those who will tell you if you don't do it this way or do it that way you are doomed. They are just trying to share their experience of what has worked for them, and many are very passionate about it. Listen to what they have to offer, and find out what works for you. This is life or death stuff for many people here. You may not yet be at that point, you may never get to that point, but it is clearly effecting your life in a negative way as you have pointed out in many different ways.

Just so you know, one reason I "know" a lot about "recovery" is that I have spent years (begining with my join date here in Feb 2002) "researching" it. I had to make sure I got it exactly right, just for me. During that "research" time, my drinking went from getting buzzed occasionally to drinking a half bottle of port wine (decent stuff), to chugging a whole bottle (cheep stuff) while locked in the bathroom, to a half bottle of Bacardi or Seagrams 7, to a whole bottle of the cheapest hooch I could find, and now that doesn't even get me "suffeciently drunk!! I went from being happily married with a beautiful little boy, to an inpatient rehab, to stints in the mental hospital, divorced, having to move back in with my parents at age 40 with no job. Again, I am not you, but these have been my experiences while I carefully studied "recovery" and argued why it would not work for me. Guess what, it didn't!!

I am now making an actual effort to try to recover, and it is freakin hard!! It's a series of falling down, getting back up, trying to learn from my mistakes, but now dwell on them and doing what is suggested by those who have some success at recovery, even if it doesn't make sense to me at the time. I mean what is the worst thing that could happen?? It doesn't work. Well, my way sure hasn't been working, so logically it makes sense to take advice from those who have a way that has worked for them. I'm at least trying it, it's all I can do.

Hope some of this rambling mess helps you along your path. There is no one single path to recovery, but it does help you find your way if you follow the advice and suggestions of those who have traveled the path before you. Take care.

Dee74

I'm not an AAer either Laura

heres a link to many programmes - not just AA/NA. I encourage you to check them out.

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...resources.html

Also check out our Secular Connections forum - you'll find other ppl with similar ideas as yrself there

D

sfgirl

I think AA definitely misappropriates the word allergy. The phenomenon they are describing is definitely real but I too would not call it an allergy. However, there are many other much more recent sources for researching the science of alcoholism:

Welcome to NIAAA
Brain Damage Caused by Alcohol Consumption

And I am sure you can use your library resources available (digital and otherwise) through dental school for doing hardcore research if you want. The thing that I do know is that cognitive functioning is affected by chronic alcohol abuse. I know this because I have seen it in myself. I didn't notice it in while I was drinking; I mean I graduated from an Ivy League school getting so loaded every night with a great GPA. So markers such as that aren't really accurate. But what I have noticed is this. I was in therapy while I was drinking. I am still in therapy at the same times with the same therapist. The quality of therapy and what I get out of it is improved about 500%. Something drastic has changed in my life. It is funny too because for the last few years of my life I would be dry for one month here and there but this never happened. Finally my brain is healing and recovery is taking hold. I can definitely notice the before and after. For that alone quitting drinking is worth it.


However, I think identifying with the science is hard because ultimately that is purely only an intellectual exercise. What made me so happy to a certain extent was when I started reading about the emotional side of alcoholism— hearing about the void people felt, the isolation, and the pattern of people's lives. I had so many markers. I had felt so off my entire life and for once I finally fit into a group. I had found a solution to my life, oh, I am an alcoholic that is why I feel like sh*t. And ultimately I was scarily cookie cutter as an alcoholic. I never hit a very external bottom with DUIs, losing jobs, etc. but I def hit what I might term a spiritual or emotional type bottom. In early recovery I really loved these books:

Drinking a Love Story by Caroline Knapp
Memoir by high-functioning alcoholic, really good, i might read this one first
Sober for Good by Anne Fletcher
about people getting sober in all different ways, aa and non-aa ways, based on studies and interviews
A Place Called Self: Women, Sobriety and Radical Transformation by Stephanie Brown

Another great resource for listening to stories is an AA meeting (I'm not in AA either). You don't have to participate. You can just go to listen. If you go to a speaker-discussion it can be really interesting and enlightening to hear peoples' experiences from their mouths. Their is no obligation to join or anything.

SMART recovery website has some tools that take a more rational approach in the beginning for examining your drinking. They might be helpful. You can find them here:

SMART Recovery® - Tool Chest and Homework

and the lifering website has some interesting articles as well, I'm not sure about their toolbox but here is the link
Toolbox


And almost forgot here is a radio interview with the author of Sober for Good and an author of another book about women and drinking on Talk of the Nation (NPR)

Problem Drinking : NPR

sfgirl

You might want to read this:

Close to Home - Interview with Marc Schuckit, M.D.

lauraandersen4

Thanks sfgirl... I learn a lot from your posts. Very informative and very personal. Thanks.

Em002

I was told by someone when I was new in aa that back when the big book was written that the definition of the word allergy is roughly= when you put a substance into your body you cannot guarantee what the reaction will be. I find that characterized my drinking a lot I didn't know if I would just be drunk and have a fun night or end up in the hospital. Hope that helps! Good luck to you laura.

lauraandersen4

EXACTLY!!! thanks for posting. I have hurt a few people emotionally but talked it out after each time... that has about been the extent if the damage... nothing physical to me (at least that I can detect), no long term damage to others.

geothinkah

When I start drinking I think I continue to drink because I want to. It 'seems' like somewhere along the line, I change my mind and just want to continue drinking. I don't see it that way now. I heard a great analogy that goes something like this:

We all have a craving right now. We just don't know it because it is being satisfied. We don't even notice it. It's called breathing. Try to stop and you will experience a craving real soon. That's the way it is for alcoholics. They think it is a choice; however, if they run short or they goto a party and only have one or two drinks. The craving is there. It's said that nonalcoholics don't experience this. They will be just as satisfied to switch over to water or something.

Not picking up the first drink, now that's another problem...

McGowdog

After you wrote "What's the difference?", I read no further... until that last paragraph. I didn't need to. I've experienced the feeling many times.

I'm not going to get into a "you chose/didn't choose to drink" rant. You can decide that for yourself. It's a big part of your quest for sobriety/recovery, assuming you desire to be done with it for good and all.

But when you said you chose to drink, you didn't crave it? That last part is correct.

The 1st drink is not about craving. Whether you set yourself up or not is not important... at least not under the few simple rules that I use from the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. The 1st step in that program says that I will drink no matter what... if it was up to me.

If I'm going to embark on the spiritual path for recovery, I have to realize two things;

If I can look at that and go from there, decide for myself that I want sobriety and am willing to go to any lengths for it, aka do a couple of things , then I can get and stay sober for the rest of my life.

If my 1st drink was a choice, this would become my new sobriety program;

I choose to not drink.

McGowdog

I don't think the alcoholic chooses to drink. I think the drink chooses them. The alcoholic does not choose to drink with all of their colors in their crayon box anyway. Something's missing. This time it'll be different. I'm not gonna black out. I'm not gonna become a crazed animal that likes to blast the music loud and go driving around. I'm not gonna finish that bottle and start into tomorrow's supply. I'm not gonna close the bar and spend my paycheck.

How can they choose to drink when they have the Great Obsession going on? What in the world is all of this garbage about choice?

cazzievee

My god you sound like me Laura!

McGowdog

So... if one were to click on CarolD's Under the Influence post here, you'll get a little education about alcohol as a "food" in our body and in the last couple of sentences from page 22, we start to separate the alky from the non-alky.

I don't know what happened to pages 23 and 24, but \ some good stuff on page 25.

To my understanding, nothing's been touched on that separates the alky from the hard drinker yet... that unability of the alcoholic's body to break the acetone down which destroys the very organs responsible for further breaking down more alcohol AND creates what we call a craving for more of the same. That description is in here somewhere. Maybe I've missed it.

A little talk of alcohol's effect on alkies, namely malnutrition here on page 29.

I love this book's description of how alcoholism progresses from early stage to later stages in the alcoholic. An alcoholic in the very early stages shows practically no signs of having any reason or need to want to stop... when there may have still been time for some.

I think I was somehow busted way early on. I blacked out and became unconscience in my mom's and brother's arms at the age of 10. When I came too about 7 or 8 hours later, I felt a bit nervous about what I'd done, but was very proud and content about myself at what I'd just discovered. I felt for the first time in my life that I was plugged into the Universe.

You know, I'm doing the A.A. thing and I love the scientific stuff. I love experiementation and emperical data... measuring stuff and watching electricity reveal itself to me via volt meters and BVG (Body Voltage Generation) readings via voltage "field" meters and measuring surface and volume resistance. I like to prove a thing... to see it for myself. I'm an electronic engineer.

So the spiritual thing is a real trip for me. No one's designed a meter to capture or test this one. The problem with doing that is the limitations of our minds. It's like trying to ask how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or something.

I disagree here. I think the word works just fine in the context that it's used. An allergy is a physical phenomena. When an alky drinks booze, something physical happens. This allergy and that craving only happens for most when booze is in the body, not prior to the first drink.

But it's all acedemic for the A.A. program as the recovery from it only involves the mental obsession, not the physical aspects of it.

McGowdog

Ah ha! I found it! Thx Carol and GreenTea for brilliant work.

jimhere

So what's your point?

It looks to me like you either want some sort of validation or that you would like us to convince you of the folly of your ways. Like Carol said, that is not what we do.

I'm not in the business of convincing anyone whether they are alcoholic or not or whether they have lost the power of choice. There is a much better teacher than I or anyone else on this board can ever be. It's called alcohol, the Great Persuader.

You are either alky or you are not. If you are on the fence, you'd best find out.

bugsworth

Laura...what struck me most about your post was the following line..."but I'm wondering how strong my desire truly is to change this in my life"

It would seem to me that until you answer this question for yourself you will never be able to steer yourself clear of your addiction. The desire to change must out weigh the desire to stay the same. Nothing changes if nothing changes.

I like Tommy commend you for speaking the words of truth...the fact that you admitted you choose to drink is huge.

I hope you find your truth and choose to change your life. Wishing you all the best!