Booze - The Pros and Cons
 

Just a start... any additions welcome, both Pros and Cons.

Pros:

It gives you a lovely buzz
It helps you socialise a bit
It tastes yummy sometimes
It brings people together at the pub and other venues
It's easier to talk to strangers and meet folks when you're tipsy


Cons:

It's addictive for many people
It causes behavioural changes if you drink too much
It costs serious money both at home or out at the pub
It causes hangovers if abused
It causes depression and anxiety in some if abused
It makes you look hideous if abused
It dehydrates you
It kills brain cells
It makes you make poor and regretable decisions if abused
It kills people who abuse it for a long time
It takes your energy away if abusing it

Pro: it helps me sleep thru the days

Con: it helps me sleep thru the days

I drank til there were no pros, turning

D

Way more cons than pros-I choose not to drink today.:c031:

for me, the pros and cons are the same thing. drinking helps me and hurts me at the same time. it buries you while you're still alive.

I would hve to agree that drinking no longer works for me.

But I do find that it can be helpful to understand what it use to do for me that I liked...cause basically those things I can have sober! It be comes a list of things I would like in sobriety :)

These 3 struck me....This was part of the alure of alchohol for me and alchohol for the most part wasn't doing it anymore....I was a drunk dialer..so the last one sorta worked but I couldn't remember the convos and actually said alot of things i shouldn't have and harmed relationships

Point is for me....So much on the pro list....and all of the important ones....I can have in sobriety and have as part of my life today.

Thanks for sharing your list.

Until it doesn't do those things anymore.

The pros stopped working for me years ago, and i still kept chasing them for years. My brother asked me the other day is it hard staying sober, I answered him its much easier than the last few years of drinking were.

I live with an active alcoholic. When he is drunk I find him 100% disgusting. I wonder how many people I grossed out drunk while thinking I was being witty, charming and sexy?

pros of quitting:
I don't have to hear stories about what horrid things I did the night before
I am setting a better example for my children
Not throwing money away
taking better care of the only body I have
dealing with problems head on rather than avoiding them
no hang overs
no waking up next to gross strange men
being able to say I am sober
being in control of my actions
not having to stop on the way home every day to stock up
not having that extra 1000+ calories a night
being able to drive myself around at night
no more bar fights
no more wondering if alcohol is available before an outing
my house doesn't reek of stale beer
I can remember the fun stuff
I like and love myself more now

I could go on for hours I think

Cons of quitting:
uhhh. hmmmm. Ya, I got nothing><

I think the pro's only apply to non-alcoholic's, certainly that is the case for me.

Once I crossed that invisible line from Binge-drinker to alcoholic, booze holds nothing but fear and suffering for me. Sure I could kick back and rail 9 cans super quickly and get out of reality for a while with the nice warm feeling as the first few cans hit, but it just don't do it like it used to, as soon as I feel that buzz and my mind registers, it has crashed before I know it and I will be on the phone ringing up scumbags trying to chase that "thing" whatever it is - very hard to put your finger on it, by buying anything to get that buzz higher.

I always found with alcohol that I never reached a point where I could sit back and relax and just be 'at one' with the inebriation. I was only happy drinking if i had lots more to drink, I would be continually counting how many cans I had left and when I was coming to the last few I would get really depressed and p*ssed-off.

I am learning to see that there are NO PRO's when it comes to me and drinking as I am unlike most people because I am an alcoholic. I am learning.

Oooooooh, least hit it (but I still can't figure out how to quote text :( )...'it buries you while you are still alive'. That's it. Plain and simple.

For me, there are no pros to being a drunk and I can't drink w/o being drunk.

Alcohol......
-can make me think I can drive when I really shouldn't (DUI candidate)
-can make me do very embarrassing things my drinking buddies show me pics of later
-prohibits articulate speech after an hour and a half
-adding extra calories/weight
-makes me age faster
-can make me smoke cigarettes more (and age even faster!)
-will kill me......it has already killed others in my family

I'm from the Friends and Family of Substance Abusers Forum. WHen I read this, I thought of a pro that I have: It makes me sick if I have more than 2 drinks within a few hours. I think its a genetic thing b/c there aren't many alcoholics in my very big family. A lot of Asians have the same thing. When I read about some people here drinking a bottle of wine at a time, I start to feel sick just at the thought. IMO, alcoholism has an inherited part.

SMART Recovery has something similar to your "pro and con" exercise. Its called the: COST/BENEFIT ANALYSIS, Four Questions About My Addiction.


Some of the Pros for me were:

• Took the edge off the Meth.
• Got rid of the hangover.
• Made me at ease in social situations.
• Lowered my inhibitions.

Some of the Cons for me were:

• Caused next day sickness/jitter.
• Caused depression.
• I was having legal, family and health problems.
• Eventually caused me to isolate.
• Made me a reckless fool and a danger to be around me.

I'll weigh up the pros and cons of having a drink:

pros: for 10 minutes I will enjoy the taste and the feeling it gives me

cons:
as i won't stop after 10 minutes the rest of my evening will be ruined and i won't be able to do anything
the next day i will have a stinking hangover and won't be able to do anything with that day either
it will gradually but fairly quickly make me fatter (i put on 10 kilos thanks to it)
my skin will be dry and I'll look old
the following days i will be irritable and easily depressed
in stressful situations I won't be able to cope-i'll be more weepy and easily flare up at the slightest thing even if not actually drunk
liver damage
memory loss

:headbange

pros: takes the edge off the anxiety

cons: makes the anxiety worse.


cons: makes me into the dumbest person on the planet... and can't stand myself

BEER

1.What do I enjoy about my addiction, what does it do for me ?

-In general it makes me feel relaxed

2. What do I hate about my addiction, what does it do to me ?

-costs money
-limits my ability to make good decisions
-memory loss
-for years it allowed me to AVOID my problems instead of dealing with them

Pros.... 45 minutes of the feel gud factor and friday feeling, which runs its course very quickly

Cons... Very many. A hopeless shadow of a life.

I'll just throw this out for thought. My drinking was not rational. Even when the scales of the pro and con equation had tipped completely to the con side, I continued to drink. My drinking seemed insane in light of all the negative consequences. No rational person would drink with those consequences. But I did.

I'm an alcoholic, and I had a mental obsession that is definitive of the alcoholic condition. That obsession made all rational arguments meaningless after a time.

The first step of my recovery was getting past the delusion that sufficient reasons to be sober was going to keep me sober. That first step was, in fact, the opposite. It was having full realization of the consequences, and also full realization that I would drink in spite of those. That first step was knowing I was f*cked. Utterly and completely.

YMMV.