Is alcohol your symptom or your problem?
 

I just hit the 30 day mark sober by the grace of God and started to think. Is alcohol a symptom or the underlying cause of my problems? I guess it can be a bit of both but the reality seems to be I used alcohol to fight depression and loneliness.

I've been able to go out with friends and drinking hasn't been much of an issue. I feel as though I am uncovering the real problems I face through this last month of being sober. Yes I can't control myself when I drink but I think its a symptom of other things. Don't get me wrong, most of my problems in life are a result of drinking but also a result of living a self centered lifestyle.

Just curious as to what others feel when they are seeking help. Im working on going to counseling to get to the root of whats really wrong.

Definitely a symptom here, counseling helped with the real stuff.

Definitely and absolutely without question, a symptom for me.

My problems involved depression/anxiety in my life from my teen years onward. In an attempt to live with the anxiety, I developed into a control-freak. Eventually, holding on tightly to everything and everyone in my life led me to physical pain and insomnia, and then I began to self-medicate with alcohol.

That's why the stopping was only the beginning. Then the hard work began.

Both for me :wavey:

I had underlying stuff long before I took a drink...but I definitely was killing myself with alcohol as well - and for years after some of those initial underlying issues had been sorted.

D

See thats what Im noticing with AA. Everyone shares their drinking stories and issues with it but the reality is some people still seem depressed because maybe there are lots more underlying issues. Though the 12 steps covers alot of them it seems that the underlying causes need to be addressed in order to curb the escapism through alcohol.

Sorry if this sounds weird. I just sit sometimes in the meetings and want to ask questions about people's stories and what triggers their behaviors versus my own.

I'm not an AA member but having read and studied the 12 steps it seems to me they're a pretty useful guide for living a meaningful full life - they're about a lot more than just not drinking - most of the steps are about this underlying cause stuff, as I read them.

Lets not make this into another one of *those* threads, hey? :headbange

D

Sorry wasn't trying to get off track.

I was just getting in early Hearne LOL.
It's a great thread topic as is :)

D

This is still all new to me and Im a pretty inquisitive person. Btw AA has been awesome for me, just wanted to make sure no one got the wrong idea. Great program, great people.

For me it was a symptom that became part of the underlying problem and created other underlying problems. I gotten enormous satisfaction honestly peeling back the layers, it is work, but ultimately the most rewarding work I've ever done. At the root i found a malignant mix of perfectionism, some insecurity, anxiety combined with a probable genetic predisposition that combined to form an unrealistic view of my world. The good thing is it's more than manageable if I acknowledge it's there and work on it.

it seems that the underlying causes need to be addressed in order to curb the escapism through alcohol."

Agreed. There are some who could benefit greatly from meds. Finding the right doc for the job is the trick. Meds can go a long way to temporarily alleviating symptoms, but other work needs to be done as well.

Hi Hearne -- I think this is a really great question because I think for some of us it is both and it's important to see it as both. For me, it was definitely both. Choosing one would lead me to deny the other, and denial either way would be really bad for my recovery!

Great topic.

My road to recovery began when I heard someone say in a Big Book Step Study, "my problem is not alcohol. My problem is sobriety." I got chills.

I've come to understand that my life has been a quest for power over the way I feel. Alcohol did that for me, for many years, and did it successfully. I believe that without alcohol, I might have killed myself at some point.

But alcohol eventually gives out, and starts to kick our behinds. We stick with it, cause we've got no other recourse. Now we've got the physical dependence in addition to the mental one.

When we quit drinking, we are put in a state of utter powerlessness. If you've heard it said that it gets worse before it gets better, for me it was true.

When you get right down to it, the fact that we call it "alcoholism" is tantamount to calling cancer "hair loss." Probably a bad example, but maybe you get the point.

Alcohol WAS a problem, for me, but it's crystal clear that removing the alcohol hasn't removed my problems.

I will always have external problems--they are called "life on life's terms". Blowing out my tire this week had nothing to do with my alcoholism. But my immediate emotional reaction (Why ME? I just bought these freakin' expensive tires a year ago! Can't I ever catch a BREAK?) had everything to do with it, or rather, with my underlying INTERNAL problem.

I took care of the tire, didn't drink, counted my blessings that the tire place had the exact one in stock, that I could afford a new one (not that it didn't pinch a little), that it happened in front of my office in the middle of the afternoon instead of a lonely road in the middle of the night.

Is alcohol your symptom or your problem??
 

I do have to say it is both. When I would try to quit drinking through the years I addressed the alcohol only...simply put I would quit my medication for my depression/anxiety to drink so was actually self-medicating my depression.

When I went to in-patient alcohol treatment in the 1970's they did not even want to discuss my depression problem that I had since a teen. They went on the premise that the alcoholism caused the depression. :tapping

I also had the predisposition for alcoholism & depression on my Maternal side of my family although my Mom did not drink & then my Dad had a problem with alcohol in his later years after my brother & I were on our own.

The second time I asked for help with my alcoholism & depression/anxiety I was given treatment for both at the same time with a counselor for each problem. It worked very well for me. I also attended AA & the first year of sobriety I worked very hard to get my life in an order of such that I could stay sober. That always was the hard part for me. :scorebad

It has been 22 years of Sobriety & 22 years of follow-ups for my depression & anxiety with my gp & a counselor for some situational depressions. I take antidepressants every day & have a lot of little tricks to use with meditation & the Serenity Prayer. I have found that being able to handle my emotions surrounding the issues that cannot be changed has been very helpful for me.

So that is how it is for me. I am busy as I can be with my arthritis but if I need to have a relaxing day I can do that too. I have learned through the years to try to keep myself in "Today" & the rest gets taken care of eventually with the perverbial "Lightbulb coming on"!!! :ring


kelsh

Well, I definitely had problems before I drank, I asked my parents for counseling when I was 14, unfortunately counseling just isn't done in my family (drinking on the other hand we do really well, or really bad depending on ones perspective).

And then, heaven, I found alcohol and all my problems disappeared, at least temporarily. I once read that your emotional growth essentially stops when you become an alcoholic, which sounds about right to me. The problem was the more I drank the more alcohol became the problem as opposed to the symptom, fueling my depression being the biggie, and boy did it fuel it, like dumping the oil from the Gulf on a camp fire.

In the almost three weeks I have been sober I have not been depressed once, which is unheard of for me.


Now that alcohol is no longer fuelin my problems I can get down to the hard work of addressing them.

I am now just beginning to develop a relationship with myself. i haven't been comfortable with me in a very long time...like when i was a sophmore at UPenn,,,before i fell under the spell of the originalMr. Fandy #1....he taught me how to drink...i continued and never stopped through our 11 year marriage, our divorce, several other relationships, my daughter's rebellion, etc, etc....

my REAL problem is lack of sleep and now a days self-esteem...but i am working on all of it and these days am cutting myself some slack.

I am ashamed to go back to my psych. doctor because she seemed so happy for me with my last relationship..which also turned out to be a sham....i got bamboozled and you would think I would know better by this time...i feel foolish and dumb.

It's a tough one. For me, alcohol has given me certain things that I lacked - more socialability and loquaciousness while drinking in company, for example - but I also hold alcohol at least 80% to blame for my depression. I have no recollection of being depressed before I started drinking excessively. Even at that, it took a good few years before the dark side started to click in.

Great topic, for me it is definitely a symptom. Truth be told, I have flopped from addiction to addiction my entire life: pot, booze, fitness, sex, painkillers, stress, work. Pretty everything except gambling. (Why I skipped that one I really don't have a clue. It just pisses me off to loose money. Too much of Scotsman I guess-LOL) I have been working on the why for several years and only recently got down to turning off the tap.

Best wishes,

A good way that helped and continues to help me maintain grateful, contented and peaceful sobriety is by accepting that I am the problem. This manages to keep myself in check and realise that if I start slacking in my recovery then the old alkie ways and traits are likely to start flooding back. By knowing this means that I can live in certain ways and practice certain core principles and behaviours towards myself and others to keep myself in 'balance' and thus grateful to be a recovering alcoholic.

Having said that I also suffered from a massive drink problem. In that alcohol directly caused most of my troubles. I only ever wished to drink and could realistically only ever drink until blackout. This was the case from my first drinking experiences at 14 years old. So in that respect my body is physically made like an alcoholic. I also could drink ridiculous quantities of alcohol.

However there are also certain 'issues' that I also had which I also self-medicated with alcohol. Incidentally these started around the time when I started binge drinking regularly. Not related per se but undoubably the heavy drinking helped me block it out, so I never dealt with them properly. Until now as part of my recovery.

So it's a bit of both but it certainly helps me keep my "self-will" in check so to speak by knowing and accepting that I am the problem. I no longer have a drink problem now that I don't drink. But I have to work on myself and do my recovery stuff every single day or I would eventually have my drinking problem back again.

Peace