Am I alcohol dependent?
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Join Date: Nov 2010
Posts: 1
Am I alcohol dependent?
Well I'm only 18. I started drinking when I was 12 to escape the fact that my mother was an alcoholic/drug addict and abusive (Quite the irony). I didn't really heavily start drinking till I was 14 though, even then it wasn't that bad as I'd just get mindlessly wasted about two times a week, but it was the first time I was drinking until I started to experience blackouts. Each year I started drinking more, at 16 to 17 it was more around 3-4 times a week.
Then this summer came, and because we moved countries from a big city to a small town in the middle of nowhere. Me and my friends felt we had nothing much to do during the summer so we just ended up drinking a lot. I had around 2 hangover days a week, and the rest was bindge drinking. I'd often feel very anxious on sober days as the idea of all the blackouts I've had would scare me, espically when this one time I came close to dying in the middle of the lake.
Then after a over a week of just drinking, I one day on my first sober day experienced a huge panic attack which lead me to become even more anxious all the time. So I started drinking more again to escape the anxiety as the alcohol would relax me.
However as everything kept going worse after a an entire month of drinking without rest, I started to cut down. I cut down to around 2 nights of drinking a week, sometimes three. After cutting down though, I noticed that drinking even a little would get me more drunk then usual. Now I've changed to drinking once or maxium twice a week. However I noticed if I don't drink during a week, I start to feel really dizzy and nausous, I feel like I can't eat anything and start to feel really down and sick. My friend who is also 18 and was with me through all the drinking, says she experiences the exact same symtoms.
To me this sounds like alcohol dependence but I guess I never thought I'd be this way at such a young age.
How should I deal with this? Any advice? It's hard to quit because my other friends who didn't go through what I went through still want to party and drink all the time and I feel really left out if I don't join them.
Then this summer came, and because we moved countries from a big city to a small town in the middle of nowhere. Me and my friends felt we had nothing much to do during the summer so we just ended up drinking a lot. I had around 2 hangover days a week, and the rest was bindge drinking. I'd often feel very anxious on sober days as the idea of all the blackouts I've had would scare me, espically when this one time I came close to dying in the middle of the lake.
Then after a over a week of just drinking, I one day on my first sober day experienced a huge panic attack which lead me to become even more anxious all the time. So I started drinking more again to escape the anxiety as the alcohol would relax me.
However as everything kept going worse after a an entire month of drinking without rest, I started to cut down. I cut down to around 2 nights of drinking a week, sometimes three. After cutting down though, I noticed that drinking even a little would get me more drunk then usual. Now I've changed to drinking once or maxium twice a week. However I noticed if I don't drink during a week, I start to feel really dizzy and nausous, I feel like I can't eat anything and start to feel really down and sick. My friend who is also 18 and was with me through all the drinking, says she experiences the exact same symtoms.
To me this sounds like alcohol dependence but I guess I never thought I'd be this way at such a young age.
How should I deal with this? Any advice? It's hard to quit because my other friends who didn't go through what I went through still want to party and drink all the time and I feel really left out if I don't join them.
bona fido dog-lover
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: SF Bay area, CA
Posts: 99,772
No matter what your friends do or how they feel... if alcohol is causing problems in your life and with your health, might be a good idea to give it up. The really good thing is that if you give it up while you're still so young, you won't have health problems, legal problems, or regrets over the damage from drinking when you get older.
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