I want a drink!
Grateful Member
Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: MI
Posts: 1,080
mswg, I used to drink just like you. I could go out and not drink, go to weddings, parties etc, and be fine, but at home, I struggled. I LIKED sitting down to a couple drinks one I was settled in for the night. I quit for a month, went to "moderating" did THAT for a month, ended up in a couple blackouts, and quit AGAIN. That time has stuck for me, and now I'm at 90 days (today 
) and I feel very sure that quitting for good is the right decision for me.
Basically, all this time and effort of just thinking about it makes you NOT a normal drinker....
And as far as the "planned binge.."
Its quite a risk to take for a silly buzz, if you think about it. I mean, alcoholism is progressive. Are you willing to see how far it might progress is your life?
Just my 2 cents of course.
I wish you the very best in whatever you do, but please give AA another try if you plan on staying quit.
) and I feel very sure that quitting for good is the right decision for me.Basically, all this time and effort of just thinking about it makes you NOT a normal drinker....
And as far as the "planned binge.."
Its quite a risk to take for a silly buzz, if you think about it. I mean, alcoholism is progressive. Are you willing to see how far it might progress is your life?
Just my 2 cents of course.
I wish you the very best in whatever you do, but please give AA another try if you plan on staying quit.
Member
Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: S.Central PA
Posts: 63
I went through a similar stage at about 90 days. Figured I could drink again like normal people. Luckily I didn't.
Next time you go to an AA meeting listen closely to "How it works" They read it in the beginning of the meetings. One of my favorite sayings in it is "half measure availed us nothing".
For months now I have been trying to find a list of all the half measures, I can't find one but rest assured when I do I will be able to check about 98% off the list as tried that, didn't work, and I am fairly confident I will never be able to make the other 2% work for me either.
I, like you, binge drank, and the thing that I found is that I can not drink like a normal person or moderate the amount that I drink. During the last few years of my drinking career my drinking got progressively worse. To the point I would start drinking first thing in the AM to help me feel better. Your binges will get worse, it might take awhile, but they will. This disease will tell you that you can drink like a normal person but you can't.
Anyway I'm rambling so I'll pass it along.
Glad your here.....keep coming back
Next time you go to an AA meeting listen closely to "How it works" They read it in the beginning of the meetings. One of my favorite sayings in it is "half measure availed us nothing".
For months now I have been trying to find a list of all the half measures, I can't find one but rest assured when I do I will be able to check about 98% off the list as tried that, didn't work, and I am fairly confident I will never be able to make the other 2% work for me either.
I, like you, binge drank, and the thing that I found is that I can not drink like a normal person or moderate the amount that I drink. During the last few years of my drinking career my drinking got progressively worse. To the point I would start drinking first thing in the AM to help me feel better. Your binges will get worse, it might take awhile, but they will. This disease will tell you that you can drink like a normal person but you can't.
Anyway I'm rambling so I'll pass it along.
Glad your here.....keep coming back
Member
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Germany
Posts: 2,058
Welcome Glenn and glad you are here.
Moderation, cutting back, controlling my drink time ----- none of that worked in the big picture. Similar to you, when I was out and about I didn't really drink nor think of it but once I got closer to my "home" time....well that was when I began thinking about drinking, if I had enough stock and well drinking is what I did once I came home.
Through SR, I was able to see I had a problem (whatever we choose to call it) and I realized that just quitting wasn't enough. I needed to change the way I lived life, and looked at life. I had to make change and support was the missing piece for me.
You have our support. Looking forward to the journey. I have not had one day in sobriety that I have regretted and I am a better person since I began recovery.
Moderation, cutting back, controlling my drink time ----- none of that worked in the big picture. Similar to you, when I was out and about I didn't really drink nor think of it but once I got closer to my "home" time....well that was when I began thinking about drinking, if I had enough stock and well drinking is what I did once I came home.
Through SR, I was able to see I had a problem (whatever we choose to call it) and I realized that just quitting wasn't enough. I needed to change the way I lived life, and looked at life. I had to make change and support was the missing piece for me.
You have our support. Looking forward to the journey. I have not had one day in sobriety that I have regretted and I am a better person since I began recovery.
Member
Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: Indianapolis, IN
Posts: 889
For me it's simple. I am either an alcoholic or I'm not. If I am, now what? What do Dr.'s say about alcoholism? It's a progressive disease that will grow over time. Also, that once we cross the line into alcoholism there is no going back. So basically if I drink when I am in the alcoholic stage, everyone in "the know" says that it will progress.
So, the idea of planned binges will probably work for you. My guess is the binges will grow closer and closer together. If you get a minute, read this
We believe, and so suggested a few years ago, that the action of alcohol on these chronic alcoholics is a manifestation of an allergy; that the phenomenon of craving is limited to this class and never occurs in the average temperate drinker. These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all; and once having formed the habit and found they cannot break it, once having lost their self-confidence, their reliance upon things human, their problems pile up on them and become astonishingly difficult to solve.
Frothy emotional appeal seldom suffices. The message which can interest and hold these alcoholic people must have depth and weight. In nearly all cases, their ideals must be grounded in a power greater than themselves, if they are to re-create their lives.
If any feel that as psychiatrists directing a hospital for alcoholics we appear somewhat sentimental, let them stand with us a while on the firing line, see the tragedies, the despairing wives, the little children; let the solving of these problems become a part of their daily work, and even of their sleeping moments, and the most cynical will not wonder that we have accepted and encouraged this movement. We feel, after many years of experience, that we have found nothing which has contributed more to the rehabilitation of these men than the altruistic movement now growing up among them.
Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks—drinks which they see others taking with impunity. After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery.
That describes me to a T. Best of luck to you!
So, the idea of planned binges will probably work for you. My guess is the binges will grow closer and closer together. If you get a minute, read this
We believe, and so suggested a few years ago, that the action of alcohol on these chronic alcoholics is a manifestation of an allergy; that the phenomenon of craving is limited to this class and never occurs in the average temperate drinker. These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all; and once having formed the habit and found they cannot break it, once having lost their self-confidence, their reliance upon things human, their problems pile up on them and become astonishingly difficult to solve.
Frothy emotional appeal seldom suffices. The message which can interest and hold these alcoholic people must have depth and weight. In nearly all cases, their ideals must be grounded in a power greater than themselves, if they are to re-create their lives.
If any feel that as psychiatrists directing a hospital for alcoholics we appear somewhat sentimental, let them stand with us a while on the firing line, see the tragedies, the despairing wives, the little children; let the solving of these problems become a part of their daily work, and even of their sleeping moments, and the most cynical will not wonder that we have accepted and encouraged this movement. We feel, after many years of experience, that we have found nothing which has contributed more to the rehabilitation of these men than the altruistic movement now growing up among them.
Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks—drinks which they see others taking with impunity. After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery.
That describes me to a T. Best of luck to you!
where the light is
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 2,763
You sound exactly like me just before my one night binges turned into three day binges.
I have been sober for three years through AA and am completely free of the obsession/delusion. Face the facts:
You CAN'T drink like a normal person and never will.
Normal people don't obsess about alcohol like you do.
This is having major effects on your health.
You are likely hurting people around you with your drinking (I only accepted this after I sobered up and my drinking past played a role in my marital separation about a year ago).
Cut your losses and move on. There is so much more to life than getting hammered (I could go on and on about that!).
I have been sober for three years through AA and am completely free of the obsession/delusion. Face the facts:
You CAN'T drink like a normal person and never will.
Normal people don't obsess about alcohol like you do.
This is having major effects on your health.
You are likely hurting people around you with your drinking (I only accepted this after I sobered up and my drinking past played a role in my marital separation about a year ago).
Cut your losses and move on. There is so much more to life than getting hammered (I could go on and on about that!
).
Member
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: The Great Outdoors
Posts: 1,992
I just don't get it..some of the terms..Binge drinking is alcoholic drinking right? A guy wouldn't go on a binge of 1 or 2 or even 4 drinks. Binge to me is all out rip roaring drunk drinking. You are on a mission to get drunk and you know it as you head out the door. If this is true.."moderation" drinking..leads to binge drinking because you can't just have a drink or two if you are on a binge...and that just leads back to daily drinking. I am thinking you are going thru the alcoholic bartering dialogue with yourself. If you are like me..you will tire of having all this bullsh!t planning going on inside your head and give it up for good!
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