I have a binge drinking problem
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Munich, Germany
Posts: 36
I have a binge drinking problem
To make a long story short:
34 years old and I have been binge drinking for about 20 years. Started in the all boys boarding school I went to and most of us did it – it was part of the culture.
I can go days without drinking and then I’ll have one drink. More often than not there’s no such thing as one drink and I get absolutely annihilated.
On 01/28/2011 I went out with my work colleagues and got absolutely punch drunk. I staggered home and had to crawl part of the way up the hill to get home. I threw up several times before and after I got home and felt like a corpse all of the next day (Saturday).
On the Sunday I came into Sydney with my wife and children in the car and whilst 36 had passed since my last drink, my brain and liver were certainly not functioning. I ran a red light and was extraordinarily lucky that no traffic was coming. If there was then I could have had myself and my family killed. I would have absolutely deserved the punishment had this been seen by the police – it would have been fair and just. Myself and my 13 month old son would have been in the most danger.
Well, this has spooked me and I realize I have a problem with binge drinking. I have not touched a drink in 10 days and have committed to being completely sober for February this year.
I’m pretty certain the best solution is total abstinence, permanently and for all time as I never want to put my wife and babies in danger like that again.
34 years old and I have been binge drinking for about 20 years. Started in the all boys boarding school I went to and most of us did it – it was part of the culture.
I can go days without drinking and then I’ll have one drink. More often than not there’s no such thing as one drink and I get absolutely annihilated.
On 01/28/2011 I went out with my work colleagues and got absolutely punch drunk. I staggered home and had to crawl part of the way up the hill to get home. I threw up several times before and after I got home and felt like a corpse all of the next day (Saturday).
On the Sunday I came into Sydney with my wife and children in the car and whilst 36 had passed since my last drink, my brain and liver were certainly not functioning. I ran a red light and was extraordinarily lucky that no traffic was coming. If there was then I could have had myself and my family killed. I would have absolutely deserved the punishment had this been seen by the police – it would have been fair and just. Myself and my 13 month old son would have been in the most danger.
Well, this has spooked me and I realize I have a problem with binge drinking. I have not touched a drink in 10 days and have committed to being completely sober for February this year.
I’m pretty certain the best solution is total abstinence, permanently and for all time as I never want to put my wife and babies in danger like that again.
A work in progress
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: South Jersey
Posts: 16,633
Hi, and welcome!
It's great that you've decided to quit drinking. The problem for most of us is staying stopped.
Do you have a plan for how you intend to do that? Have you considered AA?
It's great that you've decided to quit drinking. The problem for most of us is staying stopped.
Do you have a plan for how you intend to do that? Have you considered AA?
SR Fan
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: Mississippi
Posts: 7,910
Welcome TheVoice - We all understand what it feels like to be haunted by things that could have happened (or did) while we were actively drinking. I sure wasn't %100 there at all for my children, and that's one thing that I can never get back.
The good news is that everyone's OK and we're both here to take our lives back from alcohol. What I found so far is that things are so much better today - sobriety is the only way to go!
The good news is that everyone's OK and we're both here to take our lives back from alcohol. What I found so far is that things are so much better today - sobriety is the only way to go!
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Munich, Germany
Posts: 36
G'day guys and thanks for posting back to me,
I will go and check out an AA meeting. There's one no far from my office which kicks off at 7am and I'm a morning person.
I've told my wife that I have to stop drinking and she said "just drink when you're with me". It's not as simple as that - I don't drink that much when I'm with her but if I drink with her, the temptation to binge-drink with colleagues becomes far harder to resist. Once I've had the first and then the second drink then all bets are off, sometimes I'll get home in a relatively lucid state and the other times (like 1½ weeks ago) I'll be a walking, stinking corpse.
Several things I've noticed since abstaining for ten days which, by the way, is the longest I've been without a drink for years:
I will go and check out an AA meeting. There's one no far from my office which kicks off at 7am and I'm a morning person.
I've told my wife that I have to stop drinking and she said "just drink when you're with me". It's not as simple as that - I don't drink that much when I'm with her but if I drink with her, the temptation to binge-drink with colleagues becomes far harder to resist. Once I've had the first and then the second drink then all bets are off, sometimes I'll get home in a relatively lucid state and the other times (like 1½ weeks ago) I'll be a walking, stinking corpse.
Several things I've noticed since abstaining for ten days which, by the way, is the longest I've been without a drink for years:
- Love for my young children feels stronger
- Desire for my wife is stronger
- I cannot believe how many pubs there are in Sydney and how busy they all are with people knocking themselves out. Seriously, there is one every 20m and people are sat outside drinking like it's going out of fashion.
- I feel much more lucid
- Things which would usually bother and stress me, like looking after two babies aged 1 year and 2 months by myself, aren't so stressful
Last edited by TheVoice; 02-06-2011 at 11:26 PM. Reason: poor grammar
Recovered.
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: UK
Posts: 32
Hello and welcome!
You sound like a perfectly sensible person with your heart in the right place but maaybe suffering from the disease alcoholism, only you can decide that though. Going to a few AA meetings will certainly help you there. I'm 32 with kiddies and like you i was a binge drinker but i found the binges became closer together in time until finally the longest i could go without a drink was a day (and that was because i too just felt like a corpse) then the drinking just merged............ shortly after this i was at rock bottom. Now been sober 8 months with the help of AA, a sponser and the 12 step program and feeling brilliant for it.
Good luck
You sound like a perfectly sensible person with your heart in the right place but maaybe suffering from the disease alcoholism, only you can decide that though. Going to a few AA meetings will certainly help you there. I'm 32 with kiddies and like you i was a binge drinker but i found the binges became closer together in time until finally the longest i could go without a drink was a day (and that was because i too just felt like a corpse) then the drinking just merged............ shortly after this i was at rock bottom. Now been sober 8 months with the help of AA, a sponser and the 12 step program and feeling brilliant for it.
Good luck
Member
Join Date: Aug 2009
Posts: 114
Glad to see you here!
I, too, was a binge drinker. In college, I was pretty much on a four year bender. Then I got married, had kids, and drank moderately (or rarely) for 15 years. After my divorce, my drinking slowly escalated to drinking at home until I'd pass out. Stress/anxiety/worry, not sleeping -- all of it seemed to be helped by having a few (bottles of wine that is).
Like you, I didn't drink everyday either. I could go weeks without a drink. But something would happen... a party, a bad day, a good day... I'd have the first drink, and there was just no telling if I was going to stop or not. Most times not. Black outs were a regular occurrence for me.
I had gone to an A.A. meeting once. The nice folks even gave me a Big Book. I went home, put it in my drawer and never read it.
I had developed a thyroid problem, and over the course of the next year, I thought I was going stark raving mad. I did. Went to doctors, shrinks and even a psychiatrist. Everyone said, "limit your drinking." Well... okay then. I tested the theory.
I did okay through the holidays and thought I had it licked. Then one night, I had a glass of wine and the next thing I know, I'm in the hospital. Can I tell you what a lovely experience that was? A 44 year old professional woman with two sons at home, laying like gutter trash in an E.R. room, getting pumped with fluids. Nice.
I knew my drinking had escalated to a point where I could not honestly say I could stop at one drink. I had no idea what was going to happen when I took the first drink.
Could I have stopped completely, on my own, for a few months? Probably. I did not 'crave' alcohol. What I could not control was my intake IF I picked up the first one. And that's all I needed to know. I sure as hell didn't want to land in the hospital again, or worse, hurt my kids or someone else.
You may not be to a point where you are chemically dependent. Do you need to be? When I went back to A.A. (a day after I got home from the hospital), those fine folks told me, "You never need a reason to stop drinking." I didn't care if I 'fit the mold' of an alcoholic (and what I've learned is, there IS no mold). I never want to pick up a drink again. I can live without it (and much, much more happily, too, I've come to discover). I surround myself with people who are more than willing to help me do that.
I also have learned there is so much more to it all than just out of control drinking. These people are just like me, in so many ways I can't even begin to tell you. For me, it's the thinking problem, not the drinking problem.
My fiancee and my immediate family had a hard time adjusting to the thought that I could never drink again. They wanted ME exactly the same way as I was, just without the alcohol. And I'd try to tell them that was the problem. Me, exactly as I was, is what led to the out-of-control drinking. They're coming around.
If I were you, especially given what you know to be true inside of YOU, don't listen to your wife when she says, "just drink around me." It doesn't work. I tried that with my fiancee, too.
After I got home from my first A.A. meeting and I opened the Big Book, I was up almost half the night reading... not because I was fixated, but because it was like someone had crawled inside my brain and wrote a book about it. Give the first 164 pages a read (you can read it online if you want privacy), and see what you think. As a fellow binge drinker, I know I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts.
Hope you stay on your path to clean and sober living!
I, too, was a binge drinker. In college, I was pretty much on a four year bender. Then I got married, had kids, and drank moderately (or rarely) for 15 years. After my divorce, my drinking slowly escalated to drinking at home until I'd pass out. Stress/anxiety/worry, not sleeping -- all of it seemed to be helped by having a few (bottles of wine that is).
Like you, I didn't drink everyday either. I could go weeks without a drink. But something would happen... a party, a bad day, a good day... I'd have the first drink, and there was just no telling if I was going to stop or not. Most times not. Black outs were a regular occurrence for me.
I had gone to an A.A. meeting once. The nice folks even gave me a Big Book. I went home, put it in my drawer and never read it.
I had developed a thyroid problem, and over the course of the next year, I thought I was going stark raving mad. I did. Went to doctors, shrinks and even a psychiatrist. Everyone said, "limit your drinking." Well... okay then. I tested the theory.
I did okay through the holidays and thought I had it licked. Then one night, I had a glass of wine and the next thing I know, I'm in the hospital. Can I tell you what a lovely experience that was? A 44 year old professional woman with two sons at home, laying like gutter trash in an E.R. room, getting pumped with fluids. Nice.
I knew my drinking had escalated to a point where I could not honestly say I could stop at one drink. I had no idea what was going to happen when I took the first drink.
Could I have stopped completely, on my own, for a few months? Probably. I did not 'crave' alcohol. What I could not control was my intake IF I picked up the first one. And that's all I needed to know. I sure as hell didn't want to land in the hospital again, or worse, hurt my kids or someone else.
You may not be to a point where you are chemically dependent. Do you need to be? When I went back to A.A. (a day after I got home from the hospital), those fine folks told me, "You never need a reason to stop drinking." I didn't care if I 'fit the mold' of an alcoholic (and what I've learned is, there IS no mold). I never want to pick up a drink again. I can live without it (and much, much more happily, too, I've come to discover). I surround myself with people who are more than willing to help me do that.
I also have learned there is so much more to it all than just out of control drinking. These people are just like me, in so many ways I can't even begin to tell you. For me, it's the thinking problem, not the drinking problem.
My fiancee and my immediate family had a hard time adjusting to the thought that I could never drink again. They wanted ME exactly the same way as I was, just without the alcohol. And I'd try to tell them that was the problem. Me, exactly as I was, is what led to the out-of-control drinking. They're coming around.
If I were you, especially given what you know to be true inside of YOU, don't listen to your wife when she says, "just drink around me." It doesn't work. I tried that with my fiancee, too.
After I got home from my first A.A. meeting and I opened the Big Book, I was up almost half the night reading... not because I was fixated, but because it was like someone had crawled inside my brain and wrote a book about it. Give the first 164 pages a read (you can read it online if you want privacy), and see what you think. As a fellow binge drinker, I know I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts.
Hope you stay on your path to clean and sober living!
Member
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Northern, California
Posts: 4
Wow, I don't know what to say, except I am the EXACT same way. My husband said the same thing to me the morning after a binge that lead to me screaming and yelling 
at our 14 year old son (for some ridiculous reason) for hours on end. I sat them down the next morning and cried...for the first time I admitted that I have a real true drinking problem and had to abstain completely from drinking. My husband said "just a few with me".....I have tried that, never happens. He of course, still drinks, I mean I am the one with the problem I cant ask him to stop drinking because of me, I dont want to.... this is my problem. I found the binges getting closer and me drinking more and more... I sometimes wonder how I even survived some of them, there were times I didn't remember 5-6 hours of the evening.........how sad. I have been having a harder time the past day or so. This morning I said to my husband "why bother, not drinking, the only thing that seems to have changed is that I am not hungover....." have you felt that at all? Last week, I felt AWESOME...I loved it, this is week is starting off rough, I don't want to drink, I know I cant control it and I know it is just bad news for me. So why do I feel like I am missing something? When I drank I would binge once or twice every two weeks or so (but it was bad) I would have a glass of wine or a beer every nite while cooking dinner. Occasionally, this would also start one of my binges, or I could just have one and be done with it for the evening?????? My week has to get better..... I know it will. Good luck to you
at our 14 year old son (for some ridiculous reason) for hours on end. I sat them down the next morning and cried...for the first time I admitted that I have a real true drinking problem and had to abstain completely from drinking. My husband said "just a few with me".....I have tried that, never happens. He of course, still drinks, I mean I am the one with the problem I cant ask him to stop drinking because of me, I dont want to.... this is my problem. I found the binges getting closer and me drinking more and more... I sometimes wonder how I even survived some of them, there were times I didn't remember 5-6 hours of the evening.........how sad. I have been having a harder time the past day or so. This morning I said to my husband "why bother, not drinking, the only thing that seems to have changed is that I am not hungover....." have you felt that at all? Last week, I felt AWESOME...I loved it, this is week is starting off rough, I don't want to drink, I know I cant control it and I know it is just bad news for me. So why do I feel like I am missing something? When I drank I would binge once or twice every two weeks or so (but it was bad) I would have a glass of wine or a beer every nite while cooking dinner. Occasionally, this would also start one of my binges, or I could just have one and be done with it for the evening?????? My week has to get better..... I know it will. Good luck to you
Member
Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: San Diego
Posts: 4,451
Hey, welcome to SR! Glad you're taking a look at your drinking. I really helped me to read about others experiences.
For me, it was all or nothing. Every time I tried to control my drinking, reduce the frequency and/or quantity, sooner or later I'd go right back to where I started (or worse). I had to give it up entirely. And you know what? I'm sooooo glad I did. It was exhausting trying to control my drinking, and as you've already experienced, other areas of my life are much more enjoyable and rewarding without the booze!
For me, it was all or nothing. Every time I tried to control my drinking, reduce the frequency and/or quantity, sooner or later I'd go right back to where I started (or worse). I had to give it up entirely. And you know what? I'm sooooo glad I did. It was exhausting trying to control my drinking, and as you've already experienced, other areas of my life are much more enjoyable and rewarding without the booze!
Member
Join Date: Aug 2009
Posts: 114
One thing I think is an important to note, at least for the psyche: The only requirement for membership in A.A. is a desire to stop drinking. You don't have to label yourself an alcoholic. I found that helped me when I first started; it also helped my family digest it all better as well.
Member
Join Date: Jan 2011
Posts: 10
Originally Posted by HDclear 
Wow, I don't know what to say, except I am the EXACT same way. My husband said the same thing to me the morning after a binge that lead to me screaming and yelling at our 14 year old son (for some ridiculous reason) for hours on end. I sat them down the next morning and cried...for the first time I admitted that I have a real true drinking problem and had to abstain completely from drinking. My husband said "just a few with me".....I have tried that, never happens. He of course, still drinks, I mean I am the one with the problem I cant ask him to stop drinking because of me, I dont want to.... this is my problem. I found the binges getting closer and me drinking more and more... I sometimes wonder how I even survived some of them, there were times I didn't remember 5-6 hours of the evening.........how sad.
at our 14 year old son (for some ridiculous reason) for hours on end. I sat them down the next morning and cried...for the first time I admitted that I have a real true drinking problem and had to abstain completely from drinking. My husband said "just a few with me".....I have tried that, never happens. He of course, still drinks, I mean I am the one with the problem I cant ask him to stop drinking because of me, I dont want to.... this is my problem. I found the binges getting closer and me drinking more and more... I sometimes wonder how I even survived some of them, there were times I didn't remember 5-6 hours of the evening.........how sad.Member
Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: Indianapolis, IN
Posts: 889
Welcome TheVoice! And thank you for sharing Corri. I too was not a daily drinker. I too ALWAYS drank to the point of intoxicated and often trashed. I could write a freaking essay on why that is and have done so many times here...
The way I understand alcoholism is like this. Binge drinking (or losing control over your intake) is a much better indicator on alcoholism than is drinking daily. We alcoholics drink differently than normal drinkers not so much in our frequency but in our amounts. An alcoholic has a physical craving that takes place in them that makes our bodies actually crave more booze as we drink me. We want the 3ed worse than the 2nd, the 8th worse than the 7th and the 15th worse than the 14th. Normal drinkers do not have this issue.
The question then is can we ever go back to drinking without getting the craving that makes us binge drink? All I can share is my expeirience and that answer is no, for me. Controlling my drinking, while drinking, is a gear that I simply don't have. The book of AA supports this claim. I would be more inclined to not call your drinking "binge drinking" but rather alcoholism. I "binge drank" everytime I drank.
I don't know if this helps, but the line you wrote about wanting to not drink for the month of February is one that I said many times as well. You might be able to abstain for this month. The question is, what will happen the next time you drink?
For me, the only way I have any control over my drinking, is to simply not drink. I then must find a way to live in this world without taking that first drink. That is where recovery comes in...
Best of luck to you. We can all get better!!
The way I understand alcoholism is like this. Binge drinking (or losing control over your intake) is a much better indicator on alcoholism than is drinking daily. We alcoholics drink differently than normal drinkers not so much in our frequency but in our amounts. An alcoholic has a physical craving that takes place in them that makes our bodies actually crave more booze as we drink me. We want the 3ed worse than the 2nd, the 8th worse than the 7th and the 15th worse than the 14th. Normal drinkers do not have this issue.
The question then is can we ever go back to drinking without getting the craving that makes us binge drink? All I can share is my expeirience and that answer is no, for me. Controlling my drinking, while drinking, is a gear that I simply don't have. The book of AA supports this claim. I would be more inclined to not call your drinking "binge drinking" but rather alcoholism. I "binge drank" everytime I drank.
I don't know if this helps, but the line you wrote about wanting to not drink for the month of February is one that I said many times as well. You might be able to abstain for this month. The question is, what will happen the next time you drink?
For me, the only way I have any control over my drinking, is to simply not drink. I then must find a way to live in this world without taking that first drink. That is where recovery comes in...
Best of luck to you. We can all get better!!
Member
Join Date: Nov 2009
Posts: 79
Originally Posted by devilmaycry
start drinking less often, go to less parties and start drinking slightly less at each party ween yourself off of it. if your drinking liqour you can start just drinking beer usually in my experience no matter how drunk/dizzy i get off beer alone i still wake up able to remember just about everything.
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