not sure why im here
 

I registered here because a lot of my friends at college tell me they think im an alcohlic b/c of how much i drink. I drink almost every night, which i think is normal dfor college students. I still get good grades and everything even though i sometimes go to class drunk. Drinkoing doesnt affect my schoolwork or job so i dont feel like alcohol is a real problem for me, but after enough people tried to talk to me about my "problem" i got alittle concerned. I usually dont drink alone unless its during the day when no oner else can drink cause they have class or stuff, so its not like i lock myself in my room and dirnk every night. i tend to get a little upset when i have to go a day or two without drinking, but i feel like thats normal living in the dorms. do i sound like a normal college kid or an alcoholic?

Hi avgcollegekid

welcome :)

If your fellow students are telling you they're concerned, I do think that should be pause for thought - it's not advice you hear very much in the chug-a-lug college lifestyle.

I'm not sure it is common to drink almost every night - it certainly wasn't among my friends at college - although it was normal for me.

If you're drinking alone during the day I think that's cause for concern too - thats not a normal reaction to free time, although (again) it was normal for me.

And it's definitely not normal, or good, to 'get a little upset' when you haven't drunk for a day or two....but yeah I did that too.

I'm not diagnosing you as an alcoholic - only you could that - but there are some red flags here....have you thought of quitting for a specific amount of time - at least a month - that usually brings any problems you might have into focus?

D

Hi avgcollegekid,

And welcome! I can't tell you if you are an alcoholic or not, but as Carol said, I can see some red flags too. From my experience, it's never a good sign if you feel strange if you go 1-2 days without booze, especially if during that time you have to think about alcohol a lot. also, this drinking pattern ... ...is really a cause to be concerned. don#t take this as offensive or judgemental, but most "social drinking" people would simply dont mind to wait until later, and probably wouldn't even want a drink so often. There is no specific frequency or amount of drinking that makes you an alcoholic or not, drinking with other vs. drinking alone doesn't matter that much eithe. It's also how you drink, how it makes you feel and how you feel if you don't.

I'm a grad student, currently my last year, and it took me much more time than average because mid-way through university my drinking escalated and I wasn't able to do much else.
The thing is, before this happened, I ran with a crowd that was drinking quite a bit and there were friends who told me they were concerned about my alcohol intake. I brushed it off and didn't realize at that point that in fact, I was drinking much more and much more often than them. I was still functioning well, drinking, jobbing, being involved in different social activities, getting good grades.
Gradually I began to drink alone BEFORE I went to parties because I wanted to make sure to get enough. When the other peolpe stopped drinking after some , I was still wanting more. On days I didn't drink, my thinking revolved around alcohol, when I would have the next occasion to drink etc. At that point, I slowly realized that there might be some thing wrong, but hey, I wasn't having any physical symptoms and could stop for some time so I couldn't have an alcohol problem, could I? Invariably, periods of "sobriety" or trying to moderate my drinking ended with a massive binge.
Fast forward another year, it escalated, and I became more and more miserable even when I was smashed. at the end I was drinking to numb out, depressed and suicidal.

I'm not trying to tell you that you have an alcohol problem or not, not that this is what's inevitably going to happen in your case, but some things you said sound familiar.

As Carol suggested, it might help you to just quit for a month to see what happens then. If you find it hard to stiick to it, and your thoughts revolve around drinking contantly, and you get cravings or try to find excuses to drink nevertheless, you might have a problem. It's important to be honest with yourself. It's just a short amount of time out of a long lifetime and it can indeed help to put problems that might be there into perspective.
Peace, and take care, Lionne

Hello and welcome.

The fact that it upsets you to go a day or two without drinking should tell you that your relationship with alcohol isn't a good one :grouphug:

I agree with Carol, try and quit for a good length of time, you'll soon find out if you have a problem.

Take care x

I guess Carol and I have been working together so long, we're indistinguishable now ;)

I hope we hear from you again soon avg :)

D

welcome to the family av

i dont think anyone comes here by mistake

all good wishes to you

I remember my friends being concerned about my drinking too, i figured i was normal though, maybe stopping for 30 days would be a good idea to see how hard it is to go without booze.

You're right, it isn't common -- except among alcoholics and the immature. ;)

I justified my drinking for a long time because I thought, I'm college aged, and college kids drink a lot, so I must be normal. I even reasoned with myself that whether or not you are an alcoholic depends on your environment: so if the people you associate with drink a lot and you drink a lot that doesn't mean you're an alcoholic, you're just trying to fit in.

After years of thinking this way I finally saw the absurdity in it. Does my liver care who I hang out with? Does my mental health have to suffer because my friends drink too much? Maybe the "friends" I have are nothing more than drinking buddies, and the behavior I've been justifying has gone way beyond socially accepted norms, but I'm still trying to justify it using them.

This is what I found out after a lot of wasted time. My hope for you, avgcollegekid, is that you think carefully about these things and do some soul searching to find out if this applies to you.

Best wishes

I'm an alcoholic, yet I didn't drink daily when I was in college. I only drank on Thursday & Friday nights. Saturday was study night along with the next 4 days.

Not all alcoholics, even older alcoholics, drink every day.

Do you think you're an alcoholic?

Welcome to the forum.

I strongly urge you to speak with a doctor about this. There should be a health center on campus with confidential drop ins or appointments available. Drinking alchohol everyday and then suddenly stopping can be dangerous. Your Doctor can help diagnose and work with you on a plan of action to help you deal with these issues.

Here is a link for a copy the alcholism assesment test. These are a used nationwide as a type "gold standard" for identifying alcholism.

http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publicatio...28-2/78-79.htm

http://http://www.co.sanmateo.ca.us/vgn/images/portal/cit_609/29/1/1309587945SHORTMICHIGANALCOHOLSCREENINGTEST.pdf

Try those self tests out, keep posting here.
All the best,
-norm

I didn't drink at all during my university years. I focused on schoolwork totally.

However, I was suffering with anxiety and depression and had no clue how to help myself with those issues.

If you think you are having a problem with drinking, I hope you decide to change your life, but it will take a lot of motivation on your part.

It sounds like much of your life revolves around drinking and alcohol. This isn't "normal" at any age. I'm not saying your are an alcoholic. I'm not saying you're not. But look around you, look past your close group of friends. I think you'll find that most students, dorms or no dorms, aren't drinking every night, they aren't drinking before class and they aren't irritable or annoyed if they can't drink today.
You certainly can't be doing your very best if you're going to class drunk. What will you do when this is habit and you can't go to work without drinking? Thankfully, I didn't lose my job for drinking at work (though I was doing it) but many people here have lost their job that way.
When I was going through rehab, and I did it twice, many of my fellow group members were college students in very similar situations as your own. Getting good grades, working a job and falling further and further into an addiction.
There wouldn't be any harm in talking to a health professional on campus about this. I promise you, you aren't alone!

avg, you sound a lot like me when I was your age. But I agree with Dee, there are some red flags there.

I am 40 now and looking back college is where my road to alcoholism began. It was easy to justify because there is always a crowd around to join in.

When I look back I could always justify it because that is what everyone else was doing. But I was always the one who was always there at every oppurtunity to drink. Drank the most and stayed the latest. But it was alright cause I was in college. Then my late twenties came and went, and then my thirties came and went. There is always an excuse to drink...and believe everyone when they tell you...it progressively gets worse.

I can't say this is you or not...but you came here for a reason. Please stick around and let us know how it goes. I wish you luck...I wish I would have had the sense that you have at your age to take a hard look at myself...I'd be a lot better off now.

:rotfxko I was going to comment on that but I figured you would catch it.

Yes you do have a problem with alcohol that is not going to benefit you at all. College ends and there you are.

employers are not going to be looking for drinkers when they hire new people. They cost the company money is in many ways..and plus they often reek of booze.

What is your major? Good grades are only 1 part of getting hired...and meeting your career goals is the point of college.
Look at your post again...I see several errors ..I'm hopeing you will return sober to read it again...:) .

:laughing:
Dee and I do share often from the same POV but he is more diplomatic

Also...he's a lot younger...a man and an Aussie.
I'm honored to think of him as a son in recovery I've never met.

"I usually dont drink alone unless its during the day when no oner else can drink cause they have class or stuff, "

I love this line, it was just like me. I didn't drink when I was alone.....unless I was alone.:)

I progressed over a 20+ year period, and eventually found myself drinking all of the time. You are the only person who can really decide if you have a problem, but the advice you have been given is good. Take some time away from drinking to see if you can.

I thought I was an average college kid too...drinking during the day when no one else was drinking, always wanting more when we went out and getting way drunker than everybody else, blacking out pretty much every time I drank. Turned out, though, I wasn't quite so average. I found out that people actually weren't drinking quite as much as I thought they were. Sure, they went out and partied - HARD - on the weekends...but they weren't blacking out, they weren't getting in their car just to drive around (yeah, I'm not proud of that, but I did it), they weren't drinking before classes or on weekdays at all really. I realized I was doing most of my drinking on my own and getting way, way drunker than anyone else. It took getting drugged (I was too wasted to recognize that the "bartender" was shady and put the cup below the bar after he'd already mixed the drink), passing out on the porch of a frat house after having thrown up on myself and having the campus police escort me back to my dorm to get me to realize I MIGHT have a problem (and only then because I had to see the school therapist who gave me an objective viewpoint on what my drinking patterns actually looked like).

It's kind of like Carol (not Dee! :)) said above - college ends and there you are. College ended and I was too messed up to go anywhere so I had to spend the next year at home trying desperately to get my act together enough to survive in the real world. My best advice is not to wait until you're there and out of options to decide to deal with whatever drinking issues you may have. If you feel like it's a problem and it's adversely affecting your life - then it's a problem. I wish more than anything I'd gotten help when I first recognized I was an addict/alcoholic. (well, I really wish I'd never started to begin with)

I'm not saying you are or aren't an alcoholic (I agree with posters above who say there are red flags) - my point is that I thought I was drinking normally, too. And I really wasn't. Maybe take a step back, look at the way you drink - go to the school counselor and talk to him/her about your concerns and maybe get an outside perspective on what's happening. It's hard sometimes to tell in college because people do binge drink - quite frequently - but that doesn't mean it's healthy.

good to see you here

I'm back (sober atm this time). I read everyone's posts and a lot of people who talked about the way they used to think about alcohol and justify their drinking sounds way to similar to the way I am now for comfort. I'm thinking about trying to cut back just a little, especially on weekdays, but its hard to imagine not drinking. I'm in an honors program and as stressful as it is I feel like not drinking would just make it worse. I'll probably try to go at least a few days without drinking this week to see how it feels.

I don't know you, but when your drinking buddies start telling you that they think you have a drinking problem...I'd take that as a head's up

I didn't feel my head clearing for four or five days sober. That would be the minimum, I think, to see if you are experiencing any cognitive issues. On the other hand, in the interests of SCIENCE, it is recommended that you abstain for a month, starting right now. An inability to do this is cause for concern.

Offtopic:
Dee, I'm really sorry that I confused you with Carol.(Carol and Dee, you both are great. I don't want either of you to feel like I don't see you as individual persons. My apologies for the mixup :) ) I feel a bit embarassed now. It was early in the morning over here,and before I went off to the library I checked in on the forum and wrote my post. Maybe I wasn't totally awake yet or I maybe I read a post by Carol in another thread just before reading this one. :P

Ontopic: Glad you came back to the thread avgcollegkid. Using alcohol as a way to cope with stress or other problems is another sign that your relationship with alcohol is not average and it shows that you are already depending on it as a crutch. Even if it might be that you don't have any physical dependency (yet) to it, you are already on a very dangerous path if you cannot get through stressful times without it. Keep reading around and if you like, you can also write how your plan to not drink this week goes and what's happening. Take care,
Lionne

Ummm... Lets see. Where is there alcoholic behavior in this post?

Glad you stopped back avgcollegekid. I hope that you will realize that drinking is not relieving any stress for you. When I was drinking I was a nervous, stressed out mess. Drinking felt like it was helping because I felt like I was able to relax, but in reality it caused more stress and didn't really help me in the long run. On top of that, sleep when you are drinking is a total mess, so I wouldn't be surprised if your body is starved for some quality sleep if you are drinking a lot.

Best wishes to you and best of luck in your studies. :)

Thanks for your advice everyone. I guess I sort of knew that my rekationship with alcohol wasn't normsl. Tonight I told myself I wasn't going to drink but 6 friend showed up with half a handle and I couldn't not. I have anearly class tomorrow and I feel like an idiot becausr now I have to go hungover unless I start drinking in the morning, which I don't want to do.

Hey avgcollegekid,

I can guarantee you 100% that alcohol will not help you deal better with the stress, and it causes anxiety, is a depressant and disrupts your sleep patterns to. Really, please don't start that "hair of the dog" method...it would just open the door to drinking 24/7.
Good that you are so honest about it. You are not a fool, but I think that you found this forum because deep down you knew that your drinking has become problematic. (after all you wrote I'm pretty sure) Not being able to stop once you started ingesting alcohol, and having no control over it is part of alcoholic drinking. I'm sorry to say that, but cutting down or trying to manage your intake will most probably not work out. I think many of the people here in the forum (including me) had to go through a phase where they tried to cut down they realized that it didn't work. It's not a matter of "pulling yourself together" or willpower. Plus, life on campus is an environment where booze is everywhere and it takes some time until other people realize that there's likely something wrong with your drinking. It kinda takes a lot to stand out from the crowd of boozing students. I think that's why your friends are probably right.

If you find that it doesn't work out for you either, it's very serious but still it doesn't have to be the end of the world if you decide to do something about it. Most likely you 'll need support irl; a good next step would be to find out if there is an alcohol counsellor that you could make an appointment with either on campus (some colleges do have one) or in the town your college is in.
There's really no shame in it. PS: I didn't have that at my uni but I saw a professional at the mental health services of my university for almost a year after I quit drinking. It sure helped me a lot to stay sober and also to develop healthy coping skills for stressful times. It was totally confidential and it was free, maybe you can look if there is some kind of support available for you on campus.

I know, being "found out" and the fear of negative consequences can be a hurdle, or being afraid of being labeled, but most of the time but a) none of the things you are fearing happen, b)most likely some people know already c)it's really not as important as your own health and wellbeing. This won't go away once you graduate. It is progressive.
I hope you managed not to drink an eye opener, best wishes,
Lionne

avgcollegekid:

Perhaps things would be clearer and easier for you if you reframed the question from "am I an alcoholic?" to "do I have a healthy relationship with alcohol?"

I'm not sure anyone here can or should venture an answer as to the "alcoholic" question, since some of us can't even agree an on what an "alcoholic" IS.

But I'll go out on a limb and tell you that from where I sit you definitely have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. It may be common to drink a lot in college, even to drink daily. But it is not common, nor is it normal, nor is it healthy, to go to classes drunk, to drink alone in the middle of the day when others are in class, or to become upset when you aren't able to drink in this manner. Taken together, this behavior leaves absolutely no doubt that you have an unhealthy drinking pattern: a problem with alcohol.

The question is not whether you do or don't have a problem. The question is what you are going to do about it. Any ideas?

So glad you posted here and are willing to listen to what people have to say about their own experiences.

For me it has been much easier to not drink at all than to cut back. I tried for a while to limit myself, but that felt like deprivation and I was always thinking about when i could drink next and how much.

After the initial rough days/weeks, this has been sooooooo much better!

Welcome to the board. This is a good place.

I am glad that some of your friends care enough about you to let you know what they think about your drinking.

Take care.