You can't and won't we ride this train until the wheels fall off or worse. I like that all them bad things only equate to 1% but hey that's alcoholic logic for ya....

if i were blacking out, throwing up, harassing women and fighting...uh.....i'd be desperate to do what i can to never do it again. i'd be desperate to quit.
but that's me.
no amount of "fun" would counter-balance that. it can't.

I relapsed last night, had an absolute blast and it's affected my resolve quite a bit.

your resolve was useless before the blast. that's just it. if it had done what you thought resolve would do, then you wouldn't have drunk to begin with....

as far as your question:How do you walk away from something that is 99% fun?

i'm thinking you don't.

99% of the time we don't walk away from something that's fun 99% of the time.

[QUOTE] That's just considering pure loss of control though as though everything else is 'fun'.

For me, there were many many other things which made drinking fall into the 'not fun' category. Obsession to drink,planning to drink,do I have enough drinks,cancelling plans because of drink,re-arranging, hangovers, feeling rough at work, difficulty exercising, weight gain,physical deterioration,mental impairment,fuzzy head, sickness,hangovers, bad sleep. Even on a mild basis none of these are fun. If you have none of these fair enough but if you do they are certainly no fun :)

edit-I'm not trying to convince you you have a problem of course. You know if you do or not. I just know if drinking had been 99% fun I would never have quit,hence my question about percentages. Maybe you're not ready though if you are here maybe you are? Be honest. Food for thought.

I'm of no use to answer your question. Honestly, the last time I think I had fun drinking was sometime in 1997. After that it was 15 years of pure hell.

First of all, thank you to everyone who posted. Even if I don't reply to your post specifically, I read everything that was said and I appreciate it.

Today was my fourth "day 1" of 2013. Kind of depressing.

I can relate to that. I've taken my share of questionable decisions while sober, but alcohol (and, to a lesser extent, pot) gives me a terminal case of the stupid... or the crazy, when I really go all out.

I don't know why but I don't get bad hangovers. I have an upset stomach and a slight headache right now, and that's about as bad as it ever gets for me.

I do tend to eat compulsively when I drink... but that too is fun. Short term gratification vs long term contentment and all that jazz.

You really don't have to convince me that I'm addicted to alcohol.

I may not have completely internalised the fact, but I am well aware that I am an alcoholic. After the incident at the beginning of march, with the blackout and the amphetamines and the vomiting all over my bed, I stayed sober for all of two weeks before breaking down and having a drink. And it wasn't even a month before I decided to get hammered.

No hypothesis other than addiction can explain the situation. If I need to be convinced of something, it's that I need to do something about it rather than wait and see how long my luck holds.

I have developped some tolerance, I can definitely drink more than you would expect given my size. I still get buzzed after one beer though.

I don't know if I'm desperate, but I do agree with what you're saying.

I enjoyed being a bit of a wild card back when I was 20-21, but I'm 27 now and I'm honestly quite fed up with that kind of bs, even if it only happens once or twice a year.

The thing is, when I don't lose control I either have one drink and feel content with that, or like last night I get hammered but in a responsible way and cut myself off before things get out of hand.

Apart for occasionally getting a bit depressed after a few drinks and having a hard time staying in shape, I can honestly say that I do have fun drinking...

Except when I can't stop, that is...

That's what I'm afraid of too...

I do understand that there were some things a person likes about being intoxicated. For a very long I was able to maintain a party lifestyle. Hover-ever the consequences of that kind of life left me disabled in latter life. A high price to pay for all the 'fun' times I had being loaded.

Maybe have a look at SMART Recovery® - Four Questions About My Addiction. This is a pro vs con worksheet. I think this recovery tool dose a good job of laying out the full extent of addiction in a persons life.

:) Do keep active in your new life without alcohol/drugs.

The thing that would convince me (and was one of my big motivators) was the the stuff you put in your 1% category of un-fun...is stuff that could land you in jail or worse...

it's a dangerous game of roulette. There are lots of awesomely fun things to do and see in this world. You are young enough to master a variety of skills, talents and explore new interests. Life is rich and wonderful. Get busy with it and you are liable to not much miss the "fun" of drinking because there are 1 billion other ways to have a great time.

You can use your youth and health and the fact that you currently don't have a criminal record in your favor. If you put this off you will close up SO MANY doors and still, in the end, have to sober up. Do it now and you gain many many years of power living.

I'm sorry, I don't understand your reasoning... If you are indeed convinced you an an alcoholic then why not do something about it, just pretend that the sh;t has already hit the fan. If you are struggling to stay sober now then just think how difficult it will be years down the line when you are seriously physically or mentally impaired by your drinking and life looks a lot bleaker. We don't hit a magic point where it becomes easy to quit, if anything it gets harder. I know it is hard to keep up the incentive but just pretend, stay unflinchingly sober and don't entertain your AV. I know you can do this, you're just stalling x

Not sure that I read you right ;>?

I saw it as: "99% is a dark and very scary place. Blacking out, vomiting, harassing women, fighting, OD'ing on amphetamines, OD'ing on alcohol, etc, etc..."

and "the remaining 1% is fun..."

Take care.

Hammered and stoned but still in control. this ^^.

Even if you truly are having fun most of the time, that life gets old. You can't be a productive person who's proud of yourself if you're drinking enough to question the habit. Good luck.

I do tend to eat compulsively when I drink... but that too is fun.

this jumped out at me because anything i do by compulsion is compelled. and to me, being compelled was a horror. something i tried repeatedly to control, thinking i should be able to. compulsion is unmanageable. perpetual "war" with myself, give in or fightfightfight.
no peace, and certainly no fun.
sure eating can be fun.

but compulsive anything...oh god it was awful, the driven-ness!

Uh, 1%? That is a weird way to classify things like harassing women and overdosing on drugs, fighting, and blacking out.

You do realize that many, if not most, people in this world have done those things 0%, right? I wouldn't be too super proud that I only act a fool 1% of the time.

One woman exposed to drunken harassment is one too many. But hey, she's just a casualty of your pursuit of a good time, right? It's all about you gettin' your 99%...

The problem with your theory is that eventually you'll be the last one standing. Nobody parties like that forever - those that do often lose everything and succumb to mental and physical health failures.

There's no such thing as a "successful" drunk either. Even geniuses like Hemmingway, Mickey Mantle, and F. Scott Fitzgerald weren't smart enough to beat it - they all died of alcoholism.

The party WILL end. And it often ends badly when you're the only one left. Get off this ride while you still can, your future self will thank you.

Blacking Out is not normal, unless you are a binge drinking alcoholic.

Yeah - true dat, Soberlicious.

Someguy23, the truth is if you came over to my place and harassed women or got into fights you would be gone from my place and out of my life. Period.

I spent over a decade as a bartender dealing with drunken a$$holes like that. When kicking them out of my bar I always made sure the bouncer gave them a little change in their appearance to remember the night before for a few days.

My point is that, if you think fighting and harassing women is a one percent kinda thing, you're bound to found out the hard way sooner or later that it's not.

Who are you trying to kid?

Thanks for all the replies again, I read all of them more than once.
Incidentally, the pub crawl that I was talking about in my first post didn't happen

I think that might in fact help. I've started writing some answers to those questions. Thanks.

I don't think jail is too likely. I can get a bit boorish and reckless but I'm essentially harmless, and my drug use is only occasional and more or less restricted to pot.

I'm more afraid of killing myself in a "hilarious" way or of becoming a daily heavy drinker.

You said it yourself hypo, it's hard to keep up the incentive. That's why I'm struggling to stay sober.

That's the whole point of this thread really. It's hard to convince myself that booze==bad when 99% of my experiences with it are good, or had at most minor drawbacks... even if the remaining 1% did put me in danger of serious bodily harm and/or strained friendships and relationships.

Are you a gambling woman hypo? All actions in life are basically dice throws, with various possible outcomes and associated probabilities. Right now, the numbers aren't good enough for the rational side of me to be happy about playing, but they aren't yet bad enough for me to leave and not look back...

I was hoping people would help convince me, or suggest ways for me to convince myself. Maybe I'm just not ready to quit.

You hit on something there shoreladylu. I'm not proud of myself when I drink. Definitely does a number on my self-image. Thanks.

Perhaps compulsively was too strong a word. I get incredibly hungry when I drink, and since my brain is in "having fun"-mode already, it's very hard to resist ordering three pizzas and eating them...

My phrasing was a bit unfortunate. A better thread title would have been "How do you walk away from something which is fun 99% of the time".

If I was super proud of it, I wouldn't be on this forum would I? And I wouldn't refer to it as "harassing women, OD'ing and fighting" either, I would refer to it as "approaching women", "taking a bit too much" and "having an argument".

I don't do **** like this when I'm sober, and I'm not happy that I've done it while drunk either.

That being said, I've always gotten away with it, no lasting physical repercussions and made peace with pretty much everyone I ever pissed off...

Incidentally, it's been over two years that I haven't started a fight, and about a year and a half that I haven't harassed anyone outside of some drunk-texting.

I've had a fistfight with a bouncer once. Didn't win. No biggie.

Those are your words, not mine, dude. Reread your OP. I took it straight from there.

If that type of behavior is not concerning to you, even a small percentage of the time, then what exactly brings you here someguy? Can you pinpoint specifically what bothers you about your drinking?

There was a misunderstanding.

I meant that IF I was super proud of my behaviour, I wouldn't refer to as "harassing, OD'ing and fighting" but rather would use more benign words.

Of course I'm unhappy about that kind of behaviour, as I stated right afterwards: As for what bothers me about my drinking, two things:

1) The ridiculous binges when I turn into a douche or an escaped mental patient. I honestly, seriously believe that I'm neither (although I'm obviously not objective about it), and I'm tired of acting like one.

2) There's another alcoholic in my family. She has "gotten away with it" in the sense that she rode the vodka train hard from her 30's into her current 80's, had a very successful career and a good home life. She's also the most miserable woman I know. Don't want to become her either.