nymets86

Sorry to start two threads in rapid succession, but I've been thinking a lot this weekend about how to tackle my problem and I think one way is to properly understand my problem.

For me, there are three types of drinking.

1. I get home from work and drink at least a pint and a half, maybe two. This gets me basically to the point where I pass out. During this time, I'll often catch up on emails, text with friends, play video games and watch TV. Often at the end I'm so drunk I'll remember what I watched, but not what happened. I'll feel crappy in the morning, but always get to work on time and will operate pretty normally. This used to happen maybe once a month. Now it's like once or twice a week. Ugh.

2. I go out socially drinking and am very cognizant I don't want to make an @$$ of myself and I strain mightily to moderate. However, when successful, at the end of the night, I feel invincible that I've conqured alcoholism.

3. I go out socially, hit beer number 3 and then just say f-it and I go crazy, waking up with horrific hangovers, lost phones, in the hospital, on a friends couch that didn't invite me over, you name it. At minimum, I regret this for one week and swear it'll never happen again. Other times a lot worse.

1 and 3 go hand in hand, but when I quit drinking last summer, I "relapsed" with #2 thinking it wasn't a relapse at all. However, that quickly led to #1 happening again and then every once in a while, a horrific #3.

I guess I'm just laying this out there to show myself why I can't moderate. This feeling of beating alcoholism is just alcoholism playing a dirty mind game.

Im in my late 20s and have been in a cycle kind of like this since I was 17. When I drank at home, my parents never once caught or suspected it (not quite helicopter parents, but close, I was just very sneaky). Once I began drinking socially, it spun out of control in college and I think some of those bad memories lead to me drinking alone today....feels safer, but I desire human interaction and then go and mess it all up.

I know sobriety is going to be an epic challenge. Up until I was 16, I was a goody two shoes with some (but not a ton) of friends that was very socially awkward. At 17, I was turned on to alcohol by some new friends and nothing has been the same since.

Jsbodhi

I drank alone to avoid # 3 too, but that didn't stop me from unleashing hell via text and email.

GoesWithTheFlow

OMG the things that would be I say on FB or sent via text. Some of them were not legible. I revealed way more than I should have. People found it funny at first but then later my credibility began to diminish, still working on getting that back.

@nymets86, I have tried that cycle repeatedly for five years and failed. I always end up at three at some point. That is why I have to rid myself of the Devil's juice.

Jsbodhi

It got to the point I started erasing texts in the morning before reading them, because I couldn't bear to read what I had written in my blackouts, I still cringe thinking about it

Gardennerd

Your 1 2 and 3 describe me, except I drank like #2 from age 20-35, with #3 now and then but rare, last 5 years #3 happened monthly, then weekly. Then anytime I drank.Now I quit. It would take me 7 not 2 to get good and drunk though. It was on after beer 3 though. No stopping till I was wasted. Much happier now.

That's what I didn't get. I thought if you were alcoholic, you were from the start. No, anyone can become alcoholic if they "try" long enough. It was just a long slow progression toward near ruin. I got off the elevator before i totally destroyed my life.

MelindaFlowers

I can relate to everything you write but I'm a few years older and instead of the one to two days a week of drinking enough to pass out and forget what happened in a movie was up to seven nights a week for me. I'm 32.

It does progress, simply because it takes more and more alcohol to get the effects we desire to get.

I can relate to the hangovers but most of all the unpredictability. I've never blacked out at a bar either. In fact, in the last five years of my drinking I never ordered more than 4-5 beers at a bar. I behaved in front of friends. I did the majority of my drinking at home and drank about 12 units a night to get the desired effect. My tolerance was reaching astonishing levels.

Like you, I also never missed work but felt like **** every single day.

I'm almost eight months from my last drink. I never thought I'd get here but it's possible so you can too.

I was literally obsessed with drinking. I guarded it and didn't know how to spend one single evening without it.

My god what an illusion all of that was. Life is so much better and easier without drinking.

GoesWithTheFlow

hahaha I thought I was the only one that did that! I think of all those text, I only read two of them. I was so embarrassed to read them I just sent out the apology text not really knowing what I was really apologizing for but I knew I said something stupid.

MelindaFlowers

Oh Jesus, the story of my drinking. The face booking and texts we're perhaps the most horrifying part of my drinking, looking back. I am just really a very private person and was especially private about the drinking. That said, I would post things on Facebook thinking they were funny, profound, or feeling like I wanted people to know something about me. On one particularly embarrassing night I remember posting something like "I just can't stop crying..."

What am I? A 15 yr old?!?! I remember waking up the next day and being so humiliated I literally could barely move. I blacked out that night but when I woke up though I remembered EXACTLY what I had posted and prayed that nobody had seen it or few people at least. I could barely bring myself to login even to delete it. Ones, and I think it was that time I actually deleted my whole Facebook account for like a week out of shame.

I thought we just wondered what it would be like to be alcoholic 30 or 40 years ago. Did they look up numbers in the phone book and dial them on a landline at 2:00 am?

TroubledJoe

Ha, I've thought about this quite often.

Like a few other people have mentioned, one of the worst parts of my drinking was the Facebook messages, texts etc...absolutely horrific. Totally humiliating. No doubt changed the way a lot of people look at me just through sheer stupidity/weirdness/emotional messages. Still can't bear to look at them. I don't know what's worse, not knowing some of the things I said or knowing.

I think overall it's basically a good thing that communication is so easy these days, but my God is it a curse for us alcoholics.

I'm sure we'd have found other ways to embarrass ourselves 30/40 years ago though

Lance40

Thanks for the laugh. The image is so tragically funny I can't stop chuckling. :-)

NoelleR

Actually, we did; not random numbers from a phone book, but friends numbers from our own personal phone books; although most of us knew our friends numbers by heart, whereby today we have land lines and cell phones with memory and speed dial, so if without these, many would not be able to contact their friends because they don't know their friends phone numbers. Now, this I find even more tragically funny (in fact, not funny at all; just rather sad and tragic).

(o:
NoelleR

Thepatman

I sometimes wonder what exhausted me more, the drinking itself, or the never ending attempts to control and rationalize something illogical.

A great portion of this was that I was convinced that to be normal and accepted I had to drink like others. Now days I embrace the fact that I'm sober and not like other people. After all, who want's to be a blind follower?

Wholesome

Waking up and vaguely remembering that I had been all over the internet and my phone were moments of pure horror!! What kind of nonsense and crap had I been talking about. One time while hammered on red wine I private messaged my favourite DJ about what a big fan I was and how much I loved him! I had totally forgotten until he messaged me back! Hahahaha! That one was fairly innocent and had a happy ending. But I also used to fight with whoever I was dating about ridiculous things that made no sense and didn't matter. I would insult and upset him and then have to apologize and explain myself. The shame of it could be crippling.

Soberwolf

Great post NYmets

ScottFromWI

It's good to lay this all out, and I think you've come to a pretty profound conclusion yourself....it is your alcoholism playing mind games. It will try every imaginable moderation scenario...drink only socially, drink only with meals, drink only in the evening, drink only.......

But for an alcohlic there is only one "type" of drinking....alcoholic drinking. No matter what you initially call it, you end up back at the same bad place.

The solution for me was end the fight for control/moderation altogether. Accept/surrender to the fact that I cannot/will not ever be able to do it in other words. Things get a lot better/easier if you can make that decision.

Boylan

Me, texting my adult son and thinking I'm so clever and interesting:

Me to son: Rambling, blabbering about whatever is on my mind at the moment.

Me to son: Same as above.

Me to son: ??????? You there?

Son to me: Mom, are you drunk texting, again?

Shut me right down...

Jake1961

1 on the list was me nearly everyday.

When I'd go out and only have 2 or 3 beers, I would rationalize it by saying "see I don't have a drinking problem, I can control it whenever I want." That was just my AV lying to me, again.

Realizing and accepting that I cannot drink alcohol, and actually stopping, has made life a whole lot better for me and those around me.

nymets86

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Gardennerd, I meant to say "vodka" in relation to pints. One to two pints of beer will give me just a minor buzz at this stage. And one thing I was also trying to point out is that in isolation, I drink vodka. When I'm out socially, for the last two to three years, I've stuck to just beer since I used to be a double-vodka soda or tonic guy and that led to just blackouts real fast. Now I try to slow it down with beer, but I order ungodly amounts and often will order ones I know have higher ABVs.

I can relate some to regretting texts, though I've somehow managed any real embarrassment there somehow.

For me, right now, the toughest thing about the thought of moderating is actually when it comes to dating. Right now I'm determined, but admittedly not that confident, that I can completely abstain when out socially, and confident I can cut out the drinking at home. But being single is a HUGE source of anxiety for me and I just don't know how to deal with the anxiety without drinking. Also don't know what a first date would be without sharing drinks.

Inchworm

"For me, right now, the toughest thing about the thought of moderating is actually when it comes to dating. Right now I'm determined, but admittedly not that confident, that I can completely abstain when out socially, and confident I can cut out the drinking at home. But being single is a HUGE source of anxiety for me and I just don't know how to deal with the anxiety without drinking. Also don't know what a first date would be without sharing drinks."

I think in sobriety we're becoming a rather trendy group, in all Try doing something outdoorsy where drinking is not an expected part of the night, perhaps. As soon as it gets above 0 degrees, I mean

nymets86

Inchworm. I'd love to have that option. But I feel like it's harder in NYC even when it's not cold, since there aren't that many outdoorsy things. I know there are the museums, etc, but I dunno, it seems harder. That could just be my anxiety speaking. As I sit here thinking, I know it's definitely the anxiety speaking.

One of the sources of my drinking (and undoubtably one of the results of my drinking) is that I've never had a long term relationship and I'm in my late 20s. The anxiety of being in a relationship overwhelms me and they wind up lasting no more than 6 weeks. On first/second dates, I've always had alcohol. It's hard to imagine starting off without that.

I do currently have someone in mind that's in one of my social circles and I've had mainly drunk interactions with (I was way more drunk). It's been eating me up for about 2 months now how to take the next step and feel like I've already missed the opportunity.