Why do some of us progress so much faster than others? :/
 

It took me five years, 20 to 25, to go from my very first drink to daily, life-ruining, all-consuming, constant-battle, full-time-job style drinking. At 26 I lost my job, my friends, my apartment, every single thing I ever had.

At the end (I hope the end) I drank an average of three bottles of wine a day for most of nine months, until about 55 days ago. It took only six years from Drink 1 to get there.

On the other hand, I know so many alcoholics drink for decades--20, 30 years or more--and simultaneously continue to function and often appear normal. Both their quantity of alcohol and their quantity of problems don't go up as fast as mine did.

Why? What's wrong with me? Is there anyone else like me? I know I also have social anxiety, and that that might've helped things along. Is that all? Does that really explain a difference that huge between me and so many others?

I'm just curious about this. Also, I feel like it somehow shows I'm a terrible person on top of being an alcoholic, so I'm just putting this out there to see if anything anyone says helps me get some perspective on that feeling :/

I apologize if this post is inappropriate.

55 days is a great start!

I think it just has to do with ones personal make up = luck of the draw or misfortune, depending on how one views it. My story has many years of shenanigans before things aligned for me to gain the willingness to change.

Getting sober younger is a better option, I am certain. You are fortunate.....

It's a good topic.......Thanks

I'm sure you're not a terrible person. 3 bottles of wine a day is a lot. I think anyone would show ill effects from that pretty fast.

Some of us just go all in quickly. I think Fly N Buy has it, though. So many variables from genetics to upbringing, to past traumas, to current living environment, job, location - so many things contribute.

I took me about six years, too. I was good at being a drinker. All in. It is what it is. I don't put a lot of shame and guilt on myself any more because what does that serve? How does that help me? I just work on getting better day by day.

I can relate but in a different way. Something that ticks me off a bit is that I feel like there are people that drink, as you say, 30+ years but they don't have the health issues or aches I do when I drink. I wonder what is wrong with my body and why it can't take just a couple beers. I can't explain why my body sucks but the fact is: my body hates the booze.

A couple weeks ago blood was found in my urine which could be the start of kidney disease. If I drink my heart rate elevates really high, I sweat, blood pressure rises, my acid reflux keeps me up at night. I get bloated and joints hurt. Sometimes I would spit a bit of blood in the morning after drinking a few. My body hates the booze and it lets me know it does. I am 32 and I have some issues some 50 year olds don't have.

I think we have to accept that while some people may (or may not) have better luck with drinking than we do, you and I aren't meant to drink anymore.

I don't have health issues, but my body hates the booze too.
Just a couple drinks and I'll have insomnia for days, anxiety, it just doesn't work for me.
Xo

I don;t think there's any correlation between how long it takes us to hit bottom and our worth as a human being.

My reasons were varied, but I never ever drank for any other result but to get drunk.

It took me about 15 years to accept I had a problem. Some one else may have reached that startling conclusion much sooner LOL

it is what it is..the important part is today I think :)

D

I never drank until I was 18. I didn't really become addicted to alcohol until I was around age 30, though. But of course, one could argue that I was addicted from Day 1, who knows? At 30 I pushed "all in" and by 36 I was nearly dead. Been sober for 3+ years and I'm thankful I got sober before turning 40.

One way to look at things is that you are even luckier to have fallen down early. You have more time to pick yourself up and dust yourself off. Plenty of future left for you, and if you stay sober it's going to be a long and rewarding life! Good for you!

We're all different. We drink for different reasons, we drink different quantities, of different types of alcohol, we react differently to the substance itself, we work out, or not, we eat well, or not.. etc. There are a myriad of reasons, to answer your question.

I myself drank more as a way of self medicating emotional issues from childhood, managed to control it, and had a successful career. You might call me fortunate. However, I always had problems with relationships so never had a fulfilling marriage or a family of my own.

At age 60 I'm still wandering, and just now discovering and working on all of these issues. Now, who's the fortunate one? You have your whole life ahead of you. Enjoy it!

I was one of those who started very young and lasted a long time. How? Rigid, obsessive control. For years before I lost control (because every alcoholic does in the end), I didn't enjoy drinking -- I just managed my addiction. Some people might say I had a good run, but it wasn't very good.

Sometimes, those who get sober young envy the ones who had the long run. Believe me, we envy you more, because you'll have a long run of sobriety, which is so much better! :)

Brains differ. Bodies differ. Your personal makeup just happens to include a higher susceptibility to the ravages of alcohol abuse than people on the thick part of the statistical "bell curve." Does that makes you a "terrible person?" Only if you identify yourself that way.

My own "outlier" experience happens to be on the other end -- it's about slowness of recovery from alcoholic damage to the brain and nervous system.

I can only shake my head in awe of some of the folks who come here to SR, sober up after 30 years of the kind of extreme heavy drinking that I could only imagine, and report feeling absolutely 100% well within a week or two.

I've been sober for over 2-1/2 years after just 12 years or so of heavy drinking, and I'm still dealing with brain and nerve damage issues!

Does that make me a "terrible person?" Only if I let it.

I'm glad to be sober before 40 too, I'm 32 and I noticed things getting bad at 30-31, it was all downhill from there!

As others have already posted, you'll benefit from a long sober future. I was talking with my mom today and learned about a family member who is in a treatment center for alcohol and depression. She'd just started her freshman year of college in Sept :( I told my mom the same thing others pointed out here, that if she takes the help and gets sober, she has her whole life ahead of her.

Congratulations on your new found sobriety.

I know hat if I stay sober it is a good thing that everything went to hell at a young age. And I know it's not productive to feel like a terrible person for how fast it went for me. I just still so often feel like so much less of a person than someone who can drink for years with "rigid, obsessive control," like courage2 said.

(Also, oh, dang, no, I didn't mean to imply I had 55 days straight. I only have 18, it's just that I had 35 and relapsed briefly and then got 18. Sorry.)

That's your alcoholism whispering to you. And our culture. It and they associate alcohol with strength and manliness (or in my case, showing that I'm a girl who can hang with the guys, whatever the hell that means... a trope I ingested somewhere when I was younger). But it has nothing to do with strength or weakness. It is a hole in the road that a full 7% of the adult US population falls into. It is an illness.

I was like you.. a wee bit slower. I had my first drink in high school but didn't really start until I was 19. By 25 I was definitely an alcoholic. I was only able to keep that more-or-less manages for about 3 years, then by the time I was 29 I was drinking so much that there were days I could barely walk because my withdrawal was so bad. Like you, on my bad days I'd drink 3 bottles of wine or more.

We're lucky. At least I feel that way. There's no wiggle room here, no way to convince myself that I can drink normally. I wouldn't survive another couple years drinking. But that doesn't make me any less strong for quitting.

I think everyone is diffrent

This makes me think. I'm the opposite. My body tolerates alcohol well and always did. Even drinking serious amounts of alcohol daily, I rarely got bad hangovers, I've never had any withdrawal symptoms other than difficulty sleeping, and no matter how much I drank, I didn't become overtly ridiculous in my behavior. It was routine for me to wake up after a black out that lasted hours, and to be told by the people I was with that I was acting perfectly normal the whole night, they had no idea I had drank as much as I had or enough to black out. I never passed out in inappropriate places or wet the bed or any of that, despite several years steady, pretty high alcohol intake.

So maybe because my body chemistry or whatever made it physically less taxing to ramp up my drinking quicker, that's part of why it happened. And once it had happened, it wasn't gonna unhappen, so I was just pretty much wasted all the time, every chance I got, which is not conducive to life.

This possibility makes me feel a little better.