Work, drink, sleep. - repeat
 

And no time or desire for a social life.

The only desire is to drink after a hard days work(carpenter) . probably a bottle of wine a night , and a box of beer for Saturday night.

I know, its not ALOT of overboard drinking, in fact a bottle a night some ppl consider normal. But iam only 25, its just gonna get worse as I get older.

I actually have no desire anymore too meet new friends, date and meet woman, shop for new cloths, or even exercise. Working 50 hours a week plus drinking is a real drain on my health and life outlook.

But I wonder, is it the bottle? Or am I just naturally lazy.

I don't mind the work, its the drinking that ruins everything. Longest I've gone is 30 days without. And frankly sick of trying to quit over and over .

I look at some "healthy" people my age , and envy how they haven't let themselves be pulled into this maelstrom of constant hangovers and life disappointment.

In regards socialising, iam abit of an anti social person and abrutally honest realist,. And suppose it's anxiety that's always there , I have learned to overcome it. But the effort is huge to constantly fight the anxiety , so I don't bother dealing with it, easier to just stay at home and let the other young people be friends togethor without me. I have no friend's

Except the bottle.

Thanks for the read. Needed to vent

Have you got a plan Madruski ?

Hi madruski

My advice is to stop drinking and you'll find the answers to all those questions, I promise :)

D

Alcohol sucks all the air out of your life. It's like groundhog day in hell.

It's easy to look at quantities and say it's not that bad. That's where I got hung up for too many years. The quantity doesn't matter...what matters is that drinking is holding your life hostage.

Give it a chance and give it some tme...I think you'll be amazed.

I hope you decide to live a sober life. It's so worth it. :)

Sounds similar to how I was in my twenties, lucky for you that your only half way through them. You can not waste the entirety of those years as you will realize later in life how precious those years are. I wasted the entirety of mine in a situation similar to you and regret it immensely.

First you need a plan to stop self medicating yourself with booze for your social anxieties. I know it is hard but there are many more productive ways to deal with it.

Start here, visit a Dr and be honest about your anxiety and alcohol consumption. Then start a plan, Dee has good links for you.

Madruski,

You can be an introvert and still be happy/comfortable. The challenge with being sober is that it takes awhile. And for those of us attracted to drinking, delayed gratification is a challenge.

I second the suggestion to see a physician. I thought that was a pretty drastic/scary step, but it really did help me to get started on sobriety.

Hey madruski. I did the work, drink, repeat for 30 years before I smartened up. Don't do that. You have a chance to make a change at a young age. I'm an introvert so I'm not going to tell you that it'll make you the life of a party and you still won't desire alone time. But alone time isn't a bad thing.

Sober me is doing things I never would have done while drinking. Right now I'm signing up to travel half way around the world by myself to meet up with total strangers to do a 16 day trek to Mt. Everest base camp. It's something as a kid I always thought would be cool to do but once I got into the drinking stuff like that fell way off my reader screen.

Make the change to stop drinking. There are things that will open up in your life that won't happen if you continue to drink. Being sober isn't going to make life perfect. In fact some of the bad stuff will still happen but you'll deal with it better and you'll have opportunities you won't get while drinking.

former nail banger here.
when i was banging nails i thought all nail bangers went home and enjoyed a few drinks after a hard days work(it is quite a labor intensive job and quite a lot of math and logical thinking involved- not as simple as just do what the print says).

when i was drinking i considered a 6 pack or pint normal AND i deserved it at the end of the day- a lie and rationalization from an alcoholic in denial.
but the disease of alcoholism progressed.a 6 pack was a primer. no matter how hard i tried i just couldnt stop at 6. i couldnt stop at 8 or 10. i couldnt stop until i blacked out and passed out.

then i got sober. i was surprised at a couple things:
my work became even better- i paid more attention to detail.
i had more energy thru the work day. still whipped by the end of an 8-10 hour day, but i wasnt draggin but at 10am.
i noticed not everyone on the crew "enjoyed" a few drinks after work.noticed there are actually quite a few in the trades that dont drink!


and i wasnt sick if the insane cycle of repeating the drinking over and over- no more waking up hung over after i had "planned" on having "only a couple" the night before only to get blackout drunk.

social life? with lotsa work on me and that soul searching stuff, ive become quite comfortable with who i am- i dont need to have a jillion friends and go out all the time. the handful i have who i can get into some pretty deep conversations with, share our problems and find solutions, and share our joys, fears, frustrations, and everything else in life is a blessing(two of those friends if mine are here on SR. havent ever met em, but they are amazingly awesome people, even when theyre using their crowbars to pop my head outta my but!).

plus im an introvert.so goin out socializing wears me out and drains me.

as far as clothing? i bought new socks last month!!! pants and shirts? i sit here in 8 year old jeans with my right knee stickin out and left knee will be soon. my shirt has old stains in it.
and im ok with that,too. theyre clean! if id had been drinking theyd prolly be what i put on friday morning.
i do have clothes that arent torn, stained, but it doesnt bother me because i have clothes to wear!

ok, i rambled there. the main theme to it:
a LOT changed for me for the better when i made the decision i wanted to stop drinking,change who i was and how i felt about myself, and put in the same amount of energy i did when i was getting that next drink.

you can do it,too, madruski!

I thought working and drinking was the solution as well. The difference between us is I was 53 and near death when I woke up and decided there had to be a better way.

I literally wasted 30 years being drunk. Apparently you are a whole lot more self aware than I was because at 25 quitting drinking was not even on my radar.

As you seem to know your drinking will only get worse.

Try quitting for a year and if your life isn't a whole lot better you can always go back to drinking but I can almost guarantee you life will be vastly improved

I also have a hard time dealing with people and used to turn to the bottle instead. One morning, out of nowhere, I drank my usual bottle and then just could not stop. I kept driving back to get more and went on a few day benders as well, the only thing stopping me was sleep. Alcoholism is progressive.

By staying sober, you'll start finding new alternatives to your problems, little by little.
Stressed? Try meditation. Can't sleep? Exercize more. Shy? Only talk to people who make you comfortable, and learn to be happy alone sometimes...just some ideas. The thing is if you keep turning to alcohol to fix everything, you won't find other ways to cope.
Coming to this board frequently has helped me lots. Hope you find a good plan soon:)

Hi Madruski - Your story sounds similar to mine. I also have long had the pattern of work, (use substance alcohol/pot/whatever), sleep, repeat. The lack of desire is very common in people who use, and kinda makes sense because if we are constantly poisoning ourselves we just won't feel very well about much in general (but at the same time can have a hard time seeing that the poisoning we're doing might be responsible for that). So as others have suggested, I'd give yourself some sober time (more than 30 days) to see the difference.

You also brought up something else though which I think is terribly important. You mentioned feeling anti-social and having anxiety about it. I've also had something which sounds similar which over time I've decided to label social anxiety. For a long time I thought I was just a loner because I felt this way too but what I realized is that while I might be a loner in some ways, the fact that when I get around groups of people, and especially people I don't know very well I feel that same anxiety you describe, and that anxiety itself becomes a turn off to social situations, but in reality its the anxiety which makes me feel that way towards hanging out with others, its not my true self. This in turn can lead to an incredible amount of loneliness which can be hard to recognize as loneliness if its being felt all the time. And that last part in turn can be a huge driver to drink and use to fill that void. And then the drinking and using, by making you feel even more terrible, makes the problem a lot worse (and actually its possible the bottle might be the biggest source of this issue for you and many of us due to the havoc it wreaks on our nervous systems)!

I don't know if that all applies to you but I do feel like it applies to me.

This has also been one of the toughest issues for me to deal with with respect to getting sober because nearly all sober programs rely on group-therapy like settings which can be very difficult for people who suffer from stuff like this to deal with. For example sometimes just walking into an AA meeting can trigger something like a panic attack for me, let alone being called on to share in front of the group. Unfortunately though I also feel like having a social support group when trying to get sober is probably the most critical aspect of it, at least for me (again just my opinion), so avoiding the social side of recovery is not an option for me!

So that being said, I do find that communicating with people one on one or online can be a lot easier than in group settings. So I think online communities like this one can be helpful to people who deal with those issues. (So maybe start posting here when you want to vent or talk?) happyface:

Also, even though I have anxiety in those group settings, facing that fear over time has helped, and also meeting individuals in recovery in those groups who I've become friends with and can talk, chat, and grab coffee with one on one from time to time has really been the social backbone of my recovery program. For someone like me who sounds like you where for a long time I really didn't have any friends, meeting truly helpful, caring, friendly people in these groups and becoming friends with some of them has been a wonderful change in my life.

Anyway I don't know if any of that is helpful but I encourage you to keep talking about it and other issues either here or with.

I can also say that finding a psychiatrist who was also an addiction expert and 20 years in recovery himself has also been really useful for me in dealing with my own anxiety issues. (I dont think this qualifies as giving medical advice - I hope not).

(I hope this post doesn't come across as preachy - just trying to share my experiences since they sound similar)

This was YEARS of my life Mad. My drinking started around the time I worked two jobs, including the overnight, so my morning would be getting home from work, drinking a bunch while trying to decompress from the day, then sleeping until it was time to start working all over again. Good things happened to me during these years, but I know that I missed out on a whole lot and didn't make the most of relationships and opportunities I had during the time, and the whole thing left me really overweight and miserable. It's good that you recognize the pattern, because I didn't see how stuck I was at the time.

Hi! I was actually drinking less than you- and that's why I continued- surely a bottle of wine or two every few days isn't that bad right?
Point is I couldn't stop even though I wanted to.
I was sick of it.
Since quitting all those bad feelings went away.Life isn't perfect but its a lot of fun sober! Xoxo
( I'm 33) quit before I did :)

Im.35 and wish I'd quit at 25. The truth is EVERYTHING is so much more enjoyable without alcohol. After you're sober a while, even time at work is more pleasant, regardless of the type of job.

I'm at 5 months but I've done 1.5 years sober before that.....trust me that alcohol is lying to you. It is like eye glasses that are the wrong prescription.....until we take the glasses off, we believe alcohol helps us and we need it to get through all the other horrible moments. Once we take the glasses off (stop drinking), we see that alcohol is the common denominator. ......it's actually making all moments in life miserable.

After some sober time, you will enjoy your time at home alone even more....I do and I'm extroverted.....I now really enjoy my own company more because I'm not harming myself with booze.

Sending prayers, positive thoughts your way! We all understand and can relate!

^^^^This is true.