Is it true?
Member
Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: UK
Posts: 1,543
Originally Posted by Dee74 
....... I always drank to get wasted, The only difference over the years is frequency.............
....If the label worries you don't use it - but do acknowledge your problem with alcohol, and IMO you're best to try to accept it's forever.
D
Originally Posted by silentrun
...........I don't identify as an alcoholic anymore. There is no trace of it left in my life. I think of myself as a regular person who has a really good reason to stay a non drinker.
Originally Posted by andyh
..........I'm an alcoholic, for quite a lot of definitions of 'alcoholic'. I'm lots of other things too, so I don't find it helpful to use the label - it's an emotive term & means different things to different people. I'm with Kierkegaard on this one - "to label me is to negate me".
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For me (I didn't reply from my personal perspective in my contribution before) I have had to call myself an alcoholic to others (and inwardly) in order to 'get serious' about abstinence. It is now 'out there'. One day I hope to lose the label - not because I will or won't be one anymore - simply because I hope to have no use for the tag anymore and can simply be someone that chooses not to drink forever.
That's my hope anyway - so long as it never puts me into a complacent and dangerous place.
Regards,
JT
Member
Join Date: Feb 2016
Posts: 2,654
I don’t apply the alcoholic label to myself. I viewed myself as a liquid - I was only “alcoholic” when I contained alcohol.
I believe twenty years of daily drinking created strong neuronal circuitry in my brain (Hebb’s Law - neurons that fire together wire together - which I call my Booze Beast and its mouthpiece the AV). These loops remain dormant now that I’ve stopped drinking. New circuits are then created due to neuroplasticity, each time I ignore the AV, and engage in positive, life enhancing activities and thinking. This non-drinking supportive neuronal circuitry became stronger and my new norm, a non-drinker.
However, I believe the old dormant alcohol seeking neuronal circuityr, would reactiviate were I to ingest alcohol, such that in a short time....I’d become an alcoholic at the same level that I left off - awash with alcohol, morning to night. That is why I can never moderate or return to drinking, because the old neuronal loops would fire up so rapidly, that I’d be back in the soul destroying pit of alcoholism.
I believe twenty years of daily drinking created strong neuronal circuitry in my brain (Hebb’s Law - neurons that fire together wire together - which I call my Booze Beast and its mouthpiece the AV). These loops remain dormant now that I’ve stopped drinking. New circuits are then created due to neuroplasticity, each time I ignore the AV, and engage in positive, life enhancing activities and thinking. This non-drinking supportive neuronal circuitry became stronger and my new norm, a non-drinker.
However, I believe the old dormant alcohol seeking neuronal circuityr, would reactiviate were I to ingest alcohol, such that in a short time....I’d become an alcoholic at the same level that I left off - awash with alcohol, morning to night. That is why I can never moderate or return to drinking, because the old neuronal loops would fire up so rapidly, that I’d be back in the soul destroying pit of alcoholism.
Member
Join Date: Mar 2014
Posts: 46
Originally Posted by JustTony
On the above great contributions to the debate:
For me (I didn't reply from my personal perspective in my contribution before) I have had to call myself an alcoholic to others (and inwardly) in order to 'get serious' about abstinence. It is now 'out there'. One day I hope to lose the label - not because I will or won't be one anymore - simply because I hope to have no use for the tag anymore and can simply be someone that chooses not to drink forever.
That's my hope anyway - so long as it never puts me into a complacent and dangerous place.
Regards,
JT
For me (I didn't reply from my personal perspective in my contribution before) I have had to call myself an alcoholic to others (and inwardly) in order to 'get serious' about abstinence. It is now 'out there'. One day I hope to lose the label - not because I will or won't be one anymore - simply because I hope to have no use for the tag anymore and can simply be someone that chooses not to drink forever.
That's my hope anyway - so long as it never puts me into a complacent and dangerous place.
Regards,
JT
I think part of the problem with my relapse is that I started wondering if I really was an alcoholic. After 7 years I had it under control. Then there was the poster here that said he didn't think anyone who could quit on their own without AA was an alcoholic.
My AV held onto that one. He's wrong. And I made a BIG mistake. Now I'm back to square one,. Struggling again.
Member
Join Date: Jan 2017
Posts: 701
I was sober as a judge for ten straight years.
One night the thought hit me that I would be able to drink/recover again as when in my twenties.
Was back (and then worse) to where I had left off
TEN YEARS PRIOR
in less than a month.
One night the thought hit me that I would be able to drink/recover again as when in my twenties.
Was back (and then worse) to where I had left off
TEN YEARS PRIOR
in less than a month.
Member
Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: Plymouth, MI
Posts: 147
Originally Posted by Forward12
Yes. Alcoholism is a progressive disorder that never gets better. It doesn't matter if you're sober for a week, a month, a year, a decade,... Just a sip takes you right back to where you were and likely even worse.
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