Moderation?

Old 07-14-2014, 05:06 PM
  # 41 (permalink)  
FT
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Personally, I do not either need or appreciate the "...and I will never change my mind" part of AVRT. The same way that I make no arguments or feel the need to explain my non-drinking position, the addition of the mind-changing part only seems to be redundant emphasis.

It becomes a little trickier with opiates, because I cannot honestly make the statement, "I will never use opiates again," because I may need surgery in the future. I will never refuse pain relief for surgery and postoperatively. I can only promise never to use opiates recreationally again, but frankly that is NOT enough. It is not enough because opiate pain medications are over-prescribed and are commonly used for conditions they were never designed to treat.

Many opiate users mislead their doctors into believing they need pain medication when something non-narcotic would work, oftentimes better than opiates do. Many of these same opiate users actually believe they need strong narcotics for pain and will fight to the death for the right to have them.

Because pain is subjective, who is to say when pain is too much to bear without strong narcotics? The unfortunate truth is that opiates commonly fail to work at some point, either because of hyperalgesia or because high opiate doses can only be sustained so high for so long -- often because the doctor quite correctly gets nervous about the need for higher and higher doses to get the same relief and starts to add other pain management strategies to try to control the patient's "pain." It is a real mess, and often the patient ends up with a "disability conviction" so bad that they become their pain and it truly disables them from having a functional life.

For myself, I will never use opiates recreationally again. I can take that one step further and state, I will never use opiates except for surgery and for a finite period of postoperative pain.

The AV can have a wild time with that last part, I agree.
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Old 07-14-2014, 07:10 PM
  # 42 (permalink)  
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Interesting topic! I've often mused on my own whether or not I'm a "real" alcoholic. Biologically, my body suffers to a degree that it becomes extremely unpleasant to keep drinking. I don't know if that is the experience for heavy duty drinkers, whether they feel the same level of physical revulsion, but I think being more sensitive to physical pain can make it easier to quit than it would for a person who can easily push that aside for another drink? I've never been the type to reach for more booze when I woke up with a hangover; usually the smell of alcohol made me want to vomit even more. So I don't know if this makes me not a "real" alcoholic, whatever that means, just because there did come a point when my body said 'no more' and I've actually listened. Could a "real" alcoholic do that? Do I almost have to die for me to be considered a "real" alcoholic? I don't know, but I do know that I tried to quit so many times before and I failed. While I dislike using the word "alcoholic", I know I very clearly had/have a problem; I would never have decided to quit on my own if my body didn't fall apart to the degree it did last year, and then again more recently during a few days of binging in June. It just won't take it anymore.

As for moderation, I was able to experiment with that earlier this year. I was actually successful, but I never really enjoyed myself when I did drink. For me, the point of drinking is to get drunk and having one or two each time left me feeling unsatisfied and frustrated. Being slightly buzzed doesn't cut it, and since I don't even like the taste of alcohol (none of them - beer, wine, liquor), it's not even worth drinking for the taste. So there is really no advantage for me to try and moderate.

So I'm done now. I don't feel the angst about it the way I did when I tried to quit before though. I don't even necessarily like to think of it as "quitting". For me personally, it would make it worse to make it into this big huge deal. I'm the sort of person who wants things I can't have and can be somewhat rebellious, so I don't say, "You can't have that! It's so bad for you!" I say, "I can have that, but I don't want that." It works better for me.
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Old 07-14-2014, 07:42 PM
  # 43 (permalink)  
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NightsWatch, thanks for bringing up the "real" alcoholic concept. I am personally not into the black-or-white rulebook of alcoholism, whereby you are either an alcoholic or you're not. I do think there are degrees of alcoholism, and to be sure, the enzyme disorder of acetaldehydism is certainly one level. However, along those lines, I do not subscribe to the "disease" concept of alcoholism.

Frankly, I think the concept of alcoholism is overwrought. I do not spend a lot of time thinking about disease concepts or labels -- either I have a problem with alcohol, or I do not.

For you, your body fought back and you either had to listen or pay the consequences, which I am sure were not an attractive option.

Being done is good. I am in the camp of people who ought not be told what they can and cannot do. I am not self destructive to do something just because I'm told I can't, but I would not likely stop doing something strictly because of some outside force removing the option from me. If that worked, getting a DUI would actually work to stop people from drinking, which it clearly does not. I fortunately escaped that, but it amazes me to recall that my husband and I used to drive around with coffee cups full of wine lest we not be discovered with an "open container" if we got pulled over.

I hope you are in good health now and have suffered no permanent damage from ETOH.
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Old 07-15-2014, 07:25 AM
  # 44 (permalink)  
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Originally Posted by GerandTwine View Post
So, the question is, what does "mean it" really mean here?

The clarity and simplicity of "I will never drink again" is really enough for me. As soon as people start adding "...and I will never change my mind." I start thinking about "...and I will never change my mind to never change my mind.", etc., ad infinitum.
I never "meant it" before, is what it meant. Meaning, I never "took a stand" against my drinking before. I remember lots of "trying" but never a declaration of intent.

I tend to say what I mean, and I mean what I say. I have always been stubborn and will set out to prove someone wrong if they say something about me that is untrue. My husband and I always demonstrated "collective Beast" behavior, and his Beast did not like it one bit when I quit. But it mattered in the least what his Beast wanted, once I had made up my mind.

So perhaps, ".... and I will never change my mind" is added reinforcement, but it is a promise I made/make to myself and no one else.
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