I fear you may be right. Perhaps some of these people have been using alcohol so intensely for so long that any pre-alcoholic life seems like a dream or a fuzzy memory of some kind.
With nothing from the past they can, or perhaps want to, go back to then maybe sitting drinking coffee with other lost souls trumps sitting in a shitty run down pub drinking beer with other lost souls and all the associated problems that come with that, the same ones that always lead us back to where we began and begin again.
It might be a bit more positive than that, like the way a lot of ex-smokers like to preach after they've quit. They know how much better they feel so have a compulsion to make other people understand too. I know it's not quite the same, but when I lost loads of weight in my early twenties I really felt the need to tell others how to do it too, and I can't quite say why other than I wanted other people to feel better and improve their lives like I did. That's waned over the years though, so maybe it's different.
>>8115 However you're achieving it, that still sounds you're on a good trajectory. Maybe if you feel well enough, you could ring your sponsor next Thursday to find out where she is. I'm not sure if the sponsor-sponsee relationship is at all like one with a therapist, but in therapy you're meant to do the work together rather than the therapist doing it for you. It's meant to be a two-way process, if that makes sense. Might well be that she could do with hearing from you too.
Of course, if she's gone entirely off the deep end don't use that as an excuse to follow her. You've been doing really well.
Getting drunk is getting pretty boring. All that money spent even after getting pre-drunk at home, all those mostly forgettable conversations with mostly forgettable people. I don't even make lasting friends or meet girls when I'm out drinking so it all ends up being pointless.
I guess I'll cut back on the aimless boozing and try to be a sort of 'precision drinker'. I've already left my comfort zone by drinking at a bunch of local establishments and I found that it isn't all that interesting, so I'll try using the booze a bit more productively to gain Dutch courage to play at more open mic nights or go to funny bars where the women have gentleman sausages. At least those sorts of things fill me with a sense of both optimism and dread, which is a lot better than weary indifference.
I had a bit of a drink and a smoke with a middle aged Irish gypsy on a doorstep somewhere. When I wanted to leave he got weird and demanded £10 for the few puffs of weed and the sips of whisky. He was a big guy and a former boxer who'd done prison time for armed robbery so I told him no in the politest possible terms and walked away, but not before hearing that he'd follow me home and bash me head in.
Turns out getting drunk with gyppos isn't a particularly good idea. Who would've thunk it.
Probably around the same time the Irish became a race or the words "Gyppo" or "Pikey" anything more than tired old insults with nothing to do with race*.
*Unless you're talking about Roma Gypsies, which >>8140 wasn't.
>>8138 > Getting drunk is getting pretty boring.
> I guess I'll cut back on the aimless boozing and try to be a sort of 'precision drinker'.
I've been saying that since 2005, and a fat lot of good it's done me. I don't mean to imply that you and I are anything alike or that you'll not manage to do it, but the simple fact that you aspire to "Precision drinking" at all is a big red warning flag for me. To me, it sounds like you need, and know and accept that you need, alcohol in order to function in a "normal" way under certain situations. That, indeed, is a long fucking road to hell. Caveat Emptor, lad. Fuck "Pack your rice", it's more like "count your units".
Today is my niece's first Birthday/party. This is relevant for a few reasons, I promise. First off in under a week I'll be 35 with a soul positively flapping off my metaphorical shoe. Secondly today marks a year that I've been somewhat semi officially battling "mental health problems" as it was when people first began to notice that I was having issues (and trust me, other people will notice long before you do).
I spent a few hours in a luxury hospital suite pre-delivery that the father of the child had stocked up with booze like we were facing a ten day lock in (he's far further off the deep end than I ever managed to get but will never admit to it) talking the mother to be through her breathing exercises and counting her contractions all while downing a beer and a 2mg clonazepam every five minutes because the SNRIs I was on made me feel like I was on bad speed all day every day forever.
To cut long story slightly shorter, I went to Judo practice the next morning on a breakfast of 8mg of clonazepam and 2 extra large cans of Smirnoff Ice because I needed something to take the fucking edge off; combined with how naturally high I was from the near magical experience of the night before I must have seemed like some kind of unwashed madman stumbling my way vodka-breathed and reeking of bad booze and terminal psychosis onto the mats that morning enthusiastically grinning "I'm an uncle!!" at anyone I passed. Jesus.
It also magically coincides with ten weeks "sober" tomorrow. I use the inverted commas because my psychiatrist has me so full of pills I rattle when I walk. I'm now on both sodium valproate and lithium, which I think wins me pretty much any game of Mental Health Top Trumps except those versions which include the lobotomy / electroshock mods.
I haven't really gone back to AA very much, once every two weeks at most. My psychiatrist has recommended not going back now that my drinking seems largely under control (because it's a constant reminded of what I was, not what I can be), but to just walk away from people who helped pick up me up at my worst just because I feel better feels "I'm alright jack" to the point of being foul. I don't know how long it'll last for, but for a while I will feel the need to turn up at least once every couple of weeks and "pay my penance" listening to the same sob stories week in week out and largely opting out of talking myself (because I usually don't have anything new to say, and repeating the same old thing again just seems pointless beyond point of ridiculousness).
It's funny, really. It's not the not drinking I'm even having trouble with. It's the whole not locking myself in and crying like a muppet in the shower every 15 minutes that's the real problem.
Anyway I wanted to ramble on some more about how a year passes like nothing when you can barely tell one week from another, never mind one day from the next. Then I stare at the wall for a bit and I remember that I have made some progress, even if it's only taking me back to where I was fifteen years ago - "I've been sober for longer than at any point in the last fifteen years" becomes a lot less impressive when you reframe it as "You wasted fifteen years of your life, you mean?".
In any case, I've wasted both your, and my, time long enough for any given Sunday (and I apologise), and now it's time for me to go and strap my fake smile back on and go through this bullshit one more time and try not to spend too much time crying in the bathroom. Wish me luck lads, I'll need it.
As always, if this gets too tiresome let me know and I'll stop treating this thread as my personal occasional blog.
>>8142 Is there a socially acceptable shorthand for 'those cunts who tether their black & white horses on common land and lanes, keeping them in fucking dreadful conditions, not giving them water, then looking all hurt when I kick off about their mangy stallion busting loose and trying to break my fences down and fuck my horses to death?'
Because I'm far from pleased. Not about their parentage, but their competence and humanity.
Thread OP here.
Long time since I've posted. I'm a fat bastard these days but I'm not boozing much anymore. I still binge drink on occassion but I don't think it's a problem like it was at one point.
I got married this year and didn't die in my 20's, both of which were things I did not expect to happen around the time I made this thread.
> but I'm not boozing much anymore. I still binge drink on occassion but I don't think it's a problem like it was at one point.
It's funny that the biggest, most major, belief in the whole AA (and I presume NA) doctrine is that a single drink will turf the alcoholic fully and totally back into the gutter from whence he came. I, like you, have found that to be untrue, at least for some people.
I'm not sure if it was because I never quite ended up in the gutter (I mean I've fallen in a few gutters before, but I never really hit rock bottom - I never missed work or spent money I didn't have or rob my dear old Nan's purse in order to drink).
In any case, over the last couple of weeks I've been drinking moderately at weekends and once or twice socially during the week. So far I am yet to even get drunk, never mind end up off the alcoholic wagon.
Regardless, I'm going to steal a quote here: "Ah've kicked a few times now. Kicking and using again is like gaun tae prison. Everytime ye go to jail, the probability ay ye ever becoming free fae that kind of life decreases. It's the same every time ye go back tae smack. Ye decrease yir chances ay ever bein able tae do withoot it."
Well I've been chemically dependent on alcohol a few times now and kicked every time on my own using nothing more than a few benzos and some common sense dose reduction until you can just grit your teeth and get through the day. Once I've done that I usually go dry for a week, or two, or a month. This time I lasted almost five months before deciding "what's the harm in a quick drink".
Well, so far no harm no foul, but I sit and I think back to all the past horrors I've put myself through and I know that I don't want to ever go back to being chemically dependent on alcohol.
Not only would it take me round another trip through the addict's crossroads, it'd take up weeks or months of my life, fuck up my routine I'm just getting back together again, and just genuinely be a horrible fucking experience to go through - physically, emotionally, and mentally.
So despite knowing that AA and twelve step programs in general are geared towards remaining focused on drugs - in perpetuity, moving away from a basic evolutionary drive that exists within every human being and replacing it with rooms full of mostly annoying, stupid, and boring people, spouting drivel, until I want to kill them, myself, or just go get high - I am actually going to go back to "being sober" (or tee-total), because the stakes are too high and even if the risk is small I still don't want to take it. I've wasted enough time for this lifetime.
Lad. You have no idea how much impact this thread has had on my life since I went through my first chemical dependence on alcohol in 2012. I remember sitting and crying at 7am in a penthouse flat on Het Spui in Amsterdam because I was drinking a 1L bottle of red wine for breakfast while ironing my shirt and I couldn't find my fucking cufflinks while reading this thread. I really do think that there were some moments there where this thread and John Doran's Menk column were the only things keeping me sane in a world where I needed 40 units of alcohol per day to stave off withdrawals, well over the amount needed to make you feel very ill indeed.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, thank you for this thread. You've no idea how much it's helped.
>>8202 This is quite a lot of text about the fact that you supposedly don't agree with AA's stance of one-sip-is-a-direct-ticket-to-ruination-station to only sum up and declare that you are...going to behave precisely in line with this approach anyway.
Still, whether you think I'm completely off the mark about your tacit agreement with the 12-steppers and that on some unconscious level you know it's correct, I'm just really glad you've arrived at the realisation and are finally sorting yourself out. It's beyond time that you did, mate. Good on you.
>>8203 > This is quite a lot of text about the fact that you supposedly don't agree with AA's stance of one-sip-is-a-direct-ticket-to-ruination-station to only sum up and declare that you are...going to behave precisely in line with this approach anyway.
You are entirely right. I disagree entirely with almost everything AA says (largely due to the evidence of my own eyes) but I have decided, through whatever circuitous and perhaps self- delusionary chain of thought I took, to do things pretty much their way, perhaps maybe minus the brain-numbing meetings:
I don't believe in any of the twelve steps.
- I don't believe that a single drink throws you off the wagon.
-I don't believe that "an alcoholic"* once addicted is forever unable to return to normal drinking.
- And I definitely don't believe that alcoholism (or addiction in general) is "an incurable, progressive, fatal disease" that cannot be cured but only put into remission by "avoiding the first sip" and attending tedious meetings where roughly 1/3 of the people have real serious problems and you listen to them and you talk to them after the meeting, maybe giving them your number or even secretly spotting them a tenner if you think they'll buy a meal not a drink (AA officially does not supply members with money or other physical help), 1/3 are so far gone you can barely understand them just make out the reek of cheap spirits hitting you in the face like a right hook from Iron Mike from across the room, and 1/3 tedious cunts who've been doing this for 20+ years and depending on if they're one of the more interesting ones or not, will either chat for five minutes about one of their previous relapses (some of these stories are hilarious for those with gallows humor) or alternately whine about how AA isn't what it used to be and more people need to turn up early and buy biscuits (look you arsehole I put a fucking fiver in the bag last week, that buys a lot of fucking biscuits) and set up the chairs and that.
Anyway, I'll save you some keystrokes and say that yes this was an awful lot of words just to say "I don't agree with AA but I'm going to spend the rest of my life largely tee-total, but I do trust myself enough to have a glass of champagne at new year or a glass of whisky on my birthday or on Burns night".
Anyway, there's all kinds of assorted crap going on in my life, which may or may not have to do with this mini-lapse, but I honestly don't know if I should continue to spin them into my "Life and dating post drinking and post separation" musings here or just shut my boring trap.
I've wanted to die before 18, before 21, during my 22n'd birthday party, by 25, by 27, on my 30th birthday and every single birthday since until my 35th when I simply accepted that it was time to give up on suicide and wait for natural causes to take me off this planet.
Irony will surely see me dead from liver cancer before I see thirty-six.
>>8204 That test is a bit odd, because a lot of the answers require a fair bit of self reflection. I suppose that they tailor it to cases they think they can help. I know its farcical at the list as a resing actor, but to most of them the answer is not "Yes!", it's "I've given up...", especially the vague ones.
Seemed like a good idea to go sober at the time due to health issues but fuck it why do I bother. Being fucked up consistently is much better than reality.
"The trick is to lay out the soul but let the brain and body float on and on. Which is what, with that needle in your arm, you think you're doing. Until you realize, inevitably, that you're not. That you're just generating more pain, more penance for the one sin you couldn't help commit. The sin of being born."
>>8209 I wish I could disagree, though I really don't. Sometimes I do go sober but what do sober people even do? I've tried live comedy, theatre, opera, social gatherings, going for walks, bike rides, going travelling, sex... they're fun and all, some even great, but none fill the void in the way alcohol does. I've looked into opiates and from what I can tell I totally understand why people get addicted and count my blessings I never got into that scene. Heroin sounds so really far right up my alley it's beyond scarey and my own naivety stops me from getting it and trying it.
Angst aside, I've been a working resting actor (?) for nearly 20 years now. Youth has long since worn off so it's showing with a pot belly, liver failure is going to happen eventually. Weird how being able to keep on keeping on erases all that.
I've also been fascinated with heroin addiction since I was a teenager; it's basically my retirement plan at the moment. Honestly I can't see anywhere else I can end up - I've come to the end of the road as far as drinking goes (except rare special occasions), and drinking a "proper amount" messes with my bi-polar medication and leaves me crying in the shower to Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell records that were made before I was bloody born.
Vaguely related, a girl I really like - but who doesn't yet know that I'm a fully signed up chip-carrying member of Resting Actors Anonymous - gave me a bottle of spirits made in her home town. I need to find someone to take it off my hands but not drink the fucker like every single alcoholic friend in denial I have.
S'alright lads I dealt with the problem by emptying the entire liter into my guts, which caused the ex-missus to book me a crisis meeting with my psych which I don't need - I wasn't in crisis, I was awake and fucking drunk.
Anyone who can be alive, half drunk, and still view the world as the daft ToyTown it seems in sobriety has powers entirely beyond my ken.
I'm an alcoholic and there was a bottle of spirits within reaching distance. At that level of operation there is no forebrain interaction at all, everything just occurs at the level of unconscious habit. Often times you don't really realize what you're doing until your half way down the bottle.
>I'm an alcoholic and there was a bottle of spirits within reaching distance.
I've never been sold by that explanation and I'm a member of the state sponsored detox club myself. Something else has to be driving you, even if it is just bordem (the fact that you got your ex-missus is involved suggests to me that there is more to it), I consider heavy drinking the symptom and not the cause, and total absenance a foolish bench mark, it leads to treating one slip up as as good as total failure so when you do slip up you go for broke.
So why did you feel you had to drink it all like that? if it was the buzz I believe you would have paced yourself more.
> I consider heavy drinking the symptom and not the cause
It's one I've asked myself, and my psychiatrist, a few times now - am I sad because I drink or do I drink because I'm sad? Given that I spent nearly five months as tee-total tells me that it's probably the latter; even after being entirely detoxed for that long I was still suicidally depressed. I concur generally with your opinion.
>and total absenance a foolish bench mark, it leads to treating one slip up as as good as total failure so when you do slip up you go for broke.
Also agreed. As I've posted before I disagree with almost every aspect of the way AA do things, but for whatever foolish reasons, what they do works.
> So why did you feel you had to drink it all like that? if it was the buzz I believe you would have paced yourself more.
I didn't really get a buzz at all, I'm actively taking naltrexone daily for a while now and I also take another pill if I drink. Theoretically (and practically, actually) I shouldn't get a feel good feeling from alcohol at all.
Which brings us back to the more fundamentally difficult question of "why does 90% of you feel dead-set on auto-destruct, while 10% fights tooth and nail to do anything it can to keep you alive".
I'm afraid I don't have an answer to that question, but it has something to do with my parentage, my upbringing, and my being a father myself. Probably.
>Which brings us back to the more fundamentally difficult question of "why does 90% of you feel dead-set on auto-destruct, while 10% fights tooth and nail to do anything it can to keep you alive".
>I'm afraid I don't have an answer to that question, but it has something to do with my parentage, my upbringing, and my being a father myself. Probably.
It is okay to not have the answer to that follow up question yet, my point was before that focusing on an answer we both know isn't the root of the issue is pointless and makes the problem unsolvable (why do you do X? 'Because I do', is less useful then 'because I feel Y' even if you don't understand why you feel Y focusing on it might at some point solve Y.
I'm going to share my own Y with you on the hopes it helps. I really have 4 Ys that are quite different and have different solutions.
The first Y is I hate myself and self-loathing and drinking is my own form of self-destruction one that I feel I can get away with without it looking like a cry for help, I have a death wish, but I also value my own life too much to simply take it, so I just circle around the drain. This thankfully hasn't been a driving force for me for a long long time, I have overcome this by learning to like myself again.
The second Y is to block something out, This is event driven. Effectively a situation so uncomfortable I drank myself blind drunk for a solid week rather than have to process it. I think this version affects a lot of people in society who are otherwise decent people but have poor cooping skills, I think the solution to this is therapy and good self-help. Even if my reaction to said events was just to tell people they were fucking cunts I think that would have been a healthier outlet. I have effectively become stoic to combat this.
The third Y for me is mind numbing boredom, this is the 'rat park' model of addiction, if you feel under stimulated you will reach for things to stimulate you even if they are long term destructive, I was driven to this by having a job that although very well paying and I respected for, I found profoundly boring, so I just ended up drinking during the day, quitting my job although on the surface a poor idea was good for me.
The 4th is connected to society, the truth is I like interacting with new people and the way we meet new people where they don't treat us like creepy arseholes for talking to them is in bars. This is my least destructive drive and the only one I consider acceptable, I've drunk too heavily in the past with this (and I still do, my withdrawal is now an absolute fucker), but I can at least see a meaningful cost to benefit trade off happening as long as I accept not every night has to be 'the wildest night of my life' and think about what I have planned the next day and the trade off I think I can keep this in check.
Does any of that help to put your thoughts straight? Or am I just being self-indulgent here?
>>8222 > Does any of that help to put your thoughts straight?
Probably more than you might think. If we're going to try to solve this algorithmically (or equationally) then my [Yn] are a bit different to yours:
1) I, like you, hate myself and basically want to die. Like you drinking allows me to kill myself slowly without doing things that really upset people like smoking meth (sigh) or carving shit into my arms to blunt out the bad voices in my head.
2) To open myself up. I'll be sober and not "call a cunt a cunt" but let me down four to six pints and I'd walk up to my own father and call him a sadly failed miscarriage.
3) My own pathetic upbringing, I was brought up between two warring parents and the fake exaggerated smiles you can see on my birthday photos are firm evidence of that - wanting to be both sons to both parents.
4) There's quite a lot sexual shit here that I haven't even gone through with my psychiatrist, nevermind an anonymous image board.
5) A true passion for the abyss. I don't know how much this has to do with 1) but every since I started drinking I drank differently - I didn't have a couple; if we weren't going out to come back unconscious don't even call it.
Well that is wonderful to hear, not just for you but part of dealing with my first Y is recognising the value and contribution I make to others. I haven't cured you (something of an unrealistic goal for a random message chat), but I might have set you on the right path just through my small action and that is something I take comfort in.
I don't have easy answers for your list but I guess that is something for your own self improvement and to discuss with your psychiatrist.
Number 2 you can probably solve with some decent self help books on social skills I recommend "How to Win Friends and Influence People" and being able to express yourself better might help you with some of the other problems along the way.
>>8244 Sounds like hepatitis (the temporary alcoholic one, not the permanent viral one) and is totally reversible with abstinence. Stay sober for a year at the most and you'll be right as rain. The liver is an incredible organ and doesn't give off obvious symptoms unless it's genuinely being taxed.
>>8245 111 sent me to an emergency appointment, doctors did some tests short of a CT scan, said it might be IBS or kidney stones. Neither option is great but at least I'm not dying so I was happy.
In and out of there in about 2 hours, the NHS is impressive sometimes.
Most of the time you hear complaints about the NHS being slow and useless, it's because the people in question had nowt wrong with 'em in the first place. You get left to wait as a polite way of saying "stop being a girl."
If it sounds like there might actually be something up you'll find the NHS can be rather efficient.
It's also people who don't really understand medical care.
I had a bad infection stemming from an abscess on my appendix, and was in hospital for a month. I was in there that long as that's how long it took to fight the infection, do two surgeries, suck the goop out of me, run antibiotic courses and monitor me to make sure I didn't die. Yet ask my mother or grandparents, and they'll tell you "the bloody doctors are useless, he just sat in a bed for a month and they didn't even do anything!"
The NHS is great at some things and bloody awful at others. It's really good at acute care, albeit badly underfunded. It's bloody good at cancer, partly because cancer receives a disproportionate amount of funding and a substantial top-up from charitable contributions.
It's pretty bad at the management of chronic conditions, largely because of bad record keeping and information sharing. If you've got a chronic disease, you'll spend a great deal of your life repeating the same information over and over again, because nobody has a) written it in your notes b) managed to get your notes transferred or c) bothered to read your notes. If my experience is anything to go by, then an awful lot of serious medical errors are going un-noticed - I've prevented several fuck-ups in my own care and the care of my parents, simply because I keep accurate records. I shudder to think about what might happen to people who aren't quite compus mentis.
It's shockingly awful at mental health. In the 21st century, nobody should turn up at A&E with slashed up wrists and be sent home with the number for The Samaritans and a half-promise that the CMHT will probably call them if they aren't too busy. For decades, mental health services have been treated like a piggybank for the rest of the NHS. Last in the queue for investment, first in the queue for cuts.
Agreed. A lot of patients - especially older patients - have a really strange idea of what good clinical care looks like. There seems to be total ignorance about the importance of medical observation/watchful waiting and the unavoidable trial-and-error process of prescribing. My mum refuses to go into hospital unless she's absolutely at death's door, because that's where people go to die. I can't seem to explain to her that lots of people die in hospital because that's where we send all the really sick people.
>>8249 >a disproportionate amount of funding and a substantial top-up from charitable contributions
Yeah I used to work in that industry - Cancer Research are the number one charity in the UK, mainly because they have such popular mindshare; people give on average, once per year to charity, and about 25% of the time, it's to them. A lot of people are affected by cancer, sure, but I've never been that convinced they do that good work - Macmillan (and their nurses) are a far more impressive outfit and do better work I think.
Having my first drink since November 26th, when I returned from the highlands and made the decision to quit the stuff for a while and become a more outdoorsy kind of person. Unfortunately the nearest place that qualifies as "the outdoors" is around an hour and a half to two hours away and I never really found the motivation to drive that far. My plan was to take a very long break from drinking and then maybe only drink alcohol if I acquired a social life or to gain courage for doing worthwhile solitary stuff like playing at open mic nights or going to gigs (maybe a couple of times a month). Essentially having a semi-legitimate reason to drink instead of drinking at home merely to make the time go by quicker and as a coping mechanism for the racing, anxious thoughts. Drinking again just to remember what it feels like to be drunk, like I'm doing now, wasn't quite part of the plan.
The one positive is that the whisky I'm drinking was a christmas gift so I'm still "clean" in the sense that I haven't spent a penny on drink. I'm pretty sure that if I got on anxiety medication or really ingrained some anti-anxiety CBT techniques in my brain I would basically have no reason to drink.
[sarcasm] Me too. I am clean, since all the meth, cocaine and bath salts I smoked in the last month were offered. I did not spend a single penny on drugs [/sarcasm]
5 days without alcohol or weed, after about 8 years with either/or every day.
It's a bit boring, and now I'm switched on all the time and remember why I liked being switched off. 4 cigarettes a day and about the same number of wanks. That's healthy right?
But cheers and all that, now I can do things like Milktoberfest.
