Alcoholism Discussion Thread Version 6.0

[Mariposa]

^I know the feeling

Well, Day 4. I had quite a few really strong mixed drinks for a birthday last Friday. I thankfully did not drive and walked to crash at my friend's. What I *did* do was blow a bunch of money that I do not presently have. I'm pissed about the fact that I have to pull some extra overtime this week to make up for drinking. I think that along with the fact that I spent 2 days throwing up stomach acid is why I'm not drinking, at least for today.

I bought cheap wine yesterday to cook with. It remains unopened. Priest, almost nothing gives me more disdain for AA than the people who preach about cooking with wine. I always ask if I know someone is in recovery, but otherwise, I grew up cooking this way and I'm NOT stopping that.

I look at what I have already kicked this year (Adderall and benzos). Adding smoking to the list; yesterday is my taper date because I can't afford that either with my spring budget (tightest of the year) right around the corner. I don't ever want to throw up stomach acid again. I was miserable; I lost 4 lbs from not eating. I can see myself getting really sick if I keep this up.

So, anyone need a DD this holiday season?

 

[PriestTheyCalledHim]

I bought cheap wine yesterday to cook with. It remains unopened. Priest, almost nothing gives me more disdain for AA than the people who preach about cooking with wine. I always ask if I know someone is in recovery, but otherwise, I grew up cooking this way and I'm NOT stopping that.

I also grew up cooking with wine so I'm also not going to stop that.

I was on one site about cooking and people there who are hardcore AA claimed that the alcohol cooked into food would somehow get them buzzed, drunk, or intoxicated and craving alcohol more. I'm not sure how this is possible since the alcohol cooks off in the cooking or baking process?

I know other people who went through AA and they still cook with wines and sherry.

Some even take cough syrup when they have a cold, not to get high off the DXM but to alleviate their cough and that also has alcohol in it but I avoid medications unless I have to take them.

Here's a question for everyone: What are you supposed to do about fuck ups or even a relapse?

I have fucked up before but this was before I quit drinking and back when I thought I could drink normally but then I'd learn my lesson.

I do not want to relapse but I know they can happen. I also know that if it were to happen to me I would be responsible for getting sober again.

 

[Sepher]

Fell off. Bought self-obliterating amounts of booze, been rationalised for weeks. Barely touched it but 'forgot' I wasn't taking the Anatabuse. Will expand later. It's all gravy, OK with it. Needed to be done.

 

[Jabberwocky]

I've been drinking way too much the past few days. It seems like a thing to do....Go to work get home and bang why not drink 12 beers to pass the time. However I got laid off this week It was a phone based job and my tone wasn't always happy and they didn't like me stuttering sometimes. I blame my anxiety for this whilst I've also had depression issues ever since I was a kid so it's a bit hard to pretend to be happy 24/7.

Ah I think for me I'll always have issues with alcohol. I have tried AA and found I left the place more depressed than I went in. Recalling every day how you fucked up in some way or another doesn't do you favours. Yes it's great you can admit it but repeating it every day.....

 

[PriestTheyCalledHim]

Fell off. Bought self-obliterating amounts of booze, been rationalised for weeks. Barely touched it but 'forgot' I wasn't taking the Anatabuse. Will expand later. It's all gravy, OK with it. Needed to be done.

It's OK. Slip ups and mistakes are how we learn, grow, and evolve as people. At least you understand this.

I have never taken Antabuse or done the Sinclair method with opiate antagonists like naltrexone or nalmefene.

One major thing that I did recently that helped me was something very simple.

I made two lists.

One list consisted of what I missed about getting drunk and abusing alcohol. It was a very short list.

The second list consisted of what I did not miss about getting drunk and abusing alcohol. This was a very long list.

I have corresponded with people who are alcoholics or who did binge drink massive amounts of alcohol for years or decades daily. Then they stopped for a few years or a decade or two. Now apparently they do on rare ocassions supposedly drink 1-2 drinks. They did not recommend that I do this and said how for most alcoholics can't do or should not do this.

I told them about me and they said how I should just avoid all alcohol since I like the taste of it, and it's as I wrote in previous posts.

I also know an alcoholic who goes to AA meetings a few times a week but he smokes a lot of weed, and probably smokes it daily. I know it's just substituting one drug for another.

I avoid cannabis since it's like Cohesion wrote when I was younger and I couldn't smoke I'd drink. When I was an adult and living on my own and could smoke cannabis as much as I wanted when I wanted, I'd smoke it frequently and think that "Yeah I can handle alcohol." and go back and forth between the two drugs abusing them both.

Sometimes while stoned I would drink and wind up binge drinking way too much in a short period of time and I'm lucky I never OD'd on alcohol even if a few times while stoned and drunk I came very close to going to the ER to get my stomach pumped.

I have been looking for sober social groups. I do not mean AA groups. I mean groups of people who get together socially who do not drink at all. I am doing this because pretty much all of my friends and acquaintances do drink and even doing things like seeing a movie, going to dinner, or just hanging out at their place will involve alcohol or they'll want to hang out at bars or dance clubs that have bars.

I have nothing against AA if it works for anyone reading this, or certain people but I've never gone to a meeting. I know in some cities they have them from sunrise until late at night but I already am on a spiritual journey and I see getting sober as just a part of that not THE ultimate spiritual experience.

 

[Psychlone Jack]

I'm really surprised, the way things have been going lately that my alcoholism hasn't surged back into the forefront with my other addictions. I mean I used to be a RAGING alcoholic, at one point drinking fifty plus drinks a day and looking for more. Since I've started using again though, I've only drank about six times in two months, the most at once being a twelve pack. I know that's still above the benchmark for binge drinking, but still a huge amount of control for me. I don't harbor any delusions, I know that addiction potential is still there and don't plan on testing those waters, but I guess that's my silver lining today. Lol, now if I can jus curb my rampant abuse of everything else.

Priest, that's a great idea about the sober social groups, I'm gonna look into that.

 

[ugly]

My mom is 74. I'm 53. She's been combining alcohol with tranqs, benzos, opiates, psychotropics, and sedatives most of my life. I haven't seen her in six months. I am with her now and she's totally crazy. She's so crazy that she's making my father crazy. She wants me to attend a funeral with her for the man across the street who passed away. How do I tell her that was 5 years ago? Everything she says is completely ridiculous. My dad is 84 and losing his mind about my mom's problem. He just can't take it anymore. It's just the two of them, miles away from the family and friends still living and miles away from my sister and I. My sister... this time last year she was in rehab, where all she really learned was to be more sneaky. Whatever.

I would like to help my parents. My mom got hurt in a car accident before I was born and started mixing meds in the 1950s. She might have used something when she was pregnant with me but I was a healthy baby and am a healthy adult. Well... I'm not an alcoholic. I have a ton of problems. Whatever.

My mother has been through detox SO many times, I can't even count. She's gone to AA so many times, I can't even count. My dad had to pick her up off the floor three times yesterday. By the third time, judging from the marks on my mom, he had taken all he could, and lost his patience.

If she can't stop the substance abuse, I'm sorry, but I wish she'd stop breathing. One or the other. She's not alive anymore but she's not dead. She talks nonsense. She pees everywhere. She stinks. She's disgusting.

What the hell can I do? What the fuck.

FUCK.

 

[herbavore]

^I think you need to call social services. Your dad can't take care of your mom and she obviously cannot take care of herself.

 

[ugly]

^I think you need to call social services. Your dad can't take care of your mom and she obviously cannot take care of herself.

Thank you. That's sound advice. I hadn't even thought of that.

 

[Cohesion]

Ugly I can relate to your situation with your mom. Decades of mixing of meds/alcohol, the nonsense, disconnection from reality. I also felt that I didn't care if she was alive. She died after an accidental overdose of 3 types of pills at age 45.

I agree with Herbavore's advice. When your father is not tied up with caregiving responsibilities with your mom, he may be able to show her more kind or loving gestures in whatever living arrangement comes to be for her.

 

[Captain Brewster]

good luck ugly i've read some of your posts about your husband and know there is no way you would call social services on your parents you're a fixer much luck to you

edit - drinking straight scotch after getting out of the shower to try and tame the acid build up, zolpidem and bed

Does that work? I get acid reflux bad, once I get it drinking I have to stop, or take ppi's. but I only drink beer.

 

[RedLeader]

I used to get really bad acid reflux during my heavy drinking days as well. Was so horrible. I remember a couple of times when it got very scary, as I was physically withdrawing and needed alcohol in me, yet the reflux was so bad (even on low % beer) that I couldn't even get the alcohol down. I never tried the shower thing, but I typically would revert to drinking water alongside my alcohol and kind of going back-and-forth (since the reflux didn't act up with just water). But ya, that would usually happen to me if I had been drinking liquor consistently daily for a few weeks in a row. I do NOT miss that at all. I've been through some pretty painful opiate WDs in the past two years, but nothing in them would ever feel as alarming or scary as that whole 'body can't accept the alcohol that it needs in order to make the WD stop' thing that would happen with alcohol. ::shiver::

 

[Captain Brewster]

^ damn that sounds bad, it's real shit too when all your stomach meds stop doing their job.

I've headed down the opiate road mainly due to this, and it's made alcohol loose its magic.

But yeah, after 7 years of having it, trying different diets, drugs and no fix. Any little bit of relief is worth it.

 

[Sepher]

Priest, that's a great idea about the sober social groups, I'm gonna look into that.

My local addiction unit is the focal point for exactly that kind of social thing, posters up all over the place for a group gets together a couple of times a week to do fun stuff that doesn't revolve around bars and drinking. Dunno what the score is where you are as far as addiction units go but they'd be a good first port of call if you're looking for something like that. Trouble with mine is they're full of people who've lost their jobs to alcohol so most things are in working hours which is no good for me. I need something similar myself to counter the tendency to isolate.

nothing in them would ever feel as alarming or scary as that whole 'body can't accept the alcohol that it needs in order to make the WD stop' thing that would happen with alcohol.

Oh yeah. I was lucky enough not to have withdrawal symptoms as such but I'd reach a point where I needed a drink to sort the hangover and shakes out but just couldn't get any more booze down after a binge, the body would reject it immediately, projectile vomiting kinda thing. That's what would usually bring a binge to an end and I'd sober up for a coupla days before starting all over again.

Anyways, brief blip on the booze this weekend. Barely drank any the Friday night despite intending to get completely obliterated, mainly I guess cos I had something more interesting available that made drinking a bit of a waste in the first place. Finished what was left very slowly making it last all day Saturday, couldn't bring myself to throw it out. Didn't sleep Friday either so naturally continued into Saturday. Wasn't shit loads, 4 pack of beer and a half-bottle of cheap vodka over a full 24 hours or so. Back on the Anatabuse today. Not all that pissed off really. Knew it was coming, the cravings were just driving me mad lately, struggling to shut out the whispers but its kinda reset the commitment as I thought it would, swearing it off anew. Fact I didn't even enjoy it helps, and I think will help going forward. There's really no appeal left in booze any more. A lesson learned, as relapse always tends to do.

 

[RedLeader]

^ Ah man, sucks to hear that you relapsed. But I totally understand, when you say that you "knew it was coming." I think that such a "controlled relapse" is the least harmful of them all, especially if you can accept that your days are being reset and all of that other fluff before you even start drinking. I'm just now starting my latest heroin detox (going to be a fun week...). But ya, Mr. Sepher, you're always a role model for new people in the alcoholism thread, so please stick around and analyse to death your next 90 or next 100 days sober!

I've headed down the opiate road mainly due to this, and it's made alcohol loose its magic.

Ya, same here. And this seems to be the case for most people (aside from Sepher). I think part of it for me is that even one drink is enough to have me on the phone and ordering some of the hard stuff. So I know that a relapse on alcohol is also a relapse on heroin (or perhaps cocaine). As well, I just have come to the realisation that I simply don't like the taste of alcohol. At all, it's absolutely disgusting and I still make a face with every sip I take. And yet I drank almost daily for years. It makes little sense until we look at it as the legal drug that we are given, and this taken together with an insatiable appetite for escapism would mean that I would do a lot of drinking in my time.

But ya, alcohol seems like such a dirty drug and every time I drink these days (now it's once every few months), I always just sit there and ponder why it's legal. Hopefully we'll be able to see legalisation of marijuana in our lifetimes. In not saying this because I want us all to go out and get high, no. I mean that it would be nice if society would allow us a drug to take legally when we just wanted to escape that wasn't so incredibly toxic and hard on the body. I think for that large percentage of problem drinkers who have alcohol as their drug-of-choice solely because it is legal (and they want to get messed up on anything, and so it will most likely be alcohol because of the access), if those people could have cannabis as an option, I think that a lot of those lives would be significantly better.



I was having this thought earlier tonight: Often when I was drinking, I'd think along the lines of Why can't the hangover come first? I've always been more of a 'bad news first' kinda guy. If possible, I want to get the difficult part of something finished before the lighter part of it happens. So I'd often get annoyed with drinking, in that we would have our fun first and then the hangover would have to be taken care of. I wondered what it would be like in an alternate universe where would could choose to enter 'hangover mode' for 12+ hours (heck, let us choose the severity of it, which would govern how much fun we could have in the drunk phase) and then after enduring it, we could get drunk as "the reward." Like how much easier it would be to plan my life if I could pencil in 'be hungover' all day Saturday and then go out that Saturday night and drink and have a good time, and then I would be back to normal as soon as Saturday night was over.

Perhaps this was me just thinking that the grass was greener on the other side. Why I say this? Because I caught myself complaining the other day that recovery frustrated me because it always required a long period of hard work before any of the rewards were felt. Furthermore, that a lot of the activities and goals set up for sober living involved hard work and discipline for a while before the really good feelings were there. If I want to dance really well, I need to take lessons twice a week for a year. If I want to lift this amount of weight, I need to train that body part once or twice a week for a year. But ya, this isn't all that different from me wishing that I could get hungover before I drank, is it? Isn't recovery essentially a situation where you endure the difficult part first and then bask in the reward without that feeling in the back of your mind that you're going to have to suffer once the fun is over? It's not like in recovery we run out on the dancefloor and wow the audience right away, but then are forced to endure dance lessons twice a week for the next year in order to compensate. No, recovery is very much like my situation where we are hungover first. It is a lifestyle where hard work might come first, but fun to be had afterward isn't haunted by any dread of what's to come.

I guess I might just always see the grass as greener... But really, I need to stop and remind myself of this thought experiment whenever I feel like all I'm doing is hard work and I'm not having much fun in recovery. Hopefully that made even a little bit of sense to some of you!

 

[Sepher]

But ya, Mr. Sepher, you're always a role model for new people in the alcoholism thread, so please stick around and analyse to death your next 90 or next 100 days sober!

Ha! I do sometimes feel it's kinda become my thread. Seems like there's only me in it sometimes, talking to myself mostly. It's all good though, kind of what I use it for as much as anything else.

I caught myself complaining the other day that recovery frustrated me because it always required a long period of hard work before any of the rewards were felt.

This is part and parcel of the relapse I think RL. I've been waiting for the reward, expecting to kick in any minute the further I got. Now realise there isn't one. Not in itself that is. The reward is that I'm not killing myself anymore, but further rewards come from what that enables. If you're not taking advantage of what being sober enables the reward is very limited. Got to make commitments to other things and put some effort in like you say. Not having any bloody money to speak of these past few months been a complete bitch as far as doing that goes. Got to to work harder on that in the New Year.

Good luck with the detox BTW. Hope you're done enough in time to enjoy some of what the holiday season has to offer.

 

[ATLL765]

Possible alcohol induced hypoglycemia resulting in nerve damage?

Hey all, I'm not usually one to post about alcohol, in fact I haven't posted at all in a while, but the other day I experienced something odd, but because it was much more pronounced than the last time it happened, I believe it's made itself more clear to me now.

So basically it goes like this:

Firday during day: Ate 3 eggs and 1/3 of a king size take 5 bar. I'm about 5'5" and 110lbs.

Friday 8pm: Start drinking "quad jager bombs"<- 4oz jager+1, 8.4oz can of red bull and chug it. Yes, I know, I'm an idiot.

11pm: 3rd quad jager bomb down, memory starts becoming fuzzy here.

Sat 12am: Unconscious at this point.

Sat 4-5am: Woke up, felt EXTREMELY hung over, but not regular ugh, I'm slightly nauseous and my head hurts thing. Upon standing up, felt very light headed, felt 'pins and needles' in my arms and legs from the joint out. Vomited up anything I could(mostly the water I was trying to drink and some dry heaving). Vomiting seems to make pins and needles worse, even to the point of making both my hands feel stiff and make 'the claw' kind of position you see someone's hand who does not have the use of that hand, made hand movements difficult, feeling stiff and requiring effort.

Sat 8am-12pm: Start feeling better, still feel very weak, pins and needles still apparent. About this time I notice the sides of my head feel numb, lack of feeling I guess you could say was concentrated in about a 1-2 sq inch patch in front of my ears, though some loss of sensation is noticeable outside of that, which by now has subsided some, but I still have decreased sensation in a small area there.

So basically what I'm concerned with here is whether I've caused neuropathy by eliciting a temporary hypoglycemic episode by drinking too much alcohol and sugar.

The goal was to make a 20 bottle pyramid out of the half gallon bottles, also a stupid idea, though I still think wiring christmas lights through a huge triangular pyramid of half gallon jager bottles would be an awesome x-mas decoration. We only made it though 12 when we started last March-April, but we gave it up after that outside of the occasional effort once every few weeks.

Let me also say that something similar had occurred once after I a night of drinking 'quads' in April, but had thought nothing of it at the time as the symptoms were far less severe, having only caused pins and needles in my right arm, though about 7-8 months later now I've never recovered full sensation to the right side of my middle finger on that hand. These two events that now seem to be similar events, are what made me think that I experienced some sort of nerve issue due to alcohol induced hypoglycemia.

Or I'm a serious hypochondriac and it's all in my head, but I'd really like to think I'm smarter than that.

 

[SkagKush]

Hey guys, Im Back! lol... 203 days clean and sober, I landed myself in detox and treatment. No drinking no using.

Ive had thoughts of drinking here and there, i usually end up drinking before i have a full on relapse with everything. But this time it isnt an option for me, and im actually doing really well. If i can stay clean and sober, i have faith that anyone can. Keep up the good work fellow drinkers....

 

[Jean-Paul]

i'm used to drinking most nights of the week. i had one bad episode of drinking since i started on my meds, and have resolved to quit since. i've done well so far.

 

[Pale Rider]

Hey guys, Im Back! lol... 203 days clean and sober, I landed myself in detox and treatment. No drinking no using.

Ive had thoughts of drinking here and there, i usually end up drinking before i have a full on relapse with everything. But this time it isnt an option for me, and im actually doing really well. If i can stay clean and sober, i have faith that anyone can. Keep up the good work fellow drinkers....

I'm not a big poster but can't resist a comment here, well done SkagKush you're an inspiration my friend keep it up , take care and stay safe...