Discussion Anybody here an alcoholic?

[AerialBoundaries]

I'm very ashamed to admit it, but I'm an alcoholic with just shy of 24 hours sobriety, after a long bender, most of which I don't remember.

Hopefully I can get in touch with a doctor tomorrow to get something to help with the withdrawals. The withdrawals are pretty severe these days. The reason I stopped drinking is I got to the point that my body started rejecting the alcohol. I can handle the vomiting, but the shakes, heart palpitations and sweating is just torture.

People overlook my heavy drinking because I don't typically engage in asshole behaviour when I'm drunk and I usually only go out drinking the first day/night of a bender, so they don't see the rest of the bender when I'm home alone drinking, exacerbating my suicidal thoughts.

To anybody out there with any addiction issues, I understand your suffering and pain and how life can lead you down this dark path.

 

[hunyen420]

I have been sober from alcohol for over a year now and I wish you the best recovery.

 

[SMmetalhead36]

I'm one. The only time I'm happy is when I'm drinking or being high. Best of luck on your journey to sobriety.

 

[AerialBoundaries]

I have been sober from alcohol for over a year now and I wish you the best recovery.

Thanks. It's the most difficult thing I've ever went through. It's a fate that I wish nobody would have to go through.

It's absolutely rife in my family. It killed my grandmother shortly before my 6th birthday and I've had close family members in and out of hospital due to withdrawals.

Essentially what I've been doing is a slow, long winded suicide.

 

[Ashu]

I was an alcoholic - severely and dramatically, like you - until I realized, at twenty-seven, that it wasn't going to kill me, but it _was_ going to make far more intolerable whatever life I was still destined to live. I'm now fifty-three, and I've never even felt tempted to pick up the bottle again, for the same reason: my few consolations for the misery of my life - intellectual and creative activity and physical love - are too fragile to put at risk.

 

[AerialBoundaries]

I'm one. The only time I'm happy is when I'm drinking or being high. Best of luck on your journey to sobriety.

For me it starts off happy with a few drinks, then I get blackout drunk and emotional.

Back in April I'm almost certain I tried to hang myself in my closet. It has a horizontal metal bar in it for hanging clothes. The next day it was all bent as if someone put weight on it. I have zero recollection of doing it.

I was an alcoholic - severely and dramatically, like you - until I realized, at twenty-seven, that it wasn't going to kill me, but it _was_ going to make far more intolerable whatever life I was still destined to live. I'm now fifty-three, and I've never even felt tempted to pick up the bottle again, for the same reason: my few consolations for the misery of my life - intellectual and creative activity and physical love - are too fragile to put at risk.

27 is when it started to go really downhill for me. I've known I had a problem since I was 24, though.

My drinking has continued to get worse as I've got older. If my 27 year old self drank like I do now, I'd definitely be dead.

One of the worst parts is all the time and memories I've lost. There's a significant amount of the last couple of years that I don't even remember.

I wish people knew the extent as to how this affects me.

 

[UsagiDrop]

I'm very ashamed to admit it, but I'm an alcoholic with just shy of 24 hours sobriety, after a long bender, most of which I don't remember.

Congratulations on your sobriety, no matter how short the time frame is for it. I hope that you can get in touch with a doctor that can help very soon, because withdrawal symptoms sound really painful to deal with. And while I definitely understand the feeling of shame around it, I think there's no shame in admitting that we have a problem. We should actually be proud of that because that's the first step of trying to kick the addiction. But it's definitely easier said than done, I know.

I don't have any severe symptoms yet myself but I still consider myself an alcoholic because I feel the need to have at least one drink every day. I'm not even twenty-four hours sober but I'm already contemplating having another one whenever I leave work. I'm really ashamed of it too because I know that I can't keep putting my body through this and I know that it's not helping anything, but I don't know how to get through things without it anymore. If I could go to work after having a drink to just make the whole day easier, I definitely would. And the worst part is that the majority of the people around me don't take it very seriously since I don't drink enough to get blackout drunk or drunk at all in most cases. So more often than I am not, I end up being enabled. And then I feel like shit for indulging, and then I rinse and repeat!

I don't wish addiction on anyone. It's really a monster to deal with. Every day I can feel mine snowballing and I want to try to do things to stop it, but I don't feel like I'm in control of my life at all. I'm also hanging out on places like this online so it's obviously hard to find a reason to even stop. I agree that this is long-winded suicide and probably one of the most painful forms of that there is.

I hope that things work out for you and that you can be freed from this. I believe in you and think that you can most certainly do it if you really want to, and your body and mind may thank you for it later!

 

[AerialBoundaries]

I hope you don't get to the point that I'm at. My heavy drinking days began at work, too, when I'd go out for a few after finishing. That developed into having drinks on my lunch break because I started getting withdrawals, albeit much less severe back then.

It just escalates and before you know it, you're drinking at home at nights, then in the morning. Constantly needing that influx of booze. Where I live, you can't buy booze from a liquor store after 10pm, so I'd leave the pub I was in to get it and store it behind the bar so I have drinks to go back to after closing. A guy who drinks in my local pub actually died of alcohol poisoning around a month ago. He wasn't even an alcoholic, he just had too much one night and passed away.

We're bombarded with alcohol commercials constantly, with the promise of a good time and good memories to reflect on and that may be the case for the majority, but it isn't for me. They don't get to see when I'm home alone drinking when everybody else has called it a night, or the following day when I wake up and immediately start drinking again. They don't see the withdrawals after a long bender when I'm absolutely pleading with my body and mind to get through another 5 minutes because the suffering is too much to take. It's the worst addiction of them all because it's relatively cheap and easily available.

Thanks for replying to my post and for the encouraging words.

 

[steppenwolf]

My father was a Northern Irish alcoholic merchant seaman, who died of a massive heart attack at the age of 52 on his way to cash his giro, and alcoholism is part of my proud heritage of resistance to oppression, it's in my blood. I drink to relax and be happy in a moribund world, rather than be uptight and miserable in a moribund world. If that means I drink every day and getting out of bed is like being in a boxing match, and I look like a tramp, stink like a goat and alienate everyone around me, then so be it. I really don't care, and I've no reason to. I'll stop drinking when it stops making me happier. Just the other day an old alcoholic musician friend of mine dropped dead of a heart attack at the of 46, and I can't see him as anything but a local hero and his life as anything other than well-lived. Alcoholism for me is not an addiction or a disease, it's a way of life, it's a genetic adaptation born of a world gone awry for a thousand years, and if not living to see 60 is the price of such an adaptation then I think it's worth it. I feel devalued by people who denigrate alcoholism and alcoholics as diseased and dysfunctional. I have to let people know how much I resent that. Anyone who talks about 'sobriety' like it's a desirable aim, what with all of the insane evil shit that sober people pull, has to be a fascist who has no interest in public health, only in looking for a fight by limiting people's choices. So either stop complaining or have a fucking drink. And another one. There's no turning back. There's only drinking the cup to the bottom. And you know it.

 

[WAITING TO DIE]

I'm an alcoholic, yet sober now ( for the time being ).
Yes, the withdrawal symptoms are dreadful. Mine got so bad at one point I had delirium tremens on several occasions.
I would drink from morning till night, and often black out during this time.
At one point my skin and the whites of my eyes turned yellow, I went to the doctor and he said either give up drinking or die because you are destroying your liver.
Sometimes I wish I had carried on drinking until I died, yet I just got so sick of how bad booze was making me feel, and it had taken the vast majority of my savings so I had to give it up.
I wish you the best of luck in finding sobriety.

 

[AerialBoundaries]

My skin and eyes have a yellow tinge to them right now. This was one of my more severe benders, so I'm not surprised. My worsening withdrawals certainly coincide with my increased intake. When I drank like a normal person, I didn't even get hangovers.

I'm the same as you were. Spent the vast majority of time awake drinking.

Thanks for the well wishes.

 

[hunyen420]

For me it starts off happy with a few drinks, then I get blackout drunk and emotional.

Back in April I'm almost certain I tried to hang myself in my closet. It has a horizontal metal bar in it for hanging clothes. The next day it was all bent as if someone put weight on it. I have zero recollection of doing it.

27 is when it started to go really downhill for me. I've known I had a problem since I was 24, though.

My drinking has continued to get worse as I've got older. If my 27 year old self drank like I do now, I'd definitely be dead.

One of the worst parts is all the time and memories I've lost. There's a significant amount of the last couple of years that I don't even remember.

I wish people knew the extent as to how this affects me.

Yeah it's ruthless if you aren't careful, which when you drink a little bit you forget you even drank to begin with.
I've attempted suicide with alcohol in the past and it really left a toll on me after failing.
I have had kidney issues since, had multiple stones, severe pain and inflammation in the kidney.

Hope you can overcome your addiction.
Best of luck

 

[tiger b]

I completely lack the application to be an alcoholic. I feel like a traitor to my country of birth these days, but there will be plenty ready to pick up that baton. In the past I have made useful contributions to the cause. Now, my body just can't handle that much at all and it's annoying because sometimes the only answer is to get fucking steamingly shitfaced.

My father was a Northern Irish alcoholic merchant seaman, who died of a massive heart attack at the age of 52 on his way to cash his giro

I'll raise a steamin mug o decaf ter yer da.

Those who haven't found the answers at the bottom of a beer glass just haven't looked hard enough.

 

[Celerity]

I would probably qualify as an alcoholic. I have 3-4 drinking sessions a week, on average, the vast majority of them alone. It has been a hard habit to kick. Difficult to get drunk anymore, and my stomach hates me when I really indulge.

 

[voyager]

Aye, me too. Drank way too much twenty years ago. Was in the thick of it mentally and hated work. Really did. I'd sometimes consider just jumping in front of a train to avoid shifts. Not kidding. But I didn't, and instead got wasted before and during shifts. One time I got so smashed that I fell asleep on the job and they could've robbed me blind. Thankfully, a colleague was one of the first to come in and took over the (night) shift. A buddy of mine would also hang around at nights and we'd drink together. Would also drink a lot at home, just getting drunk and reminiscing on better times through music or film. It was mainly self-medication. A coping mechanism, which also helped me deal with my social anxiety. Despite drinking a lot I only had two blackouts my entire life. No hangovers either.

So yeah, technically an alcoholic, considering the amount and frequence. But I never felt like that and when I got fired I pretty much quit from one day to the next, but still don't have to be sober per se. Now drink when I feel like it. Lately a little bit more than usual but some years hardly any. Maybe a glass of wine (or two) at Christmas.

Feel a little bad for taking it so lightly, know that some struggle with it a lot and wish you the best to get out of it, if you so wish!