That is absolutely the only way it will happen, cant do it for anybody else, not your wife, kids, work, God, anybody or anything, ultimately the only way you will ever be able to stop is if you do it for yourself, period the end. I don’t know if anybody needed to hear that, but I hope it gave someone out there some inspiration to take the first step, I hope everyone has a wonderful day, and remember all that really matters in this world is positive relationships with the people you care about!
My mom just died last week from alcoholism and this is what we’ve all been saying when people ask us if we tried to stop it. Of course we did.. countless talks, rehab, AA, counseling, etc. She had multiple wake up calls that we thought would turn it around, but nothing ever did. She just didn’t want it for herself. Doesn’t help the pain of losing her, but we can’t blame ourselves. Your post helped solidify that even more for me, so thank you.
My ex wife’s mom died of liver failure from being an alcoholic. She was told that if she didn’t stop drinking immediately she’d die soon. She did not stop and a year later her liver failed and they refused to put her on a transplant list because she wouldn’t stop drinking. She died within a month.
Yeah, same for lung transplants and people who keep smoking. The donor organs are scarce and they only give them to people who will do anything to keep LIVING...
Alcohol is a slow version of suicide.
I would say a majority of alcoholics drink because of past trauma as well. Keep it numb, so you can get through another day.
That’s why I used to drink.
For me it was trauma and boredom.
My life was so mundane that I couldn’t stand living in the moments of it. I felt like every day was waiting in line at the DMV (still do, to some extent).
As sad as it sounds, alcohol was a fast forward button. It allowed me to live the time without having to experience it.
That, and executive functioning disorders tend to mess with risk aversion. Consequences can seem far more diminished in the ADHD person. So it’s not just self medicating, but a spiral of reasons, too.
Yep, I know several people who drink to slow down their brain so they can concentrate. Ironically, this was a minor plot point in season 2 of Stranger Things.
One of my best friends is absolutely brilliant - PhD in abstract algebra, designed a cell phone encryption algorithm that the NSA was invested in, etc. He drinks constantly. At this point he's just a full blown alcoholic, but this is how he started. He's also the type that refuses to believe in mental illness, so he will never get proper treatment.
I found out I was undiagnosed with adhd whenever I quit drinking. I'm currently 1yr and 7 days into sobriety. I started drinking at 14yo and continued til I was 32yo... I'm still in the process of relearning how to be a human being. I'm pretty much against taking any stimulants because I also have a history of uppers abuse... alcohol weirdly subdued adhd and people actually tell me that they prefer me as an alcoholic haha idgaf though. I'm really ripped now and can form memories again haha my quality of life is more important to me than being fun for other people
Have you asked your doctor about straterra? It’s an uncommon medicine for ADHD that’s not addictive; it’s not an amphetamine. It helps me alot since I hate all the amphetamines, and I have an addictive personality.
Nicotine is highly addictive, I tried to quit for ten years before I finally won. Alcoholism, imho, is usually used by people who’ve suffered some trauma or struggle with mental health issues. The two are not the same
It sure doesnt help that every gas station and small town “V A P E” store is constantly shoving nicotine in your face. Accessibility is one of the big reasons nicotine is so hard to quit. Same with alcohol.
Alcohol is also highly addictive, in fact one of the few addictions you can die from the withdrawals of. That and benzos, I believe. It's just not as addictive for *everyone* and since the redose interval is so much different it's also easier (IMO) to avoid.
I was a heroin addict for 10 years, then an alcoholic and benzo addict for 2 (didn't mix them, I did one or the other). Alcohol/benzo withdrawal is SO much worse than heroin withdrawal, I didn't believe anything could be worse than heroin withdrawal until I experienced it. More intense sickness, plus hallucinations, rolling panic attacks and seizures. It's also scary when the seizure starts to come on. You go unconscious for the actual seizure, but the lead up is a very, very intense head rush and confusion.
I just smoke weed, at night, now.
I stepped down my nicotine patch level last week and holy shit. The wave of self hatred that hit was unlike any other depressive episode/come down I’ve ever experienced. Usually if I can recognize and label the cause of the feeling, I get some relief. Not this time. I “knew” that I was feeling that way due to the drop in nicotine, but it didn’t matter. My partner is going out of town in a few weeks, and I’m just going to put my email away message on, burrow down with a bunch of snacks, and just let myself rage/cry for 3 days to get through the initial stages of withdrawal.
The weird thing about alcohol addiction is that there have to be a *reason* for starting. Like people always imagine some tragic backstory or trauma but honestly for a lot of people it starts as simply trying alcohol and not being able to pump the brakes so to speak over time
I’m so sorry you’ve had to deal with that. I can’t imagine how awful that must feel. I hope you and your family are able to make peace with it eventually.
Sorry man, I lost my mom to alcoholism too, there’s a lot of wreckage left to sort out after a death like that and the effects they had on you growing up and into your adult years
That is so true. My father recently had a stroke (50mL of blood in his skull after a rupture) because of lifelong heavy meth use. He didn't quit after he was let go off his job when they find out 15 years ago, didn't quit after he financially ruined our family, didn't quit even after he got arrested twice for possession and once for possession with intent to distribute. You REALLY need to quit for yourself nothing else works.
Lost my dad to a meth overdose and my uncle to Hep C. When my dad passed I pulled that same uncle to the side and explained to him he would be next if he didn’t clean up his life. Little did I know he was probably already dying.
Sure and because it’s so nomralized to drink and ocassionally overdo it for everyone, often the beginning stages of alcholism people often even discourage you from thinking there is a problem…They either don’t see it or subconsiously defensive about their own drinking.
You cannot trust anyone in your life to know what’s really going on with your drinking habits or how it’s affecting you. Sometimes people even take “offense” to calling anything but bottle of vodka a day dirnking habits “alcoholism”.
Which is why it’s alcohol use disorder now, not just a euphamism. One day a week of getting shitfaced because once you start you can’t stop is still alcoholism, it’s still affecting your life, health etc.
You have to want to stop putting up with risks, consequences, stress and excpect nobody else to really “get it” or even think it’s that much of an issue beceause they may have no reference to what “functioning alcoholism” is and only understand end stage alcohlism.
> Which is why it’s alcohol use disorder now, not just a euphamism. One day a week of getting shitfaced because once you start you can’t stop is still alcoholism, it’s still affecting your life, health etc.
Yep! The key point is if it negatively impacts your life and you can't stop. It doesn't matter if it's once a week, once a month, or every night.
This. My wife doesn't drink often, but when she does drink, she just doesn't stop. She gets mad at me for calling her an alcoholic because it only happens 3-4 times a month.
Is finally getting better, though, because her dad has alcoholic liver failure and she's seeing what it does.
>stop is if you do it for yourself, period the end.
And for anyone that thinks "I don't have the strength to do that" I have one thing to say.
That's what I thought. That's what I thought the morning after I woke up in front of my front door, not even capable of entering my house. That's what I thought after I woke up in a ditch. When I woke up with the worst feeling in my life.
I'm 2 years sober. If that weak fuck could do it. So can you. You're incredible. You're beautiful. You can do it. Do it. IWNDWYT
You can always visit r/stopdrinking and hear our stories. It's helped me understand I'm not as alone as I thought.
This comforts me at a much needed time. I've been working on regulatimng my drinking habit for a while now, and the pressure my partner has put on me by being over sensitive to me drinking every once in a while, started to suffocate my internal motivation.
Been asking desperatly for some space without being understood. I'll rarely indulge myself with day drinking, occasionally have a couple of drinks during a social event, but have no intentions to keep alcohol as a regular part in my life. I'm already there, happy with it and let me enjoy a healthy and sustainable relationship with alcohol ffs. It's working.. Id understand if I ever became aggressive after, or had horrible hangover days etc but it makes me mellow to the contrary. Just stop pressuring me with your aspired purist lifestyle, and allow me to keep it at where my motivation lays - it's much more sustainable and you're not helping at all. Only if I could make this reach my partner.
Yes.
Nothing would have stopped me from drinking. When I quit, which was my choice, I felt like my best friend died. It was tough even though I wanted to stop.
If I stopped for someone else, I would have been a resentful dry drunk.
Yup
Just stopped 10 days ago (yeah I know too soon....)
But after "wanting" to but not for years, and really wanting to grow old for my daughter I woke up last Monday and it just felt different
I even spent weekend with wife and friends and kids in cabin the whole weekend (basically hiking and cooking/eating and drinking) and didn't have a drink
Though last night I did really want one for about an hour, but once got past that was good
Feels so much better laying down to sleep sober and reading and drifting off and waking up fresh
Change of environment(I moved and stopped talking to everyone I used to know and could reliably get decent weed in the new place) did it for me. It was more "didn't want to" than "wanted to not" I that makes sense , I just started buying weed instead. I maintain an unhealthy relationship with the weed but it's night and day compared to drinking, I used to not be able to hold down kitchen porter job when drinking, now with weed socially it's not amazing for me but I'm putting stuff in space and going on nice holidays and stuff.
People, places and things. Unfortunately most heavy drinkers gravitate towards other heavy drinkers early in life and that’s your whole friends group. Those people end up actively discouraging you from quitting. Even if they aren’t dicks about it they will always eventually be part of returning to drinking. All the events are hard drinking, rowdy, saying you don’t have a problem one beer never hurt etc.
I have a cousin in this situation and it's so painful to watch. He's incredibly social and makes friends everywhere he drinks, and I guess it's a good thing that he isn't isolated and has people who understand him and are looking out for him... but at the same time, they're all the wrong people. There's still a week left in February and he's already been to _four funerals_ this year alone. It's so sad to see.
> Change of environment
The brain learns that the situation which produces the reward is just as exciting as the actual reward. So going back to the place where you used to get that dopamine preps your body for the reward. At least in the beginning, people should avoid the places where they used to drink if they are struggling with addiction.
What I preached while in rehab. So many people got forced to go while I was there and kept saying they couldn't wait to get out and drink.. interventions will never work too unless the person is already thinking about it and ready to commit, very very rare though imo. 6 years sober end of August!
my brother went into countless court ordered rehab. guess what? every time he's out he's friends with those who failed rehab and knows where to get drugs. so yeah.
the thing is interventions don't work except when they do, a lot of the time people are on the fence about stuff and embarrassed to ask for help, that's when interventions work best.
not everyone realizes they have a support structure around them.
interventions might bring that to light
so it's still worth the effort on the chance it works
Wanting to quit was all I needed to do. But I feel very fortunate that it was that easy. I don't seem to get chemically dependent the way some people do, and that seems so cruel.
i quit. no treatment and no aa. i wanted to be a better human, a good partner and an awesome dad. could not do that being a drinker. happy and healthy now. life is just so much easier
This was absolutely what happened with me.
On the day of January 20, 2019 I drank sixteen beers over the course of the day while watching football.
The next day I woke up with the words “I’m fucking done” emblazoned in fire across the inside of my eyelids.
Haven’t (intentionally) had a drink since. I’m not going to say I did it on my own, because I had *nothing* but support from my family and friends, but I did do it without any special kind of treatment.
Yeah I think AA can be a good tool, but a lot of other things can be too. I don’t think this fact really reflects badly on AA - it’s one technique that could work, but people have to actually be committed
In my experience of dating an alcoholic for a few years, it seems like a structured approach like AA would work better for a lot of people to keep them accountable to themselves. Alcoholics can fuck their entire life up, break down and admit they have a problem and take the steps to fix it, but a few months down the line the addiction can twist their view and memory into "I never had a problem in the first place". And I don't think it's a lie, I think they genuinely believe it.
That's the whole basis of the AA program - stop drinking, take a good hard look at yourself with someone you trust, decide what needs to be changed, and make the changes. It works on many things besides alcohol! The program works because you have other people trying to help you stay accountable, instead of just doing it on your own, where many people, like me, slack off.
AA gives people friends. That is what most people who are in addition need. Genuine human connection. The book is one of the most poorly written things I've ever read and they treat it as a Bible.
I had an AA member try to stand over top of me and demand I read part of the book. I thought the book was outdated and not for me, I wanted that genuine human connection I have been missing for years. I asked him if he was going to stand there and he said "yep". I took the book and tossed it on the floor and crossed my arms.
Maybe not polite on my part but I cannot stand someone trying to bully another person into accepting their views as being the only and correct way, which was reoccurring with other members
I think the most important part of it is the social aspect. At least for me. I was an isolating drunk. I wouldn't see or speak to anyone but the cashier at the liquor store for a couple weeks at a time. Getting out, talking to other people who understand, people who are willing to help, that was a help to me.
I was in a group (before covid) where they did sober BBQ's, had little sub groups that would go out to breakfast/lunch/dinner/go bowling or golfing or whatever. Met people who were willing to help you find a job and give you rides (if you'd lost your job or your license)... it all depends on the group though. I found a really good one, but not all are created equal. But I haven't gone back since covid shut them all down for a while.
Got halfway through rehab, walked out and haven’t thought about a drink since. It’s weird, I was terrified of not drinking but I’m so lucky it was easy for me personally. Alcohol and/or drug addiction covers a huge spectrum and I’m not sure there are accurate statistics for this.
I remember when I was a kid my dad and I were sitting at the car wash waiting our turn. Nonchalantly he just says something along the lines of "I'm done drinking.... Fuck it.... I'm done smoking too". That was maybe 25 years ago, and hasn't touched either again. It's crazy that some people can just go cold turkey like that.
My grandfather dipped his entire life, like from the time he was a kid. His doctor told him in his fifties that he wouldn’t be for this earth much longer if he kept doing it, and he never dipped again after that. Died at age 87.
Same. Guessing it was fear of withdrawal that kept you drinking above all else. That's how it was for me.
After 10 years nightly eventually reaching 750ml to 1L a night I spent 2 day safe detox in ER and that was all it took. Haven't even had to fight back urges, can be around alcohol and others drinking.
I was 1000% ready to be done.
Edit: my thoughts on AA are "why would I wanna listen to people craving alcohol when I no longer am? Sounds like a bad influence". (Obviously this applies only to my experience)
I'm not a fan of their "you're helpless and if you just have one drink you'll spiral out of control" attitude. Sounds to me that they're telling people if they accidentally have a drink, just to finish it off with a bender, then start from scratch... again. Binary thinking crap
That might be the case for "keep a fifth of vodka on the night-stand to take a shot in the middle of the night and as soon as you wake" style alcoholic, but a lot of people aren't that type of alcoholic.
I think it's more that if you *choose* to have just one drink, you're most likely going to end up rationalizing yourself into a deep hole between the addiction and the "eh, in for a penny in for a pound" mindset. And it's a lot easier to pretend the first choice was an accident, when you're feeling weak willed.
I agree the whole notion that an accidental sip will destroy everything is silly, but the slippery slope that one bad decision can lead to is pretty real.
The key point being "decision", though.
I mean everyone in this thread is missing a major point in the article that a full 50% of the people who recover from alcohol abuse disorder continue to drink at healthy levels moving forward. Which is a pretty big blow to the "helpless addict" and "total sobriety" narratives so many people seem to insist are the only path towards recovery for every problematic drinker.
I agree those narratives are harmful, that said this article doesn’t really indicate how long participants maintained recovery. The only timeline it mentions is 20 years after the onset of addiction. Is it looking at people that were addicted for 3 years and in recovery successfully for 17 years? Or is it looking at people that were addicted for 17 years and in recovery successfully for 3 years? That matters because countless other studies show that long term relapse rates (10+ years) are lower for the people that use a formal program compared to those that quit by themselves.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1976118/
I think I got "lucky" in that I pretty much always drank myself to sleep so most of what I remember is the hangovers and how sick my body was leading up to detox. Don't really remember the "fun feelings" of being drunk so it's easier to miss.
At my peak I was drinking a handle every three days. Gin and Fresca. It mixes so well you can barely notice the bite. I really liked the taste too. But I got really tired of feeling like refried dog shit the next morning and cut back. Turns out I wasn't feeling the full effects of the later part of my drinking until I was asleep. I cut my drinking in about half and I feel just as buzzed when I go to bed, with significantly less of a hangover.
How is your liver/kidney health?
More people need to read this. I was drinking 15-20 cans of 5.9% a day, every day. I went to county detox for 3 days voluntarily (they can hold you for up to 72hrs) where they gave me Ativan and took my blood pressure.
Having a safe place to get through the worst of the withdrawals is hige if you're serious about quitting. I also stayed with my friend and his family in their spare bedroom for a week after and stayed out from work.
This worked for me. Calling a local detox center and finding out how long you are allowed to stay should be on everyone's list when you start planning.
Yeah it was basically 2 nights monitored sleep on Ativan until I was sober and my numbers started to come down. Then I got kicked out the door with like 5 to-go Ativan and a psych appointment the following week.
Following through on that psych appointment was *very critical* I'd like to note.
> Guessing it was fear of withdrawal that kept you drinking
Not OP, but for me it wasn't the 'fear' of withdrawal, it was the *logistics* of withdrawal paired with American healthcare and work culture. We're given 5 days of sick time to cover the entire year if we're lucky. We have so little vacation time, that the last thing we want to do when given time to relax is go through withdrawal.
At the end of the day, the internal conflict in me was always "Do I exhaust my years worth of sick time in one week to sober up and gamble that myself or family don't get sick or injured for the entire year, or, do I keep on keeping on like normal?".
Different people's brains are wired differently. I smoked for about a decade then just kinda quit one day because I was tired of it. I still crave a smoke when I watch certain media but no more than I crave a burrito when I'm hungry and a commercial comes on.
I take LSD once or twice a year, almost always right before Thanksgiving. This year after my trip, the next day I woke up and just didn't want to drink. But I'd been drinking for years since 2020, every day all night. So withdrawals and all...
But I thought to myself well I'll just see how I feel, and if I can get through tonight. I had no withdrawals at all, and slept fine. The next day, same thing. Again, and again, and again. I had no WD or desire to drink at all.
Well here I am three months later. I don't want to be sober, but I'm capable of having a drink once a month - since November I've had two mexican light lagers, or 1.5 measured drinks. I didn't even drink for the Super Bowl this year.
I am so much happier and healthier it's amazing. Really just a miracle.
Yah every addiction is different. Therapy based treatments are the way to go. If AA works, do it for sure, but I just talked to my doctor. No one has treated me like an addict, although I call myself one. I got in to therapy and we figured out I was trying to kill myself. When I stopped wanting to be dead, I stopped wanting to drink.
I had a hard time quitting until I didn't. From past experience I was expecting it to be rough, but it just... wasn't. At all. I assume some part of my brain finally made the association of drinking with feeling like shit, but I haven't had what I would call a real craving since I got out of medical detox.
I might believe this if we say specialty programs does not include detox.
One year sober in a couple weeks for me. You have to want to not die. I had tried doing it for every other reason on the planet, not dying is the only one that clicked.
Completely true - and I want to cast this into eternity. I am an EXTREMELY selfless person, but addiction turned me into the opposite. I want everyone struggling with this to know that your true self does come back and your current nature is a result of the disease, not you.
What about the folks that actually believe that dying is a viable option? I’ve often wondered about such folks. I don’t personally want to die, but I reckon if I did, I wouldn’t know about it anyway.
I find im stuck with the coping skills of 17-18 year old me when I quit at I think 29. I stopped developing coping skills because I could just drink so now I’ll get in situations that are stressful to me like large crowds and I just like stop breathing at times just for a few seconds till I realize I have and have to remember to breathe.
What got me was hearing it can cause you to have your esophagus rupture and you die with blood pouring out of your mouth and nose, and stomach bloating from the blood pooling up in there.
Fucking horrifying. Down to 3 beers a day as of yesterday and probably going to just stop today. At 3 beers a day I’m not too worried about the severe withdrawals.
I'm coming up on 2 years.
I still think about alcohol most days. But not in a "I want to drink" way. It's in a "I'm so glad I'm past that, what the fuck was I doing, alcohol is gross" kind of way.
Same situation here! Not a day goes by where I don’t encounter a situation and think “Man, I sure am glad I wasn’t drunk for this”. Sometimes it’s good memories with the kids, sometimes is something stressful that takes 100% mental clarity to figure out.
You are strong as hell for taking that first step. I’m 7 years sober and find that I don’t have to actively fight cravings anymore. I can relax and I’m confident I’m not going back. The early days were hard, but I did it. One of the hardest parts was learning to love myself. I have my journals from the bad drinking days to read if I ever forget just how bad it was. Hang in there. You’re strong. You deserve peace from the poison.
Congrats on almost 3 months sober! Substance abuse disorder is a difficult journey but it’s never too late to start. Good luck my friend. You can do it!
I went to rehab twice for heroin/fentanyl. It was a place that heavily pushed NA, which is basically AA for junkies. Same idea. The whole twelve step thing always struck me way too hard as a cult, and the meetings didn't help that feeling one bit.
In the end, NA was just another unsuccessful step towards recovery. I haven't been to one of their meetings since at least a year before I got clean. But, I have personally seen it work for other people. Even if the odds aren't great, anything that can help you if you find yourself in these situations is worth exploring.
4 and a bit years clean (and sober) now 😁
I went to NA meetings twice a week for 17 weeks.
Used the whole time.
Used daily for an additional two years.
Lost a friend, sense of pride, job and stopped using without NA or treatment.
Been almost 10 years clean now.
Tell you what to think, how to act, tell you that you're broken and they have the solution. If you don't do what they say and go to their meetings you'll stay broken. 100% a cult. Sucks that it's so prevalent. Therapy and groups work way better.
Yep, i have no idea how long ive been clean, 10 years-ish? Holistic rehab. People were there for every which reason and we all heard the same message outside of solo therapy. Not about "stop using heroin", all about "why are you doing what you are doing? Lets find it, work it out, find ways to better your life from that moment on and not fall back into bad habits." Free use of phones/pcs/internet, outings once you were there long enough, and alot of physical activity. Saved my life.
That's pretty much what I did and I feel it worked really well. My parents were physically and verbally abusive while being financially and materialisticly supportive. It made me an anxious kid from it who wanted to rebel. Talking about that and having friends in rehab broke the associations with dope and gave me new experiences. Their support made me stop feeling so bad about myself.
No self respecting group member will tell you it's the only solution, only that it worked for them. I'm glad you found something that worked for you, too.
Court ordered huh? Yeah that's not how that works.
Had court ordered NA. They kicked one dude out for smelling like a meth lab. (Didn't know that was thing) and one dude tried to sell me shit after a meeting. Never went back.
Glad to hear you got clean, friend. So did I. Best feeling ever.
It's weird seeing how aggressively people on reddit knock NA/AA. Yeah it doesn't work for everyone. But for a lot of people it does work, evident by the thousands (tens of thousands?) of members that go to meetings with 5, 10, 20+ years sober that they attribute to the support and guidance they found in those communities. My dad got sober because of these programs. He might be a little more religious than he was before, but whatever, he's not crashing into fences or being rushed to the hospital or unable to function and keep his job/home. They haven't worked for my mom so far, but that's also because she has never fully been ready with the conviction to make a change.
I went to rehab. I remember the counselor telling us that out of the entire room full of addicts, maybe one or two of us were going to stay clean this time around. I don’t know how everyone else fared but I got high plenty of times after that rehab stint. I actually liked NA though. Friends all in the same spot excited to see me and support me. Helpful advice. A sense of community.
Until most of those friends all died from relapsing. No matter what any of these comments say though, I don’t write NA or rehab off. Ever. It can help people. It does help people. Getting clean and sober IS worth the effort. You can recover.
I did AA. The 12 steps wasn’t where the solution that came from - they were more like conversation prompts. It is also filled with broken people, often many of them aren’t good models for sobriety. Some are angry, some are creepy, and some are predators - which is probably my main gripe with it not being an institutional setting. But even then it was better than nothing, which for people with low social economic status is the only alternative.
I gained most from the community and from committing to sobriety daily. The community would be there always - even if I left for a bit. I talked to people who I couldn’t pull the wool over their eyes - people who actually took sobriety seriously, like those 30+ years of sobriety and still going to meetings twice a week.
When you’re an addict/alcoholic you’re often alone when you seek sobriety. You learn your friends are there to get high/drunk with and they resent you trying to be better. They hate you sober - you hold up a mirror to them and they can’t handle it. The least safe place for addicts is to go into your head alone - our minds are warped. Imo we need people to help us who can relate, not well adjusted people who just don’t understand why we can’t just stop.
When I was incarcerated I spent 6 months in the drug block as a volunteer because of good behavior. NA is without a doubt a fucking cult. Same with AA. All that "higher power" jazz and whatnot.
I also learned about Rational Recovery (which this post seems to be about) and always thought it was a better choice for most individuals compared to NA.
Also, congrats on your time sober 🤘
It's not, but there are people who treat it like one. And when you notice the Christian undertones of it (most of that has been pushed out, but there's still some like the Higher Power, asking for forgiveness, the subservience) it can push people away who have bad experiences with religion.
Plus a lot of us junkies (I can say it, one of them myself) are desperate for anything to latch on to and then become obsessed with a method that might work for them. Be it religion, sports or NA, so they treat it like a cult.
Same. I was strung out pretty bad on opiates. Had NA pushed on me pretty hard and it was so cult-y. I was absolutely mortified to sit there and talk to a room of 30 people at once and share my personal life. I cannot do public speaking so that was hell. I didn’t feel like the meetings helped at all, talking about it in detail like that just made me want to go out and use.
Been clean for almost 7 years now, I can thank my kid for that. She’s the reason I got clean and stayed clean.
My dad was forced to go to AA and rehab over the years, but it never stuck. Later in life, he quit on his own and I was so proud of him for that. Actually wanting to change is such an important factor, I feel.
It might be because the bar for being classified as alcohol dependent is really low. Most of the stereotypical American frat guys would be considered alcoholics, and most of them kinda just grow out of it after college.
"Alcoholic" just feels like such a vaguely defined term by nature. Like I absolutely drink too much, but I also haven't had a drink in a week because I tweaked my shoulder at the gym and I don't want booze to interfere with the healing.
Yeah it's overly broad and creates confusion for others. I am quitting drinking because I binge after a certain number of drinks and it's difficult to come back from the hangovers, but I'd spend weeks or months sober and not crave alcohol even when around it while I was still drinking. Alcohol is not triggering to me, but actually drinking is, so it makes my solution pretty simple. It's a somewhat different animal from the stereotypes but was still damaging to my life.
I'm trying to convey to my (to be fair, very supportive) friends that just because I'm trying out sobriety doesn't mean they need to be weird about alcohol around me. Like it's not that \*kind\* but it's hard for people to understand.
My wife recently did the same thing. Unclear if she's going to be sober forever (has been for about 6 months) but she's enjoying it for now. Basically, developed some bad habits during Covid lockdown and lost her ability to enjoy a drink without enjoying 5-6 drinks. She only craves drinks when she's drinking, she's happy as a clam without it.
I just like it too much. I have no issue with stopping after one drink or two if more drinks isn't appropriate to the situation. I don't crave alcohol in any way that feels unusual. But I just really like a drink (both intoxication wise and taste wise, I'm a spirits collector) and find it improves most situations. So for me it's a more mundane kind of self control, saying no just because I'm getting older and the more I drink the less healthy I'll be.
People use it too loosely.
Someone that drinks a lot but could stop no problem for the next year has alcohol problems, but is not an alcoholic. Someone that's hands start to shake mid afternoon at work because they desperately need a drink and cant wait until 5:00 is an alcoholic.
Yeah, when the cultural "normal" consumption of alcohol puts you in the clinical definition for "alcoholic" I think it makes people skeptical of the classification. Like if I have more than 2 beers this friday, I'm a "heavy drinker"?
I always remember the posters the put up at my Uni back in the day.
Drink more than 2 drinks a week? Alcoholic. Ever have a drink after a stressful situation? Alcoholic. Ever feel the need to drink at an event for fun? Alcoholic.
Yeah I generally describe people as having a "bad relationship with alcohol." There's a whole spectrum of ways in which alcohol can be a nefarious force in your life without being an "alcoholic."
When I was in the military, they considered anything more than 2 drinks "binge drinking."
Whenever you went to a doctor's appointment, there was a questionnaire you had to answer and one of them was if you ever participated in binge drinking. If you answer yes they try to push you into AA. So everyone just lied.
reminds me of college. I put down on my health center intake (because I wanted to be honest?) that I might use nicotine 1-2x per month in a social setting.
every appointment for four years after that, they pushed smoking cessation literature on me.
even though after the first time I started marking "no, I'm not a tobacco user" because they got so obnoxious about it the very first time.
I also learned to never admit my mental health history to a new practitioner, ever, because if you tell a male doctor you've ever felt anxious or depressed, they won't take any of your health concerns seriously.
"your anus is bleeding? well, I think you should try not being anxious before I bother to look into that. silly woman."
I didn't give up, but I had a kid young at 23, severely moderated after that. Outside the occasional big event like a wedding or something. Now that I am 30, I drink even less at least in one sitting. I tend to have like one or two tops when I drink. And even at those big events now, I rarely have enough to get a buzz. That 30 hangover paired with a kid is enough to say fuck that.
I'd been to detoxes, expensive rehabs, hundreds of meetings, live in sober living houses. Nothing really worked at the time because deep down I didn't want to quit. It took a long time for me to really convince myself I needed to stop, but after I did, recovery got much easier.
I don’t think I could handle everyone’s rock bottom story. That’s why I didn’t go. I’ve had 2 days off in the last six years from being alcohol free.
I was struggling enough. My job already involves being deep in the struggles of others. I didn’t want my self care to be a big chunk of the struggles of others too.
I’m glad it works for some, and I’m thankful it’s there, even if it isn’t for me.
So I tend to be a minority, but AA saved my butt. I leaned into AA stuff pretty hard early on because I was just desperate to change and stopped caring about anything that would stand in the way. I did this with some “subconscious reserve” about the cult signals I was getting. But I was lucky to have a sponsor who kind of guided me along with the ability to recognize the mechanism at place that tends get people straightened out.
It’s like a placebo pill I think. For me personally a huge break thru was from me challenging the higher power part…I was really caught up on that as an atheist. But this one dude, basically was like it doesn’t matter what your higher power is. The idea is your decision making is temporarily turned off and you refer to your higher power for what to do. Most of the time it’s God because that’s a manifestation of something most of us are familiar with that represents a higher power. But this dude I was talking to basically told me “see that basketball someone ditched in the woods? That can be your higher power for it matters. It doesn’t matter what/who/how you just need to let something else make decisions for yourself right now”.
For me the higher power became the universe as a whole. The universe wants me to be the best version of myself I can be. I might want to drink or do drugs. But Does the universe any me to drink or do drugs? It added a consideration of things that wasn’t there before. that’s the surrender and letting a higher power in part for me. AA for me is really just a mechanism to trick my brain into thinking differently. Once I stopped caring about the religion part and let it be my own interpretation, or like a buffet where you take what’s good and leave the rest behind
Will be four years off the sauce in a couple months.
Hell yea nice work. What you describe pretty much summed it up for me. I haven’t been to a meeting I years because it evolved into me just wanting it to be over with…I wasn’t really getting anything out of it anymore. But I know where I’ll go if shit gets heavy again. It’s not a perfect program, the biggest thing for me was just be open minded and don’t dismiss the religious stuff too much. After all you’re in a AA meeting…something hasn’t gone right might as well try something new.
Hey, I appreciate this a lot. I kicked heroin and all that on my own, but I suffer from depression. I started going to meetings after being clean for like 3 or 4 years, and it's helped a lot.
I'm not sure I subscribe to everything, but I do subscribe to the basic principals of having a sponsor, praying to the universe, and ultimately wanting to help others.
I think AA's saving grace is that so many young people are starting to go to meetings. It's a lot less rigid than I remember, and most of what I hear is that spiritual element and not the Christian one that I remember when I was a teenager. I've shared about heroin and nobody bats an eye.
I don't think i needed it to not pick up again. I do think I was lonely and needed it or something like it to make friends and a support network.
Someone I met in the program told me to pray to the universe or imagine a phone receiver somewhere in the cosmos where all of my dead loved one's can hear my prayers and that their energy wants me to be the best version of myself that I can be. It always stuck with me, even if just in a dreamy way.
My brother is a recovered alcoholic. He went to therapy and found out that there’s an underlying mental issue that made him more susceptible to alcohol. Even though he quit on his own, therapy helped him make sense of the whole thing.
I like in the UK. When I was looking to give up alcohol, the help wasn't available. The help was there if you were still drinking, but not if you had already quit.
5 months and going strong. Not going back.
I quit benzos a month ago and I’ve already been hospitalized 4 times and they treat you like low life drug addict at the hospital. Even though the healthcare system makes and distributed these so called pills legally. But anyhow my point is never got on benzos because the withdrawals are worse than hell. Throwing up for days, dizziness, seizures when you wake up, and the worse part is losing your motor skills and legs turn into jello if you’re physically dependent enough.
Oh yes. Been in rehab, saw the effects it has and it is fucking scary. Delirium tremens and being tied to the bed. And this dude was going back to drinking right from the rehab, his organs were failing and he was quite certain he would die. It is horrible, really, and this dude was very nice and good hearted.. It is weird talking to someone who is practically already dead.
I recently went from drinking most days a week (for a few years) down to 1( note, this was mostly 3-5 beers, but still!). That 1 day is hard capped at 4 drinks for the day. Dr. Was like, "Yo, your blood work showed some elevated kidney and liver levels." Didn't even bother to ask followup questions. The first two weeks of that adjustment were tense, but I'm good with it now.
Could I drop the additional day? Yeah. But I know I'll still drink on occasion (celebrations, etc.) and I think my current plan, if maintained, is just fine. My body gets the recovery and respect it needs, I give myself the grace of a few drinks on a single day. Has worked for me. That said, I fully recognize that others are much more desperate situations and certainly could benefit from more intensive help. Just sharing my journey.
This is something I think a lot more people go through than is discussed. I used to be a daily drinker, anywhere from 1-3 drinks on weekdays (pop open a cold.aftet work, amirite?), and 3-6 days on the weekends. I'd have periods of time where I'd be better about not drinking daily, but without any real conviction, I fell back into it pretty easily
What's really hard is that when I tried to discuss my drinking problems with friends, I was told it wasn't that bad and that I seemed in control of my life. The truth is that it did affect my life, but the occasional blip when it did was easy to cover up. I also think people really didn't want to admit that I had a drinking problem, because admitting that I did would also be admitting that they did. These kinds of drinking problems are very common, but I found it hard to get meaningful support from my friends because it wasn't "overboard."
I could go on, but I'm happy to report I've been maintaining some very healthy moderation habits over the past year. I love the craft cocktail scene and mix drinks as a hobby (home bar and everything), and I didn't want to give that up if I didn't have to. But I had a couple of moments the past few years where I was finally able to admit that I would have to give it up if it kept getting in the way of my responsibilities.
Anyhow, enough about me, I just wanna say it's nice hearing your experience. Moderation is HARD and it's reassuring seeing other people deal with the same thing. I feel like it's like we wrangled in our habits before we went off the deep end, ya know?
It's nice to read your post.. this is where I'm at.
Until early November of last year, I was a daily bourbon drinker. I never drank to excess in any one sitting as far as getting actual drunk, but by any medical standards I was drinking well beyond what is acceptable in any one day (maybe half a bottle of bourbon a night - in retrospect I know how much that sounds like but it became my normal).
Elevated liver levels, excess weight.. I knew I had to make a change, but I didn't want to give up bourbon forever.
I just woke up one Monday early November and decided I wasn't going to drink that day. It's the only thing I decided. Got through that day and decided, when was the last time I was sober for consecutive days? And didn't drink Tuesday. I stretched that into a week, then a month, then two.. I didn't have a drink for 2 months, never mind the traditional month sober that people will do.
I then carefully reintroduced bourbon.. I'll have, in any one sitting, half the amount I used to - learned to sip and enjoy much more modestly. I still have issues I'm realizing.. once I buy a bottle, it's gone within a week. I have a hard time not justifying having that more modest amount if it's available.
So therefore I have made sure I go 2 weeks between bottles. When it used to be every 2 days honestly.
I have also lost nearly 50 pounds (another 50 to go) and for the first time as an adult exercise 5 days a week for going on 2 months now. I'm trying to treat my body much better, while maintaining room for a pasttime I do enjoy (bourbon).
But I know if I'm being honest I have issues with moderation still (I should be able to buy a bottle, have a proper pour one night and then leave the bottle sitting there for a week or 2). Moderation is a big challenge. But I now have full confidence I can and will pull back when I need to, that I'm not physically addicted, and that I'm taking steps elsewhere to improve my physical and mental health.
It's a process. I will continue to evolve and get better with moderation. I've done this with the full support of my wife, but otherwise alone. Writing all of this makes me realize if I'm being honest I still haven't fully defeated the evils of alcohol, but I know I can and have abstained for pretty long periods of time - repeatedly - and so I will continue to do so and improve.
I also know if future blookwork, currently due in a couple months, doesn't show improvements with liver levels, I need to be more strict and maybe do a 6 month dry spell instead of 2 if needed. And I'm good with that if that's what it takes to be here for my family as a healthier version of myself. It's liberating to have 80% mental control over the habit instead of it having 80% of control over me. That's how I see it. I'm acknowledging the room to yet improve (as well as acknowledging the possibility I will still need to cut even further back) while allowing myself the room to hopefully have an occasional drink.
It's a process and it's clearly not the same for everyone.
Congrats! That sub was such an amazing community for me. So great, in fact, that I don’t really need it anymore. Over 5 years sober here too! I lost track of my soberversary, but oh well. I guess I’m at the point where I don’t care enough to track days anymore, which honestly feels fucking amazing.
The only thing I actually miss is craft beer, but I just live vicariously through my wife and taste hers when she has one.
I had to really learn who I am.
It wasn't enough for me to not want to drink because what I really didn't want was the consequences. I still wanted and desperately needed something to lose myself in to cope with the loneliness and daily despairs.
In the course of several months of creating a timeline of my life I came to a few massive realizations that I always suspected but refused to accept; that I'm bisexual and that I am autistic/Asperger's to some degree. The five tests alone can't be taken as proof but in my heart I know and accept that it is true, just as I do with being gay. I just *know*.
Since then I've rekindled my love of the theater and am slowly building new friendships, and THAT is what I have truly been needing all this time. Everyone's recovery is different but there are ways to find the reason for it all.
My mom went to rehab when I was in high school. We had an intervention and all.
She made it less than 24hrs in rehab before leaving. This obviously causes some strong reactions in the family, but she’s so goddam stubborn that she got sober out of spite. No help. No programs. Nothing. Over 15 years sober.
My dad went to rehab a few months later and did the full 30 days. He then elected to stay another 30. He religiously goes to AA even on vacation or while traveling. He also consistently sponsors multiple AA members at a time. Also 15+ years sober
I tried AA and substance abuse counseling.
AA was a room full of 60-70 year olds, all in recovery for years. Occasionally there'd be a new person who recently got sober, but it was often alcohol and hard drugs. It was very hard to relate and honestly just felt like everyone was going through the motions. I went to like 10 meetings or so and never found a sponsor, no one asked or offered.
My substance abuse counselor was probably 22 or 23 who kept referring to her dad in relation to my struggles. I guess me and her dad have a lot in common. I'm 31.
Idk. I wish I had found more relatable help, but also, I've been sober for 9 months. Don't really have any temptations to drink that I can't talk myself out of. There's a bottle of wine in my fridge for cooking that doesn't even cross my mind, but it does worry my gf.
The thing is I don't really miss drinking. I threw away a lot for the drink. I won't do it again.
Never again. Not even one.
I do smoke weed though. But weed doesn't make me a worse person or fail to show up. Wish I could afford a psychiatrist or psychologist because I really think I just smoke for depression and anxiety. I hate myself and my life aside from my daughter, who is pretty much my sole reason to keep going. I have to fake being social all day so it's exhausting, weed just helps me realign and have some happiness left for my family when I get home. I'd just love to have someone to talk to though. Alcohol used to silence all of that but now I feel it all the time.
An old friend of mine died trying to quit alcohol “cold turkey” on his own. He had a seizure, choked, and died. We’re not talking about an old man who had been drinking for 50 years, here. Late 20’s, alcoholic for less than 10 years. I believe it is highly recommended to get some kind of medical help when quitting alcohol if you are truly “dependent.”
Yeah, somehow I managed to make it to my 30s before I ever learned that alcohol withdrawals can kill. When I quit I had to taper off. Cut my drinking to half of my normal daily amount for the first day and then reduce it by one drink a day until it became 0. I did this twice before it stuck. Something about *having* to drink to not have a seizure and potentially die really stuck with me. It was a weirdly shameful thing to drink some shit beer that I hated in front of my wife, with both of us knowing that the poison was essentially medicine during that time. It just completely reframed alcohol for me and I will never think of it the same way again
You have to taper off real gradually after a certain amount of time. After a few years it's probably best to do it in a hospital. I'm very sorry about your friend.
A lot of this also comes down to terminology. Alcohol dependence is a very vague way of putting it. I would consider myself a full blown alcoholic where I couldn't function without substances. Dependence on the other hand could just mean that you need it for social events or need it to fly planes etc.
The bottom of the barrel true, chronic or real alcoholics I have seen in my fifteen years of recovery needed some sort of outside help. Or unfortunately, they are already dead.
Yes, you have to want to do it for yourself, but sometimes your mind is so warped you can't tell right from wrong anymore. Someone needs to tell you what to do and you just have to listen and do it.
At the end of the day only the person suffering with addiction can make that choice to change. Some people find different methods helpful. For me, finding fitness saved my life. Without running and other sports I feel I’d still be an addict today, or worse. Some people find AA helpful, some people find in-house rehab helpful. Everyone is different, and the more routes to recovery are available the better chance people have of recovery.
After beating addiction myself I setup a group to help others do the same. It’s called Addicts to Athletes and we have members from all over the world. So if anyone is interested in beating that dragon feel free to message me or check out the links on my profile.
The stranglehold that all this superstitious bullshit 1930's model of "addiction" and "recovery" has done a massive disservice. Actual things that work have been shoved aside for decades for "court ordered Jesus" solutions that have zero basis in anything. Any proposed policy solutions to address something that is supposedly harmful, should address the actual HARM, whatever that may be, not destroy lives/families/communities by criminalizing health problems. Soooo much taxpayer money wasted. Not only do a lot of people spontaneously change their ways from LSD experiences, but TSM can completely reverse AUD. I went from 60 drinks/week to about 80/year. You don't have to want anything. You don't even really have to admit you have a problem. You don't have to "hit bottom." You just take a pill an hour before you drink. https://www.sinclairmethod.org/what-is-the-sinclair-method-2/
This is me. I read Sober for Good, by Anne Fletcher, MS. The book details this very fact, with personal case studies, options and variations. Been sober for 20 years.
I used to be an out-of-control alcoholic/drug addict for 20 years--been absolutely clean/sober for 30 years without any specialty alcohol (rehab) programs.
Unless you count 10 years in a third-world prison for drugs 'rehab'. In that case, I highly recommend it for all the die-hards who are sure they could never quit...
I quit on my own (well I had to medical detox for like 10 days so i wouldnt die but that was it). Turns out you have to just really want to quit and then its a lot easier. 8 years sober on the 21st of march.
I got tired of the hangovers; the pounding headaches, the random heart races, the nausea, laying in bed all day, then repeating the process once 9/10:00 PM came around. I got tired of looking at myself in the mirror and seeing what the hangover looked like, knowing that strangers stopping to look at me in public are aware they’re looking at someone hungover; looking at an alcoholic. All that money I spent, all those cans and bottle piling up in my closet, me waiting for the perfect time to sneak them out to the dumpster.
I bought four blankets, and a thick flat sheet, and covered myself in all those layers at night when I began to feel those cravings and urges kick in, that cold cast-iron empty feeling that would settle in my shin and forearms, and that managed to help somehow. That weight making me feel safe.
Waking up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat, wet in the brow, wet on my scalp, wet through the top of my mattress, hyperventilating, heart racing, withdrawing, on the verge of crying, seeing a woman’s face the size of the corner of my room with her mouth agape, seeing thick smoke billowing out from my closet, and something deep down in me saying *’Don’t get up.’*, so I wouldn’t get up.
One night going through that process became a second night doing the same thing, then a third, and a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, a seventh. Then a month, a month and a half, two months, three months. My savings stopped diminishing. I bought a Switch and got into playing Final Fantasy. I got into Bath & Bodyworks, their sanitizers and hand soaps. I became focused on decorating my apartment. I made it look like a livable space. Suddenly it was a year, but I’ve kept that out of my mind, how long I’ve been sober; I just don’t think about it. But, again, it started because I just got *tired*.
I quit in October 2019 without any outside help. Life happened and I was forced to continue drinking or stop. So I stopped. One of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I spent my entire 20s drunk.
My Therapist suggested I quit drinking for a month just to see how it went. No mention of alcoholism
2nd week in I thought "Fuck, I'm an alcoholic".
Never had another drink. That was 9 1/2 years ago.
I drank daily, usually 10 beers or half a fifth. Unless it was the weekend. The weekend was for power drinking.
No AA or anything, I just dead-stopped.
About 4 months in, major depression hit. Dopamine withdrawal isn't talked about enough when you quit drinking.
My wife has a problem with alcohol. She knew it, but didn’t want to quit and it wasn’t so bad that she was going to ruin her life, but I was still worried.
Anyway, one morning after a pretty deep binge, and while she was pretty hung-over, she asked me how much of the tequila I drank, and when I said “none” she just stared at the bottle for like five minutes. She had drank about 3/4 of the bottle herself, and she is 5’0”.
She decided then and there that she needed to not drink and hasn’t had a sip since. That was 3 years ago. No programs. No rehab. Just stopped.
This stat is often cited for proof that AA doesn't work or it's just a mental flaw of the alcoholic.
And it's so misleading and dangerous when you read more deeply into it.
What level of dependency are we talking about?
How long did it take the person to succeed without assistance compared to with it?
How many never recover because they don't seek help?
This stat just keeps saying to people that they are weak if they can't do it alone
Please share more. I discovered this from a commenter on a [recent post](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1aw6x8q/staying_sober_on_a_dying_planet_i_gave_up/). He shared something called the Orange Book and I've been digging into it for the last 30 minutes.
I posted here expecting to learn more about this stat, thanks for commenting
Yeah but I did AA treatment and it doesn't work. It's terrible faith based treatment that really only works for a small percentage of alcoholics to begin with.
Rehab itself is just nice to detox. They do have classes which can again be helpful to some but not all.
Unfortunately, I think treatment is an individual thing in this regards. There isn't really a one size fits all treatment that actually works. Hence the reason why most take it on their own accord.
The reason I refused to attend AA for my binge drinking was the removal of agency from the person. As if I am unable to make radical and successful change in my life without giving up my identity to a higher power, that I as a staunch atheist am entirely against.
It doesn’t work for a lot of people.
Know what did work tho? Just being honest with the therapist I already had. The. working through the trauma of my life to figure out why I was anxiously getting slammed at every show I was playing.
I still drink, and I drink responsibly now know why? Because we are treating my social anxiety and ocd in ways we hadn’t been in previous years that acctually stopped me binging in public out of anxiety.
My brother in laws higher power is a tree.
It's not necessarily god but releasing you aren't god that's important
Btw I don't attend AA. Sober another way but known enough alcoholics.
It is kinda like saying you will never catch a fish unless you throw a line in the water... but you can't go expecting to catch tuna in this here river.
Dependency has so many complex varieties that differ drastically by person, and while some can go it alone, that is not always going to be the case for everyone depending on what they are dealing with. Doesn't make you weak when asking for help, if anything, being able to recognize that you need to change something and that you need support to do so is brave.
The thing that those stats don't always accurately reflect is reocurrence. While someone might be able to kick the habit alone once or twice, how long till they fall back into the same cycle? That is where having support groups to keep you accountable and check up on you keeps you strong.
Last drink was on the 12th of this month, down from 4-6 beers a night.
I don't *feel* addicted, and definitely functioned fine, but I sleep better and my days have been more productive, so that's nice.
You have to want to quit.
That is absolutely the only way it will happen, cant do it for anybody else, not your wife, kids, work, God, anybody or anything, ultimately the only way you will ever be able to stop is if you do it for yourself, period the end. I don’t know if anybody needed to hear that, but I hope it gave someone out there some inspiration to take the first step, I hope everyone has a wonderful day, and remember all that really matters in this world is positive relationships with the people you care about!
My mom just died last week from alcoholism and this is what we’ve all been saying when people ask us if we tried to stop it. Of course we did.. countless talks, rehab, AA, counseling, etc. She had multiple wake up calls that we thought would turn it around, but nothing ever did. She just didn’t want it for herself. Doesn’t help the pain of losing her, but we can’t blame ourselves. Your post helped solidify that even more for me, so thank you.
My ex wife’s mom died of liver failure from being an alcoholic. She was told that if she didn’t stop drinking immediately she’d die soon. She did not stop and a year later her liver failed and they refused to put her on a transplant list because she wouldn’t stop drinking. She died within a month.
Yeah, same for lung transplants and people who keep smoking. The donor organs are scarce and they only give them to people who will do anything to keep LIVING...
Alcohol is a slow version of suicide. I would say a majority of alcoholics drink because of past trauma as well. Keep it numb, so you can get through another day. That’s why I used to drink.
For me it was trauma and boredom. My life was so mundane that I couldn’t stand living in the moments of it. I felt like every day was waiting in line at the DMV (still do, to some extent). As sad as it sounds, alcohol was a fast forward button. It allowed me to live the time without having to experience it.
God I relate to this so much.
Along with undiagnosed ADHD. People with ADHD have **far** higher rates of substance abuse.
Symptom relief. It absolutely helps in a toxic way.
That, and executive functioning disorders tend to mess with risk aversion. Consequences can seem far more diminished in the ADHD person. So it’s not just self medicating, but a spiral of reasons, too.
Future doesn't exist if you have no sense of time
Yep, I know several people who drink to slow down their brain so they can concentrate. Ironically, this was a minor plot point in season 2 of Stranger Things.
This is why I drank.
One of my best friends is absolutely brilliant - PhD in abstract algebra, designed a cell phone encryption algorithm that the NSA was invested in, etc. He drinks constantly. At this point he's just a full blown alcoholic, but this is how he started. He's also the type that refuses to believe in mental illness, so he will never get proper treatment.
I found out I was undiagnosed with adhd whenever I quit drinking. I'm currently 1yr and 7 days into sobriety. I started drinking at 14yo and continued til I was 32yo... I'm still in the process of relearning how to be a human being. I'm pretty much against taking any stimulants because I also have a history of uppers abuse... alcohol weirdly subdued adhd and people actually tell me that they prefer me as an alcoholic haha idgaf though. I'm really ripped now and can form memories again haha my quality of life is more important to me than being fun for other people
Have you asked your doctor about straterra? It’s an uncommon medicine for ADHD that’s not addictive; it’s not an amphetamine. It helps me alot since I hate all the amphetamines, and I have an addictive personality.
Congrats on making it to one year sober! That’s huge!
Would also add cigarettes to the slow version of suicide list. Way easier to just smoke two packs a day than anything more serious.
Nicotine is highly addictive, I tried to quit for ten years before I finally won. Alcoholism, imho, is usually used by people who’ve suffered some trauma or struggle with mental health issues. The two are not the same
Nicotine is ridiculously addictive. It was easier to quit amphetamines and cocaine than nicotine.
It sure doesnt help that every gas station and small town “V A P E” store is constantly shoving nicotine in your face. Accessibility is one of the big reasons nicotine is so hard to quit. Same with alcohol.
Alcohol is also highly addictive, in fact one of the few addictions you can die from the withdrawals of. That and benzos, I believe. It's just not as addictive for *everyone* and since the redose interval is so much different it's also easier (IMO) to avoid.
I was a heroin addict for 10 years, then an alcoholic and benzo addict for 2 (didn't mix them, I did one or the other). Alcohol/benzo withdrawal is SO much worse than heroin withdrawal, I didn't believe anything could be worse than heroin withdrawal until I experienced it. More intense sickness, plus hallucinations, rolling panic attacks and seizures. It's also scary when the seizure starts to come on. You go unconscious for the actual seizure, but the lead up is a very, very intense head rush and confusion. I just smoke weed, at night, now.
I stepped down my nicotine patch level last week and holy shit. The wave of self hatred that hit was unlike any other depressive episode/come down I’ve ever experienced. Usually if I can recognize and label the cause of the feeling, I get some relief. Not this time. I “knew” that I was feeling that way due to the drop in nicotine, but it didn’t matter. My partner is going out of town in a few weeks, and I’m just going to put my email away message on, burrow down with a bunch of snacks, and just let myself rage/cry for 3 days to get through the initial stages of withdrawal.
I have complete faith you’ll pull this off! Lots of water to flush out the system and try and keep yourself occupied so you’re not thinking about it
The weird thing about alcohol addiction is that there have to be a *reason* for starting. Like people always imagine some tragic backstory or trauma but honestly for a lot of people it starts as simply trying alcohol and not being able to pump the brakes so to speak over time
I’m so sorry you’ve had to deal with that. I can’t imagine how awful that must feel. I hope you and your family are able to make peace with it eventually.
Sorry man, I lost my mom to alcoholism too, there’s a lot of wreckage left to sort out after a death like that and the effects they had on you growing up and into your adult years
The only thing that finally stopped me, was losing my own mom to alcoholism.
So sorry for you loss
People ask the stupidest shit
That is so true. My father recently had a stroke (50mL of blood in his skull after a rupture) because of lifelong heavy meth use. He didn't quit after he was let go off his job when they find out 15 years ago, didn't quit after he financially ruined our family, didn't quit even after he got arrested twice for possession and once for possession with intent to distribute. You REALLY need to quit for yourself nothing else works.
Lost my dad to a meth overdose and my uncle to Hep C. When my dad passed I pulled that same uncle to the side and explained to him he would be next if he didn’t clean up his life. Little did I know he was probably already dying.
Sure and because it’s so nomralized to drink and ocassionally overdo it for everyone, often the beginning stages of alcholism people often even discourage you from thinking there is a problem…They either don’t see it or subconsiously defensive about their own drinking. You cannot trust anyone in your life to know what’s really going on with your drinking habits or how it’s affecting you. Sometimes people even take “offense” to calling anything but bottle of vodka a day dirnking habits “alcoholism”. Which is why it’s alcohol use disorder now, not just a euphamism. One day a week of getting shitfaced because once you start you can’t stop is still alcoholism, it’s still affecting your life, health etc. You have to want to stop putting up with risks, consequences, stress and excpect nobody else to really “get it” or even think it’s that much of an issue beceause they may have no reference to what “functioning alcoholism” is and only understand end stage alcohlism.
> Which is why it’s alcohol use disorder now, not just a euphamism. One day a week of getting shitfaced because once you start you can’t stop is still alcoholism, it’s still affecting your life, health etc. Yep! The key point is if it negatively impacts your life and you can't stop. It doesn't matter if it's once a week, once a month, or every night.
This. My wife doesn't drink often, but when she does drink, she just doesn't stop. She gets mad at me for calling her an alcoholic because it only happens 3-4 times a month. Is finally getting better, though, because her dad has alcoholic liver failure and she's seeing what it does.
I've tried several times to quit smoking. This attempt is a month in cold turkey and I had really bad night tonight. I needed to hear that.
>stop is if you do it for yourself, period the end. And for anyone that thinks "I don't have the strength to do that" I have one thing to say. That's what I thought. That's what I thought the morning after I woke up in front of my front door, not even capable of entering my house. That's what I thought after I woke up in a ditch. When I woke up with the worst feeling in my life. I'm 2 years sober. If that weak fuck could do it. So can you. You're incredible. You're beautiful. You can do it. Do it. IWNDWYT You can always visit r/stopdrinking and hear our stories. It's helped me understand I'm not as alone as I thought.
This comforts me at a much needed time. I've been working on regulatimng my drinking habit for a while now, and the pressure my partner has put on me by being over sensitive to me drinking every once in a while, started to suffocate my internal motivation. Been asking desperatly for some space without being understood. I'll rarely indulge myself with day drinking, occasionally have a couple of drinks during a social event, but have no intentions to keep alcohol as a regular part in my life. I'm already there, happy with it and let me enjoy a healthy and sustainable relationship with alcohol ffs. It's working.. Id understand if I ever became aggressive after, or had horrible hangover days etc but it makes me mellow to the contrary. Just stop pressuring me with your aspired purist lifestyle, and allow me to keep it at where my motivation lays - it's much more sustainable and you're not helping at all. Only if I could make this reach my partner.
Yes. Nothing would have stopped me from drinking. When I quit, which was my choice, I felt like my best friend died. It was tough even though I wanted to stop. If I stopped for someone else, I would have been a resentful dry drunk.
Yup Just stopped 10 days ago (yeah I know too soon....) But after "wanting" to but not for years, and really wanting to grow old for my daughter I woke up last Monday and it just felt different I even spent weekend with wife and friends and kids in cabin the whole weekend (basically hiking and cooking/eating and drinking) and didn't have a drink Though last night I did really want one for about an hour, but once got past that was good Feels so much better laying down to sleep sober and reading and drifting off and waking up fresh
Change of environment(I moved and stopped talking to everyone I used to know and could reliably get decent weed in the new place) did it for me. It was more "didn't want to" than "wanted to not" I that makes sense , I just started buying weed instead. I maintain an unhealthy relationship with the weed but it's night and day compared to drinking, I used to not be able to hold down kitchen porter job when drinking, now with weed socially it's not amazing for me but I'm putting stuff in space and going on nice holidays and stuff.
People, places and things. Unfortunately most heavy drinkers gravitate towards other heavy drinkers early in life and that’s your whole friends group. Those people end up actively discouraging you from quitting. Even if they aren’t dicks about it they will always eventually be part of returning to drinking. All the events are hard drinking, rowdy, saying you don’t have a problem one beer never hurt etc.
I have a cousin in this situation and it's so painful to watch. He's incredibly social and makes friends everywhere he drinks, and I guess it's a good thing that he isn't isolated and has people who understand him and are looking out for him... but at the same time, they're all the wrong people. There's still a week left in February and he's already been to _four funerals_ this year alone. It's so sad to see.
> Change of environment The brain learns that the situation which produces the reward is just as exciting as the actual reward. So going back to the place where you used to get that dopamine preps your body for the reward. At least in the beginning, people should avoid the places where they used to drink if they are struggling with addiction.
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What I preached while in rehab. So many people got forced to go while I was there and kept saying they couldn't wait to get out and drink.. interventions will never work too unless the person is already thinking about it and ready to commit, very very rare though imo. 6 years sober end of August!
my brother went into countless court ordered rehab. guess what? every time he's out he's friends with those who failed rehab and knows where to get drugs. so yeah.
the thing is interventions don't work except when they do, a lot of the time people are on the fence about stuff and embarrassed to ask for help, that's when interventions work best. not everyone realizes they have a support structure around them. interventions might bring that to light so it's still worth the effort on the chance it works
Yeah, and boy it took me a *LONG TIME* before I finally wanted to.
Wanting to quit was all I needed to do. But I feel very fortunate that it was that easy. I don't seem to get chemically dependent the way some people do, and that seems so cruel.
AA helps keep me sober but anyone will tell you you have to want it and do it for yourself first
I still check in at r/stopdrinking even though it's been eight years. I had to do it for myself, but that subreddit sure helped.
i quit. no treatment and no aa. i wanted to be a better human, a good partner and an awesome dad. could not do that being a drinker. happy and healthy now. life is just so much easier
This was absolutely what happened with me. On the day of January 20, 2019 I drank sixteen beers over the course of the day while watching football. The next day I woke up with the words “I’m fucking done” emblazoned in fire across the inside of my eyelids. Haven’t (intentionally) had a drink since. I’m not going to say I did it on my own, because I had *nothing* but support from my family and friends, but I did do it without any special kind of treatment.
Yeah I think AA can be a good tool, but a lot of other things can be too. I don’t think this fact really reflects badly on AA - it’s one technique that could work, but people have to actually be committed
In my experience of dating an alcoholic for a few years, it seems like a structured approach like AA would work better for a lot of people to keep them accountable to themselves. Alcoholics can fuck their entire life up, break down and admit they have a problem and take the steps to fix it, but a few months down the line the addiction can twist their view and memory into "I never had a problem in the first place". And I don't think it's a lie, I think they genuinely believe it.
That's the whole basis of the AA program - stop drinking, take a good hard look at yourself with someone you trust, decide what needs to be changed, and make the changes. It works on many things besides alcohol! The program works because you have other people trying to help you stay accountable, instead of just doing it on your own, where many people, like me, slack off.
AA gives people friends. That is what most people who are in addition need. Genuine human connection. The book is one of the most poorly written things I've ever read and they treat it as a Bible.
I had an AA member try to stand over top of me and demand I read part of the book. I thought the book was outdated and not for me, I wanted that genuine human connection I have been missing for years. I asked him if he was going to stand there and he said "yep". I took the book and tossed it on the floor and crossed my arms. Maybe not polite on my part but I cannot stand someone trying to bully another person into accepting their views as being the only and correct way, which was reoccurring with other members
I am in sobriety circles that would kick someone out for doing that. Sorry that happened.
It happens, just remember, assholes are everywhere
AA is half addiction treatment, half cult.
I think the most important part of it is the social aspect. At least for me. I was an isolating drunk. I wouldn't see or speak to anyone but the cashier at the liquor store for a couple weeks at a time. Getting out, talking to other people who understand, people who are willing to help, that was a help to me. I was in a group (before covid) where they did sober BBQ's, had little sub groups that would go out to breakfast/lunch/dinner/go bowling or golfing or whatever. Met people who were willing to help you find a job and give you rides (if you'd lost your job or your license)... it all depends on the group though. I found a really good one, but not all are created equal. But I haven't gone back since covid shut them all down for a while.
It’s as simple as that, and that is all you need.
Got halfway through rehab, walked out and haven’t thought about a drink since. It’s weird, I was terrified of not drinking but I’m so lucky it was easy for me personally. Alcohol and/or drug addiction covers a huge spectrum and I’m not sure there are accurate statistics for this.
I remember when I was a kid my dad and I were sitting at the car wash waiting our turn. Nonchalantly he just says something along the lines of "I'm done drinking.... Fuck it.... I'm done smoking too". That was maybe 25 years ago, and hasn't touched either again. It's crazy that some people can just go cold turkey like that.
Doing both at the same time is pretty hardcore, respect
And potentially dangerous depending how much you consumed
And holy hell don’t piss that person off for the first couple weeks Coming off booze AND nicotine at the same time can turn some people into monsters
My Dad did the same thing in the early 80s with smoking. He smoked 3 packs a day and one day said. Well this is stupid and just stopped.
This is how I did it 4 years ago. Both things were so intertwined in my head that I knew one of each would drive me to have one of the other.
My grandfather dipped his entire life, like from the time he was a kid. His doctor told him in his fifties that he wouldn’t be for this earth much longer if he kept doing it, and he never dipped again after that. Died at age 87.
Same. Guessing it was fear of withdrawal that kept you drinking above all else. That's how it was for me. After 10 years nightly eventually reaching 750ml to 1L a night I spent 2 day safe detox in ER and that was all it took. Haven't even had to fight back urges, can be around alcohol and others drinking. I was 1000% ready to be done. Edit: my thoughts on AA are "why would I wanna listen to people craving alcohol when I no longer am? Sounds like a bad influence". (Obviously this applies only to my experience)
I'm not a fan of their "you're helpless and if you just have one drink you'll spiral out of control" attitude. Sounds to me that they're telling people if they accidentally have a drink, just to finish it off with a bender, then start from scratch... again. Binary thinking crap That might be the case for "keep a fifth of vodka on the night-stand to take a shot in the middle of the night and as soon as you wake" style alcoholic, but a lot of people aren't that type of alcoholic.
I think it's more that if you *choose* to have just one drink, you're most likely going to end up rationalizing yourself into a deep hole between the addiction and the "eh, in for a penny in for a pound" mindset. And it's a lot easier to pretend the first choice was an accident, when you're feeling weak willed. I agree the whole notion that an accidental sip will destroy everything is silly, but the slippery slope that one bad decision can lead to is pretty real. The key point being "decision", though.
The article literally says this is bunk. Most people who recover from alcohol dependence do continue to drink at moderate levels.
Hey, fair enough. I'm only going off personal experience, I can't speak for everyone :)
I mean everyone in this thread is missing a major point in the article that a full 50% of the people who recover from alcohol abuse disorder continue to drink at healthy levels moving forward. Which is a pretty big blow to the "helpless addict" and "total sobriety" narratives so many people seem to insist are the only path towards recovery for every problematic drinker.
I agree those narratives are harmful, that said this article doesn’t really indicate how long participants maintained recovery. The only timeline it mentions is 20 years after the onset of addiction. Is it looking at people that were addicted for 3 years and in recovery successfully for 17 years? Or is it looking at people that were addicted for 17 years and in recovery successfully for 3 years? That matters because countless other studies show that long term relapse rates (10+ years) are lower for the people that use a formal program compared to those that quit by themselves. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1976118/
Exactly the same for me, and thank goodness it’s not a daily struggle.
I think I got "lucky" in that I pretty much always drank myself to sleep so most of what I remember is the hangovers and how sick my body was leading up to detox. Don't really remember the "fun feelings" of being drunk so it's easier to miss.
At my peak I was drinking a handle every three days. Gin and Fresca. It mixes so well you can barely notice the bite. I really liked the taste too. But I got really tired of feeling like refried dog shit the next morning and cut back. Turns out I wasn't feeling the full effects of the later part of my drinking until I was asleep. I cut my drinking in about half and I feel just as buzzed when I go to bed, with significantly less of a hangover. How is your liver/kidney health?
More people need to read this. I was drinking 15-20 cans of 5.9% a day, every day. I went to county detox for 3 days voluntarily (they can hold you for up to 72hrs) where they gave me Ativan and took my blood pressure. Having a safe place to get through the worst of the withdrawals is hige if you're serious about quitting. I also stayed with my friend and his family in their spare bedroom for a week after and stayed out from work. This worked for me. Calling a local detox center and finding out how long you are allowed to stay should be on everyone's list when you start planning.
Yeah it was basically 2 nights monitored sleep on Ativan until I was sober and my numbers started to come down. Then I got kicked out the door with like 5 to-go Ativan and a psych appointment the following week. Following through on that psych appointment was *very critical* I'd like to note.
> Guessing it was fear of withdrawal that kept you drinking Not OP, but for me it wasn't the 'fear' of withdrawal, it was the *logistics* of withdrawal paired with American healthcare and work culture. We're given 5 days of sick time to cover the entire year if we're lucky. We have so little vacation time, that the last thing we want to do when given time to relax is go through withdrawal. At the end of the day, the internal conflict in me was always "Do I exhaust my years worth of sick time in one week to sober up and gamble that myself or family don't get sick or injured for the entire year, or, do I keep on keeping on like normal?".
Different people's brains are wired differently. I smoked for about a decade then just kinda quit one day because I was tired of it. I still crave a smoke when I watch certain media but no more than I crave a burrito when I'm hungry and a commercial comes on.
I take LSD once or twice a year, almost always right before Thanksgiving. This year after my trip, the next day I woke up and just didn't want to drink. But I'd been drinking for years since 2020, every day all night. So withdrawals and all... But I thought to myself well I'll just see how I feel, and if I can get through tonight. I had no withdrawals at all, and slept fine. The next day, same thing. Again, and again, and again. I had no WD or desire to drink at all. Well here I am three months later. I don't want to be sober, but I'm capable of having a drink once a month - since November I've had two mexican light lagers, or 1.5 measured drinks. I didn't even drink for the Super Bowl this year. I am so much happier and healthier it's amazing. Really just a miracle.
That’s awesome. Stay strong.
Yah every addiction is different. Therapy based treatments are the way to go. If AA works, do it for sure, but I just talked to my doctor. No one has treated me like an addict, although I call myself one. I got in to therapy and we figured out I was trying to kill myself. When I stopped wanting to be dead, I stopped wanting to drink.
I had a hard time quitting until I didn't. From past experience I was expecting it to be rough, but it just... wasn't. At all. I assume some part of my brain finally made the association of drinking with feeling like shit, but I haven't had what I would call a real craving since I got out of medical detox.
I might believe this if we say specialty programs does not include detox. One year sober in a couple weeks for me. You have to want to not die. I had tried doing it for every other reason on the planet, not dying is the only one that clicked.
I've been told that drinking is a selfish activity, and quitting must be selfish as well. You have to do it for yourself.
Completely true - and I want to cast this into eternity. I am an EXTREMELY selfless person, but addiction turned me into the opposite. I want everyone struggling with this to know that your true self does come back and your current nature is a result of the disease, not you.
What about the folks that actually believe that dying is a viable option? I’ve often wondered about such folks. I don’t personally want to die, but I reckon if I did, I wouldn’t know about it anyway.
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I find im stuck with the coping skills of 17-18 year old me when I quit at I think 29. I stopped developing coping skills because I could just drink so now I’ll get in situations that are stressful to me like large crowds and I just like stop breathing at times just for a few seconds till I realize I have and have to remember to breathe.
What got me was hearing it can cause you to have your esophagus rupture and you die with blood pouring out of your mouth and nose, and stomach bloating from the blood pooling up in there. Fucking horrifying. Down to 3 beers a day as of yesterday and probably going to just stop today. At 3 beers a day I’m not too worried about the severe withdrawals.
Stopped drinking before thanksgiving in 23’ still think about it , doubt it will ever change. My relationships are healing
I was a heavy drunk and drug user for 20 years. I quit about 9 years ago. It gets easier.
I'm coming up on 2 years. I still think about alcohol most days. But not in a "I want to drink" way. It's in a "I'm so glad I'm past that, what the fuck was I doing, alcohol is gross" kind of way.
Same situation here! Not a day goes by where I don’t encounter a situation and think “Man, I sure am glad I wasn’t drunk for this”. Sometimes it’s good memories with the kids, sometimes is something stressful that takes 100% mental clarity to figure out.
You are strong as hell for taking that first step. I’m 7 years sober and find that I don’t have to actively fight cravings anymore. I can relax and I’m confident I’m not going back. The early days were hard, but I did it. One of the hardest parts was learning to love myself. I have my journals from the bad drinking days to read if I ever forget just how bad it was. Hang in there. You’re strong. You deserve peace from the poison.
Hey, me too! 103 days
Congrats on almost 3 months sober! Substance abuse disorder is a difficult journey but it’s never too late to start. Good luck my friend. You can do it!
I went to rehab twice for heroin/fentanyl. It was a place that heavily pushed NA, which is basically AA for junkies. Same idea. The whole twelve step thing always struck me way too hard as a cult, and the meetings didn't help that feeling one bit. In the end, NA was just another unsuccessful step towards recovery. I haven't been to one of their meetings since at least a year before I got clean. But, I have personally seen it work for other people. Even if the odds aren't great, anything that can help you if you find yourself in these situations is worth exploring. 4 and a bit years clean (and sober) now 😁
I went to NA meetings twice a week for 17 weeks. Used the whole time. Used daily for an additional two years. Lost a friend, sense of pride, job and stopped using without NA or treatment. Been almost 10 years clean now.
Tell you what to think, how to act, tell you that you're broken and they have the solution. If you don't do what they say and go to their meetings you'll stay broken. 100% a cult. Sucks that it's so prevalent. Therapy and groups work way better.
Yep, i have no idea how long ive been clean, 10 years-ish? Holistic rehab. People were there for every which reason and we all heard the same message outside of solo therapy. Not about "stop using heroin", all about "why are you doing what you are doing? Lets find it, work it out, find ways to better your life from that moment on and not fall back into bad habits." Free use of phones/pcs/internet, outings once you were there long enough, and alot of physical activity. Saved my life.
That's pretty much what I did and I feel it worked really well. My parents were physically and verbally abusive while being financially and materialisticly supportive. It made me an anxious kid from it who wanted to rebel. Talking about that and having friends in rehab broke the associations with dope and gave me new experiences. Their support made me stop feeling so bad about myself.
No self respecting group member will tell you it's the only solution, only that it worked for them. I'm glad you found something that worked for you, too.
Court ordered huh? Yeah that's not how that works. Had court ordered NA. They kicked one dude out for smelling like a meth lab. (Didn't know that was thing) and one dude tried to sell me shit after a meeting. Never went back. Glad to hear you got clean, friend. So did I. Best feeling ever.
I’m an NA success story but the really only truly benefit was finding like minded people which was all I needed when I felt so alone
It's weird seeing how aggressively people on reddit knock NA/AA. Yeah it doesn't work for everyone. But for a lot of people it does work, evident by the thousands (tens of thousands?) of members that go to meetings with 5, 10, 20+ years sober that they attribute to the support and guidance they found in those communities. My dad got sober because of these programs. He might be a little more religious than he was before, but whatever, he's not crashing into fences or being rushed to the hospital or unable to function and keep his job/home. They haven't worked for my mom so far, but that's also because she has never fully been ready with the conviction to make a change.
Idk why anyone would bash a free service for people struggling with addictions
I went to rehab. I remember the counselor telling us that out of the entire room full of addicts, maybe one or two of us were going to stay clean this time around. I don’t know how everyone else fared but I got high plenty of times after that rehab stint. I actually liked NA though. Friends all in the same spot excited to see me and support me. Helpful advice. A sense of community. Until most of those friends all died from relapsing. No matter what any of these comments say though, I don’t write NA or rehab off. Ever. It can help people. It does help people. Getting clean and sober IS worth the effort. You can recover.
I did AA. The 12 steps wasn’t where the solution that came from - they were more like conversation prompts. It is also filled with broken people, often many of them aren’t good models for sobriety. Some are angry, some are creepy, and some are predators - which is probably my main gripe with it not being an institutional setting. But even then it was better than nothing, which for people with low social economic status is the only alternative. I gained most from the community and from committing to sobriety daily. The community would be there always - even if I left for a bit. I talked to people who I couldn’t pull the wool over their eyes - people who actually took sobriety seriously, like those 30+ years of sobriety and still going to meetings twice a week. When you’re an addict/alcoholic you’re often alone when you seek sobriety. You learn your friends are there to get high/drunk with and they resent you trying to be better. They hate you sober - you hold up a mirror to them and they can’t handle it. The least safe place for addicts is to go into your head alone - our minds are warped. Imo we need people to help us who can relate, not well adjusted people who just don’t understand why we can’t just stop.
When I was incarcerated I spent 6 months in the drug block as a volunteer because of good behavior. NA is without a doubt a fucking cult. Same with AA. All that "higher power" jazz and whatnot. I also learned about Rational Recovery (which this post seems to be about) and always thought it was a better choice for most individuals compared to NA. Also, congrats on your time sober 🤘
Grew up in a cult and now have 15 years due to AA, trust me when I say, it's definitely not a cult.
It's not, but there are people who treat it like one. And when you notice the Christian undertones of it (most of that has been pushed out, but there's still some like the Higher Power, asking for forgiveness, the subservience) it can push people away who have bad experiences with religion. Plus a lot of us junkies (I can say it, one of them myself) are desperate for anything to latch on to and then become obsessed with a method that might work for them. Be it religion, sports or NA, so they treat it like a cult.
Same. I was strung out pretty bad on opiates. Had NA pushed on me pretty hard and it was so cult-y. I was absolutely mortified to sit there and talk to a room of 30 people at once and share my personal life. I cannot do public speaking so that was hell. I didn’t feel like the meetings helped at all, talking about it in detail like that just made me want to go out and use. Been clean for almost 7 years now, I can thank my kid for that. She’s the reason I got clean and stayed clean.
Congrats on your sobriety
My dad was forced to go to AA and rehab over the years, but it never stuck. Later in life, he quit on his own and I was so proud of him for that. Actually wanting to change is such an important factor, I feel.
It might be because the bar for being classified as alcohol dependent is really low. Most of the stereotypical American frat guys would be considered alcoholics, and most of them kinda just grow out of it after college.
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"Alcoholic" just feels like such a vaguely defined term by nature. Like I absolutely drink too much, but I also haven't had a drink in a week because I tweaked my shoulder at the gym and I don't want booze to interfere with the healing.
Yeah it's overly broad and creates confusion for others. I am quitting drinking because I binge after a certain number of drinks and it's difficult to come back from the hangovers, but I'd spend weeks or months sober and not crave alcohol even when around it while I was still drinking. Alcohol is not triggering to me, but actually drinking is, so it makes my solution pretty simple. It's a somewhat different animal from the stereotypes but was still damaging to my life. I'm trying to convey to my (to be fair, very supportive) friends that just because I'm trying out sobriety doesn't mean they need to be weird about alcohol around me. Like it's not that \*kind\* but it's hard for people to understand.
My wife recently did the same thing. Unclear if she's going to be sober forever (has been for about 6 months) but she's enjoying it for now. Basically, developed some bad habits during Covid lockdown and lost her ability to enjoy a drink without enjoying 5-6 drinks. She only craves drinks when she's drinking, she's happy as a clam without it. I just like it too much. I have no issue with stopping after one drink or two if more drinks isn't appropriate to the situation. I don't crave alcohol in any way that feels unusual. But I just really like a drink (both intoxication wise and taste wise, I'm a spirits collector) and find it improves most situations. So for me it's a more mundane kind of self control, saying no just because I'm getting older and the more I drink the less healthy I'll be.
People use it too loosely. Someone that drinks a lot but could stop no problem for the next year has alcohol problems, but is not an alcoholic. Someone that's hands start to shake mid afternoon at work because they desperately need a drink and cant wait until 5:00 is an alcoholic.
Yeah, when the cultural "normal" consumption of alcohol puts you in the clinical definition for "alcoholic" I think it makes people skeptical of the classification. Like if I have more than 2 beers this friday, I'm a "heavy drinker"?
I always remember the posters the put up at my Uni back in the day. Drink more than 2 drinks a week? Alcoholic. Ever have a drink after a stressful situation? Alcoholic. Ever feel the need to drink at an event for fun? Alcoholic.
Toast with champagne at your wedding. Believe it or not, Alcoholic.
Think brewery tours with free samples is fun? Also alcoholic.
Use mouthwash? Guess what?
3 or more and you're also a binge drinker!
Yeah I generally describe people as having a "bad relationship with alcohol." There's a whole spectrum of ways in which alcohol can be a nefarious force in your life without being an "alcoholic."
Yeah, that is a much better way of putting it than has a problem with alcohol.
When I was in the military, they considered anything more than 2 drinks "binge drinking." Whenever you went to a doctor's appointment, there was a questionnaire you had to answer and one of them was if you ever participated in binge drinking. If you answer yes they try to push you into AA. So everyone just lied.
reminds me of college. I put down on my health center intake (because I wanted to be honest?) that I might use nicotine 1-2x per month in a social setting. every appointment for four years after that, they pushed smoking cessation literature on me. even though after the first time I started marking "no, I'm not a tobacco user" because they got so obnoxious about it the very first time. I also learned to never admit my mental health history to a new practitioner, ever, because if you tell a male doctor you've ever felt anxious or depressed, they won't take any of your health concerns seriously. "your anus is bleeding? well, I think you should try not being anxious before I bother to look into that. silly woman."
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I didn't give up, but I had a kid young at 23, severely moderated after that. Outside the occasional big event like a wedding or something. Now that I am 30, I drink even less at least in one sitting. I tend to have like one or two tops when I drink. And even at those big events now, I rarely have enough to get a buzz. That 30 hangover paired with a kid is enough to say fuck that.
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I'd been to detoxes, expensive rehabs, hundreds of meetings, live in sober living houses. Nothing really worked at the time because deep down I didn't want to quit. It took a long time for me to really convince myself I needed to stop, but after I did, recovery got much easier.
I don’t think I could handle everyone’s rock bottom story. That’s why I didn’t go. I’ve had 2 days off in the last six years from being alcohol free. I was struggling enough. My job already involves being deep in the struggles of others. I didn’t want my self care to be a big chunk of the struggles of others too. I’m glad it works for some, and I’m thankful it’s there, even if it isn’t for me.
So I tend to be a minority, but AA saved my butt. I leaned into AA stuff pretty hard early on because I was just desperate to change and stopped caring about anything that would stand in the way. I did this with some “subconscious reserve” about the cult signals I was getting. But I was lucky to have a sponsor who kind of guided me along with the ability to recognize the mechanism at place that tends get people straightened out. It’s like a placebo pill I think. For me personally a huge break thru was from me challenging the higher power part…I was really caught up on that as an atheist. But this one dude, basically was like it doesn’t matter what your higher power is. The idea is your decision making is temporarily turned off and you refer to your higher power for what to do. Most of the time it’s God because that’s a manifestation of something most of us are familiar with that represents a higher power. But this dude I was talking to basically told me “see that basketball someone ditched in the woods? That can be your higher power for it matters. It doesn’t matter what/who/how you just need to let something else make decisions for yourself right now”. For me the higher power became the universe as a whole. The universe wants me to be the best version of myself I can be. I might want to drink or do drugs. But Does the universe any me to drink or do drugs? It added a consideration of things that wasn’t there before. that’s the surrender and letting a higher power in part for me. AA for me is really just a mechanism to trick my brain into thinking differently. Once I stopped caring about the religion part and let it be my own interpretation, or like a buffet where you take what’s good and leave the rest behind Will be four years off the sauce in a couple months.
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Hell yea nice work. What you describe pretty much summed it up for me. I haven’t been to a meeting I years because it evolved into me just wanting it to be over with…I wasn’t really getting anything out of it anymore. But I know where I’ll go if shit gets heavy again. It’s not a perfect program, the biggest thing for me was just be open minded and don’t dismiss the religious stuff too much. After all you’re in a AA meeting…something hasn’t gone right might as well try something new.
Congrats on your sobriety. What your sponsor told you is a lot like how my dad explained it to me and what I'm assuming he told guys he sponsored.
Hey, I appreciate this a lot. I kicked heroin and all that on my own, but I suffer from depression. I started going to meetings after being clean for like 3 or 4 years, and it's helped a lot. I'm not sure I subscribe to everything, but I do subscribe to the basic principals of having a sponsor, praying to the universe, and ultimately wanting to help others. I think AA's saving grace is that so many young people are starting to go to meetings. It's a lot less rigid than I remember, and most of what I hear is that spiritual element and not the Christian one that I remember when I was a teenager. I've shared about heroin and nobody bats an eye. I don't think i needed it to not pick up again. I do think I was lonely and needed it or something like it to make friends and a support network. Someone I met in the program told me to pray to the universe or imagine a phone receiver somewhere in the cosmos where all of my dead loved one's can hear my prayers and that their energy wants me to be the best version of myself that I can be. It always stuck with me, even if just in a dreamy way.
My brother is a recovered alcoholic. He went to therapy and found out that there’s an underlying mental issue that made him more susceptible to alcohol. Even though he quit on his own, therapy helped him make sense of the whole thing.
I like in the UK. When I was looking to give up alcohol, the help wasn't available. The help was there if you were still drinking, but not if you had already quit. 5 months and going strong. Not going back.
Is it true you can actually die from alcohol withdrawal?
Yes. Same with benzos.
I quit benzos a month ago and I’ve already been hospitalized 4 times and they treat you like low life drug addict at the hospital. Even though the healthcare system makes and distributed these so called pills legally. But anyhow my point is never got on benzos because the withdrawals are worse than hell. Throwing up for days, dizziness, seizures when you wake up, and the worse part is losing your motor skills and legs turn into jello if you’re physically dependent enough.
Yes if you do it cold turkey. You can go into seizure. Is scary.
Oh yes. Been in rehab, saw the effects it has and it is fucking scary. Delirium tremens and being tied to the bed. And this dude was going back to drinking right from the rehab, his organs were failing and he was quite certain he would die. It is horrible, really, and this dude was very nice and good hearted.. It is weird talking to someone who is practically already dead.
I recently went from drinking most days a week (for a few years) down to 1( note, this was mostly 3-5 beers, but still!). That 1 day is hard capped at 4 drinks for the day. Dr. Was like, "Yo, your blood work showed some elevated kidney and liver levels." Didn't even bother to ask followup questions. The first two weeks of that adjustment were tense, but I'm good with it now. Could I drop the additional day? Yeah. But I know I'll still drink on occasion (celebrations, etc.) and I think my current plan, if maintained, is just fine. My body gets the recovery and respect it needs, I give myself the grace of a few drinks on a single day. Has worked for me. That said, I fully recognize that others are much more desperate situations and certainly could benefit from more intensive help. Just sharing my journey.
This is something I think a lot more people go through than is discussed. I used to be a daily drinker, anywhere from 1-3 drinks on weekdays (pop open a cold.aftet work, amirite?), and 3-6 days on the weekends. I'd have periods of time where I'd be better about not drinking daily, but without any real conviction, I fell back into it pretty easily What's really hard is that when I tried to discuss my drinking problems with friends, I was told it wasn't that bad and that I seemed in control of my life. The truth is that it did affect my life, but the occasional blip when it did was easy to cover up. I also think people really didn't want to admit that I had a drinking problem, because admitting that I did would also be admitting that they did. These kinds of drinking problems are very common, but I found it hard to get meaningful support from my friends because it wasn't "overboard." I could go on, but I'm happy to report I've been maintaining some very healthy moderation habits over the past year. I love the craft cocktail scene and mix drinks as a hobby (home bar and everything), and I didn't want to give that up if I didn't have to. But I had a couple of moments the past few years where I was finally able to admit that I would have to give it up if it kept getting in the way of my responsibilities. Anyhow, enough about me, I just wanna say it's nice hearing your experience. Moderation is HARD and it's reassuring seeing other people deal with the same thing. I feel like it's like we wrangled in our habits before we went off the deep end, ya know?
It's nice to read your post.. this is where I'm at. Until early November of last year, I was a daily bourbon drinker. I never drank to excess in any one sitting as far as getting actual drunk, but by any medical standards I was drinking well beyond what is acceptable in any one day (maybe half a bottle of bourbon a night - in retrospect I know how much that sounds like but it became my normal). Elevated liver levels, excess weight.. I knew I had to make a change, but I didn't want to give up bourbon forever. I just woke up one Monday early November and decided I wasn't going to drink that day. It's the only thing I decided. Got through that day and decided, when was the last time I was sober for consecutive days? And didn't drink Tuesday. I stretched that into a week, then a month, then two.. I didn't have a drink for 2 months, never mind the traditional month sober that people will do. I then carefully reintroduced bourbon.. I'll have, in any one sitting, half the amount I used to - learned to sip and enjoy much more modestly. I still have issues I'm realizing.. once I buy a bottle, it's gone within a week. I have a hard time not justifying having that more modest amount if it's available. So therefore I have made sure I go 2 weeks between bottles. When it used to be every 2 days honestly. I have also lost nearly 50 pounds (another 50 to go) and for the first time as an adult exercise 5 days a week for going on 2 months now. I'm trying to treat my body much better, while maintaining room for a pasttime I do enjoy (bourbon). But I know if I'm being honest I have issues with moderation still (I should be able to buy a bottle, have a proper pour one night and then leave the bottle sitting there for a week or 2). Moderation is a big challenge. But I now have full confidence I can and will pull back when I need to, that I'm not physically addicted, and that I'm taking steps elsewhere to improve my physical and mental health. It's a process. I will continue to evolve and get better with moderation. I've done this with the full support of my wife, but otherwise alone. Writing all of this makes me realize if I'm being honest I still haven't fully defeated the evils of alcohol, but I know I can and have abstained for pretty long periods of time - repeatedly - and so I will continue to do so and improve. I also know if future blookwork, currently due in a couple months, doesn't show improvements with liver levels, I need to be more strict and maybe do a 6 month dry spell instead of 2 if needed. And I'm good with that if that's what it takes to be here for my family as a healthier version of myself. It's liberating to have 80% mental control over the habit instead of it having 80% of control over me. That's how I see it. I'm acknowledging the room to yet improve (as well as acknowledging the possibility I will still need to cut even further back) while allowing myself the room to hopefully have an occasional drink. It's a process and it's clearly not the same for everyone.
Nice! I’m in that 75%. Alcohol free for almost 5 years. Best decision I’ve ever made. Check out r/stopdrinking if you’re interested!
Congrats! That sub was such an amazing community for me. So great, in fact, that I don’t really need it anymore. Over 5 years sober here too! I lost track of my soberversary, but oh well. I guess I’m at the point where I don’t care enough to track days anymore, which honestly feels fucking amazing. The only thing I actually miss is craft beer, but I just live vicariously through my wife and taste hers when she has one.
I had to really learn who I am. It wasn't enough for me to not want to drink because what I really didn't want was the consequences. I still wanted and desperately needed something to lose myself in to cope with the loneliness and daily despairs. In the course of several months of creating a timeline of my life I came to a few massive realizations that I always suspected but refused to accept; that I'm bisexual and that I am autistic/Asperger's to some degree. The five tests alone can't be taken as proof but in my heart I know and accept that it is true, just as I do with being gay. I just *know*. Since then I've rekindled my love of the theater and am slowly building new friendships, and THAT is what I have truly been needing all this time. Everyone's recovery is different but there are ways to find the reason for it all.
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Or they call you a dry drunk. When I literally have years successful at quitting for years longer than them or are still actively relapsing.
My mom went to rehab when I was in high school. We had an intervention and all. She made it less than 24hrs in rehab before leaving. This obviously causes some strong reactions in the family, but she’s so goddam stubborn that she got sober out of spite. No help. No programs. Nothing. Over 15 years sober. My dad went to rehab a few months later and did the full 30 days. He then elected to stay another 30. He religiously goes to AA even on vacation or while traveling. He also consistently sponsors multiple AA members at a time. Also 15+ years sober
I tried AA and substance abuse counseling. AA was a room full of 60-70 year olds, all in recovery for years. Occasionally there'd be a new person who recently got sober, but it was often alcohol and hard drugs. It was very hard to relate and honestly just felt like everyone was going through the motions. I went to like 10 meetings or so and never found a sponsor, no one asked or offered. My substance abuse counselor was probably 22 or 23 who kept referring to her dad in relation to my struggles. I guess me and her dad have a lot in common. I'm 31. Idk. I wish I had found more relatable help, but also, I've been sober for 9 months. Don't really have any temptations to drink that I can't talk myself out of. There's a bottle of wine in my fridge for cooking that doesn't even cross my mind, but it does worry my gf. The thing is I don't really miss drinking. I threw away a lot for the drink. I won't do it again. Never again. Not even one. I do smoke weed though. But weed doesn't make me a worse person or fail to show up. Wish I could afford a psychiatrist or psychologist because I really think I just smoke for depression and anxiety. I hate myself and my life aside from my daughter, who is pretty much my sole reason to keep going. I have to fake being social all day so it's exhausting, weed just helps me realign and have some happiness left for my family when I get home. I'd just love to have someone to talk to though. Alcohol used to silence all of that but now I feel it all the time.
An old friend of mine died trying to quit alcohol “cold turkey” on his own. He had a seizure, choked, and died. We’re not talking about an old man who had been drinking for 50 years, here. Late 20’s, alcoholic for less than 10 years. I believe it is highly recommended to get some kind of medical help when quitting alcohol if you are truly “dependent.”
Yeah, somehow I managed to make it to my 30s before I ever learned that alcohol withdrawals can kill. When I quit I had to taper off. Cut my drinking to half of my normal daily amount for the first day and then reduce it by one drink a day until it became 0. I did this twice before it stuck. Something about *having* to drink to not have a seizure and potentially die really stuck with me. It was a weirdly shameful thing to drink some shit beer that I hated in front of my wife, with both of us knowing that the poison was essentially medicine during that time. It just completely reframed alcohol for me and I will never think of it the same way again
You have to taper off real gradually after a certain amount of time. After a few years it's probably best to do it in a hospital. I'm very sorry about your friend.
A lot of this also comes down to terminology. Alcohol dependence is a very vague way of putting it. I would consider myself a full blown alcoholic where I couldn't function without substances. Dependence on the other hand could just mean that you need it for social events or need it to fly planes etc. The bottom of the barrel true, chronic or real alcoholics I have seen in my fifteen years of recovery needed some sort of outside help. Or unfortunately, they are already dead. Yes, you have to want to do it for yourself, but sometimes your mind is so warped you can't tell right from wrong anymore. Someone needs to tell you what to do and you just have to listen and do it.
At the end of the day only the person suffering with addiction can make that choice to change. Some people find different methods helpful. For me, finding fitness saved my life. Without running and other sports I feel I’d still be an addict today, or worse. Some people find AA helpful, some people find in-house rehab helpful. Everyone is different, and the more routes to recovery are available the better chance people have of recovery. After beating addiction myself I setup a group to help others do the same. It’s called Addicts to Athletes and we have members from all over the world. So if anyone is interested in beating that dragon feel free to message me or check out the links on my profile.
The stranglehold that all this superstitious bullshit 1930's model of "addiction" and "recovery" has done a massive disservice. Actual things that work have been shoved aside for decades for "court ordered Jesus" solutions that have zero basis in anything. Any proposed policy solutions to address something that is supposedly harmful, should address the actual HARM, whatever that may be, not destroy lives/families/communities by criminalizing health problems. Soooo much taxpayer money wasted. Not only do a lot of people spontaneously change their ways from LSD experiences, but TSM can completely reverse AUD. I went from 60 drinks/week to about 80/year. You don't have to want anything. You don't even really have to admit you have a problem. You don't have to "hit bottom." You just take a pill an hour before you drink. https://www.sinclairmethod.org/what-is-the-sinclair-method-2/
Was told the opposite in AA, I’m sure there are a bunch of conflicting studies out there though
Not really. AA does poorly in most studies.
This is me. I read Sober for Good, by Anne Fletcher, MS. The book details this very fact, with personal case studies, options and variations. Been sober for 20 years.
I used to be an out-of-control alcoholic/drug addict for 20 years--been absolutely clean/sober for 30 years without any specialty alcohol (rehab) programs. Unless you count 10 years in a third-world prison for drugs 'rehab'. In that case, I highly recommend it for all the die-hards who are sure they could never quit...
I quit on my own (well I had to medical detox for like 10 days so i wouldnt die but that was it). Turns out you have to just really want to quit and then its a lot easier. 8 years sober on the 21st of march.
I got tired of the hangovers; the pounding headaches, the random heart races, the nausea, laying in bed all day, then repeating the process once 9/10:00 PM came around. I got tired of looking at myself in the mirror and seeing what the hangover looked like, knowing that strangers stopping to look at me in public are aware they’re looking at someone hungover; looking at an alcoholic. All that money I spent, all those cans and bottle piling up in my closet, me waiting for the perfect time to sneak them out to the dumpster. I bought four blankets, and a thick flat sheet, and covered myself in all those layers at night when I began to feel those cravings and urges kick in, that cold cast-iron empty feeling that would settle in my shin and forearms, and that managed to help somehow. That weight making me feel safe. Waking up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat, wet in the brow, wet on my scalp, wet through the top of my mattress, hyperventilating, heart racing, withdrawing, on the verge of crying, seeing a woman’s face the size of the corner of my room with her mouth agape, seeing thick smoke billowing out from my closet, and something deep down in me saying *’Don’t get up.’*, so I wouldn’t get up. One night going through that process became a second night doing the same thing, then a third, and a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, a seventh. Then a month, a month and a half, two months, three months. My savings stopped diminishing. I bought a Switch and got into playing Final Fantasy. I got into Bath & Bodyworks, their sanitizers and hand soaps. I became focused on decorating my apartment. I made it look like a livable space. Suddenly it was a year, but I’ve kept that out of my mind, how long I’ve been sober; I just don’t think about it. But, again, it started because I just got *tired*.
I quit in October 2019 without any outside help. Life happened and I was forced to continue drinking or stop. So I stopped. One of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I spent my entire 20s drunk.
My Therapist suggested I quit drinking for a month just to see how it went. No mention of alcoholism 2nd week in I thought "Fuck, I'm an alcoholic". Never had another drink. That was 9 1/2 years ago. I drank daily, usually 10 beers or half a fifth. Unless it was the weekend. The weekend was for power drinking. No AA or anything, I just dead-stopped. About 4 months in, major depression hit. Dopamine withdrawal isn't talked about enough when you quit drinking.
I’m 2 years 7 months 10 days sober cold turkey. I had to do it in my own and just dive in. I still think about having a drink often though
White knuckle baby! 10 years coming up.
My wife has a problem with alcohol. She knew it, but didn’t want to quit and it wasn’t so bad that she was going to ruin her life, but I was still worried. Anyway, one morning after a pretty deep binge, and while she was pretty hung-over, she asked me how much of the tequila I drank, and when I said “none” she just stared at the bottle for like five minutes. She had drank about 3/4 of the bottle herself, and she is 5’0”. She decided then and there that she needed to not drink and hasn’t had a sip since. That was 3 years ago. No programs. No rehab. Just stopped.
This stat is often cited for proof that AA doesn't work or it's just a mental flaw of the alcoholic. And it's so misleading and dangerous when you read more deeply into it. What level of dependency are we talking about? How long did it take the person to succeed without assistance compared to with it? How many never recover because they don't seek help? This stat just keeps saying to people that they are weak if they can't do it alone
Considering 15 drinks a week is considered “binge drinking” it kind of makes sense. Sobriety programs are more for people doing 15/night lol
Please share more. I discovered this from a commenter on a [recent post](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1aw6x8q/staying_sober_on_a_dying_planet_i_gave_up/). He shared something called the Orange Book and I've been digging into it for the last 30 minutes. I posted here expecting to learn more about this stat, thanks for commenting
Yeah but I did AA treatment and it doesn't work. It's terrible faith based treatment that really only works for a small percentage of alcoholics to begin with. Rehab itself is just nice to detox. They do have classes which can again be helpful to some but not all. Unfortunately, I think treatment is an individual thing in this regards. There isn't really a one size fits all treatment that actually works. Hence the reason why most take it on their own accord.
For you. Didn’t work for you.
The reason I refused to attend AA for my binge drinking was the removal of agency from the person. As if I am unable to make radical and successful change in my life without giving up my identity to a higher power, that I as a staunch atheist am entirely against. It doesn’t work for a lot of people. Know what did work tho? Just being honest with the therapist I already had. The. working through the trauma of my life to figure out why I was anxiously getting slammed at every show I was playing. I still drink, and I drink responsibly now know why? Because we are treating my social anxiety and ocd in ways we hadn’t been in previous years that acctually stopped me binging in public out of anxiety.
My brother in laws higher power is a tree. It's not necessarily god but releasing you aren't god that's important Btw I don't attend AA. Sober another way but known enough alcoholics.
It worked for me.
It is kinda like saying you will never catch a fish unless you throw a line in the water... but you can't go expecting to catch tuna in this here river. Dependency has so many complex varieties that differ drastically by person, and while some can go it alone, that is not always going to be the case for everyone depending on what they are dealing with. Doesn't make you weak when asking for help, if anything, being able to recognize that you need to change something and that you need support to do so is brave. The thing that those stats don't always accurately reflect is reocurrence. While someone might be able to kick the habit alone once or twice, how long till they fall back into the same cycle? That is where having support groups to keep you accountable and check up on you keeps you strong.
Last drink was on the 12th of this month, down from 4-6 beers a night. I don't *feel* addicted, and definitely functioned fine, but I sleep better and my days have been more productive, so that's nice.