Alcoholism Support Thread - Down the hatch

[repta]

To me a month was enough to clear the worst fog. Cant say an exact timetable, it all depends on how much you have drunk, how often, what is your tolerance etc. One month was enough to get me to the basic bitch apathetic mode ie yeah yeah whatever. In that month i had to forcefully enforce positive thoughts. After that it gets easier. I'm on my 3rd month sober and my mind is calm barring the occasional intrusive thought. In the beginning i had peaks and valleys, when my mind was clear and i felt great and then when i felt like shitty dirt. To my experience when you clear the emotional roller coaster you are winning.

Congrats on your sobriety, I imagined it would take about a month. Maybe TMI but i usually struggle to make it a week without binging atleast once unfortunately...

 

[Your Girlfriend's Dad]

I'm less high functioning every time I fall off the wagon.

Time to get back on.

 

[Rebelmac]

I have drunk equivalent to what you have described in less than 2 hours and planning on drinking more. I sure hope this is a shitpost

Fatty stop drinking.

 

[Manwithamask2]

One thing that i have still left from my drinking days is the habit. Always whether i was gaming, watching a movie/series i always had a drink in my hand. Then it was beer or liquor though mostly beer. Today the habit is still there. I have replaced alcohol with soda, coffee or just water. The ingrained bodily function is still there. Oh and to

i usually struggle to make it a week without binging atleast once unfortunately..

My weekly routine was to get shitfaced after a work week. It takes a lot of effort and doing to replace the beers with whatever non alcoholic drinks but you can do it.

 

[clara red bottoms]

I miss drinking heavily. Pound 3 four loko and just be a fucking menace. Eat a pound of spaghetti. Hit the gym. Get violently ill in the neighbors yard and have a nice nap. Peak.

 

[Your Girlfriend's Dad]

I miss drinking heavily. Pound 3 four loko and just be a fucking menace. Eat a pound of spaghetti. Hit the gym. Get violently ill in the neighbors yard and have a nice nap. Peak.

It's pretty fun being a menace. Then when you're done being hungover 3 days later and you remember you called your girlfriend a cunt and she doesn't look at you the same.

I find it plays better at 22 than 30.

I can say this: I'm almost 2 weeks back on the wagon and I'm starting to feel good again.

 

[56 others]

I dont want to stop drinking. I really enjoy drinking and being drunk, but its the last major thing in the way of my life goals. Gotta cut myself back to only drinking one night a week, barring eating out at a restaurant. I cant lift effectively, I cant eat correctly, and I cant think straight while drinking every night. Shit sucks

Ive got 2 weeks off work, so the first week im spending drinking and doing nothing. The second week im quitting and using to get through the worst of the withdrawl.

 

[Your Girlfriend's Dad]

I dont want to stop drinking. I really enjoy drinking and being drunk, but its the last major thing in the way of my life goals. Gotta cut myself back to only drinking one night a week, barring eating out at a restaurant. I cant lift effectively, I cant eat correctly, and I cant think straight while drinking every night. Shit sucks

Ive got 2 weeks off work, so the first week im spending drinking and doing nothing. The second week im quitting and using to get through the worst of the withdrawl.

I'd recommend spending that first week in withdrawals and the second half of that second week feeling good while sober. I know a lot about making excuses for drinking more. Don't do it.

 

[⋖ cørdion ⋗]

I dont want to stop drinking. I really enjoy drinking and being drunk, but its the last major thing in the way of my life goals. Gotta cut myself back to only drinking one night a week, barring eating out at a restaurant. I cant lift effectively, I cant eat correctly, and I cant think straight while drinking every night. Shit sucks

Ive got 2 weeks off work, so the first week im spending drinking and doing nothing. The second week im quitting and using to get through the worst of the withdrawl.

"A glass of wine before bed" generational wisdom be like.

I think of it like fasting. According to science you can cheat two days (ie the weekend) and still gain basically 100% of the benefits. Drinking once a week, somewhat moderately, or every two weeks, I'm sure is fine. I watched some britbong mad lad vlogger say he finally caved and did a health check, but the doctor said his liver was fine, so I'm like.. am I torturing myself over drinking every two weeks? I do miss being drunk as well, particularly right now, cause I got up 6AM on a day off and haven't done shit all day, so why not get drunk and waste half the day being hungover? "Health!" yeah but for whom? I live alone and mild depression and societal isolation is as dangerous as binge drinking anyway.

The best times I've had in relation to whether to drink or not was when I just did it. Shopped alcohol and snacks the day before drinking, none of this trying to bat it off and then caving in the end. Yes drinking sucks, I'd much rather be sober to make sure an eventual wife gets home safely after making a mess of herself at a function, but fuck. I'm so BORED.

 

[Your Girlfriend's Dad]

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"A glass of wine before bed" generational wisdom be like.

I think of it like fasting. According to science you can cheat two days (ie the weekend) and still gain basically 100% of the benefits. Drinking once a week, somewhat moderately, or every two weeks, I'm sure is fine. I watched some britbong mad lad vlogger say he finally caved and did a health check, but the doctor said his liver was fine, so I'm like.. am I torturing myself over drinking every two weeks? I do miss being drunk as well, particularly right now, cause I got up 6AM on a day off and haven't done shit all day, so why not get drunk and waste half the day being hungover? "Health!" yeah but for whom? I live alone and mild depression and societal isolation is as dangerous as binge drinking anyway.

The best times I've had in relation to whether to drink or not was when I just did it. Shopped alcohol and snacks the day before drinking, none of this trying to bat it off and then caving in the end. Yes drinking sucks, I'd much rather be sober to make sure an eventual wife gets home safely after making a mess of herself at a function, but fuck. I'm so BORED.

A few drinks every few weeks isn't going to hurt anyone. But is that how you drink historically?

Maybe I'll start there after a long break, but that's never where I stay. I've got the sample size to know 10 times out of 10 I'm going to escalate and get more comfortable with my drinking until I'm blacked out for days at a time.

Like I have to imagine you're in this thread for a reason. Has drinking regularly fucked up your life? If so, why is this the time it's going to work out for you?

Alcohol isn't a problem for everyone. It's a problem for me.

 

[56 others]

but fuck. I'm so BORED.

It really is the boredom for me

 

[Hey Johnny Bravo]

I find it plays better at 22 than 30.

Not only do people stop giving you a pass, but so does your body. You do not bounce back at 32 the same way you did at 22. Getting injured while doing stupid drunk shit can result in lifelong injuries instead of a bad bruise and a funny story.

It really is the boredom for me

This is a big fear for a lot of people when getting sober, but what most people realize is how much time they wasted while drunk. I cannot even begin to count the days I wasted sitting around with a frozen bottle of cheap vodka doing nothing. Now that I'm sober, I actually do stuff that's fun instead of sitting in a drunken stupor and waiting for the next thing to happen.

 

[trent]

This is a big fear for a lot of people when getting sober, but what most people realize is how much time they wasted while drunk. I cannot even begin to count the days I wasted sitting around with a frozen bottle of cheap vodka doing nothing. Now that I'm sober, I actually do stuff that's fun instead of sitting in a drunken stupor and waiting for the next thing to happen.

Time absolutely flies for me when I'm drinking. I'll start off the night around 8pm doing something I actually want to do like playing a videogame, listening to a podcast, reading or watching a TV show but then I'll get to a point of drunkenness where I know I'm not really absorbing anything so I'll just go down a rabbit hole of random YouTube videos until it's suddenly 3am and I drag myself to bed for maybe 6 hours of terrible sleep.

I'm cutting down drastically over the past few days and I'm hoping to be completely done at some stage this week. It sucks and I'm over it.

It is 100% linked to the fact that I was in a job that I fucking hated for the past 15 years up until I switched to a handy desk job 2 weeks ago. I'm pretty much done with drinking now because I'm not "unwinding" from anything because my life is chill as fuck now. My appetite has even come back when there were days I'd skip eating at all because my stomach was churning from anxiety.

There's very few people hard drinking every day for fun. It's usually something unpleasant hanging over you that you want to block out.

 

[Hey Johnny Bravo]

There's very few people hard drinking every day for fun. It's usually something unpleasant hanging over you that you want to block out.

Or it's maintenance drinking. When I was hitting the bottle extra hard, I drank just to keep the withdrawals away. At that point, you plan your day around drinking or else you get sick. As the quote goes: "quite an experience to live in fear isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave."

 

[Your Girlfriend's Dad]

I was astonished by how much I had crazy night sweats last week. I'm dry as a bone now, but I kept waking up thinking I'd pissed my pants just to realize, no, that's all sweat.

That, and the general fog and crippling anxiety. A little under 2 weeks in and I'm starting to feel good. I'm enjoying things again. When I'm drinking regularly every sober moment is just boring and miserable, but when I'm sober all the time my brain rapidly retunes to enjoying things as it's not getting an artifical GABA and runaway dopamine fix.

It gets better, and it gets better faster than you think it will.

 

[dick brain]

A few drinks every few weeks isn't going to hurt anyone. But is that how you drink historically?

Maybe I'll start there after a long break, but that's never where I stay. I've got the sample size to know 10 times out of 10 I'm going to escalate and get more comfortable with my drinking until I'm blacked out for days at a time.

Like I have to imagine you're in this thread for a reason. Has drinking regularly fucked up your life? If so, why is this the time it's going to work out for you?

Alcohol isn't a problem for everyone. It's a problem for me.

If you welcome every trespass, then every tramp's a guest;
give what they would take from you, and every theft's a gift;
hold too tightly to what's in your hands or in your chest,
and the future will not open -- palm readers can't work fists.
Broken bones are stronger for the breaking; the danger's in the bending --
the concessions that you never can take back.
Curl you 'round a cane, you're still intact, but now quite lame;
better to ready the cast, grit your teeth and let it snap.

 

[⋖ cørdion ⋗]

This is a big fear for a lot of people when getting sober, but what most people realize is how much time they wasted while drunk. I cannot even begin to count the days I wasted sitting around with a frozen bottle of cheap vodka doing nothing. Now that I'm sober, I actually do stuff that's fun instead of sitting in a drunken stupor and waiting for the next thing to happen.

RustyCage's sobriety vlog was almost entirely about him finding shit to do. He started going on walks. Literally like day 4 was "I got so much time I actually need things to do, I can't just wash hours away drinking". Thing is I don't daydrink. It's every second friday and I sit here like I always do, 5pm thinking "holy shit I got off work and I got the entire weekend off with no plans. Am I really just gonna sit here?". I drink because laying in with a hangover is slightly more worthwhile than literally doing nothing with my time. If I had the smallest of things to do, I'd do that instead.

"Go for a run" yeah but you can't do that shit literally every day. I've biked everything in a 30km radius dry over the last few years. There's no more sense of exploration. Games once again, are the easiest. I can try something entirely different, ie. a horror game, simply by launching another game than usual. But I'm tired of gaming. I enjoy reading now, but I can't just eat through 120 pages fri-sun and feel like I used my time well.

I actually had a good time leveling in Classic WoW despite knowing it was a waste of time and I wouldn't stick around because it was slow and mundane but intentful. Akin doomscrolling but actually productive to some end. I need something to grind and learn from. I got so many easy workdays where I come home and just collapse out of disinterest. If I instead rushed towards something, I'd feel like I have a second track to my career. I envy those who played WoW at their peak while working; they'd do those two things all day on repeat. I open WoW now and I just sigh, knowing the social buzz won't come back and only nostalgic boomers stil play it (which ironically is better than modern games).

 

[Hey Johnny Bravo]

I drink because laying in with a hangover is slightly more worthwhile than literally doing nothing with my time. If I had the smallest of things to do, I'd do that instead.

It's not worthwhile at all. You're literally recovering from poisoning yourself, dude.

"Go for a run" yeah but you can't do that shit literally every day. I've biked everything in a 30km radius dry over the last few years. There's no more sense of exploration. Games once again, are the easiest. I can try something entirely different, ie. a horror game, simply by launching another game than usual. But I'm tired of gaming. I enjoy reading now, but I can't just eat through 120 pages fri-sun and feel like I used my time well.

You can go for a run literally every day, but that's besides the point.

What you need is a creative hobby. Learn an instrument, whittle, draw shitty comics, learn to make stuff from metal, anything creative. And don't do the "wah wah do I really want to do this" routine. You said it yourself: you have loads of time to kill, so why not burn it trying new things instead of poisoning yourself? Also, your "I only drink in X, Y, or Z way" excuse only lasts insofar as it lasts. I remember saying "I'll only drink 2 beers a night." Then it became "I'll only drink on the weekends." Then it became "at least I'm not daydrinking." Then I started clearing a liter of vodka a day and stopped caring. It can snowball and this can happen quickly or over several years.

Maybe you don't have that "one is too many and a million is not enough" attitude that many drunks do, but why even risk it? The data is clear: alcohol is terrible for the human body. Do something else.

 

[⋖ cørdion ⋗]

You can go for a run literally every day, but that's besides the point.

I went on walks to take pics for local google maps pins that didn't have any. You can do that 3 times in my city and you're done. I had the same attitude towards biking. I did it to explore, then I saw all there was, and then biking would just be for training, ie. boring as fuck.

I don't have a creative soul, I don't yearn to try shit for the fun of it. I have a art workshop coworker who did one for the coworkers and I and it was fun, but he literally just sits up til 3AM drawing squiggles. I can see how it's fun, but it's not progressive towards something. I don't need matchmaking rating or cosmetic rewards, but I want to feel that I'm going towards something. And yet even then I just lack it. I used to raid on my friend's WoW account for free simply to be able to say "I tanked naxxramas". Now I can't even be fucked doing WoW content for the hell of it.

I prefer going to bed in a better place than I woke up, such as throwing out shit, deleting old files on my Drive, literally any small tiny thing, but that likewise can't be done on repeat. Sure I could go for a walk, but I walk 12k steps a day at work already. At which place I also do a ton of extra visual/creative work for coworker things. I got a lot of stuff going on, just none that I'd write off as hobby-esque fun. I don't wake up 6:30AM on a saturday and go "hell yeah time to grind my 3 hours of Tekken" but by god I wish I did. I'll painmaxx by shopping and doing chores after a tiring workday. If I had creative juices I'd be a fucking powerhouse.

Look at clarkson's farm or farming sim 25 in general. There is no incentive to do anything but sow seeds and reap, but yet clarkson will be all "huh. I should get pigs, that'd be fun lol". I lack those urges. I'll 100% games and do achievements and shit, but I don't relate it to any kind of itch or urge. To clear a backlog. At this point I basically have to force myself to play games, and yet I'm too indifferent for even that. I enjoyed Tomb Raider 1, yet can't force myself to boot up 2, knowing I'd love it too.

I'm jaded, indifferent. I'll sit 5pm on friday evening, well-aware I won't do anything with my time, and then drink in case I'll randomly install TF2 due to nostalgia and shit talk some strangers. That's more than I'd do without being drunk. Yet I haven't drank in like 2 months and don't really feel inclined to, but I can see why I justify it. No "Hell yeah friday night raid time". On that note: I see those 'FRIDAY NIGHT WHAT YOU PLAYING/EATING/LISTENING/WATCHING/DRINKING" threads on 4chan and I see people playing old-ass games, watching old-ass movies, just enjoying themselves. I wish I could do that. Do things for myself.

 

[Hey Johnny Bravo]

I went on walks to take pics for local google maps pins that didn't have any. You can do that 3 times in my city and you're done. I had the same attitude towards biking. I did it to explore, then I saw all there was, and then biking would just be for training, ie. boring as fuck.

I don't have a creative soul, I don't yearn to try shit for the fun of it. I have a art workshop coworker who did one for the coworkers and I and it was fun, but he literally just sits up til 3AM drawing squiggles. I can see how it's fun, but it's not progressive towards something. I don't need matchmaking rating or cosmetic rewards, but I want to feel that I'm going towards something. And yet even then I just lack it. I used to raid on my friend's WoW account for free simply to be able to say "I tanked naxxramas". Now I can't even be fucked doing WoW content for the hell of it.

I prefer going to bed in a better place than I woke up, such as throwing out shit, deleting old files on my Drive, literally any small tiny thing, but that likewise can't be done on repeat. Sure I could go for a walk, but I walk 12k steps a day at work already. At which place I also do a ton of extra visual/creative work for coworker things. I got a lot of stuff going on, just none that I'd write off as hobby-esque fun. I don't wake up 6:30AM on a saturday and go "hell yeah time to grind my 3 hours of Tekken" but by god I wish I did. I'll painmaxx by shopping and doing chores after a tiring workday. If I had creative juices I'd be a fucking powerhouse.

Look at clarkson's farm or farming sim 25 in general. There is no incentive to do anything but sow seeds and reap, but yet clarkson will be all "huh. I should get pigs, that'd be fun lol". I lack those urges. I'll 100% games and do achievements and shit, but I don't relate it to any kind of itch or urge. To clear a backlog. At this point I basically have to force myself to play games, and yet I'm too indifferent for even that. I enjoyed Tomb Raider 1, yet can't force myself to boot up 2, knowing I'd love it too.

I'm jaded, indifferent. I'll sit 5pm on friday evening, well-aware I won't do anything with my time, and then drink in case I'll randomly install TF2 due to nostalgia and shit talk some strangers. That's more than I'd do without being drunk. Yet I haven't drank in like 2 months and don't really feel inclined to, but I can see why I justify it. No "Hell yeah friday night raid time". On that note: I see those 'FRIDAY NIGHT WHAT YOU PLAYING/EATING/LISTENING/WATCHING/DRINKING" threads on 4chan and I see people playing old-ass games, watching old-ass movies, just enjoying themselves. I wish I could do that. Do things for myself.

You need sober, in-person friends.

Also, just because you tried a few creative things doesn't mean you can decide that you don't have a creative soul. It means you haven't found the thing that you like.

Nothing you've posted here justifies drinking yourself into oblivion.