Published on 12, July, 2020
I drink too much. I have done for quite some time. I'm certain I'm not an alcoholic. I don't have an overwhelming desire to drink. I don't need to start the day with a drink, and I don't generally drink during the day. I don't drink every day, either. I function well, and manage to keep very fit. I eat well. But in the evenings (mainly over the weekend period), when I sit to watch a film, I'll have a drink. Then another. And so on it goes, until I go to bed drunk. As I did last night. And then I wake up in the morning - as I did this morning - and realise I've done damage in some way. Not just to my health, but to other people. I'll look at my previous day's internet history and realise there are comments I've made - on here, on social media - that are rude at best, downright offensive at worst. I keep upsetting people. I don't know why I do it. In vino veritas goes the old saying. Yet it isn't the truth I'm using. The drink turns me into this nasty, spiteful person I don't especially like - and I'm sure others don't, either. Having said that... this person is seductive. There's a big part of Mr Hyde that will always appeal to me.
I think it's all to do with years and years of keeping it all inside - never being confident enough to speak up, because generally when I did, I was shouted down and ridiculed. And suddenly, I found a way to loosen all of that up. I didn't start to drink in any way that you would call 'problematic' until I was in my 40s, and what kicked it off then was feeling trapped in an unhappy marriage and a job I hated. Drink became an escape as well as a form of relaxation. It also numbed the anxiety that is pretty much a default condition for me, and always has been. It was all very selfish. It shut me off from others and made me indifferent to the effect that my drinking was having on them. It has cost me a lot since then. I've lost a wife, a home, the trust of friends and relatives. It's isolated me more and more.
I've been to AA. I've been to therapy groups. I've tried meditation, spirituality, etc. I know the ins and outs of it. I've heard all the horror stories, and told a few myself. I'm away from everything now, really, that previously would have been a trigger to get drunk. But I still do it. Frankly, I can't ever imagine giving it up entirely. Because I enjoy it. I enjoy the feeling of all my cares and woes slipping away. I enjoy getting light-headed. It's pure selfishness. I admit it. It'll probably get me in the end, in one way or another. I know that. The only times I've ever attempted to end my life are when I've been drunk. It facilitates so many things, and most of them aren't good.
I'm not posting this for advice, really. I know what I ought to do. But maybe others have similar experiences with some form of drug. And maybe discussing these issues openly can help in some way.
Greetings, especially to Mr. Tom and Miss Elephant...
I recall the Christmas Threads, and have sort of waited for this Topic to come up again. I wanted to ask some perhaps strange questions about it (since I am anoymous here!).
...I myself do "drink" as well as "drink"... does anyone else get annoyed at the confusion between "drink", "drinking" and "getting drunk"? When I buy a "drink", people think the worst and think that I am only interested in "getting drunk". ...If this question confuses anyone, then that is what I mean!
...Then there is the different effects which "drunk" has upon people (including myself). Some become elated, some become, er - "hostile", and some become sick, or just sleepy. I myself become sick and then sleepy, and so was wondering if anyone else can detect that kind of "threshold" within themselves, telling them to stop drinking that thing and go off and eat/drink something else instead...?
Again, this may be confusing, which is what I am trying to find out about. Thanks for any answers, even if I do not Post about it again, it is a sort of "sensitive/uncomfortable" topic, I think. (But I say again that I do not drink just to get drunk, ever!)
Ah, but DC.. I am not drinking, but self-drowning :)
Don’t panic... it is a managed “indulgence” and one to temper life’s pointy edges. As DC eludes, knowing ones threshold is key.
Things have been challenging of late and it is done not to seek a high per se but as Possibly Autistic so succinctly puts it, it is to dampen down ones system
And much further out than we thought?
I didn't mean to suggest in my earlier comment about self-destructiveness that there aren't social factors that 'drive' people to drink, and some people may be physically more vulnerable to addiction. What is it AA tells you to avoid? Hunger, anger, loneliness and tiredness? Then there's stress and social inequality.
Personally I've been lucky enough not to have a problem with alcohol, smoking or drugs. I don't seem to get high off anything I've tried (although I hear heroin is very moreish), and recently I'd been associating this with autistic alexithymia. So maybe I do get a high but don't realise it. As a kid, I discovered butane gas and solvent in blu-tac by myself, so perhaps if I'd not been so isolated I would have got into glue-sniffing, or nowadays it would be nitrous oxide.
Hundreds of people die in the UK each year from acute alcohol toxicity, not to mention the thousands who die from liver cirrhosis, and then there's violence, suicide, accidents, cardiovascular disease. And yet whenever a death is even vaguely associated with, not caused by, ecstasy, the tabloids are all over it.