Drinking: a confession

Disallowed Cynosure said:

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...?

Keith Richards claims he has a threshold which he doesn't exceed, which is the reason he gives for the fact that he's still alive.  He says he's always been able to get to a point and stop, when the others around have carried on and got wrecked.  I'm not sure how true that is.  I haven't known many true alcoholics who have been able to stop themselves once they're intoxicated enough.  As they say in AA: One's too much.  Ten's not enough. 

I used to have a limit.  On the rare occasions I might go out for a drink with other people when I was in my 20s and early 30s, three pints of beer was my limit.  Any more than that made me feel sick.  And I never wanted more.  Alcohol was just never very much a part of my life at all.  I didn't go out socialising, so didn't need any 'social lubricant'.  And, as I said, I was too jacked into personal fitness - road running, cycling to work, swimming, gym.  I've always maintained that, too.  But the booze has increasingly become the thing that could easily threaten that.  Sometimes, I can just have a couple of beers and be done with it.  That's usually during the week, though, and in the evenings.  At weekends, it depends when I start drinking.  If I leave it until late in the evening, I'm fine.  But if, like yesterday, I start at midday... I just carry on until I either fall asleep or can no longer think straight.  I often have blackout - something I never really experienced until just a few years ago.  When it gets to that stage of never having enough, of finishing what you've got and going out for more, then you know it's a problem. 

And the 'wet brain' will, of course, tell you things that are blatantly untrue.  You'll look around at people who drink very heavily for years and years and kid yourself that if they can do it, so can you.  My dad drank heavily from around the age of 13.  At my age, 59, he could knock back 12 cans of Special Brew (9% then, which is 4.5 alcohol units) over the course of a day and still function well.  He died at 77, having never had an alcohol-related illness.  So maybe I have some tough genes on my side.  Most of my writer heroes - Raymond Carver, John Cheever, Charles Bukowski, etc - were alcoholics.  Carver kicked it after he met Tess Gallagher, and she helped him to save himself.  Cheever died of it, I think.  Bukowski drank so heavily in his early life that he was hospitalised with a stomach hemorrhage at 33 and told he would die if he ever drank again.  He gave it a week, then drank again - and drank on throughout the rest of his life until he died at 74 (though he stopped in his final months, I think, after he got his leukaemia diagnosis).  His final writing years were fuelled by 2 bottles of wine an evening.  There's the romance of all that - which is all bulls**t, as Stephen King - a recovering alcoholic - rightly points out.  These people wrote well in spite of their drinking, not because of it. We can always find excuses and justifications to continue drinking.  During my years in therapy groups, I heard all the stories.  Something bad happens in your day, so you pick up a drink because it makes you feel better - makes it matter less.  I spoke to formerly recovered alcoholics who'd gone back to the bottle because they said they no longer found life as enjoyable without the fix.  They got bored.  I know heavy drinkers now who say they ought to stop, but they don't because they enjoy it so much.  That makes it difficult.  If you enjoy drinking - in spite of the many costs - then you have a battle on your hands.  And I think many of them probably use the 'enjoyment' argument as a justification when in reality they know they have a serious problem, but can't seem to do anything about it.

I'm not physically addicted to alcohol.  I don't get the shakes.  I've never had DTs.  I've never had dry retching.  It's only made me physically sick once in the last 10 years.  Maybe I have an inner 'limit'.  Again, though, that's me telling myself it's probably alright to continue.  Because, as we all know, the more the body adjusts to a drug, the more it needs.  I read that Richard Burton was regularly getting through 3 bottles of vodka a day during the 60s and 70s.  By 45, he was wrecked internally.  He had the body of an old man.  He had a neck operation, and they discovered that his spinal column was coated in crystallized alcohol.  When I read that, my reaction was  'I can't imagine ever getting that bad.'  But who knows?  I know I'm still very fit - probably much fitter than most people my age.  I can cycle ten miles to work in about 40 minutes, do a day's work, then cycle home again and feel fine.  I have a fast metabolism.  My body seems able to process alcohol very quickly. But sooner or later, something will give.  I know this.  So I have to ask myself some very important questions.  Do I want to keep sacrificing my health - playing Russian Roulette with it?  Do I want to keep kidding myself that I'll probably be alright?  Do I want to stop drinking altogether - which is the only way I'll ever really stop the harm it's doing?  If I'm honest, I know it's also connected to where I am right now in life.  I've not achieved the things I once hoped for, and I feel disillusioned by that.  In my down moments, I think it's too late now - though I know that's nonsense, really.  It's a common enough thing at this age, I suppose.  But add to it the sense I have that my life has been stunted in some way.  That I'm 'behind and still trying to catch up.'  My condition - unknown as it was for most of my life - has, I know, held me back in many ways.  And perhaps the awareness of this is one of the downsides of the diagnosis.  The rational, positive part of me says 'So what?  Move on.  Stop looking for reasons not to.'  There's still enough of that in me.  Drink is probably devouring it, though, bit by bit.

Again... I know what I need to do.  My first novel was all about a man recovering from mental illness and alcoholism (it's out of print, so this isn't a pitch!)  It was largely autobiographical.  I used it as a way to analyse my own mental processes - the reasons why I do certain things, think certain things.  Reading it again makes me realise that it's all about living with Asperger's.  Booze is naturally a huge motif in the story.  At one point, the character goes to see his alcohol counsellor and talks about his week.  I used it as a way of interrogating myself.  I see the arguments from both sides - and my side isn't really an argument at all.  One of the counsellors in my own therapy group once said 'You have a choice about this.  You can either stop or carry on.'  I took issue with that, saying that some people had fewer choices than others, or their choices were much harder to make.  She persisted, though.  'But it's still a choice.  You still have that choice, don't you?'

Yes.

Disallowed Cynosure said:

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...?

Keith Richards claims he has a threshold which he doesn't exceed, which is the reason he gives for the fact that he's still alive.  He says he's always been able to get to a point and stop, when the others around have carried on and got wrecked.  I'm not sure how true that is.  I haven't known many true alcoholics who have been able to stop themselves once they're intoxicated enough.  As they say in AA: One's too much.  Ten's not enough. 

I used to have a limit.  On the rare occasions I might go out for a drink with other people when I was in my 20s and early 30s, three pints of beer was my limit.  Any more than that made me feel sick.  And I never wanted more.  Alcohol was just never very much a part of my life at all.  I didn't go out socialising, so didn't need any 'social lubricant'.  And, as I said, I was too jacked into personal fitness - road running, cycling to work, swimming, gym.  I've always maintained that, too.  But the booze has increasingly become the thing that could easily threaten that.  Sometimes, I can just have a couple of beers and be done with it.  That's usually during the week, though, and in the evenings.  At weekends, it depends when I start drinking.  If I leave it until late in the evening, I'm fine.  But if, like yesterday, I start at midday... I just carry on until I either fall asleep or can no longer think straight.  I often have blackout - something I never really experienced until just a few years ago.  When it gets to that stage of never having enough, of finishing what you've got and going out for more, then you know it's a problem. 

And the 'wet brain' will, of course, tell you things that are blatantly untrue.  You'll look around at people who drink very heavily for years and years and kid yourself that if they can do it, so can you.  My dad drank heavily from around the age of 13.  At my age, 59, he could knock back 12 cans of Special Brew (9% then, which is 4.5 alcohol units) over the course of a day and still function well.  He died at 77, having never had an alcohol-related illness.  So maybe I have some tough genes on my side.  Most of my writer heroes - Raymond Carver, John Cheever, Charles Bukowski, etc - were alcoholics.  Carver kicked it after he met Tess Gallagher, and she helped him to save himself.  Cheever died of it, I think.  Bukowski drank so heavily in his early life that he was hospitalised with a stomach hemorrhage at 33 and told he would die if he ever drank again.  He gave it a week, then drank again - and drank on throughout the rest of his life until he died at 74 (though he stopped in his final months, I think, after he got his leukaemia diagnosis).  His final writing years were fuelled by 2 bottles of wine an evening.  There's the romance of all that - which is all bulls**t, as Stephen King - a recovering alcoholic - rightly points out.  These people wrote well in spite of their drinking, not because of it. We can always find excuses and justifications to continue drinking.  During my years in therapy groups, I heard all the stories.  Something bad happens in your day, so you pick up a drink because it makes you feel better - makes it matter less.  I spoke to formerly recovered alcoholics who'd gone back to the bottle because they said they no longer found life as enjoyable without the fix.  They got bored.  I know heavy drinkers now who say they ought to stop, but they don't because they enjoy it so much.  That makes it difficult.  If you enjoy drinking - in spite of the many costs - then you have a battle on your hands.  And I think many of them probably use the 'enjoyment' argument as a justification when in reality they know they have a serious problem, but can't seem to do anything about it.

I'm not physically addicted to alcohol.  I don't get the shakes.  I've never had DTs.  I've never had dry retching.  It's only made me physically sick once in the last 10 years.  Maybe I have an inner 'limit'.  Again, though, that's me telling myself it's probably alright to continue.  Because, as we all know, the more the body adjusts to a drug, the more it needs.  I read that Richard Burton was regularly getting through 3 bottles of vodka a day during the 60s and 70s.  By 45, he was wrecked internally.  He had the body of an old man.  He had a neck operation, and they discovered that his spinal column was coated in crystallized alcohol.  When I read that, my reaction was  'I can't imagine ever getting that bad.'  But who knows?  I know I'm still very fit - probably much fitter than most people my age.  I can cycle ten miles to work in about 40 minutes, do a day's work, then cycle home again and feel fine.  I have a fast metabolism.  My body seems able to process alcohol very quickly. But sooner or later, something will give.  I know this.  So I have to ask myself some very important questions.  Do I want to keep sacrificing my health - playing Russian Roulette with it?  Do I want to keep kidding myself that I'll probably be alright?  Do I want to stop drinking altogether - which is the only way I'll ever really stop the harm it's doing?  If I'm honest, I know it's also connected to where I am right now in life.  I've not achieved the things I once hoped for, and I feel disillusioned by that.  In my down moments, I think it's too late now - though I know that's nonsense, really.  It's a common enough thing at this age, I suppose.  But add to it the sense I have that my life has been stunted in some way.  That I'm 'behind and still trying to catch up.'  My condition - unknown as it was for most of my life - has, I know, held me back in many ways.  And perhaps the awareness of this is one of the downsides of the diagnosis.  The rational, positive part of me says 'So what?  Move on.  Stop looking for reasons not to.'  There's still enough of that in me.  Drink is probably devouring it, though, bit by bit.

Again... I know what I need to do.  My first novel was all about a man recovering from mental illness and alcoholism (it's out of print, so this isn't a pitch!)  It was largely autobiographical.  I used it as a way to analyse my own mental processes - the reasons why I do certain things, think certain things.  Reading it again makes me realise that it's all about living with Asperger's.  Booze is naturally a huge motif in the story.  At one point, the character goes to see his alcohol counsellor and talks about his week.  I used it as a way of interrogating myself.  I see the arguments from both sides - and my side isn't really an argument at all.  One of the counsellors in my own therapy group once said 'You have a choice about this.  You can either stop or carry on.'  I took issue with that, saying that some people had fewer choices than others, or their choices were much harder to make.  She persisted, though.  'But it's still a choice.  You still have that choice, don't you?'

Yes.