At times I don't like the way it makes me feel but I do it anyway. Then there are other times when I can drink like a regular person with few consequences or I can not drink at all. I seem to be able to say no to it when I should and I can go for weeks without touching a drop. So am I really an alcoholic? I've read some posts from others here who've heard the same thing I have from doctors, therapists, etc...that some of us aren't true alcoholics but simply suffer from undiagnosed and untreated disorders that we've learned to self medicate for with alcohol. If I was a morbidly obese person using food as a way to cope with emotional!psyche issues nobody would suggest I stop eating completely. They'd tell me to get to the root cause of my problems so I could eat sensibly again. Why can the same logic not be applied to alcohol?
I guess I'm just having my doubts about the severity of my problem and the extreme nature of the AA solution. I welcome any words if wisdom that might remove them.
Tipsy, I could write a lot in response to this share of yours but it's late so It's going to be brief. I don't envy your strain of this malady. I was lucky to have had the typical experiences, and consider myself a "garden variety" drunk, although I bailed early at 29 years old, like you, concerned about my new baby (who's 24 now). I saved myself a lot of heartache, grief, and wear and tear ect... I had not progressed to morning drinking, vomiting, hiding bottles, medical issues, never convicted of dui... but had a lot of awful moments, regrets, loses, and a pretty deep emotional bottom. i felt my sanity slipping away and that was the scariest part. I believe that you were a member here when I came to this board, in '06. That's a long time to be wondering. You've never really let us get to know you. You've hinted about details in a hit and run fashion and have become somewhat of a paradox wrapped inside of an enigma. :P You must have heard everything, ever response, that will be posted in this thread about the progressive nature of the disease, the differences between maintenance drinkers and binge drinkers (I was both) and that they both wind up in the same place, dead, or warehoused somewhere. If you're not a "real alcoholic" (I don't think that's the case) then you may continue to have these consequences for a long time, as you're still a fairly young guy.
I'm glad I'm not in your shoes. And even if you're medicating untreated MD or bi-polar, SAD or a dozen other modern diags, you can't get to the bottom of any of those while on this cycle of self over-medication and abstinence. I'm not in the "only real alcoholics belong here" camp as I believe that problem drinkers with other issues can still benefit greatly from getting sober and working the program, even though I still don't think that description fits you. There is no good reason to drink and especially if it's causing problems. Not really getting "the extreme nature of the AA solution" other than the thought of not drinking is so horrible to you, that would indicate a pretty strong obsession. Because working the steps isn't that hard to do. Why not commit to a year of sobriety, get through the steps in the recommended fashion, and if you're still not satisfied with your quality of life, head down to your govt. owned booze store, with the thousands of $$$ you saved and pick up where you left off. At least you'll know what sobriety feels like and whether it turned out as well for you as it did for these impossibly happy people, and your child won't have to have the rather frightening experience what it's like to watch someone that's entrusted with his care stumble around. I had two of them and it wasn't a lot of fun.
-- Edited by StPeteDean on Thursday 15th of December 2011 02:15:34 AM
Non Alcoholics don't wonder if they are alcoholics
The sheer size and scope of your denial in even asking this question should tip you off about whether you are an alcoholic or not
step one states we are powerless over alcohol, this doesn't mean we take one drink and start killing hookers and leaving toilet seats up right then, what it means is if we take a drink we can't promise what is going to happen
Sure we can go days and weeks without a drink, and even have one or two drinks a few times without consequences, but what invariably happens eventually? The inevitable downward spiral resulting in pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization, how many times have you washed up here in that condition?
I don't know what is going to happen every time I put alcohol in me, thus I am powerless over alcohol, thus I am an alcoholic, I can "control" it for periods but not enjoy it, or I can enjoy it but not control it, and alcoholics want to be able to control AND enjoy their drinking, which you are clearly unable to do
You use over eaters as an example, look, when I get dumped by my old lady I don't sit down and consume 15 German Chocolate Cakes then get in my car driving around looking for someone to talk to, but substitute alcohol for that, and it fits me perfectly
Have you ever actually sat down and read the Big Book Tipsy? It answers these exact questions 3 or 400 times, I mean how long you been posting here or on other forums about your problems with alcohol then you start wondering if you -really- have a problem
this is the "insanity" that comes along with alcoholism, if you read your own story as if it were written by somebody else, then that person wondered out loud if they were an alcoholic, even drunk you would be mercilessly and humorously tearing them a new one and asking them if they were as crazy as a ****house rat, and you would point to all their posts as reference.
We don't like to diagnose anyone as an alcoholic, but you can quickly diagnose yourself, step over to the nearest barroom, try to drink then stop abruptly, try it more then once.
So if you had 2 drinks 10 times, how many times would you get drunk instead, how many times would you just keep drinking?
any answer other then zero and you -ARE- an alcoholic, and dude, the jury just filed back in the room after reading the last few years of your posts, and the verdict is in, and it aint "you suffer from some undiagnosed and untreated disorder that you learned to self medicate with alcohol", it's "You ARE an alcoholic of the "there is no ****ing question about it" variety looking for excuses to drink again, just like the rest of us
Most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics. No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows. Therefore, it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.
We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.
We alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control. All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such intervals usually brief were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. We are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period we get worse, never better.
We are like men who have lost their legs; they never grow new ones. Neither does there appear to be any kind of treatment which will make alcoholics of our kind like other men. We have tried every imaginable remedy. In some instances there has been brief recovery, followed always by a still worse relapse. Physicians who are familiar with alcoholism agree there is no such thing a making a normal drinker out of an alcoholic. Science may one day accomplish this, but it hasn't done so yet.
Despite all we can say, many who are real alcoholics are not going to believe they are in that class. By every form of self- deception and experimentation, they will try to prove themselves exceptions to the rule, therefore nonalcoholic. If anyone who is showing inability to control his drinking can do the right-about- face and drink like a gentleman, our hats are off to him. Heaven knows, we have tried hard enough and long enough to drink like other people!
Here are some of the methods we have tried: Drinking beer only, limiting the number of drinks, never drinking alone, never drinking in the morning, drinking only at home, never having it in the house, never drinking during business hours, drinking only at parties, switching from scotch to brandy, drinking only natural wines, agreeing to resign if ever drunk on the job, taking a trip, not taking a trip, swearing off forever (with and without a solemn oath), taking more physical exercise, reading inspirational books, going to health farms and sanitariums, accepting voluntary commitment to asylums we could increase the list ad infinitum.
We do not like to pronounce any individual as alcoholic, but you can quickly diagnose yourself, step over to the nearest barroom and try some controlled drinking. Try to drink and stop abruptly. Try it more than once. It will not take long for you to decide, if you are honest with yourself about it. It may be worth a bad case of jitters if you get a full knowledge of your condition.
-- Edited by LinBabaAgo-go on Thursday 15th of December 2011 02:36:48 AM
__________________
Light a man a fire and he's warm for a night, set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life
I can't add much more to what the traveling Big Book said above....But I will say I don't think I have seen a case of denial with the amount you seem to have....Now that I see that this has been going on for six years....You might just be constitutionally incapable of being honest with yourself.
The sheer amount of times you have been back and forth here with your misery over drinking is proof enough to me that you are alcoholic. But what I think doesn't matter. It's you that has to know.
__________________
Keep coming back. It works if you work it. So work it. You're worth it!
I am going to have a shot at answering this or at least at providing my thoughts on the subject.
ALL people NEED food to LIVE so your comparison does not cut it
``If I was a morbidly obese person using food as a way to cope with emotional!psyche issues nobody would suggest I stop eating completely. They'd tell me to get to the root cause of my problems so I could eat sensibly again.``
I have members in my extended family who are very religious. When they are faced with a struggle they turn to the church for a solution.
I Know several people that are not in any program for anything but they are very spiritual. When faced with a struggle they tend to spend time in nature, or mediation. or something similar to find a solution.
As an alcoholic when faced with a struggle (the insanity of the disease now dictates what is a struggle, could be something as simple as it is time to pay bills) I drink.
My insanity tells me that escape or oblivion is in fact a solution.
Most folks if not afflicted with alcoholism can do something that hurts themself or someone they care for and they will say Hey that hurt - won`t be doing that again EVER. They don`t say Hey that hurt - so I will do that again but it will be different next time. I do know alcoholics think like that.
My insanity tells me that if I drink slower, or on a different day. or a different brand. or ____________________( fill in the blank) it will be different. The worst thing my insanity told me, as a woman in her 20`s and then 30`s, was that ``Hey I drank tonite and I didn`t mess up so it will be ok, I don`t have a problem I can DRINK``
I have always been told to share my experiance and not my opinion and I try to do that. I am however going to offer a suggestion to you TM
Find a few friends/family members/aquaintances that are NOT alcoholic. (I would even go so far as to suggest that you need to find someone who just does not drink at all ever because they don't want to) and ask them if they have ever wondered if they had a problem, if they had ever belonged to a group of people that try to sober together, if they ever attend AA for something to do? It is my experience that only alcoholics reach for help, others just stop drinking. So I wish you luck in your struggle to identify your problem, and I hope I have made some sense.
All the above. The only add is...........That is a classic question! Drunks always ask themselves that question 8-15 hours before they are vomiting AGAIN. It is a cycle that you are seeing over and over and it keeps getting worse with time. You have a few successful outings (in that you are not in jail or only "hungover")--then you binge. Then you end up here asking why. That is fine. I would be glad to answer the same question day in and day out, because eventually you decide to give the program a fair shake. Ask Sober Steve. He is the most recent and vocal "light bulb coming fully on" guy.
-- Edited by turninggrey on Thursday 15th of December 2011 01:20:01 PM
-- Edited by turninggrey on Thursday 15th of December 2011 01:22:15 PM
__________________
"You're in the right place. That's the door right there. Turn around."
Sound advise above from people who have already walked the same path you are trudging down. I stayed in Step 0 for 3 + years. Step 0 is the time between your last drink and Step 1 of the AA Program. The last drink for me kept re-occurring. They call is 0 because we go round and round eliminating all the options available we can come up with to continue our right to drink. It's our diesase lying to us repeatedly. It's insanity.
One of the most profound things someone told me during this time was a girl participating in my Intensive Outpatient Treatment Program. We talked at break and she listened to me and looked me straight in the eyes and said; "when are you going to surrender". There's no Step 1 until we fully surrender. I understand today what she meant, I had to stop fighting the truth, that I was an alcoholic and powerless over alcoholic. I can not drink in safety. When I got off Step 0- the merry go around- and surrendered, my recovery started. Life has never been so good.
Dean makes a great point above. Working The Program can help anyone improve their life. Just my opinion.
Wow Tip! I know right where you are at. My first trip to a head doctor was when I was 5 years old. My first bout with alcohol was at age 11. Psych wards, therapists, groups, meds and all kinds of diagnosis throughout my life. After all that ya'd think the professionals would have found that magic pill to fix me! I loved to hear from them that I wasn't an alcoholic and that I was self-medicating. Now I'm 42. I finally am beat. Alcohol was my master. For me, I could pick it up or put it down (for the most part) up until I was somewhere near 35 years old. But then IT happened. I started binge drinking and became completely dysfunctional. I left everyone and everything that I loved. I drank to change the way I felt. Always full of anxiety and fear. Feeling like I was out of place. Even in my own family. Then I finally gave in to the possibility, as weird and drastic as it is, that people in AA are right. Too many of em have had right near the same experiences as you and I have had and are having right now. What if it is true that we really do have to overcome a spiritual malady before we straighten out mentally? I fought that intellectually since 1996. By the GRACE of a God I do not understand I surrender to the process of recovery. I quit doing battle in my head about everything. By going to bunches of meetings over the years, my "terminal uniqueness" has been terminated. What do you have to lose by giving AA a real shot for a while? So ya miss out on that false sense of peace and confidence that alcohol gives. No matter how many times we think we are beating the game, we inevitably sink into that bitter morass of self-pity decorated with deeper and incomprehensible demoralization. TODAY, I'm an alcoholic named David in recovery from alcoholism. And still crazy as a sh@#-house rat! Give up the fight ;)
Easy, step over to the nearest bar and try some controlled drinking. Try to control and enjoy your drinking. Try it more than once. The allergy is what makes an alcoholic an alcoholic. There are many people in AA who are not alcoholics. They may have gotten in a mess with booze and been sent by doctors, wives, judges, probation. I do not identify with them or them me. I suggest u find out pretty quickly. I hope u are not an alcoholic. With all my heart.
I really an alcoholic? I've read some posts from others here who've heard the same thing I have from doctors, therapists, etc...that some of us aren't true alcoholics but simply suffer from undiagnosed and untreated disorders that we've learned to self medicate for with alcohol.
I guess I'm just having my doubts about the severity of my problem and the extreme nature of the AA solution. I welcome any words if wisdom that might remove them.
Tipsy,
You are correct, you are self medicating and your problem is not the alcohol, the problem is with the person who consumes it.
The AA solution deals with changing the person, yes the problem is severe and there is effort involved in the solution. You don't hunt a bear with a switch. Good news is for most, if we devote 25 % of the time you spent drinking, recovering from hangovers, apologizing and being remorseful about actions while drinking, your recovery will be a success and you will have another 75% of your time to actually live life.
Are you actually acoholic? Only you can say. You might be the 1 in 100,000,000 people who are social drinkers but keep coming back to AA message boards for answers about their drinking problem.
Hope this helps, below is from page 64 of the AA big Book.
Take Care, Rob
Our liquor was but a symptom. So we had to get down to causes and conditions.
Therefore, we started upon a personal inventory. This was Step Four. A business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke. Taking a commercial inventory is a fact-finding and a fact-facing process. It is an effort to discover the truth about the stock-in-trade. One object is to disclose damaged or unsalable goods, to get rid of them promptly and without regret. If the owner of the business is to be successful, he cannot fool himself about values.
We did exactly the same thing with our lives. We took stock honestly. First, we searched out the flaws in our make-up which caused our failure. Being convinced that self, manifested in various ways, was what had defeated us, we considered its common manifestations
__________________
Rob
"There ain't no Coupe DeVille hiding in the bottom of a Cracker Jack Box."
Aloha TMc...beautiful to see the responses of the fellowship coming at you from their experiences and awarenesses. I can just bet that this increases their gratitute for their own sobriety. It does for me. For me I just stopped asking the question was I or wasn't I. I looked at where alcohol had taken me and what it was and was not and then practiced leaving it alone one day at a time consistently. I found more proof that it was a real problem in my life by not drinking and looking at the evidence over time which grew and grew toward me being alcoholic...a compulsion of the mind (which has never gone away) and an allergy of the body (which on several occasions in the past almost resulted in my demise). When I found out that alcohol was such a central part of my thinking and doing and that a majority of my existence centered around getting it (to any lengths), using it (to any lengths), being around other who did the same (to any lengths), identifying with it (San Miguel, Tanguery, Ron Rico 151, etc adnauseum), carrying physical consequences of the relationship such as a yellowish/green tinge in the color of my skin and bunches and bunches of neuological and behavioral and emotional problems...I didn't pick up again.
I listened to the psycological industry say that alcoholics drank the way they did because they had problems and then listened to the medical industry say that alcoholics had problems because they drank the way they did and then inventoried my life over time without alcohol and sure enough the longer I stayed alcohol free the less problems I had and the ones that I had I could deal with a ton better...more effectively. I still had a compulsion to drink and didn't.
I came into recovery thru the doors of the Al-Anon Family Groups...I was born and raised in the disease of alcoholism and can point fingers and name names. I wasn't alcoholic because my family of origin told me I wasn't because of how they say how I drank..."as much as I wanted, as often as I wanted without going down" that doesn't of course count the toxic shocks they didn't know about. They also didn't get the education I got from college about what the disease and chemical is and isn't. Want to know more...don't drink and go study the chemical and physical/emotional consequences...very very inlightening to this alcoholic. I recommend it to all I hang with in the program including my sponsees.
So there are some "differences" between individual personalities in the program of AA. I came into AA oppositionally defiant after 9 years without a drink. Consider what would have happened if I would have had a drink in those 9 years? Would I be here now considering the toxic shocks and the relapse awareness that we don't begin again where we started but where we left off. Where I left off was 4/5s of a 5th in 45 minutes...over dosing leading to toxic shock. So I get into AA and get my first recovery chip at 16 years; I was still being a bit oppositional and defiant however my sponsorship kept working on the premises of simularities rather than differences and the more I do the premises the more I admit to being "alcoholic". I don't identify as "an" alcoholic. I identify as being alcoholic...one who has a life threatening disease and who with the program of AA and anonymity one would hardly be able to tell I was any different than the next "good guy" in town. I am also tuberculic and catholic...ikiness.
Today I know the chemical alcohol as well as I know my own name. Today I know what alcohol does to the human body as well as anyone else who has ever been under it's influence. I know that my mind won't work right and that every other part and organ of my body won't either I also know that the chemical will rob me of my own self control and when it takes control of me my life and life outcomes with change into somethings I never intended to deal with. I know I will turn "green" again and that my anger and rage will return. I know that my third wife will leave me and that I will return to the corner in the dark with my booze like I was just before I stopped. For that reason I hang around relapsers who have gone back out there and tried it again and who have survived it so that they could return to the program and the meetings to sit with me and teach me what it will be like if I do that myself. I will not start with a class of heavy Rose...I will start with 4/5s of a 5th in 45 or less minutes, in the dark, alone and one ounce or less away from death. That's not how I want to die today. I don't want to die today at all and to warrantee that I won't have a drink today.
I will come here and read your posts and say thank you greatly TMc for helping me stay sober and sane and will ask my HP to hang with you as my HP hangs with me listening to me repeat over and over. "Place me where you want me and tell me what to do."
Keep coming back Tip. ((((hugs))))
Am I a real alcoholic?...Naw every body else is, I'm just done trying to find out.
-- Edited by Jerry F on Thursday 15th of December 2011 07:49:36 PM
Just want to say, that what I have read here of the replies to this post, make me a very proud member of Miracles In Progress, ... because I can see the program of Alcoholics Anonymous in its true form.
The message that is being carried in this thread, could not be any more clear, honest and non judgemental of those who are still in the questioning stage...
Thanks to each of you for sharing as openly and honestly as you have with Tipsy.
Tipsy. I consider myself a problem drinker, and not an alcoholic (meaning I self medicate and when I deal with those issues I don't have a problem with alcohol). However, obviously I haven't dealt with my issues or I wouldn't have problems with alcohol, so either way, I am glad I am here. Take care Tips.
Like others said, non alcoholics don't wonder if they are alcoholics.
My boyfriend drinks maybe one beer in a month. He doesn't obsess over it the rest of the time. It just doesn't occur to him to drink at other times. That's what it's like to NOT be an alcoholic.
Rob sez "This is the only disease that kills the host by telling it that it doesn't exist." Simple, profound, and true. What is the "extreme" nature" of the solution offered in the 12 steps of AA.? Life, instead of death? (Death as experienced in a zillion forms, from living deaths of self and others to the dead-dead kind, of self and others.
I'm in the same boat at you are in. I self-medicate with alcohol. I think that's the key. Other people don't need to do that. I'm just realizing this myself. It's not a healthy way of dealing with negative problems, just like over-eating or starving your self isn't. The thing is that in society people are much more accepting of over-eating to stave off emotions than drinking. Not right but it's the way it is.
Jacq, wouldn't it be nice if you didn't have to do it anymore? There are dozens of folks on this board that have decades of sobriety, and pleanty that have 3,5,7,10 years as well. All of us have been where you are now, more or less. I gets much better, with sobriety, and conversely, because of it's progressive nature, gets worse if we continue to drink. Most folks, that wander into our program have suffered some loses,in the areas that you are involved in now (married, good career, healthy...). There is nothing that alcoholism won't take from the drinker.
