It sounds to me that neither you nor I can determine whether or not you are an alcoholic.
It does sound as if we might be able to agree that you are either an alcoholic, a problem drinker, or a heavy drinker who ends up regretting her actions when she does drink. Which of these designations must you have to think that continuing to drink is a good idea for you? Or, would you conclude that quitting drinking is a good idea regardless of which designation you fall into? If the latter is true, what difference does it make to begin an alcohol free life. If you have passed the stage of heavy drinker or problem drinker to the designation of alcoholic, you'll find out soon enough on your sober journey. If you try to quit for a year and find that you cannot, then you are either a person with very little willpower or an alcoholic - you can decide for yourself at that point.
-- Edited by Angell on Friday 23rd of August 2013 07:21:55 PM
-- Edited by Angell on Friday 23rd of August 2013 07:57:42 PM
Keep asking myself. But then i think well i'm not and have never been dependent on alcohol where i top up each day. But i don't want to drink yet i keep finding myself binging every so often, but to a point where i can't stop, i will fixate on a drink, i will never and can't stop after 1 drink this would be torture for me, and i will take ANY other substance that is put my way after a drink. I have been done for drink driving, crashed my car drunk. Collapsed after taking 13 ecstasy pills & had to be brought round 3 times by someone. I've also overdosed on cocaine and have been trying to get some heroin recently. But how can i call myself an alcoholic if i've never been dependent on it?
My mum has alcoholic liver disease, and my dad drank a bit each night, he died aged 74. I also get up to know good when i'm drunk, things i'd never do sober, but doesn't everyone? i don't want to see myself as an alcoholic, or dramatize a normal social drinking situation. I've never drank alone, apart from getting ready to go out .
If only there was some kind of examination to see if i am or i'm not, i even asked the doctor for this, but there's not. I'm not the type to label but i think a diagnoses would clarify exactly IF i have the illness or not.
Hey Sarah, ... Here's a 'test' for you ... hope it helps ...
SUGGESTED TEST QUESTIONS
1. Do you require a drink the next morning?
2. Do you prefer to drink alone?
3. Do you lose time from work due to drinking?
4. Is your drinking harming your family in any way?
5. Do you crave a drink at a definite time daily?
6. Do you get the inner shakes unless you continue drinking?
7. Has drinking made you irritable?
8. Does drinking make you careless of your family's welfare?
9. Have you harmed your husband or wife since drinking?
10. Has drinking changed your personality?
11. Does drinking cause you bodily complaints?
12. Does drinking make you restless?
13. Does drinking cause you to have difficulty in sleeping?
14. Has drinking made you more impulsive?
15. Have you less self-control since drinking?
16. Has your initiative decreased since drinking?
17. Has your ambition decreased since drinking?
18. Do you lack perseverance in pursuing a goal since drinking?
19. Do you drink to obtain social ease? (In shy, timid, self-conscious individuals.)
20. Do you drink for self-encouragement? (In persons with feelings of inferiority.)
21. Do you drink to relieve marked feeling of inadequacy?
22. Has your sexual potency suffered since drinking?
23. Do you show marked dislikes and hatreds since drinking?
24. Has your jealousy, in general, increased since drinking?
25. Do you show marked moodiness as a result of drinking?
26. Has your efficiency decreased since drinking?
27. Has your drinking made you more sensitive?
28. Are you harder to get along with since drinking?
29. Do you turn to an inferior environment since drinking?
30. Is drinking endangering your health?
31. Is drinking affecting your peace of mind?
32. Is drinking making your home life unhappy?
33. Is drinking jeopardizing your business?
34. Is drinking clouding your reputation?
35. Is drinking disturbing the harmony of your life?
If you have answered YES to any one of the Test Questions, there is a definite warning that you may be alcoholic. If you have answered YES to any two of the Test Questions the chances are that you are an alcoholic.
If you answered YES to three or more of the Test Questions you are definitely AN ALCOHOLIC.
NOTE: The Test Questions are not A.A. Questions but are the guide used by Johns Hopkins University Hospital in deciding whether a patient is alcoholic or not.
In addition to the Test Questions we in A.A. would ask even more questions. Here are a few-
36. Have you ever had a complete loss of memory while, or after drinking?
37. Have you ever felt, when or after drinking, an inability to concentrate?
38. Have your ever felt "remorse" after drinking?
39. Has a physician ever treated you for drinking?
40. Have you ever been hospitalized for drinking?
Many other questions could be asked but the foregoing are sufficient for the purpose of this instruction.
Aloha Sarah...gosh some of that sounded like me back then and then I learned like tuberculosis which I was born with I also was alcoholic which I was born with. It's not a moral issue and I am not less than as a person unless I was drinking. "I also get up to no good when I drink, something I don't do when I'm not drinking/(sober is something else)". Thats part of my story.
Read your story as if you were someone else and then come back with your new impression. As a former substance abuse/alcoholism behavioral health therapist I'd plainly say you are addicted to mind and mood altering chemicals in a very serious way. Allcoholism is a fatal disease and you have missed that mark nearly several times.
If it is your pride and ego that is keeping your from hearing your story as you have told it here maybe the suggestion of attending as many open AA meetings in the next 90 days might help you decide. You can sit and listen to the stories of lost of other country men in your area and compare it to your own and then....? Keep coming back here also. Make sure to take Pappy's test. ((((hugs))))
wow thank you for you speedy and thorough responses. Angell my thinking is very black & white so thank you for that alternative way of looking at it, and yes how far down the road can go. I've wanted to stop now for years but somehow fell back into it. This time it was environmental stuff (guy moved in in the end flat and literally knocked on my door offering booze...i can resist anything but temptation... unwanted temptation i think i've heard it call.
Thanks for all them questions, my resistant started with....no, no, nope, nope ,nope.....and then yep, yep yep, yep, yep and so on......didn't expect only 3 yes answers to make me alcoholic.
It amazes me to hear that someone is born alcoholic, my mum is and my aunty, 1 of my cousins & his wife even says it seems to be something in the family hey... they are all in denial. Apparently my grandad & grandma didn't drink. But my mums cousin is a heavy drinker (he's Irish) :) my half brother drinks a lot, & my half sister drinks everynight. I don't see them though, but i know this.
I feel like a fraud most of the time, 2 other people have said to me they don't think i'm an alcoholic, but then my friend who is a recovering alcoholic sober fro 15 years & goes to AA all the time thinks i need rehab, which i'm considering, but can i do rehab sober? and do they give it for problem drinkers or heavy drinkers. Plus i have a little pet bird who i can't be apart from for too long because he gets depressed and plucks his feathers out when i go on binges or leave him with people.
I think i'm ready to take myself a little more serious now, i've never been allowed to express feelings or seriousness, my mum wouldn't allow it, she is a raving alcoholic who laughs everything off, i feel sad that i've enabled her for so long and lost myself in the processes, totally becoming obsessed with her drinking and not realizing that actually i too have a problem.
The meetings i enjoyed, (5 of them i went to) but then my ex followed me to them which put me off coz he was just trying to intimidate me but pretending to be there to help himself.
I'm actually moving away soon to a different area, so how would rehab work then. and if i were to register with the alcohol team there could something like that go against me if i ever wanted to adopt in the future do you think? so many questions! sorry! and thank you for such lovely responses. Think i better get to bed my valli's are kicking in :) night all
Welcome! I really identified with a lot of your post. For me, it came down to 'do I want to change my life and not feel this kind of pain anymore?' And the answer was yes. To be honest, I STILL sometimes have the 'am I an alcoholic?!' thoughts. It's got to be the only disease out there that tells you you don't have it! It's up to you if you want to change or not. The good news is, there is a wonderful solution in the form of Alcoholics Anonymous. It works, and it has certainly made my life happier.
Feel free to private message me anytime if you want to talk.
My wise friend once said to me, you have low self esteem-you're not even good enough to be an alcoholic. This really hit home, i was thinking...hmmm he's right, deep down i think i know, but i did a lot of comparing at the meetings at first and hearing how one mans heart stopped and he was brought back to life and other upsetting things i started thinking, well i'm not that bad....but eventually i learned that there are also people in AA that have been through less, and that my situation is unique and if it's causing me problems that is all that matters...all you want/need is a desire to stop drinking. My worse fear was talking i didn't want to talk ever. One man then said 'you never have to talk if you don't want to'. This was really empowering for me & kept me in there that little bit longer. There was one woman being a bit funny with me asking me inappropriate questions that was non of her business, but i didn't have the strength to actually say 'I'd prefer not to answer that thank you' either that or 'Mind your own business'. Anyway i stopped going to the meetings after that.
I do want the pain to stop too, i am very unhappy and have been for a very long time, i don't like myself or love myself, although my defenses sometimes pretend otherwise :)
All I've done since i was 14 is drink& drugs & i really do want to change it. I'm awake for the first time in a long time at 7 am (without still being up of course from the night before) & even though i've only had 3 hrs sleep due to Valium, i feel good to be awake at this time. I have the full day ahead of me, and today is a new day and a new start to my life.
When i move i think i'm going to finally get some real help.
Please read the AA book for a clear cut definition of an alcoholic. That's where I got mine. Especially important are the first 4 chapters of the book and the medical doctor's opinion.
Welcome - The only requirement to be part of AA is a desire to stop drinking. You can figure out the labels later. Personally, I would think you probably meet the criteria but it's a binging type more than a dependent type. Either way, it can and will kill you to have that pattern with drugs and alcohol. The relationship I hear you describing with alcohol is similar to what I hear from drug addicts who also call themselves alcoholics. I know I might as well call myself and addict and I would if in an NA meetings cuz I would substitute alcohol in pill form if I could back in the day and I'm still vulnerable to that. Usually drinking got me wasted enough though and I didn't bother chasing other highs or altered mood states. If someone handed me a bottle of painkillers back then though...they would be gone real quick.
__________________
Keep coming back. It works if you work it. So work it. You're worth it!
My wise friend once said to me, you have low self esteem-you're not even good enough to be an alcoholic. This really hit home, i was thinking...hmmm he's right, deep down i think i know, but i did a lot of comparing at the meetings at first and hearing how one mans heart stopped and he was brought back to life and other upsetting things i started thinking, well i'm not that bad....but eventually i learned that there are also people in AA that have been through less, and that my situation is unique and if it's causing me problems that is all that matters...all you want/need is a desire to stop drinking. My worse fear was talking i didn't want to talk ever. One man then said 'you never have to talk if you don't want to'. This was really empowering for me & kept me in there that little bit longer. There was one woman being a bit funny with me asking me inappropriate questions that was non of her business, but i didn't have the strength to actually say 'I'd prefer not to answer that thank you' either that or 'Mind your own business'. Anyway i stopped going to the meetings after that.
I do want the pain to stop too, i am very unhappy and have been for a very long time, i don't like myself or love myself, although my defenses sometimes pretend otherwise :)
All I've done since i was 14 is drink& drugs & i really do want to change it. I'm awake for the first time in a long time at 7 am (without still being up of course from the night before) & even though i've only had 3 hrs sleep due to Valium, i feel good to be awake at this time. I have the full day ahead of me, and today is a new day and a new start to my life.
When i move i think i'm going to finally get some real help.
Thanks for reading.
Thanks for your share here Sarah, ... but I want to clue you in on something, nearly ALL of us thought we were 'unique' when we got here, we thought, yeah, but, my situation is different ... we came to realize later on, that 'No', we WERE indeed the same as all these other folks here, just the name is different and the stories told all wound up being the one thing that got us here to start with ... we are NOT unique, we are brothers and sisters with a common problem, and we can help each other ...
Moving may temporarily solve a few of your problems, BUT, the disease moves with you ... you cannot outrun it or leave it behind ... I tried ... so what do you do?, get help now, don't wait ... take action now ... we may not have a tomorrow, all we really do have is 'today' ... use it wisely!!!
__________________
'Those who leave everything in God's hand will eventually see God's hand in everything.'
Py, thanks for your opinions...... but without uniqueness the beauty of the world wouldn't be here. Every individual and living thing is unique, even twins. To me anyway. My situation IS different from yours or anyone else's.. either by race, culture, social status, personality, conditioning or life experience. Blondes are even unique. However i would say that our disease is the same & it is that that has brought us together....... we can't 'all' help each other, in reality we 'could' kill each other. I'm not your sister, nor you my brother. Surely it's not someones job to get sober n start helping someone straight away. Actually i wrote that when i move i am going to get some real help, my journey has already begun obviously from joining here.
Py, thanks for your opinions...... but without uniqueness the beauty of the world wouldn't be here. Every individual and living thing is unique, even twins. To me anyway. My situation IS different from yours or anyone else's.. either by race, culture, social status, personality, conditioning or life experience. Blondes are even unique. However i would say that our disease is the same & it is that that has brought us together....... we can't 'all' help each other, in reality we 'could' kill each other. I'm not your sister, nor you my brother. Surely it's not someones job to get sober n start helping someone straight away. Actually i wrote that when i move i am going to get some real help, my journey has already begun obviously from joining here.
God bless.
Hi Sarah, ...
I agree with your response in the 'context' it was written ... so let's look at the comments I made earlier and put them in the right 'context' also ... Before we come to AA for recovery, most of us have passed through a period where our disease tells us we're okay, that we drink for this reason or that, that we are 'not' like other people therefore we are 'not' alcoholic ... our disease fills our heads with all kinds of this type 'nonsense' ... our disease tells us we are unique, so much so that we don't need to worry about our drinking, that WE can handle it ... the point is, we get to the stage where the disease controls our every thought ... we never want to admit we have this weakness about ourselves ... but the sooner we accept the fact that we are not 'unique' when it comes to addiction to alcohol, that we are indeed, 'powerless' over our drinking, then we come to find that those in AA are, in fact, exactly like us ... and those who have learned a new life without alcohol stick around to help those who have yet to learn ...
As far as helping another alcoholic, well, that can take a little time -OR- I've seen it start immediately too ... A guy in a meeting one time asked, okay, how much 'sobriety do you have? ... several people answered that they had this many years or that many years and one guy said he had three days ... ... ... this guy said okay, you with the 3 days, just how the hell did you go 3 days without drinking ... ???
So you see, you don't have to have all this 'experience' being sober in order to help others ... it can begin almost immediately ... and as far as I see it, we were created by one creator, for me that is God, and yes, I do in fact believe with all my heart that we are all 'brothers and sisters' of one Father ... it does not matter the color of our skin, or where we were born of earthly parents, we are all of the 'human race' ... ... ...
Love ya and God Bless,
Pappy
__________________
'Those who leave everything in God's hand will eventually see God's hand in everything.'
If a substance helps you feel more like "the real you" then you may have an addictive personality.
It isn't complicated.
Sometimes the cumulative price we pay in using those substances to be "the real you" is the other person is slowly destroyed and mangled physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
I hope you find what you are looking for.
Peace
__________________
"I spent a lifetime in hell and it only took me twelve steps to get to heaven."
"Experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you."
I feel less angry today, more low and depressed. I see what you mean pappy, i'm just very detached at the moment and the thought of us all being one doesn't appeal to me, I want to tell everyone i know to f off..... i really do appreciate ppl's support on here though..
I understand that It's not the real me, just felt like it in that moment and i felt good and free again and now i'm depressed, sober, and back to reality.
Thanks gonne, i have this book i've been reading it and will refresh chap 4 thank you.
Thanks pink, i guess it all comes back to the 'wanting to fit in' thing from my teenage years, i want to fit into AA, and i have these questions in my head going round 'what if they think i'm not really an alcoholic', 'what if they think, but you didn't drink everyday'.....
Hi Sarah, ... Don't worry over what others may think ... if you feel you belong in AA, you're in (the only requirement is to have the DESIRE to stop drinking) ... the important thing for you to do right now is go to meetings and do not drink ... listen only, if need be ... soon enough, you'll see the nature of our program to improve your life ...
It is VERY normal to get depressed at this point ... I did, ... one thing was the thought that I didn't like these folks at the start ... and the other is, I could not stand the thought of never being able to drink again ... but they taught me to not think of 'never having a drink again', just don't drink 'today', maybe tomorrow I can drink, just not today ...
Again, don't worry over what others think, like "but you didn't drink every day" ... the only thing that matters is that if you feel you have a problem with alcohol, then you do!!! ... the AA program can help you solve that problem and teach you how to live a sober, happy, productive life ... don't ever 'give up' on yourself ... there are those here on this board and here in my locale that did ... they are dead now ... that's NOT the answer you should be looking for ...
Love you and God Bless, Pappy
__________________
'Those who leave everything in God's hand will eventually see God's hand in everything.'
