Yet he got drunk again. We asked him to tell us exactly how it happened. This is his story: "I came to work on Tuesday morning. I remember I felt irritated that I had to be a salesman for a concern I once owned. I had a few words with the boss, but nothing serious. Then I decided to drive into the country and see one of my prospects for a car. On the way I felt hungry so I stopped at a roadside place where they have a bar. I had no intention of drinking. I just thought I would get a sandwich. I also had the notion that I might find a customer for a car at this place, which was familiar for I had been going to it for years. I had eaten there many times during the months I was sober. I sat down at a table and ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk. Still no thought of drinking. I ordered another sandwich and decided to have another glass of milk.
"Suddenly the thought crossed my mind that if I were to put an ounce of whiskey in my milk it couldn't hurt me on a full stomach. I ordered a whiskey and poured it into the milk. I vaguely sensed I was not being any too smart, but felt reassured as I was taking the whiskey on a full stomach. The experiment went so well that I ordered another whiskey and poured it into more milk. That didn't seem to bother me so I tried another."
Thus started one more journey to the asylum for Jim. Here was the threat of commitment, the loss of family and position, to say nothing of that intense mental and physical suffering which drinking always caused him. He had much knowledge about himself as an alcoholic. Yet all reasons for not drinking were
So the problem here is going into a type of trance or hypnotic state, where you forget that you shouldn't drink. Have you ever gone into the next room and then forgotten why you went there or driven for many miles in the car and not noticed anything, but suddenly you "wake up" and notice where you are? That's a kind of trance. Stephen Wolinsky has a good book called "Trances People Live" [3] That I found helpful. Some people are always in an emotional bind that looks like a trance.
In order to quit drinking I had to wake up and remain awake, develop situational awareness, use tools like meditation and Cognitive Behavior Therapy, and a big one is deal with my traumas. I had some that I ignored or laughed at and minimized, but turns out traumas caused me to "space out" more than anything.
You ask an alcoholic why they drank again and they can't tell you why. They don't know. Drinking because you went in a trance state is a really difficult problem to solve and the reason most alcoholics don't recover.
Hope this helps.
Edit: I forgot to add that doing the 4th step is like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and doing the 5th step is like Cognitive Processing Therapy (for trauma) so you can get those for free in AA
[1] I use the term real because some of us in AA use it to distinguish ourselves from people that have 1 too many glasses of wine in the evening and then go to AA as a social club and call themselves alcoholic. I avoid meetings with too many of those.
[2] https://anonpress.org/bb/Page_36.htm
[3] https://www.google.com/books/edition/Trances_People_Live/yyy...
Just as many alcoholics can't handle a glass of wine with dinner or a beer with a friend on a Friday night, many food addicts just can't handle sugar or fast food at all, and would be better off cutting these things out of their lives entirely. It's a more hardcore lifestyle change, but it can also be a psychologically simpler ruleset to follow.
It's a hardcore change but "simple" to follow? Isn't that part of the problem? The physical and mental are tightly interwoven. Telling someone they should just eat vegetables and chicken breasts ignores all of the other problems, mental and physical, that could be leading someone to unhealthy habits. In fact, a "ruleset" like this could contribute to further psychological problems and then further physical problems. This is the issue with diets, they ignore all the other factors outside of food.
It's definitely hard but the "just say no" approach can work. I do recommend taking it one at a time though. Once you've cut out one thing successfully, add another.
I lost 90 lbs with this approach.
It's harder, but the biggest trick was learning to pay attention to what my body was telling me, stop when it first gave me a sign to stop, don't start until it gave me a signal to start, and also... realizing that if you're obese (as opposed to an underweight person with an eating disorder), that maybe spending a part of your day feeling hungry is a sign that you are taking care of yourself. That sounds pretty simple too when you write it out like that, but my goodness just doing that is a so hard (yet effective).
Yes - may as well feel positive associations with hunger.
It wasn't until about two years later until I would have several days without cravings.
10 years later, I get cravings maybe once every few months and they are easy to let go of. Two days ago I got into a Lyft and someone dropped a pack of cigarettes in the back seat. The temptation was moderate to take them.
I think in part the brain hardwires to confuse nicotine as a type of food. Do not eat for two days, and that is what a smoker feels like for the first 2 weeks. Do not eat fir a day and that is what the first 3 months felt like (all the time, constantly). Your mind is telling you that you will literally die if you don't resolve the urge.
I think this is why relapse is so high for nicotine. You have to be consistently strong every time for months to almost be hone free. During that 7 years I had relapses usually after days, a few times I made it a week or two, once I went 3 months, and had gone 6 months twice as well before relapse.
FWIW, a person just has to keep trying. I admitted that 1) I deeply loved smoking. It is amazing. 2) there is no such thing as one last cigarette. Relapse would likely occur, and when that happens, my cessation efforts would continue.
As for alcohol, I'll just say that as incompatible as withdrawal is with holding down a job... being drunk is pretty incompatible too. I think if you can finesse one, you can probable finesse the other.
In general, my observation has been that as horrible as withdrawal is, that's the easiest part of kicking a habit.
I ask because on the one hand it’s fair to say that I’ve never suffered. Not like my wife. Not like many on this board.
On the other I have have a pain, and I know where it’s from, but it seems so idiotic compared to what others have suffered.
And yet I seek escapism, the trance state where I try to forget my existence.
Perhaps part of you views it as “idiotic” because it is reluctant to address it?
I've read the big book, and consider it a source of wisdom, even if I perhaps don't follow all of the tenants contained within.
The serenity prayer, which is AA adjacent if not (now) directly part of the AA wisdom is my personal lodestar, it's great wisdom on how to deal with life's challenges.
From it I ascertained that the first two questions one should ask are when encountering something in life are, "is this actually important?" and "is this a problem I can actually solve or make a meaningful difference in helping solve?" - anything one can answer "no" to either of those questions one should just let go of, and try to focus one's energies on other problems.
Also, I'm glad for you, that you found sobriety.
The Monday rule is two fold. First it is a weekly check on alcohol seeking behavior. It is also because all the reasons I can think of for drinking on a Monday are not reasons I want to be drinking. Having a rule helps avoid bad habits.
This puts succinctly something I try to practice that I likely got from the same source. My parents were both in AA for the entire time I knew them and I was carried along to many meetings and, later, went along with them of my own volition. I have a great respect for the organization and, especially, the people humble enough to recognize their need for support.
I'm really glad there are others that were able to absorb the AA adjacent wisdom, and transform it into something productive like I was.
This is also a teaching of stoicism. Focus only on those things you can actually change and understand that your reaction to external things is under your control
“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…” – Epictetus
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” ― Marcus Aurelius
I avoided AA due to the quasi-religious aspect, but Smart Recovery meetings helped me in the initial phase (https://www.smartrecovery.org).
I was always concerned about the longer term aspect of replacing alcohol in social settings, and there is still some awkwardness there but non-alcoholic beers have really helped for me. The scene has exploded in recent years and they're really quite good, see Athletic Brewing for some excellent craft non-alcoholic beers (https://athleticbrewing.com). In a social setting you could be drinking one and nobody would have to know. I don't hide it but I'm still glad to have something "special" to drink at an occasion. And I drink them alone too: they fill that role of something to drink when I want to relax, and I enjoy that placebo effect.
I found the Personal Stories/Testimonies section to be pretty relevant for me, others may find other things. AA fundamentally is the best tool you can find to get you sober, and keep you sober, but it in some ways IMO, works as an addiction transference program. But if you need to stabilize your life, and find your own path to permanent sobriety, AA is literally the best tool you can find to do it.
Breaking the habit? Have the will to stop. That's both hard and easy. But you didn't ask the question because you don't want to carry on so there's a plus.
I drink as much regular milk as I can when I feel the urges: this is because whacking down beer after it just feels sloshy in the stomach: not unpleasant, just 'sloshy'. And pointless..it takes too long to get drunk.
So, I've pretty much banished the beer of late.
To keep away the demons - when I absolutely feel a binge coming on, I keep a mouthful of liquorice 26% alc in my mouth for as long as possible (as well as having had the milk).
Happy to say I've not been fucked up for well over two months now, and have done several stretches of 5-8-10 and a 14 days with zero alcohol in the last three months.
That's a success, as I've been pretty much drunk for the last 8 years.
And, I didn't stop to buy a crate of beer today - there's none in the house, either.
I personally have not tried it, but some people use a system called The Sinclair Method (TSM) whereby you take naltrexone prior to drinking, and it is supposed to reduce both the enjoyment you get from alcohol as well as your craving for it, so you would end up drinking much less than normal. I know on reddit, r/Alcoholism_Medication/ has a lot of discussion and resources on it.
The answer varies where I might send you to seek help.
It did nothing for the underlying causes of my wanting to be inebriated of course, but the "I can't think about anything else until I've had a drink" just disappeared.
How some people can function while drinking every night is beyond my comprehension.
I need about 150ml vodka and 3 beers to get to the state I want. It wasn't always that way, of course, but it escalated gradually. I don't sleep well, but oh well. It's worth it, in a way. I can forget about my troubles, my bad pay, and my work pressure by drinking and watching movies or playing video games at the same time.
The next day? Sometimes I wake up with a headache. Not often, now that I know exactly how much water I need to drink before I sleep to avoid that. But the next day is always normal and I'm pretty well functioning, if lazy and procrastinating. I just need a 20 min nap after 12pm and I'm pretty much set to function.
Will I stop? I don't know. These things on my mind may seem utterly trivial to some. I wasn't abused, I haven't lost anyone in my family, I live fairly comfortably. But I need to get my mind off those thoughts. I can go days at a time, even weeks, without feeling the need to drink, so long as I just forget about its feeling. But why would I do that? When I have a 2L bottle of vodka and an 18 back of 5% beers? With them, I can enjoy the night more than I would otherwise. That's got to be worth something, at least to me.
I don't know if it makes a difference but my alcohol of choice was beer and I consumed between 10-15 every night for around a decade. I still would consider myself an alcoholic because if I drink even one beer, I am going to keep drinking until they are all gone, but I guess I have the ability or wisdom to choose not to have that first drink, or maybe I'm just co-dependent without anyone to make it happen. Lucky for me I suppose.
So first beer has an effect and you can make the decision whether you want that effect (with its pros and cons) or not. But if you say yes, then there is less reason to say no to the 2nd drink. After 2nd drink there is even less reason to say no to the 3rd and so on.
So when you contemplate taking that first drink ask yourself: If I do, is there any reason why I wouldn't keep on drinking after this first drink? And by the logic above, there really is less of a reason to say no to the 2nd drink than the first and so on.
But curiously and luckily this logic means that there is also a big reason to NOT have that first drink, because you can assume that its effect is not only the effect that one glass has on you, but also the effect that it makes you drink more. That is a good reason to not drink the first drink. If you don't say no now, why would you say no later?
So I wouldn't consider you an alcoholic just because your first beer leads to the 2nd and so on. You are not alcoholic you are just being logical. If you have a reason to drink the first beer then you also have a reason to drink the 2nd and so on. But luckily because you are logical you can see that it is not a good idea to drink that first beer in the first place.
The sheer insanity of that game suits a few (by which I mean 2-3 beers, not much of a drinker) every couple of weeks.
It’s incredibly relaxing.
I drank way too much in my twenties (shitfaced every weekend which was normal in the uk back then), stopped entirely for my thirties and now stick to 2-3 once every few weeks.
Not been drunk drunk in 14 years, good on you for getting yourself sorted.
Gabapentin is often prescribed for depression. It can be taken with other antidepressants. I’ve heard it can cause severe weight gain via water weight and bloating.
I don’t even take my full low dose during the day as I don’t like the way it makes me feel (though it’s a very effective drug for me).
NAC a couple of hours before your drinking escapade.
A five hour energy drink the morning after. The B’s + folate really help to feel”normal” the after.
Adult drinking is preparing for and mitigating the day after effects. :)
I wish I could still do it, but I found myself waiting for the liquor store to open up at 7:00 am to get rid of the shakes. Then when I tried to stop I couldn't. Long story short, after several rehabs, more stints in mental health lockup than I care to remember, and burning through more sponsers in AA that I can count, I finally was able to stop.
"Cunning, baffling and powerful" is how Bill Wilson, founder of AA called alcohol for those of us who are "real alcoholics" or if you prefer
“Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each non-existed in an entirely different way.”
— Stanisław Lem
p.s. There is a tradition of the Drunken Zen Master but it's archaic. We all know better now.