Sobriety: Classic or Dud?

2nd question - as far as I know, insane people don't make decisions like these.

And you're not insane. We're yer friends, some of them at least. :-) *hugs* Best of luck, in whatever you do.

I *love* drinking. Sh1ps is my second home (and second job). All of my friends are good-hearted drunks.

*sigh*

Encouragment please.

The thing is the hardest thing is to not get caught up in it because sometimes it still hurts not to join in.

Once you get used to not doing something "bad" for you though, you get to realize you feel better about things and that also helps it when it gets really hard to stay sober. Just remembering how awful you'd feel if you gave up on it.

Sam email me if you want, I put my real email on this post. I'm not on AIM so much anymore but if you wanna talk, I feel weird posting here about this stuff.

ally is right, it's going to feel weird at first, but i found that people eventually just got used to me and my diet coke/sparkly water. if they didn't then they were so far in that they weren'r really friends they were future duis and o.d.s looking for company so it was just as well.

it's really important to have people you can talk to because it can be culture shock. i'll never forget going to the first party ever with "normal, suburban people" and thinking "wtf, where are the drugs? i mean this is really bad hosting! and aren't these people bored?!" but i got over it and got normalized on a more healthy vibe.

We'll see how it goes this weekend. I have to go to work at the bar tonight. But my friend said tomorrow night we could order pizza and stay in with some DVDs.

I've done it before, it's just a drag. But yes, I absolutely have no choice now. Apparently drinking with one of my new meds would turn me into a complete pyscho and possibly cause seizures. (who knows what pot would do).

thanks for the encouragement.

I really hate thinking about this question! That probably means something!

hi, what do we think of sobriety now?

I think sobriety is Classic when I recall my mishap at a buddy's 21st when I was completely arseholed and had my balls out all night. In front of his parents and step-parents and stuff. It was supremely regrettable.

gareth was indeed OTM.

OMG that sounds regrettable...

i think gareth was wrong, or at least, I don't see how drinking would be easy to give up in a vacuum, since otherwise, who would care? if i knew no-one, had no-one to care about me or what happened to me or what I did to myself, I would find it hard not to drink myself to death, i think.

Ok, giving it all away would be easier when surrounded by clean people rather than boozers/drug-takers is more what I was thinking really.

Yeah I think I'd agree with that, although I mostly drink at home anyway thanks to the smoking ban. The only thing thats now making me put the brakes on hard is depression. I refuse to fall apart.

I usually have 2-3 drinks a day but after three or four days of having to go without, I can say it's at least nice to be able to take Tylenol for aches & pains (which I couldn't do for fear of hurting the liver). Were there not a million billion other factors in my life I might be able to note some other positive change (ie I won't be able to get a refill on one of my (many) RX meds until the 28th). But the Tylenol thing, that's nice.

I take paracetamol daily AND I drink.

I dont know how I still have a functional liver.

I'm not supposed to drink OR eat grapefruit on my meds, but guess which one I avoid with sadness at the grocery store.

Revived as a counterthread to I'm Drunk!

I wish this thread's title was "Not drinking EtOH: Classic or Dud?" because the word "sobriety" gives me the heebies.

Alas, the time came when I was ready, willing, and able to quit this particular vice.

The first three weeks were kinda suck, but now it is nice. Better than before for sure.

I treasure my one memory of getting drunk with you and tza <3

I’m pretty much sober now too. I’m on too many meds to fuck with more than a v v v rare single glass of wine.

Sup thread, i will be joining you but I just need to make minor adjustments to one thousand things

I treasure that memory as well!

But having now done all sorts of socializing sans EtOH I realize I really do have just as much fun without the booze, or (and this is important) if I'm not having just as much fun, I move on and do something I truly prefer instead of just getting stuck in the "wtf, another round!" cycle.

xpost welcome, wins. You'll be fine! Better than fine, actually. I mean, if not, you can always go back. But you can't really make an informed choice until you've given it a fair shot and adequate assessment period.

What things do you have to adjust?

I actually managed it for several months and the thousand things are alcohol dependence

I’m about ready for another go though

Gotcha. I did some and stop and starts and you never really go back to square 1, you get a little wiser with experience ime.

how long have you been off EToH

as i said in the other thread i dont think id consider full going-off, but i never really want to be drunk again and def never really want to be hungover again and im working on how that works in social circles over here

Hmmm I don't have like a sober date or anything. . . just started changing things up a couple of months ago. Only recently did something firmly click and I decided I'm most content with option none.

can i ask what the first things were, out of interest? very obvious stuff like just not ordering alcohol, or had you another tack/strategy etc

Very first thing for me was not drinking at home anymore. Which felt weird as fuck for a while, but that passed. Then ordering non EtOH stuff at happy hours and out at bars/restaurants. Same thing, felt weird as fuck but passed. Then going away on vacation and not drinking at all. Surprisingly more fun and relaxing than my previous booze fueled travels!

Throughout this I had tremendous mental angst about what my drinking would/should look like in the future. That was the most brain draining part by far.

One of my bigger takeaways has been that the ahead of time worrying about what it was going to be like not drinking at x, y, or z event (would I feel deprived? Would it be as enjoyable?) was loads more uncomfortable/stressful than the actual act of not drinking at x, y, or z.

all good to know, thanks

what are the good etohfree options when out?!

i feel theres a good dorothy parker poem in a list of brief complaints against each of sweet drinks, posh water, pub coffee, etc

You know the thing about what fish do in water

I live in a city with a "craft cocktail" joint on every block. At places like that there are usually some etohfree options on the cocktail menu (fuck them if there are not!), or a bartender competent enough to put together something far superior to a fucking shirley temple or some shit.

I was recently out with dearly departed ilxor I DIED (RIP) and we did several hops to spots that made me something nice served in lovely glassware with lovely ice and lovely garnish. It goes a long way to not feeling envious of the drinkers. I'm not strident so I let the barkeep know that bitters or whatever are fine, anything to add interest.

If I'm somewhere that isn't fancy like that, I'll hope for a ginger beer or just some sparkling water with lime or whatever.

At home I'm making myself all sorts of iced drinks. There are some NA beers that do the trick for me if I just want something cold and wet. Honestly a fresh squeezed lemonade with mint from my garden is so damn good and feels like a treat vs. the crap white wine on offer at happy hour.

Missing that je ne sai quos though amirite

If by je ne sais quoi you mean wicked hangover then yes, yes it is.

Another of my takeaways from not drinking (darragh you may relate). Hangovers can be so subtle that you don't really know they are hangovers until you've been etohfree for awhile. To quote Kristi Coulter, whose blog Off Dry I enjoyed:

"I was hungover for 12 years. I thought I was just tired!"

"dearly departed ilxor I DIED (RIP)"

at what stage is it necessary to check that a person referenced has not in fact deceased, i wondered

i relate to takeaways while drinking but im most definitely trying not to do any of that these days

my hangover days are thankfully rare now, what ive actually been a lot more conscious of is putting my foot in it or being less pleasant than i would like (again, these days) once ive had more than is good.

but that said jesus the hangovers are def worse than they used be too.

hmm, much to think on. would take a lot for me to relinquish the whiskey shelf at home during winter- i think id be a lot more likely to turn into a teetotaller-when-out and get what i want out kf it that way....thanks for posts, v interesting

Dud!

More later.

Sobriety demands:

- a life absent whisky
- a life absent rum
- a life absent absinthe, and related anisettes
- a life absent gin
- a life absent tequila
- a life absent strong brandy
- a life absent wine
- a life absent BEER

In short, a life demanding that unfermented vegetable infusions somehow suffice for every delightful characteristic that the above provide, and most strikingly:

- a life that accepts that just going through everything straight is okay and somehow better than admitting that, for example, 14 hour plane rides are awful and you should be allowed to drink up to help deal.

To each their own. But to me - dud.

sobriety's fine, just don't overdo it imo

Ended up in hospital with alcohol withdrawal and I don’t exceed 6 beers a day. So sobriety is classic imo

hangovers cause me unbearable dysphoria

life causes me unbearable dysphoria

"I was hungover for 12 years. I thought I was just tired!"

Feeling this tbh but that time at night when I drink and smoke and read books is my favorite time of the entire day. Unfortunately it's also the absolute worst for me and my health and my long-term survival. If I want to change, I have to replace it with something...idk what tho. What are some things non-drinkin Lincoln ilxors have substituted for relaxation/recreation purposes?

quincie otm, a nice drink in a nice glass w/ a garnish or whatever is just as good as an alcoholic drink. while i still drink alcohol, once i started drinking kombucha regularly i found it easy to stick to one alcoholic drink a day. last week i was making non-alcoholic drinks w/ fresh mint, lime, sparkling water and i felt better when i made it that way than it did when i added whiskey or rum to it

honestly smoking/vaping weed made it way easier for me to drink less too. might not be "sober" but weed > alcohol in pretty much every way imo.

anything more than a drink or two makes me feel like trash

Tea, depression, applying hand sanitizer xxp

Jazzercise

once i started drinking kombucha regularly i found it easy to stick to one alcoholic drink a day

So do (non-alcoholic) people drink alcohol every day?

ILXors, I mean.

Yes.

me and my health and my long-term survival

I find worrying about these things overmuch makes people somewhat insufferable and stuck-up - and I’m a parent!

(xp) That's something I've never done fwiw, I can't imagine doing that.

I've been a borderline alcoholic for the majority of my life and I've never drank daily for longer than say a week or two at a time.

like at my worst i would drink it up a storm all weekend, beginning by going directly to the pub after getting off work on friday and ending just before bed on the sunday night. then i would probably get drunk once or twice during the week. but there would always be rest days.

It's the Scottish way.

i did the month of May sober and it was absolutely great for my bank balance and i was so much less tired, also my gf did it with me and it was really good for our relationship, which is fairly new, and had been spent mainly at bars after she gets off in the evening from her serving job. just find it impossible to be abstemious in the long-term, really hoping to cut my intake more sharply in future though

also my gf did it with me

quincie's posts upthread are really good.

i'm basically a no alcohol person, but three times over the past two weeks or so i had *one* drink and for the first time in my alcohol relationship i didn't want any more. i finally don't like the feeling of being drunk anymore, thank god.

since i barely drink anymore my tolerance is really low and i totally feel a buzz from a kombucha. it's subtle but it's there. it's small and nice and it's all i need.

For the posters who are like "omg drinking EVERY DAY wtf?," honest question: do you think there's an interesting difference between 7 drinks per week consumed as one glass of wine at each dinner vs. all of them consumed at a Friday happy hour?

There clearly are interesting differences - Jim’s post shows that daily intake vs days off is not a deciding factor in habit formation but I think the symptoms of same will manifest differently with these quite different methods of intake!

I’m daily/binge so I can see Both Sides

There's definitely an interesting difference. For me, drinking is entirely social, I don't drink at home - occasionally I'll get some cans in to watch a football match.

This is totally learned behaviour from my dad, who was an alcoholic who did all this drinking in the pub and never drank at home - literally never. The good news is I'm not an alcoholic.

"sobriety = dud" is a horrible sentiment

albeit i've mostly cut out all of my alcohol consumption and just smoke weed all the time and it's way fucking better!

lol

My buddy drinks 24-30 beers in a weekend. Imo that’s not better than daily drinking 2-4. Also you’ll be a drunken mess binging that way, whereas daily minor consumption just gives you a buzz similar to if you smoke pot daily

I think it has the same effect on yr liver + braincells though.

it's really less about volume than it is the behavior one constructs around drinking imo

Can’t imagine lots of my friends would’ve made the terrible decisions they did (cheating/disorderly conduct) if they weren’t plastered tho?

Worst offenders are daily bingers tho

this is a kind of bad presentation of the data (who talks an average of a quantile range instead of the quantile endpoints?) but I found this chart of average US alcohol consumption by decile from a few years ago pretty remarkable. If you drink alcohol every day that puts you somewhere in the heaviest 25-30% of US drinkers.

real interested in learning about that top decile, wow

anyway I've heard you're considered a "heavy drinker" if you have more than 14 in a week so I've tried to stick to that. it's kinda difficult in summer though when there's always something going on.

Also heard that frog. Believe that’s a medical rec

It’s now 7 per week. Doctors looked at how they were informing male and female patients and decided “hey wait, why again are we telling dudes they can drink twice as much?” Et voila.

Also guess who is in the top quartile of drinkers in America

I've cut back on beer so much that it's basically a once per month thing. Same with cocktails. I guess I might have a margarita a couple times per month. It's 90% red wine for me, if I'm cutting loose I might have two or three conservative pours probably amounting to a full glass size. that happens once every couple months. I went away from it after my 40th birthday was too memorable. Or rather, too unmemorable.

https://media.giphy.com/media/3orif5bEfQhQ9o2IqQ/giphy.gif

I live in a "sober house" but I'm drinking a beer rn lol

The thing is, I feel like wine should be able to be drunk all throughout the evening while doing stuff like talking to ppl, cooking, eating, and over about 3-4 hours that's 4-5 glasses which is a whole bottle. Per person. Which sounds like a lot when you say "a whole bottle" but not when you think about sipping something gradually over 4 hours. Idk. Maybe you're just not supposed to do that every night.

Like how could you only have 1.5 glasses? First of all the rest of the bottle would spoil overnight and second, you'd be done by 8pm and then what would you do for 4 hours?

Sorry folks I realize this is not the thread for this digression. Pls continue to celebrate replacing self-harm with better habits and how much energy you have now!

spoil overnight

dubious

ime wine is usually okay for several days unless it’s miserably hot. Also I share my bottles! I used to drink alone more but I can’t do it.

Last night I thought my wife and I drank a lot of rose but when we put away the bottle it was almost 3/4ths full. Lightweights.

that reminds me, I bought like a $7 bottle of sherry at TJ's months ago to use like 1/4 cup in a recipe, does anyone want the rest? I can mail it to you or just leave it out front

I drink every night. Probably three glasses of wine - one before dinner, one with dinner, one after. These days I try to take a day or two off drinking per week, but it's an effort. Drinking as a reward for getting through the day is so ingrained in my psychology. But I want to cut down.

i have to say that 6-7 hours of sober sleep is worth 2x that of 8-10 of drunken passout

All of this is relevant and I definitely get this, so much:

The thing is, I feel like wine should be able to be drunk all throughout the evening while doing stuff like talking to ppl, cooking, eating, and over about 3-4 hours that's 4-5 glasses which is a whole bottle. Per person. Which sounds like a lot when you say "a whole bottle" but not when you think about sipping something gradually over 4 hours. Idk. Maybe you're just not supposed to do that every night.

Also this:

Feeling this tbh but that time at night when I drink and smoke and read books is my favorite time of the entire day. Unfortunately it's also the absolute worst for me and my health and my long-term survival. If I want to change, I have to replace it with something...idk what tho. What are some things non-drinkin Lincoln ilxors have substituted for relaxation/recreation purposes?

So for me the short answer (which was not at all immediately apparent, although in retrospect duh, it should have been) was: I do all the same stuff as before, including sipping on a beverage sans alcohol. And I've learned to, like, self-soothe and unwind without chemical assistance. But it took a process of unlearning some stuff and figuring some other stuff out. Which I can say more about but at the moment I wanna go make dinner!

Just back from the pub to say that drinking alcohol every day is not a good idea, no matter how civilized it might be.

marcos it's funny you bring up kombucha because i had a Revive Boogie Down 'Cola' the other day and it was kind of like drinking a beer!

silby I would totally cook some lamb in yr sherry

xp except for the whole intoxication thing

Quit alcohol a little over a year ago and it's been great. I was drinking 3-4 beers per night, with one or two self-enforced days off per week, as well as an occasional run with whatever hard liquor. Never really a degenerate drunk. More of an oafish Homer Simpson type. There are a number of reasons why I quit.

a.) It was getting harder to stop myself from going to the liquor store after work. I'd tell myself to drive straight home and then swerve in for a six-pack at the last second.

b.) Related to that, a lack of decent, fresh beer choices had started to wear on me. "Do I stick with the old standby that I've been drinking for a decade or do I try this new $16 IPA they got in this week with the cartoon on the label and hope that it isn't hopped beyond hope or flavored like a Jolly Rancher?" Maybe I had drank everything worth drinking.

c.) I started physical therapy for back issues. On one of my first 7:45 a.m. appointments, I realized that I was still exhaling noxious fumes from the night before while my therapist was right in my face trying to fix me. So I stopped drinking on those nights as a courtesy. Also, to a certain extent my daily drinking was a response to neck and shoulder tightness that I perceived as symptoms of anxiety but turned out to be causing it. Once I cleared up the back issues, the neck tightness went right along with it and as a result I became much less anxious.

d.) There was one night towards the end where both my kids had the flu and I was completely exhausted and I knew that I couldn't drink because I wouldn't be able to take care of them. After that hell week, I just decided not to have another.

I've quit for extended periods before, but I think I'm totally done this time. At least for a long while. I'm much happier and healthier now and I think that if I were to just to reintroduce it "on special occasions" that I'd be right back on it again in no time.

Sorry, that's huge.

Jolly rancher beer is some tasty shit, would order that at the bar in a heartbeat. I’m mostly a Becks man these days tho, same as it ever was, works every time.

That was a great post, how's life!

The idea of not drinking as a positive thing with many visits as opposed to not drinking as a deprivation. . . that shift is huge, but you have to get away from the booze for a decent chunk of time in order to *get* the shift.

ummmm I mean seeing not drinking as a positive thing with many BENEFITS, not many VISITS.

I swear I'm not drunk.

hangovers cause me unbearable dysphoria

Totally this, I drink occasionally but starting a couple of years ago even without other hangover symptoms the day after drinking would be absolutely miserable. I've never been one to drink alone or at home at all but I was going out 3-4 nights a week for a long time.
Cutting back to only drinking once every two weeks seems to have made the next day no problem.

i hate 'northeast IPAs' so i get the ire towards fruity IPAs. give me something piney and bitter please. that all said, it's nice to read about a lot of you folks in similar boats and how it's so common. and ya i'm getting somewhat past the deprivation element and recognizing the appeal of just, i dunno... folding your laundry and making pizza sauce and shit and how that informs the rest of your choices

drinking is just alright with me

I did six months sober when I was 22 and it was both brilliant and awful. At that point, nearly all my friendships were based on "we go to the pub together" and not drinking was a great way to find out what I actually wanted from people in my social circle. It turns out that I was going to a lot of mediocre parties and clubs with terrible music because it was "fun" but it turns out the fun bit was just being drunk and without that social lubricant it was just awful and now I don't ever entertain doing these things. Now I do things with people I like when I'm sober, and the things we do are more likely to be things I actually actively want to do, and if I get drunk then it's a bonus on top.

It is amazing the impact not drinking can have on your health. I lost two inches off my waistline and it was purely because I wasn't drinking anything like the amount of fizzy juice as a mixer.

I lost 30 lbs. in the first six months after quitting.

me and my health and my long-term survival

I find worrying about these things overmuch makes people somewhat insufferable and stuck-up - and I’m a parent!

― El Tomboto, Monday, July 9, 2018 12:45 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://pitchfork.com/news/richard-swifts-cause-of-death-revealed/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deaths_through_alcohol

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Alcohol-related_deaths_in_England

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Alcohol-related_deaths_in_Canada

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Alcohol-related_deaths_in_California

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Alcohol-related_deaths_in_Florida

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol-related_brain_damage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol-related_dementia

What else you got?

great post how's life

ppl mentioning healthy byproducts of sobriety surely doesn't equal "worrying about these things overmuch"?

anyway that deeply sucks about richard swift

When I cut back to 0-2 drinks a day, I realized what a big role tolerance played in my drinking lifestyle.
When I drank more, I thought nothing of having 6-8 drinks. I felt elated and felt fine the next morning.
Now when I have 4 drinks I don't enjoy the intensity of the buzz, and I'm sluggish the next morning.
I think I go out more now that I drink less. It's fun being out late with all the senses fully operating.

when i heard that Richard Swift update i thought immediately of this noisey interview they did with him

https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/rzg4j6/a-whisky-soaked-interview-with-richard-swift

my family doesn't have what i would call a history of alcoholism but maybe...it's hard to tell sometimes. i've had several relatives who have been long-time occasional drinkers, whose drinking went from being not really "seen" to being a bit sloppy at gatherings, and it only accelerates with age. and i can tell in their sober moments, their thought processes and tempers have changed. they're a bit snappier and more unpleasant. much like watching how my FIL's hoarding has made us want to cut back on possessions, that's made me want to stick to water and coffee and tea after a certain point.

my parents def weigh on our minds when we think about our drinking (and most of our other behaviour too i think)

i have an alcoholic uncle - has been high functioning, holding down decent paying carpentry jobs fairly consistently - who is currently dying of esophageal cancer at 50, who i resemble when I'm on a big drunk, in terms of being sort of melancholy and lachrymose and not much fun to be around (also a slight physical resemblance). that weighs increasingly heavily on my mind

also absolutely no one itt seems to be resembling what tombot seems to be responding to? idgi

Father and paternal grandfather both died at 57, no intention of doing that tbh. (xp)

... both with the same name as me too!

I'm in a borderline area where by strict # of drinx I'm way over, but in terms of life functionality it's not having a noticeable negative impact. I can still drink 1-2 socially, or I can drink 5-6 alone while reading. I never pass out, I never lose any memories, I don't do "benders," it's all very civilized, as Tom said. But still...I'm starting to feel the research weighing on me more, that this is not a long-term plan.

it's what I do, lash out at straw men

Recalibrating my (fairly moderate but also quite regular) alcohol consumption looks more appealing than it ever has -- it's a couple days away from the first anniversary of my first bf's death last year to alcoholism. His death was appalling and totally preventable. He was drinking to self-medicate for depression and it killed him. I have literally no fond feelings for the guy but no one should die that way.

:(

Revive because I have done long-term sober and long-term drinkies and it is time for me to go back to the former, for the simple reason that it just works better for me (a fact I resent but oh well).