great moments in alcoholism

So tonight at the liquor store I stood in line behind this man (purchasing a 5th of Tvarski vodka, a liter of Diet Coke, and a pack of Marlboro Lights) whose credit card was declined 3 times (5 min approx time). He then proceeded to write a check he, I, and the clerk all new was bound to bounce (2 min approx time). Finally he stepped aside and I bought my bottle box of wine. As I walked out of the building in the handicapped parking spot just outside the liquor store I saw the man in his car - idling, lights on, presumably in park - literally CHUGGING, for at least 3 seconds straight GLUG GLUG on the bottle of Tvarski - alone in the car.

WAU!!!!!!!!!!! Hooray.

this actually managed to make me feel better about myself. A+

Listerine anyone?

had a great-grandaddy who drank paint thinner

walking back to booth @ fast food restaurant to throw out trash b/c you feel bad about drunk colleagues leaving a mess everywhere & realize one of them is LYING ON THE FLOOR UNDER THE BOOTH of this nasty ass place WTF WTF WTF who does that?? for real

Also:

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/2187061.jpg

god love George Best, but (from the files of) you know you're an alcoholic if..: After multiple DUIs, a liver transplant, & having an electronic device surgically implanted into your digestiv system to make you physically ill if you consume alcohol, you still proceed to drink yourself to an early death.

And one more for the road:

http://blog.rifftrax.com/wp-content/photos/_39902518_shanemagowan.jpg

They drink the anti MRSA/CDIF hand gel off the wards at the hospital I work at.

drunken logic 1 : a friend of mine was at a party drinking loads of red wine and was sick on the newish white carpet. remembering that white wine can be used to get rid of red wine stains, he drank some white wine & forced himself to throw it up over the previous stain.

xpost - A couple years ago I read in the morning that Shane M. had been beaten up by dudes and spent the night in hospital. That evening I saw him at the pub completely bruised, battered, limping, and yes - wasted. Nothing keeps the man down. That may also have been the night he told me to blow him.

Did he at least introduce himself first?

Ha - no!!

He was bitter because my team was beating his in the music pub quiz.

He was probably disappointed that the quiz was about music rather than pubs.

(...)man (purchasing a 5th of Tvarski vodka, a liter of Diet Coke, and a pack of Marlboro Lights) whose credit card was declined 3 times (5 min approx time). He then proceeded to write a check he, I, and the clerk all new was bound to bounce (2 min approx time). Finally he stepped aside and I bought my bottle box of wine. As I walked out of the building in the handicapped parking spot just outside the liquor store I saw the man in his car - idling, lights on, presumably in park - literally CHUGGING, for at least 3 seconds straight GLUG GLUG on the bottle of Tvarski - alone in the car.

HELLO MY FUCHUR

"GLUG GLUG" LOLZZZZZZZZ

My friend's cousin got her third DUI and when she returned home (don't all drunks live at home with their parents, no matter the age) from a month in the pokey, her mom had rid the house of all things booze. Not having a car, the girl took a cab to the liquor store where she bought a bottle of cheap vodka. Not having remembered to tell the cabbie to stay in the parking lot while she bought her booze, she had to walk five miles or so home. That was plenty enough time for her to drink the whole bottle while she walked.

Listerine anyone?

― Sugar hiccup, Makes a pig soar and swoon (Pillbox), Sunday, November 16, 2008 9:39 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Does anyone else ever get the thing where you have to concentrate really hard on not swallowing mouthwash as a result of having just spent several hours swallowing drinks with clockwork regularity?

also, this is rich with material

http://www.moderndrunkardmagazine.com/issues/10_02/10_02_bar_signs.htm

a good friend of mine when we were in high school has been drinking excessively ever since. finished college and an advanced degree.. been arrested a couple times, been through rehab a couple times (at least one trip costing in the $10K range), currently on disability & can't work, has something (doesn't know what, last I heard) wrong with his liver now, still getting completely wasted and drunk dialing those of us who actually gave him their phone number (I didn't..)

http://static.flickr.com/45/118944197_84aac4570a.jpg

http://www.foxnews.com/images/151321/46_25_012005_bush_inaugural20.jpg

My drunken ex bf has already been hospitalized once that I know of for cirrhosis. He's only 36. Apparently these days he looks like Gollum, only worse, according to a mutual friend of ours. The guy was a trainwreck when I knew him at 21, I cant imagine what he's like now if he's kept up that lifestyle.

My high-functioning alcoholic uncle moved home to a flat above his local. That's sort of cool.

Kinda-maybe-former best friend wakes me up at 8am on a Sunday because she had gotten lost in Dallas trying to find her way home. She lives in Arlington (~40 miles SW of downtown Dallas). The bar where she worked the night before is in Fort Worth (~30 miles E of downtown Dallas, ~12 miles NW of where she lives).

Has no idea where she is, refuses to stop and ask for help (even though she's basically sobered up), proceeds to keep me on the phone for almost two hours as I talk her street by street back into Arlington ("Okay, is the sun in front of you or behind you? You want it behind you, that means you're heading west. NO BEHIND YOU GODDAMIT.")

nb: this is a girl who got a 1540 on her SAT and got into NYU but couldn't get her parents to help pay to go.

That I brought this up as an example of my good faith effort to be a friend when we had an argument is one reason she hasn't spoken to me in three weeks. So fuck her.

dude she probably lost her phone whilst on a bender. Give a drunk a break.

one of my best friends from back in the day (still hang out evry once in a while) who has been through hell and back in terms of addictions has this story:

We are at friend's pool in lush green summertime in Philadelphia. We sneak to my alcoholic friend's car and begin downing beers rapidly so that no one will notice that we are doing so. We come back to the pool after finishing a sixer, and everyone is naked, so we both get naked and jump in the hot-tub and smoke a joint. Then, we drive to the local bar in separate cars, down three more drinks each, and then I need to leave because I have work in the morning. My friend makes like he's leaving, too, but instead downs many more drinks, and proceeds to then drive ONE OF THE MOST DANGEROUS ROADS IN PHILLY (Kelly Drive, to all yall Philadelphians) to go cop some bud from our mutual friend and weed dealer. He is going NINETY in a FORTY-FIVE, and gets pulled over by a trooper. He is completely blacked-out drunk.

The next day, I come over to his parents' house (lols about that parents comment, right on the money there) and we decide to get some rum and just relax on the porch whilst getting blasted. We get into his car, and he finds a speeding ticket for $240. He doesn't remember getting the ticket, and doesn't remember going 90 in a 45, either. So, he caught one hell of a lucky alcoholic break.

My DUI just made me stop driving drunk.

Ha.

also, about that friend-- he recently gave a lecture on this:

Mass-media and the Emerging Edge of Contemporary Human Dynamics: Emergence, Self-organization, and Deleuze

he majored in Intellectual History at the University of Pennsylvania. it took him two schools (kenyon previous to upenn) and seven years.

(he also was addicted to crack and heroin at various points, so this last fact is actually astounding. the fact that he is alive is astounding)

I always worry about the extent of my drinking (I drink about 5 days a week but only get drunk about 2-3 days a week, I'd say) but I have never driven drunk or been in trouble with the law or woken up on someones lawn or anything like that :/

I have had a couple of memory hole nights but those days are long gone (and also involved things other than booze).

An acquaintance in lol college was enough of a drunk that when he left a party once everyone bet him that he wouldn't make it home (approximately a two mile walk) in three hours. I left the same party two hours later and as I was walking to my car across town I heard rustling in some bushes about half a mile from the party. It was the drunk, who had made it only half a mile in the two hours, gave up, and was settling in to sleep in the bushes in a bank parking lot. I gave him a ride home and he actually called back to the party and barely won the bet.

Like a year later he was really drunk at a bonfire party and tried to leave, people tried to stop him, and he attempted to ram everyone with his car before hitting a tree in the yard. He was pulled out and passed out. Sometime after that all the windows in his car ended up getting broken out and he basically lost contact with everyone he ever knew.

agreed to a game of vodka shot checkers. had forgotten i suck at checkers. threw up on my girlfriend's bed. then on her floor. then in her shower.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, October 25, 2007 11:15 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark

A few years ago, I found out that one of my old friends had:

- Drove from St. Louis to some strip club in Illinois
- Got blackout drunk by himself at the strip club
- Got kicked out
- Snuck back into the strip club
- Got kicked out again
- Tried to sneak back into the club, but was caught
- Backed his car into the side of the club, causing thousands of dollars worth of structural damage.

The mystery remains - did he back his car into the club on purpose, or on accident?

He got a DWI, of course. A few months later, he drunkenly parked his car on a sidewalk. He also ruined a Deerhoof show at the Ranch in Columbia, Missouri by moshing all over Satomi.

this thread is horribly depressing.

^^^was thinking the same thing as i deleted the bookmark

this thread is horribly depressing.

― ;n_n; (tehresa), Sunday, November 16, 2008 10:44 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

I AM DRINKING NATTY LIGHT AND LISTENING TO DISCO

the only time i passed out with all my clothes on:

xanax, drinks, marijuana, more drinks, more marijuana, percoset, more marijuana, more xanax, more percoset, more drinks, cocaine, adderall.

that day went like this:

brunch, hanging out, art-opening, hanging out, i DJ a massive house party

that's probably the most shameful morning/afternoon i've ever spent.

I drove drunk one time. I wasn't familiar with the neighborhood I was driving in, and almost drove into a cemetery. That was enough of a hint for me, and I laughed all the way home and haven't driven drunk since.

They drink the anti MRSA/CDIF hand gel off the wards at the hospital I work at.

― Jarlrmai, Sunday, November 16, 2008 12:41 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

ok wtf. that would never even have occurred to me! and i'm assuming "they" are patients?

gerry rafferty to thread.

there's something about the phrase "soaked in blood and urine" that just sort of conveys all you need to know about hardcore full-on alcoholism.

hey tips, that link doesn't work, and no other info i can find gives anecdotal evidence of the man's insanity.

also, out of curiosity, are any of his songs any good? never heard of 'em, maybe cuz i ain't british.

http://www.google.com/search?q=gerry+rafferty

welcome to the world

YES A LIST OF THE MAN'S SONGS AND PROFILES ON ITUNESILIKEDISCOGSYAHOOMUSIC TELLS ME ABOUT HIS ALCOHOLISM YOU SHIT

i might be drunk, but i can read.

i think the scotsman.com site's just a little hinky right now. try the link again later.

anyway, i think i have before in one thread or another talked about working for an alcoholic boss at a pub in manchester (i know, pub landlord in alcoholic shocker). we had a lot of regulars who were drunks of one variety or another, naturally, but the boss was the real deal. on days when i worked the early shift (starting 10:30 a.m., to get ready for the lunch crowd), i'd have to bang on the door and the buzzer until he finally woke up and stumbled downstairs. then the first order of business was brewing coffee for him and putting a couple jiggers of brandy in every cup. he looked terrible in the mornings, ashen, creased, squinting, hands shaking, like me on my worst hangover times five. (in my experience, alcoholics -- especially middle-aged and beyond -- look 10 years older when they wake up than they do by the time they're well-liquored and rosy-cheeked in the evenings.)

dude was a charmer, was the thing -- funny, a great storyteller, not unhandsome in a roguish way, you could totally see how he'd gabbed and gladhanded his way through pub gigs. but he was a fucking disaster. he ran himself and his friends (and the staff) tabs that he never paid, he paid no attention to the money -- probably half the staff was openly stealing from the safe, because he'd given us all the combination since it saved him the trouble of having to get off his bar stool a few times each day. when the accountants from boddingtons (which owned the pub) came for spot checks, he had some inside source at hq who alerted him, and he'd recruit a few of us to go across the street with him to the bank where the manager (who i assume also drank for free) allowed large impromptu temporary loans. we'd run back across the street with bags of money to throw in the safe, and then when the accountants left we had to hike the cash back over to the bank. this is the kind of shit that your longterm professional alcoholic will do. which might be just good stories if he didn't crash into so many people's lives along the way. he made all of his employees accomplices, so we could have all been fired at any point (or even charged with god knows what), he slept his way indiscriminately through the female bar staff, stoking rivalries, turning best friends into enemies and playing two cousins against each other so that one was so humiliated she left and went home to ireland. all for the privilege of cleaning up after him when he pissed the bed, which i was told by a few of the disenchanted women was a fairly regular occurrence. and he made his poor schlub of an assistant manager his patsy, blaming him for all the accounting screw-ups and making a big show of firing him the week before christmas when the asst's wife was about 6 months pregnant. nice. which didn't even save the drunk ass, because he got fired a few months later himself.

i have no idea what happened to him after that, but this was 17 years ago and if he's still alive i'd be shocked.

several years ago i spent a week in paris with a friend on his way home from three years in the peace corps in niger. whenever we got drunk he would call out various (friendly) things in hausa to anyone we passed who looked vaguely west african. no one ever answered.

no one knew what to make of him in french either, as he'd learned it variously in mauritius, paris, brussels and west africa.

moving viololtion
xpost

Matching Bond drink-for-drink is never wise.

Once my dad puked out the window of moving car (as passenger) onto the head of a passerby on a bridge we were crossing :/

Best Wonder Years episode ever.

Hahahah :)

Some See Big Problem in Wisconsin Drinking

“I work 70, 80 hours a week, and sometimes I just want to relax,” said Luke Gersich, 31, an engineering technician, who drank a Miller as he watched the Monday Night Football game at Wile-e’s tavern. On a weeknight, he said he might drink seven or eight beers. On a weekend, it might be closer to 12...

“We’re not ashamed of it,” Mr. Madland said. He said anti-alcohol campaigns were efforts to “demonize” people who simply liked to kick back and relax with some drinks.

“It’s gotten to the point where people are afraid to have a couple of beers after work and drive home, for fear they’ll be labeled a criminal,” he said. “At lunch, people are afraid if they order a beer someone will think they have a drinking problem.”

wisconsin, last holdout of the EU in north america

the price of drink would drive you to drink.

Last night, came home totally out of it, got phone call from girl having a crisis. I was trying to give advice/compassion etc while trying not to let on I was drunk. She was going on a bit, and I needed to piss all of a sudden. Dunno why I didn't just go to the bathroom while I was chatting to her, but it seemed a bit inappropriate and I saw a large (and empty) porcelain plant pot on the floor and thought "That's the vessel". I knelt down and started to piss, kind of leaning backwards to keep the phone away from the splashing sound, keeping the conversation going, not looking down until I was finished, at which point I saw a HUGE PUDDLE OF PISS on my carpet. I thought "WTF? Could my aim be so bad?" then realised, oh yeah, the plant pot has a large hole in the base. This girl kept going on about she feels lost, no future, what should she do? etc and I was being all slurrily sympathetic while at the same time using up two rolls of kitchen towels desperately trying to soak up a litre or two of my own urine from the floor. She suspected nothing!

the grove in old trafford. previously the seymour grove. currently, i believe, a parking lot. (it was at the intersection of upper chorlton rd. and seymour grove.)

ha! no way. i live in the flats that are now built on that spot.

Fancy that!

― not_goodwin, Monday, 17 November 2008

back in 03 when i first moved to manchester i used to live about one street back from there too, fancier that! it was nice round there, leafy and friendly.

whats your mail these days goodwin?

http://jalopnik.com/5101276/drunk-woman-pulled-over-by-ambulance

An ambulance crew in Nevada found a new way to save lives by pulling over a woman apparently too drunk to realize EMTs don't have arresting powers or notice the gas nozzle sticking out of the tank on her Subaru wagon.

Question

Is alcoholism kind of passé these days

Don't think it's as visibly present here nor in wider international culture, whether that be as a result of it having been replaced by other addictions (more socially acceptable or otherwise)

Where did alcoholism go?

I still see the packed local AA meetings out on the harbor over here

alcoholism has ceded the limelight for flashier, newer addictions like opioids, but I'm sure it is plodding along, killing alcoholics at its good old steady, reliable pace.

it can fuck up their lives long before it kills them

so many degrees on the scale between full-blown alcoholism and wrecking your life and health discreetly

MADD and the resulting nationwide DUI enforcement paradigm shift have all but eradicated weekday day drinking, the sign of the “true” alcoholic. binge drinking on a few evenings every week just isn’t the same, even the CDC agrees:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/11/20/vast-majority-of-americans-who-drink-excessively-are-not-alcoholics-new-cdc-study-shows/

The attitude towards alcoholism has changed. I think only a few years ago it was portrayed (on TV etc) as 'kinda sad but also kinda lol' to now 'actually a serious problem with nothing very funny about it'.

Yeah I know when they try to push binge drinking over here as anything over X no of units ppl scoff at the lightweight boffins

Ppl otm tbh the true number is usually closer to 2x

Boffins aren't good at taking cultural specifics into account

XP it was always more that alcoholism was a tramp dying, a fella drinking 2x pints a night was just a guy who liked a drink

Three different countries, three different situations.

Well now it’s being treated as a long term health consideration rather than an acute disorder. For example, my GP would really prefer that I stick to 7 units a week or less, which obviously interferes with my alcoholism quite a bit.

The attitude towards alcoholism has changed. I think only a few years ago it was portrayed (on TV etc) as 'kinda sad but also kinda lol'

Examples?

Well, Rab C Nesbitt, Eight Ace (from Viz), Johnny Vegas's character from 'Happiness'; the familiar stereotype of the lovable, roguish drinker in so many comedies (especially UK ones)

Loads of UK comedies from the past had a jesterish alcoholic that made drink-addiction look sort of, kind of fun - Eddie from Bottom, a dozen Harry Enfield characters I'm sure

I'm not sure any of them made alcoholism look like fun.

I quit the sauce altogether in March 2017. I didn't consider myself an alcoholic, but I definitely knew I drank too much and more out of habit than personal desire. My doctor never mentioned alcoholism to me either, but year or so beforehand, did mention that having more than 7 drinks per week (or something like that) was considered an excessive amount. I laughed inwardly at that because I would typically have 3+ drinks per night.

xps yeah, what tombot said

Tom D: Fun Bobby from friends?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18JmieM8SFc

(xp) No idea who Bobby from Friends is tbh.

"Shameless", of course.

xxp also

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF8U_v6S120

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k85Mk3TJqtg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlKJPf8btKE

meant this one actually

He's built his whole image out of 'alcoholims is p cool'

Sorry for alcoholic spelling

I think one of the best and most perspective-changing things I've read on the subject was Doran's review of the L. Pierre album http://thequietus.com/articles/11129-within-these-walls-l-pierre-the-island-come-true which reminds me, I should really get round to reading Jolly Lad.

The last 2 years or so I was drinking about 1-1.5 bottles of wine 4-5 times a week and maybe 1-2 glasses the other two days. It had absolutely no affect on anything other than I gained some weight and there was a lot of recycling. But I know it's unsustainable, so I am trying to only drink 2 times a week at most now. I love this interview below because this basically was us.

"Jacques (Pépin) chuckles that people freak out when he tells them he and his wife Gloria drink two bottles over dinner. “Well yes,” he details, “I start cooking at 4:00 in the afternoon and I open a bottle of white wine and by the time we eat at 7:00, we’ve finished that bottle of white wine and we open a bottle of red wine.” Jacques concludes this by saying he’s recently decided to exclusively buy magnums of wine. “So when my doctor asks, I will say, ‘Oh, I only drink one bottle.'"

John Doran’s barely remembering part of the plot of The Snow Queen and seeing everything as a metaphor for alcohol addiction (even using a record review as a AA confessional) are certainly a couple of great moments in alcoholism I guess.

My drinking pattern has always been more like a steady trickle than drought/blowout. So, only like two or three drinks an evening... but this is easily five evenings a week.

Honestly I can't relate to the pattern of dry week / weekend binge. Can't remember the last time I was binge-a-riffically DRUNKN! I haven't had trouble with the law or driving or waking up someplace unexpected. College?

(Not that I'm judging people for whom that constitutes fun. It's just that it seems antithetical to the joy and warmth I associate with moderate drinking as a complement to food, conversation, and company.)

All that said, I understand that drinking even moderately (but almost every day) it adds up to a total that is frowned on by health professionals. I do take periodic breaks.

in my case i think it very much starts off as joy and warmth and company and unfortunately i don't know when/how to turn the tap off and it becomes other things which aren't good

I am surprised that Gerard Depardieu and his 14 bottles a day isn't referenced on this thread.

For Tom D:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nJ_l5qMrdw

It had absolutely no affect on anything other than I gained some weight and there was a lot of recycling.

Dragging the cans out to the curb has gotten so much lighter and quieter since I quit.

last summer, everyone from my high school class was shocked by the death of our classmate to severe alcoholism. it would have been just plain old super-sad if this person had not been significant to me personally (my first boyfriend) but his death was like a million stab wounds to my high school self because all anyone could talk about after he died was how funny and sweet he was. this did not reflect not my experience with this person and it was difficult to deal with. that's a pretty big understatement really. dying of alcoholism remains as tragic and depressing as it always has been.

x-post - woah really? FOURTEEN???

Where did alcoholism go?

― things you looked shockingly old when you wore (darraghmac)

alcoholism is more popular than ever now, particularly in america with our War on Opioids. we've all started drinking more to numb the pain. this isn't, of course, going to end well.

depardieu is a big lad and he's had a lot of practice i guess

xpost I greatly cut down after reading about the death of Nelsan Ellis (heart failure due to alcohol withdrawal).

Yeah, I just saw he has quit drinking a couple of years ago though.
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2014/09/gerard-depardieu-bottles-wine-per-day

apart from anything else, this level of drinking must be fuckin expensive

https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article4210850.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/MAIN-Gerard.jpg

I am looking at a picture on my facebook of all the bottles 6 of us drank one night while playing mahjong (of all things).
13 bottles. Plus half a bottle of cognac. It was very good wine too.

/6 isn't too much tho

IANAA tho