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What is being an alcoholic actually like?
- 'Sober' becomes a state similar to 'hungry' or 'thirsty'. Literally so in many cases, as [the DT's means it's quite possible to die of sobriety](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delirium_tremens) just as you would hunger or thirst.
— SailorArashi
- brief periods of euphoria surround by large chunks of just trying to get back to feeling like baseline.
— Bhikkux
- It starts out being fun. You have some drinks, get a buzz and like what you're feeling. You do what all the other kids your age are doing, parties, bonfires, whatever. Go get tore up, feel great. Everything gets a little easier when you're drunk. You're funnier, more handsome, people seem to like you more. Everything is copacetic, just a little 'social lubricant'. You have a good time.
You start to realize that, hell, everything is a little bit easier when you're fucked up. Work doesn't suck anymore. You can sit through a 2 hour lecture at school, no problem. Getting fucked up makes good nights into great ones. Why can't it make mediocre days into good ones? You can handle your shit, nobody really notices if you've got a buzz on at 3pm, so why not?
3pm becomes noon. A buzz doesn't cut it anymore. In fact, what used to do it for you anymore doesn't come close, now. 3 beers needs to be 12. A few shots is now half a fifth. People in your life start to notice your a little bit rougher around the edges than you used to be. More easily aggravated, harder to deal with. Any hobbies you had, any normal activities you used to derive joy from have taken a backseat to drinking.
It's not getting fucked up anymore, now it's just getting through the day. Noon became 9am became 3am. Waking up in the middle of the night to take a few drinks so you can go back to sleep. Work used to be better with a drink, but now you can't even walk through the door without being drunk. There are no more parties or bonfires. There's not even a drink at the bar with some friends. Now it's just you and a bottle, alone. The pleasure and feeling of relief no longer comes with a drink. Now it's just hoping for the pain to stop, or at least just recede a little bit. Being happy isn't really an option anymore, now it's just praying to not hurt so much all the goddamn time.
You can't stop, you're not even really sure that you want to. Life is unbearable. The pain of just existing is almost incomprehensible. You're killing yourself and you know it, but you wonder if that would really be such a bad thing. If you're dead, you won't hurt anymore, you're family won't have to wonder why you keep doing this to yourself. The job is probably just a distant memory at this point. Goals and ambitions have long since faded, you live only to drink. The few moments of clarity are so horribly depressing that you just resolve to drink yourself to death. There's no pleasure in drinking anymore. You're not sure if there ever was any to begin with. But, you don't know anything else. Drinking is the only thing that ever brought you any relief. You know that it's ruined your life, brought you to this point where death would be a blessing, but what else is there? This is the only thing left. So you drink, with the dim hope that maybe it will work again.
— SeizureSally
- Depends. I'm a functional alcoholic.
But I've been sober for years.
When I was bad, I didn't feel like I needed it in the same way I do for smoking.
But I found myself making excuses to drink.
Always having alcohol around, being the only one lunch time drinking.
I was hiding it too. Ordering Irish coffee's or putting booze in a mug at home.
If I was single I'd go to the pub on my day off to socialise and stay there till closing.
It wasn't a burning need but I normalised the behaviour and would joje about it.
Now I'm much older with a family I tend to avoid alcohol unless it's actually an event or a glass of wine with Sunday dinner. I volunteer as designated driver a lot to remove temptation.
— -brownsherlock-
- When I was at my worst I would drink to pass the time, ignore my problems, relieve stress, get sleep, wake myself up, to boost energy. Yet I was never happy, I would finish work go to my car and have a few chugs of vodka then go home and drink tequila. You get the shakes if you don’t have a drink and you find literally any excuse to drink and I would get aggressive if I didn’t have a drink... it’s horrid but here I am still kinda doing it but no one is around for me to hurt anymore so yah. It fucking sucks.
— WhereIsMyPenisLava
- Former high functioning alcoholic here. AMA.
It was weird for me because it took a long time to really recognize it as a problem. I would joke about it but I thought I just loved alcohol and that it was a choice not a problem. I mean I got everything done I needed to do and drinking never interfered, hell some of my most productive days to this day where days where I was day drinking. I would almost never say no to a drink.
What made me realize I had a problem wasn't the frequency I drank (which was a fuck ton, especially looking back.) but when I would hit a point I could not stop and would slam everything. Everyone would pass out at a party and I would stumble around all fucked up looking for more booze. Finishing other people's unfinished drinks if need be. Or sometimes I wouldn't stop drinking at all and people would wake up hungover and see me making a 50/50 jack n coke at 10am.
Then there are the shakes and anxiety when you arn't drinking, those are a bit of a cunt. I always attributed those to hangovers until I learned it is an withdraw symptom. I have it under control now that I know it is an issue (still occasionally go a tad hard at parties, but that is generally when others are going hard as well so I try to cut myself some slack.) but to this day if i have a few drinks the next day i have anxiety and the shakes.
Speaking of realizing it was an issue, people tend to not give a fuck if you are an alcoholic unless you act like a cunt. I latter realized that not all parties I attended were parties to get as fucked up as you possibly could and people just used a moderate amount of alcohol as social lubricant. No one said anything because they thought it was amusing and would try to feed me more booze. In fact when I would try to cut back people would get frustrated and insist I drink more and this got worse when I realized I had a problem and tried to control it. I realized I was just a novelty to people I considered good friends because they stopped wanting to hang out when I wanted to avoid drinking.
One of the things that hurts the most to this day is that people like me better when im shitfaced. My roommates who didn't know me much at all during my alcoholic years have told me when I was drunk "this is my favorite version of you don't ever change." It was ment with nothing but good intentions but fuck that cuts real deep. One of the reasons I fell absolutely in love with drinking was that I could express myself much more freely. I have dealt with some shit in my life and I couldn't tell you the turning point but I became very closed off and even after recognizing it I couldn't seem to break out of that shell, unless I drank.
— Dazmen1755
- Mostly normal. You don’t feel different from anyone else. You’re just having fun, and it’s kind of a downer when people don’t want to drink. But you find an excuse to drink tonight. Had a bad day. Lot of things to do. Going to the game tonight. Watching the game tonight. Cognizant of some sort of sporting event tonight. You wonder why no one else seems to feel the same as you. It’s a letdown. Why wouldn’t anyone else want to drink right now? Don’t they know it’s __________? You start drinking. One, two drinks. You don’t feel different. You have more. You feel slightly buzzed. You try to convince people around you to have another. You don’t know them. You have another. And another. You feel good for once. You begin to smile...and you wake up. In your bed. You weren’t in your bed before. It’s 7 hours later. You find receipts in your pockets from places you don’t remember going to. You may have thrown up. You check to see if you have your car keys. You do. You click it to see if your car is just outside. You hear it lock. You drove back last night. You don’t remember it. You thought you’d keep it together to drive back fine. You didn’t. You walk around shameful. You don’t know what you did last night. Everyone else does. They laugh it off. You’ve done it before. They expect this out of you. You can’t eat anything for the first half of the day. You regain your hunger around 7pm. You grab something to eat. You have a drink. You don’t feel different from anyone else. You’re just having fun, and you find an excuse to drink tonight...
— brother_of_menelaus
- Borrowing happiness from tomorrow until you run out of credit.
— bn1979
- A high functioning alcoholic, like I was, is constantly trying to keep a secret. You have breath mints in your car. You go to different bottle shops so they don't know how much you drink (they do.) You have some built in excuses why you can't attend some events.
It's like driving around with expired plates, you're constantly watching.
— picksandchooses
- I am a nurse on a substance abuse crisis unit. People come to us for safe initial detox before going onto long term treatment.
The worst withdrawals by far are alcohol related.
Opiate users feel rough, benzo users are worse, but alcohol takes the cake.
Just had a guy who came in who drank 30 beers a day for a decade. He said he had to have " 3 or 4 when I wake up just to stop the shakes and feel right"
These people are in sheer misery when they withdrawal. Tremors, sweat pouring off of them, vomiting, loose stools, pounding head ache. Plus a very real and very high risk of seizure.
In my experience, most long term substance abusers eventually switch from abusing the substance to get high to abusing the substance to not get sick.
It is a sad thing some days to see how easily lives can be wrecked.
— Rdubdanger
- You feel like shit nearly everyday. The way I coped with any of my problems would be to just drink. If I had problems with money, that’s fine I’ll drink. Had an argument with my grandpa, that’s fine I’d drink. It eventually got to the point where even if I didn’t have that big of a problem or no problem at all I needed to be tipsy to get through my day. If I had a long shift at work coming up, I’d go to my pub and take a couple spirits just to get a kick. There are different kinds of alcoholics. Some worse than other due to how they act when drunk. They could be violent or they could be the happiest person you ever met.
The best way I could describe it is that the alcoholic is a car and the alcohol is the fuel.
No fuel no function
— dantheman2108