7 ms·

I'm an alcoholic. I'm an alcoholic but I don't have a problem, and I don't see what it is about alcohol that would possibly cause people to think they're not pr

by hug 9y ago

I'm an alcoholic. I'm an alcoholic but I don't have a problem, and I don't see what it is about alcohol that would possibly cause people to think they're not problem alcoholics. I drink "too much", by which I mean I definitely exceed the so-called healthy amount of four standard drinks a day over the long term, and just between you and me I also exceed that amount over the short term, if you know what I mean, but as I said earlier I also think that I don't have a problem. I know alcohol is a vice, but it's not a vice I just have, it's a vice I luxuriate in. It's a vice that gives me comfort and pleasure and just sometimes a little bit of pain, but never regret. It's not a habit, it's a hobby. Every weekday morning, after a night of drinking beers at the pub with friends, or after a bottle of wine while playing video games, or after sharing stories with a bartender at a cocktail bar, I wake up, I shit, I shower and I shave, and I head to work on the train among all of the healthy, non-alcoholic commuters. I achieve what I need to every day at work, being easily one of the most productive people at the job, and I come home and I spend time with my family, and my friends, and except for the part where I have a glass of gin in my hand you'd never pick me as the guy who drinks "too much". I blend in. I blend in not because I try, but because it's not actually really an issue. Not a problem. Sometimes, rarely enough to call it rare but repeatable enough to call it occasional, on a Saturday morning I'll wake up with blurry eyes and a pounding headache and I'll know I've definitely overdone it. That the night before I had -- in full knowledge of the consequences, and accepting them -- found the limit of the amount that I should have had to drink and gone right past it without looking back. That maybe I should have stopped four or five or six or seven drinks earlier in the night, if only for the fact that drinking is too much fun and too delicious. If only for the fact that I didn't so much enjoy being drunk, with the knots in my brain unwound, feeling like I'm finally able to relax my consciousness with a drink like I relax my body with a massage. Even those mornings after I think to myself that I don't have a problem. Maybe it's just my naïveté.

koolba 9y ago
Do you drink in the mornings and during the day as well or only binge drink on a nightly basis? I know plenty of people in the industry with a work hard / play hard mindset that are like that but all the ones I know personally moved on when it being impractical (generally when they started having kids).
ridgeguy 9y ago
It doesn't seem like you have any behavioral problems with alcohol. Over an extended time span, you might face other issues [1]. Shorter life and a merry one vs. longer life and perhaps less enjoyment. A choice that merits thought and spirited discussion with friends. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_and_cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_and_cancer
- hug 9y ago
  I am statistically far more likely than others to face alcohol-related-health-problems. Also, through an accident of fate and genetics, diabetes. And a family history of pancreatic cancer means that I'll be sticking a gold star next to that entry on the list. I occasionally smoke, so throw a pinch o' lung cancer into the mix. I eat too much red meat, not enough vegetables, too many saturated fats, and all of the other things that add up to heart disease. I don't exercise enough, but the exercise I do is too high impact. I have been known to partake of illicit drugs on the odd occasion, so who knows what kind of back-yard horribly contaminated meth lab chemicals I'm putting into my body, and what they'll do. I ride a motorbike, so all of my organs, low value as they may be due to the combination of all of the aforementioned, might calamitously end up splattered over asphalt any day now. Life is a calculated series of trade-offs. I've picked mine, and I'm really enjoying where they're taking me.
  - paulcole 9y ago
    >Life is a calculated series of trade-offs. I've picked mine, and I'm really enjoying where they're taking me. Everybody changes their tune when they get there.
    - hug 9y ago
      Mistakes aren't always regrets.
    - ionised 9y ago
      > Everybody changes their tune when they get there. I don't buy that.
nkozyra 9y ago
I'm in the same boat, but I know it's a problem. Yes, I get everything done I need to and then some. I'm up by 7 every day of the week, I work efficiently 50, sometimes 60+ hours a week. I'm with my family nights and weekends. I exercise, I play basketball, I play music. I'm 5 drinks in right now. I drink alone, every night after my wife and son are asleep. I'm usually working and drinking from 9 or 10 until 2 or 3 and then up a few hours later. I feel a little off for the first hour or so and then drink enough coffee to plow through the day. To be completely honest I think I've been drinking enough that getting a hangover would take a phenomenal amount of effort. I've acclimated to having booze every night. That's a problem. But it's not the big one. The big deal is: alcohol is unequivocally bad for you long-term. If it doesn't kill you directly through fatty liver/cirrhosis it'll contribute to an early death through many, many forms of cancer, heart disease, dementia, etc. You won't find many doctors who will say that drinking is not bad for you. My doctor was shocked even though I lied about how much I drink. I lowballed it and my doctor said "whoa, that's too much" It is a problem. A serious problem that is too often marginalized by alcohol's social role.
- hug 9y ago
  I don't know you and you don't know me, despite the fact that you say we're in the same boat, but it sounds to me like you're saying you really think it's time to start bailing. I hope by the same boat you just mean the same model, because if what you're saying is as true for me as it is for you, I'm going to sink, because honestly I don't feel like I'm gaining water. I feel like I might have stretched the analogy too far, but here's the thing: What's the first step, again? If you're happy, and if you honestly don't think you have a problem after some serious introspection, then you don't have a problem. You might have a diminished life span and you might have some health complications, but if the root cause of those things is you living your life the way you want to, maybe that's something you should have the choice to do.
  - nkozyra 9y ago
    > If you're happy, and if you honestly don't think you have a problem after some serious introspection, then you don't have a problem. See here's where we disagree. Alcohol is extraordinarily addictive. I have begun to believe that I'm not living my life the "the way [I] want to," but am convinced through conditioning and social norms that this is the "good life" or whatever. Nobody is living a "good life" with 6+ drinks a night, particularly in the way I do. Alone, at a laptop, working until 3 a.m. There's a difference between a casual/social drinker and a habitual drinker. The latter will - via addiction - attempt to justify our drinking. And let me also say that you're right - we may be in the same boat but perhaps I'm at the bow and you're at the stern. For a long time I didn't even think about my drinking. I'd drink occasionally. Then semi-regularly. Then every day but I was 25 so who cares that's what we do. One day you wake up and you have a wife and family and you're still drinking like a college sophomore. Again, all of this would be fine if I were just a functional alcoholic and that were the end of the repercussions. But this is physically destructive behavior. It's the kind of thing you don't really consider until you start to get a bit older.
kirse 9y ago
Everyone has an innate capacity for mental/physical stress where they can still operate, it just sounds like you are using your margin on boozing. Maybe try powerlifting or running marathons and see if you reach a breaking point where the drink has to go if you want to grow? Or maybe try sleeping less and starting a company?
- hug 9y ago
  You say suffer, and you say pain tolerance, but really none of what I said is about suffering or pain. The beer I drink, tonight, isn't going to hurt me. The gin the next day isn't, by itself, the cause of any real harm. The cumulative twenty some years of drinking too much? That's the kicker. That's the one that's going to get me. Maybe. Maybe it won't. Maybe fuck what the actuarials say. Maybe I'll beat the odds. Maybe, though, maybe I won't make it, and maybe I'll die young with all my dreams unfulfilled, a sad shrunken wreck of a man that achieved nothing. Maybe all of those things are totally possible with and without the alcohol and life is all just one big shitshow that I enjoy living exactly how it is. I'm not a fatalist. I'd just rather be an alcoholic than a power lifter.
  - 9935c101ab17a66 9y ago
    *Actuaries
vt240 9y ago
Sounds similar to my life for the past 10 odd years. Then one day, I woke up with that headache and blurry eyes, and said I can't do this again. I'll still have a drink a few times a year, for special occasions, but enough was enough. Hah. I quit drinking three years ago.
- hug 9y ago
  Good for you, man. You're clearly doing what you want to do and living your life how you want to live it, and as far as I'm concerned that's worth more than any faux sage advice that is going to be offered over the Internet.
devb 9y ago
Can I ask how old you are? Non-judgmental, I totally identify with you.
- hug 9y ago
  Thirty. Old enough that by now I should probably know better, but old enough to know that if I haven't learned by now, I probably never will.
tpeo 9y ago
Yeah, I don't think you're an alcoholic. It might be because I come from a wet culture. Which is to say one where having a beer over lunch isn't (or wasn't) frowned upon. But 4 beers a day is completely manageable. Doctors have been trying to tally up how many beers it takes until someone is an "alcoholic", but IMHO they're far off the mark. Because as it is, it's quite easy to tally up enough standard drinks to become a medically defined "alcoholic", or to enter some similar classification ("heavy drinker"?), without ever experiencing any clear behavioral or physiological issues (e.g. not diverting money from needs to drink, not being a nuisance to yourself or others, absence of seizures upon cessation of intake). Even the idea of a "standard drink" is rather lousy: 4 shots of vodka doesn't equal 4 beers. The amount of alcohol per volume matters, and the higher the relative volume of alcohol, the faster it hits you and the more easily one might develop dependence. In short, you're more or less fine. Unless you're downing a fifth of vodka every day, in which case you might want to cut down a bit.
- hug 9y ago
  Who said I only drank four beers a day? I said I exceeded that mark, I didn't say I aimed for it. That said, the definition of a "standard drink" is, in the United States, any drink containing 14g of alcohol. And while neither you nor I nor anyone else who doesn't actually have a problem is picking drinks to drink based on how many grams of alcohol they contain, it's still a measure that's probably useful to know. At the very least so you can silently judge while frowning at yourself in a mirror late at night in a seedy bar.
- ams6110 9y ago
  To me, you're an alcoholic if when you stop you have physical withdrawal. If you need to drink rather than just enjoy drinking. There's probably a fairly wide grey area. I've always felt that drinking was a choice not a compulsion. I can go a week with no booze and have no symptoms. But occasionally I get past that limit and my self control evaporates and I pay for it the next day.
whiddershins 9y ago
A lot of people are replying to you talking about lifespan. But I have read a ton of conflicting studies about this, and there are definitely some meta-studies which indicate it's rather difficult to drink enough to make your mortality worse than a non-drinker. In other words for all cause mortality, moderate drinkers > heavy drinkers > teetotalers Same with alcohol's affect on obesity. Counter intuitive. I am skeptical of those studies, but in any event they exist and there's a lot of controversy here. I also agree one can very very easily be fooling themselves about a substance but the assumption that you are not self aware is ideology based. Before we demonized substances there were countless examples of people who indulged heavily and seemed no more or less happy than their peers. I think our social standards are skewing the conversation and that's too bad. Some people have a problem with alchohol. Some people really don't. And for all of them it's their determination to make for themselves and something I should have no opinion about. Like all life choices. I humbly suggest others try taking the same attitude.
- hug 9y ago
  My grandparent post is talking about a man greater than I can ever expect to be, and all of the great things he achieved. Oh and also he drank his own volume in alcohol a week and smoked enough cigars to keep a tobacco plantation in business single-handedly. Now I'm no Churchill, so I don't expect to make his political or tactical achievements, but maybe I can match him at the other things.
  - hvidgaard 9y ago
    Some people survive a major car accident without wearing a seatbelt, that does not mean that it's a good idea to not wear your seatbelt.
- mercer 9y ago
  > But I have read a ton of conflicting studies about this, and there are definitely some meta-studies which indicate it's rather difficult to drink enough to make your mortality worse than a non-drinker. I'm extremely skeptical of this as it seems to obvious to me that drinking to excess is bad for the body. But I haven't done the research. Do you have some links for evidence? I'm honestly curious.
ams6110 9y ago
I'm sort of in the same camp. I don't drink every day, but when the mood hits it just makes everything more fun. My dad drank every day. The first thing he did when he got home from work was make a Manhattan and he had a glass with him until he went to bed. He was never aggressive, cruel, or unpleasant when he drank, just relaxed and happy. It definitely affected his health as he got older, and there was a period where he stopped. He ended up dying of liver cancer in his seventies, which was metastatic from lung cancer (he was a smoker until his fifties) but I'm sure the drinking didn't help matters. Interestingly I've never used any other intoxicants. I've never smoked tobacco or weed, never used hallucinogenics or anything else. Booze is enough and I enjoy it. These days it's mostly whiskies in the 100+ proof range. Nice to have neat and just sip. I don't drink beer much anymore. I think everyone makes decisions about what they like and don't like in life. Some people like to drink. So what. We all end up in the ground eventually.
- ido 9y ago
  Empathically, yes we all end up in the ground but the way there can make a big difference and you may only really regret it when it's too late to do something about it (general you, not you personally - occasional drinking is far less hazardous than being an alcoholic). My father is now 76 and smoked, ate badly and did no excercise his whole life. He knew it was bad for him and started seeing the effects for decades, but had the same attitude as above. Right now, and for the past several years, his life can be fairly described as "would have been better off dead" because of the health implications of such choices. I'm not exaggerating for the sake of argument, I would literally prefer to commit suicide if I was in that situation (he is no longer capable of doing that). So yes everyone should make their own choices & you may end up like Churchill rather than my father, but seeing the effects first hand that there's a (likely) fate worse than death convinced me to never take that sort of attitude lightly.
sliverstorm 9y ago
I find it keeps me from my best self. But I only notice the first day or two, and then it becomes the new normal. My sleep is shallow, I stay up to late, I'm dehydrated, I become irritable when I'm not drinking. I do function. But not as well. I became more aware of this when I started training, and now I can't ignore it.
ryan-allen 9y ago
It's all fun and games until your body screams to stop, you can't go on drinking like that for ever, it does have it's consequences.
- honestoHeminway 9y ago
  Drugs and Alcohol is how i want to spend my retirement.
PhasmaFelis 9y ago
Once I understood where my limits are (the day after my 21st birthday), I have never felt any desire to drink to the extent that I'm hung over the next morning. I mean, I'll happily get smashed with friends occasionally, but even then I drink until I'm drunk and happy, and then I stop drinking until either my buzz fades or it's time to go home. I don't really understand what drives people to keep drinking until they can't anymore. Maybe that's a good thing.
- hug 9y ago
  Good for you. This is, to be honest, the best way to enjoy alcohol. It gives you the social-glue that you need to network, it gives you the social-relaxant that might deepen your interpersonal relationships, and it gives you all the fun and enjoyment you can get from drinking a good drink. What you're missing by the way, with regards to your drinking, is a complete and utter disregard for consequences. Do you think, while I'm getting drunk, that I don't know what might happen? What I might say to people I love and what I might reveal that I wish I hadn't? Of course I know. I know and I don't care, or alternatively I know and I care and I want the truth to come out instead of burning a hole in the pit of my stomach, because what I want to put out there doesn't fit with the neat little jigsaw puzzle picture of society I have in my head. Maybe it's right and maybe it's wrong, but it's me.
nbardy 9y ago
I had a similar habit and discovered I was self medicating for ADD/bipolar disorder.
- hug 9y ago
  Man, that sucks. Like really sucks. Not that you were self medicating -- that's probably, like, not the worst thing you could have done, all things considered -- but that you have ADD & bipolar. I hope that, despite the setbacks you may have faced and despite the fact that alcohol may have been a crutch for you, you've landed on your feet. Thank you for replying and sharing the tiny sliver of insight into your life. It might not mean a whole lot to you but it means a whole lot to me. I'm not bipolar, I don't have ADD or depression or any number of those other things that alcohol might be a mask for: I just really like drinking. But I hope that if anyone else reads this recognises that something might be wrong, it helps.
barking 9y ago
This is not meant as a smart-ass comment but I think that you should go to an AA meeting and tell them your story. If I was to guess I'd say it would resonate with at least someone there. You need to talk to people who've been there, done that.
- hug 9y ago
  I'm not going to go to an AA meeting. I don't need to go to an AA meeting. I'm glad you're the kind of guy who is looking to give people advice so that they can be their best, but this isn't one of those situations where you can be right. Or even wrong. It's not the sort of situation where having a ten second insight into someone's life gives you the ability to judge, and it's not the sort of situation where anything you say is going to have anything of value to me. All of that sounds kinda harsh and I really don't mean to be too much of a jerk about it, but I really do mean to be a tiny bit of a jerk about it. Of course my story will resonate with someone else at an AA meeting. It resonated with a number of people here, who aren't at AA, and it will resonate with a number of people who have never had a drink in their life. That's all cool, it's all great, and except for the people at AA who are struggling it's all very low impact to their life. Things are problems when they cause issues. Things that don't cause issues aren't problems, they're just things. Sometimes they're beautiful and sometimes they're sad and sometimes you won't understand them at all, but that doesn't mean that they need to change. Sometimes what I like isn't what you like. And that should be okay.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
mistermann 9y ago
I suppose I shouldn't encourage you but I thought that was lovely.
- hug 9y ago
  From the bottom of my heart, thank you. I'll come clean: A lot of what I've been writing in this thread has been practice for writing in general. None of it is untrue, none of it is exaggerated, and none of it is even different in tone to how I live my life. It's all there, laid bare, heart on my sleeve but written in a way that people will find engaging. Why? Because I want to practice writing. Because I want what I write to be enjoyed. Because everything I write on the Internet, now and previously, has been the sort of hum-drum okay I've argued with you online garbage that every man and his dog has written. And I want to be better than that. I want to be better than that in the way that makes people think, or the way that makes people smile, or the way that makes people sad. I'm not trying to achieve any of those things, in and of themselves, I'm just trying to tell my story in a way that other people might end up commiserating, or empathising, or sympathising, or whatever it is that people do when they read something like this. All of that said, though, to be honest I don't give a fuck what you think. Despite the fact that if I knew you I might love you, I don't know you, and so I don't. What you think, as an Internet guy, doesn't really make an impact to my life, except in the sort of butterfly-winged chaos theory sort of way. So, y'know. You're great. Thanks for the compliment, but I don't care. Cognitive dissonance is a bitch.
taneq 9y ago
The word 'alcoholic' gets tossed around a lot without ever seeming to be defined. Some people seem to define it as 'someone who regularly has more than the recommended 4 standard drinks in one sitting' and some define it as 'someone who is destroying their life and health because they cannot stop drinking'. The definition I tend to use is just 'someone who is unable to stop drinking if they choose to'. But then, I'm like you - I can choose not to drink if I want to, but I enjoy the way alcohol makes me feel, so I keep doing it (although far less than I used to).
- hvidgaard 9y ago
  Have you actually tried to stay sober for 12 months? I know for a fact that many alcoholics think they choose to drink, when in reality they have become so addicted that they cannot stop even if they tried.
  - wruza 9y ago
    This. I tried to convince my buddies on the "block" to stay away from it, and they were ready, but in 2 days it all came back, because "it's not funny, how do we hang out?" When they don't have money to drink enough, it's silent funeral of time. I'm not sobriety prophet. I drink on occasion, but every time I regret that stupid state. My alcoholic friends of all ages are all good guys, and I wish I could discuss with them on some complex themes, but after two hours of consumption they turn into repeating the same primitive shit again and again, abusing me as free psychoanalytic or bad comedy listener. They think they're nice and interesting in that state, but the pattern is clearly seen just after few times. And I'm with them for decades. Alcohol addiction makes you think you're nothing without it, but the fact seems to be the opposite in my anecdotal experience.
  - trevyn 9y ago
    That's sort of arbitrary. "Bet you can't stay sober for 40 years." Also reminds me of Erdős and amphetamines: "(Ron Graham) bet him $500 that he could not stop taking the drug for a month. Erdős won the bet, but complained that during his abstinence, mathematics had been set back by a month." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erdős#Personality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erdős#Personality
coldtea 9y ago
Well, if you frequently go out with friends and "play video games" then you are probably a 20-something -- so it's difficult to imagine how this (accumulated) would hit you at 30 and 40, then things start to go south anyway...
- hug 9y ago
  Would it be pithy to tell you, simply, that you're wrong? If it is, I'll expand: I'm thirty and change years old. I don't have children because I don't want them, because for all I know about myself I think I'd be a terrible parent, short tempered, lacking in patience, and yes, it has to be said, an alcoholic. So how will this hit me at 30? Well, how it will hit me is a group of great friends, people who I love, who will join me at the bar and join me in good health and bad, misery and happiness, excitement and ennui. All of them are people I would trust with my life, my darkest secrets, and my greatest hopes and dreams. And you know where I meet them? I meet them at the bar.
hvidgaard 9y ago
Having experienced how long term drinking causes liver failure and dementia on two seperate occations, it will become a problem sooner rather than later, and it will be ugly.

by hug 9y ago

koolba 9y ago

Do you drink in the mornings and during the day as well or only binge drink on a nightly basis? I know plenty of people in the industry with a work hard / play hard mindset that are like that but all the ones I know personally moved on when it being impractical (generally when they started having kids).

ridgeguy 9y ago

It doesn't seem like you have any behavioral problems with alcohol. Over an extended time span, you might face other issues [1]. Shorter life and a merry one vs. longer life and perhaps less enjoyment. A choice that merits thought and spirited discussion with friends. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_and_cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_and_cancer

hug 9y ago
I am statistically far more likely than others to face alcohol-related-health-problems. Also, through an accident of fate and genetics, diabetes. And a family history of pancreatic cancer means that I'll be sticking a gold star next to that entry on the list. I occasionally smoke, so throw a pinch o' lung cancer into the mix. I eat too much red meat, not enough vegetables, too many saturated fats, and all of the other things that add up to heart disease. I don't exercise enough, but the exercise I do is too high impact. I have been known to partake of illicit drugs on the odd occasion, so who knows what kind of back-yard horribly contaminated meth lab chemicals I'm putting into my body, and what they'll do. I ride a motorbike, so all of my organs, low value as they may be due to the combination of all of the aforementioned, might calamitously end up splattered over asphalt any day now. Life is a calculated series of trade-offs. I've picked mine, and I'm really enjoying where they're taking me.
- paulcole 9y ago
  >Life is a calculated series of trade-offs. I've picked mine, and I'm really enjoying where they're taking me. Everybody changes their tune when they get there.
  - hug 9y ago
    Mistakes aren't always regrets.
  - ionised 9y ago
    > Everybody changes their tune when they get there. I don't buy that.

nkozyra 9y ago

I'm in the same boat, but I know it's a problem. Yes, I get everything done I need to and then some. I'm up by 7 every day of the week, I work efficiently 50, sometimes 60+ hours a week. I'm with my family nights and weekends. I exercise, I play basketball, I play music. I'm 5 drinks in right now. I drink alone, every night after my wife and son are asleep. I'm usually working and drinking from 9 or 10 until 2 or 3 and then up a few hours later. I feel a little off for the first hour or so and then drink enough coffee to plow through the day. To be completely honest I think I've been drinking enough that getting a hangover would take a phenomenal amount of effort. I've acclimated to having booze every night. That's a problem. But it's not the big one. The big deal is: alcohol is unequivocally bad for you long-term. If it doesn't kill you directly through fatty liver/cirrhosis it'll contribute to an early death through many, many forms of cancer, heart disease, dementia, etc. You won't find many doctors who will say that drinking is not bad for you. My doctor was shocked even though I lied about how much I drink. I lowballed it and my doctor said "whoa, that's too much" It is a problem. A serious problem that is too often marginalized by alcohol's social role.

hug 9y ago
I don't know you and you don't know me, despite the fact that you say we're in the same boat, but it sounds to me like you're saying you really think it's time to start bailing. I hope by the same boat you just mean the same model, because if what you're saying is as true for me as it is for you, I'm going to sink, because honestly I don't feel like I'm gaining water. I feel like I might have stretched the analogy too far, but here's the thing: What's the first step, again? If you're happy, and if you honestly don't think you have a problem after some serious introspection, then you don't have a problem. You might have a diminished life span and you might have some health complications, but if the root cause of those things is you living your life the way you want to, maybe that's something you should have the choice to do.
- nkozyra 9y ago
  > If you're happy, and if you honestly don't think you have a problem after some serious introspection, then you don't have a problem. See here's where we disagree. Alcohol is extraordinarily addictive. I have begun to believe that I'm not living my life the "the way [I] want to," but am convinced through conditioning and social norms that this is the "good life" or whatever. Nobody is living a "good life" with 6+ drinks a night, particularly in the way I do. Alone, at a laptop, working until 3 a.m. There's a difference between a casual/social drinker and a habitual drinker. The latter will - via addiction - attempt to justify our drinking. And let me also say that you're right - we may be in the same boat but perhaps I'm at the bow and you're at the stern. For a long time I didn't even think about my drinking. I'd drink occasionally. Then semi-regularly. Then every day but I was 25 so who cares that's what we do. One day you wake up and you have a wife and family and you're still drinking like a college sophomore. Again, all of this would be fine if I were just a functional alcoholic and that were the end of the repercussions. But this is physically destructive behavior. It's the kind of thing you don't really consider until you start to get a bit older.

kirse 9y ago

Everyone has an innate capacity for mental/physical stress where they can still operate, it just sounds like you are using your margin on boozing. Maybe try powerlifting or running marathons and see if you reach a breaking point where the drink has to go if you want to grow? Or maybe try sleeping less and starting a company?

hug 9y ago
You say suffer, and you say pain tolerance, but really none of what I said is about suffering or pain. The beer I drink, tonight, isn't going to hurt me. The gin the next day isn't, by itself, the cause of any real harm. The cumulative twenty some years of drinking too much? That's the kicker. That's the one that's going to get me. Maybe. Maybe it won't. Maybe fuck what the actuarials say. Maybe I'll beat the odds. Maybe, though, maybe I won't make it, and maybe I'll die young with all my dreams unfulfilled, a sad shrunken wreck of a man that achieved nothing. Maybe all of those things are totally possible with and without the alcohol and life is all just one big shitshow that I enjoy living exactly how it is. I'm not a fatalist. I'd just rather be an alcoholic than a power lifter.
- 9935c101ab17a66 9y ago
  *Actuaries

vt240 9y ago

Sounds similar to my life for the past 10 odd years. Then one day, I woke up with that headache and blurry eyes, and said I can't do this again. I'll still have a drink a few times a year, for special occasions, but enough was enough. Hah. I quit drinking three years ago.

hug 9y ago
Good for you, man. You're clearly doing what you want to do and living your life how you want to live it, and as far as I'm concerned that's worth more than any faux sage advice that is going to be offered over the Internet.

devb 9y ago

Can I ask how old you are? Non-judgmental, I totally identify with you.

hug 9y ago
Thirty. Old enough that by now I should probably know better, but old enough to know that if I haven't learned by now, I probably never will.

tpeo 9y ago

Yeah, I don't think you're an alcoholic. It might be because I come from a wet culture. Which is to say one where having a beer over lunch isn't (or wasn't) frowned upon. But 4 beers a day is completely manageable. Doctors have been trying to tally up how many beers it takes until someone is an "alcoholic", but IMHO they're far off the mark. Because as it is, it's quite easy to tally up enough standard drinks to become a medically defined "alcoholic", or to enter some similar classification ("heavy drinker"?), without ever experiencing any clear behavioral or physiological issues (e.g. not diverting money from needs to drink, not being a nuisance to yourself or others, absence of seizures upon cessation of intake). Even the idea of a "standard drink" is rather lousy: 4 shots of vodka doesn't equal 4 beers. The amount of alcohol per volume matters, and the higher the relative volume of alcohol, the faster it hits you and the more easily one might develop dependence. In short, you're more or less fine. Unless you're downing a fifth of vodka every day, in which case you might want to cut down a bit.

hug 9y ago
Who said I only drank four beers a day? I said I exceeded that mark, I didn't say I aimed for it. That said, the definition of a "standard drink" is, in the United States, any drink containing 14g of alcohol. And while neither you nor I nor anyone else who doesn't actually have a problem is picking drinks to drink based on how many grams of alcohol they contain, it's still a measure that's probably useful to know. At the very least so you can silently judge while frowning at yourself in a mirror late at night in a seedy bar.
ams6110 9y ago
To me, you're an alcoholic if when you stop you have physical withdrawal. If you need to drink rather than just enjoy drinking. There's probably a fairly wide grey area. I've always felt that drinking was a choice not a compulsion. I can go a week with no booze and have no symptoms. But occasionally I get past that limit and my self control evaporates and I pay for it the next day.

whiddershins 9y ago

A lot of people are replying to you talking about lifespan. But I have read a ton of conflicting studies about this, and there are definitely some meta-studies which indicate it's rather difficult to drink enough to make your mortality worse than a non-drinker. In other words for all cause mortality, moderate drinkers > heavy drinkers > teetotalers Same with alcohol's affect on obesity. Counter intuitive. I am skeptical of those studies, but in any event they exist and there's a lot of controversy here. I also agree one can very very easily be fooling themselves about a substance but the assumption that you are not self aware is ideology based. Before we demonized substances there were countless examples of people who indulged heavily and seemed no more or less happy than their peers. I think our social standards are skewing the conversation and that's too bad. Some people have a problem with alchohol. Some people really don't. And for all of them it's their determination to make for themselves and something I should have no opinion about. Like all life choices. I humbly suggest others try taking the same attitude.

hug 9y ago
My grandparent post is talking about a man greater than I can ever expect to be, and all of the great things he achieved. Oh and also he drank his own volume in alcohol a week and smoked enough cigars to keep a tobacco plantation in business single-handedly. Now I'm no Churchill, so I don't expect to make his political or tactical achievements, but maybe I can match him at the other things.
- hvidgaard 9y ago
  Some people survive a major car accident without wearing a seatbelt, that does not mean that it's a good idea to not wear your seatbelt.
mercer 9y ago
> But I have read a ton of conflicting studies about this, and there are definitely some meta-studies which indicate it's rather difficult to drink enough to make your mortality worse than a non-drinker. I'm extremely skeptical of this as it seems to obvious to me that drinking to excess is bad for the body. But I haven't done the research. Do you have some links for evidence? I'm honestly curious.

ams6110 9y ago

I'm sort of in the same camp. I don't drink every day, but when the mood hits it just makes everything more fun. My dad drank every day. The first thing he did when he got home from work was make a Manhattan and he had a glass with him until he went to bed. He was never aggressive, cruel, or unpleasant when he drank, just relaxed and happy. It definitely affected his health as he got older, and there was a period where he stopped. He ended up dying of liver cancer in his seventies, which was metastatic from lung cancer (he was a smoker until his fifties) but I'm sure the drinking didn't help matters. Interestingly I've never used any other intoxicants. I've never smoked tobacco or weed, never used hallucinogenics or anything else. Booze is enough and I enjoy it. These days it's mostly whiskies in the 100+ proof range. Nice to have neat and just sip. I don't drink beer much anymore. I think everyone makes decisions about what they like and don't like in life. Some people like to drink. So what. We all end up in the ground eventually.

ido 9y ago
Empathically, yes we all end up in the ground but the way there can make a big difference and you may only really regret it when it's too late to do something about it (general you, not you personally - occasional drinking is far less hazardous than being an alcoholic). My father is now 76 and smoked, ate badly and did no excercise his whole life. He knew it was bad for him and started seeing the effects for decades, but had the same attitude as above. Right now, and for the past several years, his life can be fairly described as "would have been better off dead" because of the health implications of such choices. I'm not exaggerating for the sake of argument, I would literally prefer to commit suicide if I was in that situation (he is no longer capable of doing that). So yes everyone should make their own choices & you may end up like Churchill rather than my father, but seeing the effects first hand that there's a (likely) fate worse than death convinced me to never take that sort of attitude lightly.

sliverstorm 9y ago

I find it keeps me from my best self. But I only notice the first day or two, and then it becomes the new normal. My sleep is shallow, I stay up to late, I'm dehydrated, I become irritable when I'm not drinking. I do function. But not as well. I became more aware of this when I started training, and now I can't ignore it.

ryan-allen 9y ago

It's all fun and games until your body screams to stop, you can't go on drinking like that for ever, it does have it's consequences.

honestoHeminway 9y ago
Drugs and Alcohol is how i want to spend my retirement.

PhasmaFelis 9y ago

Once I understood where my limits are (the day after my 21st birthday), I have never felt any desire to drink to the extent that I'm hung over the next morning. I mean, I'll happily get smashed with friends occasionally, but even then I drink until I'm drunk and happy, and then I stop drinking until either my buzz fades or it's time to go home. I don't really understand what drives people to keep drinking until they can't anymore. Maybe that's a good thing.

hug 9y ago
Good for you. This is, to be honest, the best way to enjoy alcohol. It gives you the social-glue that you need to network, it gives you the social-relaxant that might deepen your interpersonal relationships, and it gives you all the fun and enjoyment you can get from drinking a good drink. What you're missing by the way, with regards to your drinking, is a complete and utter disregard for consequences. Do you think, while I'm getting drunk, that I don't know what might happen? What I might say to people I love and what I might reveal that I wish I hadn't? Of course I know. I know and I don't care, or alternatively I know and I care and I want the truth to come out instead of burning a hole in the pit of my stomach, because what I want to put out there doesn't fit with the neat little jigsaw puzzle picture of society I have in my head. Maybe it's right and maybe it's wrong, but it's me.

nbardy 9y ago

I had a similar habit and discovered I was self medicating for ADD/bipolar disorder.

hug 9y ago
Man, that sucks. Like really sucks. Not that you were self medicating -- that's probably, like, not the worst thing you could have done, all things considered -- but that you have ADD & bipolar. I hope that, despite the setbacks you may have faced and despite the fact that alcohol may have been a crutch for you, you've landed on your feet. Thank you for replying and sharing the tiny sliver of insight into your life. It might not mean a whole lot to you but it means a whole lot to me. I'm not bipolar, I don't have ADD or depression or any number of those other things that alcohol might be a mask for: I just really like drinking. But I hope that if anyone else reads this recognises that something might be wrong, it helps.

barking 9y ago

This is not meant as a smart-ass comment but I think that you should go to an AA meeting and tell them your story. If I was to guess I'd say it would resonate with at least someone there. You need to talk to people who've been there, done that.

hug 9y ago
I'm not going to go to an AA meeting. I don't need to go to an AA meeting. I'm glad you're the kind of guy who is looking to give people advice so that they can be their best, but this isn't one of those situations where you can be right. Or even wrong. It's not the sort of situation where having a ten second insight into someone's life gives you the ability to judge, and it's not the sort of situation where anything you say is going to have anything of value to me. All of that sounds kinda harsh and I really don't mean to be too much of a jerk about it, but I really do mean to be a tiny bit of a jerk about it. Of course my story will resonate with someone else at an AA meeting. It resonated with a number of people here, who aren't at AA, and it will resonate with a number of people who have never had a drink in their life. That's all cool, it's all great, and except for the people at AA who are struggling it's all very low impact to their life. Things are problems when they cause issues. Things that don't cause issues aren't problems, they're just things. Sometimes they're beautiful and sometimes they're sad and sometimes you won't understand them at all, but that doesn't mean that they need to change. Sometimes what I like isn't what you like. And that should be okay.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

mistermann 9y ago

I suppose I shouldn't encourage you but I thought that was lovely.

hug 9y ago
From the bottom of my heart, thank you. I'll come clean: A lot of what I've been writing in this thread has been practice for writing in general. None of it is untrue, none of it is exaggerated, and none of it is even different in tone to how I live my life. It's all there, laid bare, heart on my sleeve but written in a way that people will find engaging. Why? Because I want to practice writing. Because I want what I write to be enjoyed. Because everything I write on the Internet, now and previously, has been the sort of hum-drum okay I've argued with you online garbage that every man and his dog has written. And I want to be better than that. I want to be better than that in the way that makes people think, or the way that makes people smile, or the way that makes people sad. I'm not trying to achieve any of those things, in and of themselves, I'm just trying to tell my story in a way that other people might end up commiserating, or empathising, or sympathising, or whatever it is that people do when they read something like this. All of that said, though, to be honest I don't give a fuck what you think. Despite the fact that if I knew you I might love you, I don't know you, and so I don't. What you think, as an Internet guy, doesn't really make an impact to my life, except in the sort of butterfly-winged chaos theory sort of way. So, y'know. You're great. Thanks for the compliment, but I don't care. Cognitive dissonance is a bitch.

taneq 9y ago

The word 'alcoholic' gets tossed around a lot without ever seeming to be defined. Some people seem to define it as 'someone who regularly has more than the recommended 4 standard drinks in one sitting' and some define it as 'someone who is destroying their life and health because they cannot stop drinking'. The definition I tend to use is just 'someone who is unable to stop drinking if they choose to'. But then, I'm like you - I can choose not to drink if I want to, but I enjoy the way alcohol makes me feel, so I keep doing it (although far less than I used to).

hvidgaard 9y ago
Have you actually tried to stay sober for 12 months? I know for a fact that many alcoholics think they choose to drink, when in reality they have become so addicted that they cannot stop even if they tried.
- wruza 9y ago
  This. I tried to convince my buddies on the "block" to stay away from it, and they were ready, but in 2 days it all came back, because "it's not funny, how do we hang out?" When they don't have money to drink enough, it's silent funeral of time. I'm not sobriety prophet. I drink on occasion, but every time I regret that stupid state. My alcoholic friends of all ages are all good guys, and I wish I could discuss with them on some complex themes, but after two hours of consumption they turn into repeating the same primitive shit again and again, abusing me as free psychoanalytic or bad comedy listener. They think they're nice and interesting in that state, but the pattern is clearly seen just after few times. And I'm with them for decades. Alcohol addiction makes you think you're nothing without it, but the fact seems to be the opposite in my anecdotal experience.
- trevyn 9y ago
  That's sort of arbitrary. "Bet you can't stay sober for 40 years." Also reminds me of Erdős and amphetamines: "(Ron Graham) bet him $500 that he could not stop taking the drug for a month. Erdős won the bet, but complained that during his abstinence, mathematics had been set back by a month." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erdős#Personality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erdős#Personality

coldtea 9y ago

Well, if you frequently go out with friends and "play video games" then you are probably a 20-something -- so it's difficult to imagine how this (accumulated) would hit you at 30 and 40, then things start to go south anyway...

hug 9y ago
Would it be pithy to tell you, simply, that you're wrong? If it is, I'll expand: I'm thirty and change years old. I don't have children because I don't want them, because for all I know about myself I think I'd be a terrible parent, short tempered, lacking in patience, and yes, it has to be said, an alcoholic. So how will this hit me at 30? Well, how it will hit me is a group of great friends, people who I love, who will join me at the bar and join me in good health and bad, misery and happiness, excitement and ennui. All of them are people I would trust with my life, my darkest secrets, and my greatest hopes and dreams. And you know where I meet them? I meet them at the bar.

hvidgaard 9y ago

Having experienced how long term drinking causes liver failure and dementia on two seperate occations, it will become a problem sooner rather than later, and it will be ugly.