8 ms·

I agree with everything in this article. Drinking alone is the best, particularly if you like to write while listening to music. The flights of fancy I used to

I agree with everything in this article. Drinking alone is the best, particularly if you like to write while listening to music. The flights of fancy I used to go on! I wish I could still do it, but I found myself waiting for the liquor store to open up at 7:00 am to get rid of the shakes. Then when I tried to stop I couldn't. Long story short, after several rehabs, more stints in mental health lockup than I care to remember, and burning through more sponsers in AA that I can count, I finally was able to stop. "Cunning, baffling and powerful" is how Bill Wilson, founder of AA called alcohol for those of us who are "real alcoholics" or if you prefer “Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each non-existed in an entirely different way.” — Stanisław Lem p.s. There is a tradition of the Drunken Zen Master but it's archaic. We all know better now.

ineedasername 5y ago
If you don't mind sharing, what finally made it stick when you stopped?
- okareaman 5y ago
  Most "real [1]" alcoholics try over and over to stop like myself and Bill Wilson. The following story from the Big Book illustrates the problem [2] Yet he got drunk again. We asked him to tell us exactly how it happened. This is his story: "I came to work on Tuesday morning. I remember I felt irritated that I had to be a salesman for a concern I once owned. I had a few words with the boss, but nothing serious. Then I decided to drive into the country and see one of my prospects for a car. On the way I felt hungry so I stopped at a roadside place where they have a bar. I had no intention of drinking. I just thought I would get a sandwich. I also had the notion that I might find a customer for a car at this place, which was familiar for I had been going to it for years. I had eaten there many times during the months I was sober. I sat down at a table and ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk. Still no thought of drinking. I ordered another sandwich and decided to have another glass of milk. "Suddenly the thought crossed my mind that if I were to put an ounce of whiskey in my milk it couldn't hurt me on a full stomach. I ordered a whiskey and poured it into the milk. I vaguely sensed I was not being any too smart, but felt reassured as I was taking the whiskey on a full stomach. The experiment went so well that I ordered another whiskey and poured it into more milk. That didn't seem to bother me so I tried another." Thus started one more journey to the asylum for Jim. Here was the threat of commitment, the loss of family and position, to say nothing of that intense mental and physical suffering which drinking always caused him. He had much knowledge about himself as an alcoholic. Yet all reasons for not drinking were So the problem here is going into a type of trance or hypnotic state, where you forget that you shouldn't drink. Have you ever gone into the next room and then forgotten why you went there or driven for many miles in the car and not noticed anything, but suddenly you "wake up" and notice where you are? That's a kind of trance. Stephen Wolinsky has a good book called "Trances People Live" [3] That I found helpful. Some people are always in an emotional bind that looks like a trance. In order to quit drinking I had to wake up and remain awake, develop situational awareness, use tools like meditation and Cognitive Behavior Therapy, and a big one is deal with my traumas. I had some that I ignored or laughed at and minimized, but turns out traumas caused me to "space out" more than anything. You ask an alcoholic why they drank again and they can't tell you why. They don't know. Drinking because you went in a trance state is a really difficult problem to solve and the reason most alcoholics don't recover. Hope this helps. Edit: I forgot to add that doing the 4th step is like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and doing the 5th step is like Cognitive Processing Therapy (for trauma) so you can get those for free in AA [1] I use the term real because some of us in AA use it to distinguish ourselves from people that have 1 too many glasses of wine in the evening and then go to AA as a social club and call themselves alcoholic. I avoid meetings with too many of those. [2] https://anonpress.org/bb/Page_36.htm https://anonpress.org/bb/Page_36.htm [3] https://www.google.com/books/edition/Trances_People_Live/yyyCMAAACAAJ?hl=en https://www.google.com/books/edition/Trances_People_Live/yyy...
  - nexuist 5y ago
    This is real relatable insight I haven't seen anywhere else. Thanks for sharing. I struggle with eating healthy and order out way too much and relate to the same exact phenomenon - one minute I'm driving home and the next I end up at some random drive-through. No memories, no premeditation, no route planning. I didn't leave the house planning to eat out today, and yet here I am, and well now I have a spot in the line and I'm hungry anyways...
    - okareaman 5y ago
      I'm trying to apply what I know to food and failing. Now is the first time I've tried dieting and I have a lot more respect for the degree of difficulty. You're right, the issue is very similar
      - tempestn 5y ago
        I've hypothesized that a unique problem with unhealthy eating habits compared to other addictions is that you have to eat. I would think at least with something like alcohol or nicotine, what you need to do as an addict is fairly simple (which of course is different from easy). But you can't just cut out food entirely, so it's a much more complex issue trying to eat in a healthy manner. Especially since even being too restrictive and structured can be a problem as well. Do you think there's anything to that?
        nexuist 5y ago
        Well, one of the problems with alcohol and nicotine is that you also can't just cut them out entirely. Withdrawal symptoms are brutal and not compatible with modern 40 hour week jobs. Cutting out food, especially sugary ones, probably would bring about some subset of the same withdrawal symptoms...so the problems are more closely related than they appear, IMO (disclaimer that I have never been addicted to either so I may be completely off).
        tempestn 5y ago
Aloha 5y ago
I have very strict rules I follow for alcohol consumption, if for no other reason than I'm the son of a man who was a functioning alcoholic for most of his life. I've read the big book, and consider it a source of wisdom, even if I perhaps don't follow all of the tenants contained within. The serenity prayer, which is AA adjacent if not (now) directly part of the AA wisdom is my personal lodestar, it's great wisdom on how to deal with life's challenges. From it I ascertained that the first two questions one should ask are when encountering something in life are, "is this actually important?" and "is this a problem I can actually solve or make a meaningful difference in helping solve?" - anything one can answer "no" to either of those questions one should just let go of, and try to focus one's energies on other problems. Also, I'm glad for you, that you found sobriety.
- xlance 5y ago
  I don't drink alone for the exact same reason. How some people can function while drinking every night is beyond my comprehension.
  - sgarland 5y ago
    Have you met SREs?
  - claudiawerner 5y ago
    Personal anecdote: I don't drink during the day, only after 9:30pm. It started out as weekends only, i.e. Friday and Saturday. Then I started doing it on Sunday. Then Thursday. Soon enough, I was drinking every day of the week, only after 9:30pm. I'd stay up until about 1am or 2am, sometimes 3am. This worked fine, until I started having to attend work meetings at 9am on the dot. I wormed my way out of some with excuses about personal commitments (my manager understands that not everyone can be available at 9am on the dot). I need about 150ml vodka and 3 beers to get to the state I want. It wasn't always that way, of course, but it escalated gradually. I don't sleep well, but oh well. It's worth it, in a way. I can forget about my troubles, my bad pay, and my work pressure by drinking and watching movies or playing video games at the same time. The next day? Sometimes I wake up with a headache. Not often, now that I know exactly how much water I need to drink before I sleep to avoid that. But the next day is always normal and I'm pretty well functioning, if lazy and procrastinating. I just need a 20 min nap after 12pm and I'm pretty much set to function. Will I stop? I don't know. These things on my mind may seem utterly trivial to some. I wasn't abused, I haven't lost anyone in my family, I live fairly comfortably. But I need to get my mind off those thoughts. I can go days at a time, even weeks, without feeling the need to drink, so long as I just forget about its feeling. But why would I do that? When I have a 2L bottle of vodka and an 18 back of 5% beers? With them, I can enjoy the night more than I would otherwise. That's got to be worth something, at least to me.
empressplay 5y ago
Gabapentin + Clonidine
- kruptos 5y ago
  What are you suggesting these medications be used for?
  - azalemeth 5y ago
    A recovering alcoholic can die from "not drinking" -- delirium tremens, the "shakes" that they get in the morning, are a physical manifestation of the transcriptional changes that have occurred in their brains as a result of being adapted to ethanol. The drugs mentioned all modulate neurotransmitters pharmacologically and are often part of the recovery process (the details are quite complex).
- sdze 5y ago
  Baclofen, titrate up until you reach indifference to alcohol.
- noir_lord 5y ago
  People use gabapentin recreationally? I don’t even take my full low dose during the day as I don’t like the way it makes me feel (though it’s a very effective drug for me).
  - empressplay 5y ago
    No to stop drinking
- iJohnDoe 5y ago
  Don’t know anything about Clonidine. Gabapentin is often prescribed for depression. It can be taken with other antidepressants. I’ve heard it can cause severe weight gain via water weight and bloating.
colechristensen 5y ago
We’re not all alcoholics. Substances affect people in vastly different ways. A key problem is that people do not understand this, that substances and substance abuse don’t work the same across the board and one person’s experience does not extend to the rest of humanity. It is more like there are tribes that don’t understand each other.
- okareaman 5y ago
  I reread what I wrote and don't see where I said what happened to me happens to everyone who drinks
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
- bradleyjg 5y ago
  This is true. I feel for people that struggle, I really do but it should also be acknowledged that many good and enduring relationships—-romantic and platonic—-were catalyzed by alcohol. Maybe the alcohol wasn’t strictly necessary but empirically it sure helps. That’s not something we should be so quick to dismiss when weighing costs and benefits.
  - austintech1 5y ago
    I really appreciate this insight. Met my wife at a nightclub 19 years ago, me inebriated, her much less so, and we're still going strong!
  - meristohm 5y ago
    Yeah, alcohol helps us strip away our stuffy adult self and be children again, enjoying life in the moment nevermind the consequences. Thing is, with enough practice and humility, we can express a childlike nature without alcohol. Becoming a parent helped me do this; now I don’t much care what other people think. And, I’m more willing to ask questions of strangers or people I want to get to know. Getting older and accepting death may help with this, too.
- 5y ago
noir_lord 5y ago
My favourite way to blow of steam is what I call drunken arma3. The sheer insanity of that game suits a few (by which I mean 2-3 beers, not much of a drinker) every couple of weeks. It’s incredibly relaxing. I drank way too much in my twenties (shitfaced every weekend which was normal in the uk back then), stopped entirely for my thirties and now stick to 2-3 once every few weeks. Not been drunk drunk in 14 years, good on you for getting yourself sorted.
aantix 5y ago
Try magnesium chloride daily. Morning and evening preferably. NAC a couple of hours before your drinking escapade. A five hour energy drink the morning after. The B’s + folate really help to feel”normal” the after. Adult drinking is preparing for and mitigating the day after effects. :)
throwoutway 5y ago
Can someone explain what Stanislaw ment?

ineedasername 5y ago

If you don't mind sharing, what finally made it stick when you stopped?

okareaman 5y ago
Most "real [1]" alcoholics try over and over to stop like myself and Bill Wilson. The following story from the Big Book illustrates the problem [2] Yet he got drunk again. We asked him to tell us exactly how it happened. This is his story: "I came to work on Tuesday morning. I remember I felt irritated that I had to be a salesman for a concern I once owned. I had a few words with the boss, but nothing serious. Then I decided to drive into the country and see one of my prospects for a car. On the way I felt hungry so I stopped at a roadside place where they have a bar. I had no intention of drinking. I just thought I would get a sandwich. I also had the notion that I might find a customer for a car at this place, which was familiar for I had been going to it for years. I had eaten there many times during the months I was sober. I sat down at a table and ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk. Still no thought of drinking. I ordered another sandwich and decided to have another glass of milk. "Suddenly the thought crossed my mind that if I were to put an ounce of whiskey in my milk it couldn't hurt me on a full stomach. I ordered a whiskey and poured it into the milk. I vaguely sensed I was not being any too smart, but felt reassured as I was taking the whiskey on a full stomach. The experiment went so well that I ordered another whiskey and poured it into more milk. That didn't seem to bother me so I tried another." Thus started one more journey to the asylum for Jim. Here was the threat of commitment, the loss of family and position, to say nothing of that intense mental and physical suffering which drinking always caused him. He had much knowledge about himself as an alcoholic. Yet all reasons for not drinking were So the problem here is going into a type of trance or hypnotic state, where you forget that you shouldn't drink. Have you ever gone into the next room and then forgotten why you went there or driven for many miles in the car and not noticed anything, but suddenly you "wake up" and notice where you are? That's a kind of trance. Stephen Wolinsky has a good book called "Trances People Live" [3] That I found helpful. Some people are always in an emotional bind that looks like a trance. In order to quit drinking I had to wake up and remain awake, develop situational awareness, use tools like meditation and Cognitive Behavior Therapy, and a big one is deal with my traumas. I had some that I ignored or laughed at and minimized, but turns out traumas caused me to "space out" more than anything. You ask an alcoholic why they drank again and they can't tell you why. They don't know. Drinking because you went in a trance state is a really difficult problem to solve and the reason most alcoholics don't recover. Hope this helps. Edit: I forgot to add that doing the 4th step is like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and doing the 5th step is like Cognitive Processing Therapy (for trauma) so you can get those for free in AA [1] I use the term real because some of us in AA use it to distinguish ourselves from people that have 1 too many glasses of wine in the evening and then go to AA as a social club and call themselves alcoholic. I avoid meetings with too many of those. [2] https://anonpress.org/bb/Page_36.htm https://anonpress.org/bb/Page_36.htm [3] https://www.google.com/books/edition/Trances_People_Live/yyyCMAAACAAJ?hl=en https://www.google.com/books/edition/Trances_People_Live/yyy...
- nexuist 5y ago
  This is real relatable insight I haven't seen anywhere else. Thanks for sharing. I struggle with eating healthy and order out way too much and relate to the same exact phenomenon - one minute I'm driving home and the next I end up at some random drive-through. No memories, no premeditation, no route planning. I didn't leave the house planning to eat out today, and yet here I am, and well now I have a spot in the line and I'm hungry anyways...
  - okareaman 5y ago
    I'm trying to apply what I know to food and failing. Now is the first time I've tried dieting and I have a lot more respect for the degree of difficulty. You're right, the issue is very similar
    - tempestn 5y ago
      I've hypothesized that a unique problem with unhealthy eating habits compared to other addictions is that you have to eat. I would think at least with something like alcohol or nicotine, what you need to do as an addict is fairly simple (which of course is different from easy). But you can't just cut out food entirely, so it's a much more complex issue trying to eat in a healthy manner. Especially since even being too restrictive and structured can be a problem as well. Do you think there's anything to that?
      - nexuist 5y ago
        Well, one of the problems with alcohol and nicotine is that you also can't just cut them out entirely. Withdrawal symptoms are brutal and not compatible with modern 40 hour week jobs. Cutting out food, especially sugary ones, probably would bring about some subset of the same withdrawal symptoms...so the problems are more closely related than they appear, IMO (disclaimer that I have never been addicted to either so I may be completely off).
        tempestn 5y ago

Aloha 5y ago

I have very strict rules I follow for alcohol consumption, if for no other reason than I'm the son of a man who was a functioning alcoholic for most of his life. I've read the big book, and consider it a source of wisdom, even if I perhaps don't follow all of the tenants contained within. The serenity prayer, which is AA adjacent if not (now) directly part of the AA wisdom is my personal lodestar, it's great wisdom on how to deal with life's challenges. From it I ascertained that the first two questions one should ask are when encountering something in life are, "is this actually important?" and "is this a problem I can actually solve or make a meaningful difference in helping solve?" - anything one can answer "no" to either of those questions one should just let go of, and try to focus one's energies on other problems. Also, I'm glad for you, that you found sobriety.

xlance 5y ago
I don't drink alone for the exact same reason. How some people can function while drinking every night is beyond my comprehension.
- sgarland 5y ago
  Have you met SREs?
- claudiawerner 5y ago
  Personal anecdote: I don't drink during the day, only after 9:30pm. It started out as weekends only, i.e. Friday and Saturday. Then I started doing it on Sunday. Then Thursday. Soon enough, I was drinking every day of the week, only after 9:30pm. I'd stay up until about 1am or 2am, sometimes 3am. This worked fine, until I started having to attend work meetings at 9am on the dot. I wormed my way out of some with excuses about personal commitments (my manager understands that not everyone can be available at 9am on the dot). I need about 150ml vodka and 3 beers to get to the state I want. It wasn't always that way, of course, but it escalated gradually. I don't sleep well, but oh well. It's worth it, in a way. I can forget about my troubles, my bad pay, and my work pressure by drinking and watching movies or playing video games at the same time. The next day? Sometimes I wake up with a headache. Not often, now that I know exactly how much water I need to drink before I sleep to avoid that. But the next day is always normal and I'm pretty well functioning, if lazy and procrastinating. I just need a 20 min nap after 12pm and I'm pretty much set to function. Will I stop? I don't know. These things on my mind may seem utterly trivial to some. I wasn't abused, I haven't lost anyone in my family, I live fairly comfortably. But I need to get my mind off those thoughts. I can go days at a time, even weeks, without feeling the need to drink, so long as I just forget about its feeling. But why would I do that? When I have a 2L bottle of vodka and an 18 back of 5% beers? With them, I can enjoy the night more than I would otherwise. That's got to be worth something, at least to me.

empressplay 5y ago

Gabapentin + Clonidine

kruptos 5y ago
What are you suggesting these medications be used for?
- azalemeth 5y ago
  A recovering alcoholic can die from "not drinking" -- delirium tremens, the "shakes" that they get in the morning, are a physical manifestation of the transcriptional changes that have occurred in their brains as a result of being adapted to ethanol. The drugs mentioned all modulate neurotransmitters pharmacologically and are often part of the recovery process (the details are quite complex).
sdze 5y ago
Baclofen, titrate up until you reach indifference to alcohol.
noir_lord 5y ago
People use gabapentin recreationally? I don’t even take my full low dose during the day as I don’t like the way it makes me feel (though it’s a very effective drug for me).
- empressplay 5y ago
  No to stop drinking
iJohnDoe 5y ago
Don’t know anything about Clonidine. Gabapentin is often prescribed for depression. It can be taken with other antidepressants. I’ve heard it can cause severe weight gain via water weight and bloating.

colechristensen 5y ago

We’re not all alcoholics. Substances affect people in vastly different ways. A key problem is that people do not understand this, that substances and substance abuse don’t work the same across the board and one person’s experience does not extend to the rest of humanity. It is more like there are tribes that don’t understand each other.

okareaman 5y ago
I reread what I wrote and don't see where I said what happened to me happens to everyone who drinks
hellbannedguy 5y ago
bradleyjg 5y ago
This is true. I feel for people that struggle, I really do but it should also be acknowledged that many good and enduring relationships—-romantic and platonic—-were catalyzed by alcohol. Maybe the alcohol wasn’t strictly necessary but empirically it sure helps. That’s not something we should be so quick to dismiss when weighing costs and benefits.
- austintech1 5y ago
  I really appreciate this insight. Met my wife at a nightclub 19 years ago, me inebriated, her much less so, and we're still going strong!
- meristohm 5y ago
  Yeah, alcohol helps us strip away our stuffy adult self and be children again, enjoying life in the moment nevermind the consequences. Thing is, with enough practice and humility, we can express a childlike nature without alcohol. Becoming a parent helped me do this; now I don’t much care what other people think. And, I’m more willing to ask questions of strangers or people I want to get to know. Getting older and accepting death may help with this, too.
5y ago

noir_lord 5y ago

My favourite way to blow of steam is what I call drunken arma3. The sheer insanity of that game suits a few (by which I mean 2-3 beers, not much of a drinker) every couple of weeks. It’s incredibly relaxing. I drank way too much in my twenties (shitfaced every weekend which was normal in the uk back then), stopped entirely for my thirties and now stick to 2-3 once every few weeks. Not been drunk drunk in 14 years, good on you for getting yourself sorted.

aantix 5y ago

Try magnesium chloride daily. Morning and evening preferably. NAC a couple of hours before your drinking escapade. A five hour energy drink the morning after. The B’s + folate really help to feel”normal” the after. Adult drinking is preparing for and mitigating the day after effects. :)

throwoutway 5y ago

Can someone explain what Stanislaw ment?