Got back from family vacation, got on the dreaded Facebook, found out the woman who was my first gf 12 years ago, and subsequently a friend I talked to pretty frequently, had died of liver failure at 33 years old.
Looking back on it, when she was drinking 12 years ago it just seemed like a fun time. I didn't know she sustained that pace for a decade plus. Some other things took a toll too, like an eating disorder.
Anyways, I am fuckin sad, fuck alcohol, it's as bad as heroin but capitalism gotta make that $$$$$
Me reading this after falling off of the sober wagon
It fucking sucks...
Stay strong comrade. It's not about total abstinence so much as trying to reduce consumption. At least, that's always been my attitude. I've seen people fall off once and then say fuck it and go on benders because of it and I don't think it's helpful to live in that binary.
For me it was about abstaining but I slipped... again. I wish I could trust myself to have like a social beer or whatever here and there but it always ends up me buying a bunch and then losing control over it. Gonna just not buy it again because I can't be around it.
It's never too late to try and improve and sobriety streaks are only as meaningful in of themselves as the importance they have to you if their lengths are helpful to be healthier long term. I went through a really bad wagon crash after two years dry and it really fucked me up for months until circumstances in my life changed enough to cut back again.
This was only six months but I don't want it to be an excuse for not trying to keep staying sober. I really hate this about me though.
I haven't had a drink in like 5 months maybe. Haven't smoked since like 3. I'm getting close to smoking. I don't know.
I was finally able to quit smoking about a decade ago but it still took me like 3 years of actually trying.
What helped me with not smoking was doing theses little breathing exercises where I'd breath in and out slowly, almost as if I was taking a drag off of a cigarette.
Drinking is somehow way fucking harder. I've gone through 3 sober spells now and this one I was hoping to go a year and then re-evaluate. Because I think part of my drinking is related to my autism and part is related to depression. I was trying to go about it from that angle this time instead of "drink bad!" lol. Maybe the fact that I'm a bit more aware this time is why I'm beating myself up over it so much.
Starting today I'm hopping back on the wagon tho. I got weed for the weekends and occasional evenings for now so gonna go back to that, reading, and therapy and just keep trucking.
I have genuinely never had a sip of alcohol in my life. It’s just amazing how people still almost constantly try to get me to start. They seem offended as if I personally attacked them when I refuse. Could you imagine someone getting offended because you didn’t want to do heroin with them?
Almost everyone in my family is some form of an addict, and they all say they could definitely quit anytime they want to, even the one who mixes alcohol with coffee in the mornings and who gets drunk almost every night. The societal level of denial when it comes to alcohol is amazing, people treat addiction like it’s just a snack-eating habit and not drinking literal poison. A lot of my family basically just treats it as a snack that they “munch” on throughout the day. The physical and cognitive decline over the decades is readily apparent.
I clearly remember the amount of pressure I was under to start drinking myself to death the second I turned 21. I said no. One of the best decisions I ever made. But how is a 21 year old kid supposed to make a clear-minded decision when drinking is almost universally normalized and encouraged, so much so that they’ve probably already gotten dangerously drunk several times over by the time they’re 16? (at least, that was the norm where I grew up)
Definitely never start. I’ve been heavy drinking for a decade and it’s almost completely destroyed my life. I have squandered ever opportunity and meaningful relationship I’ve ever had. I have profound brain fog and cognitive impairment and im not even 30 yet (and I’ll be surprised if I even make it there). Never let anyone convince you to start drinking
it's never too late to quit btw, i was in a similar position (started at 14, kept going for a decade+) and it's been years now since i've touched the stuff.
you can always escape
I’ve been striving to wean off and stay off for as long as I can withstand doing so. It’s really a terrible poison lol. And it’s so ubiquitous, especially in food service, which is where im currently employed.
did you do AA or anything similar when you stopped? I’ve been thinking about going but im on the fence
oh shit i missed this in the deluge, my bad comrade.
I’ve been striving to wean off and stay off
this is the way to do it. slow and steady wins the race. uhhh which is also part of my answer to your next question: no, i did not seek any outside help. one day, after months of puking up blood every morning, i decided to go cold turkey. just quit right overnight.
i absolutely 1000% encourage you to do anything but what i did. it was super dumb as fuck and i probably should have died. it was like...a week(?) of nonstop vomiting, sweating, and shitting, and that wasn't even the bad part. >> the hallucinations were what made it a living nightmare. idk if i'm just naturally predisposed or what but i felt like i was losing my fucking mind at points.
all that is to say that it's totally possible to quit and not go through hell; you just gotta be smart. it sounds like you are! i will also say that imo you've already gotten past the hard part, which is deciding you no longer want this substance in your life and deciding you're going to do something about it, and then beginning. those things together represent maybe one of the biggest hurdles to kicking a substance.
as a quick mishmash of advice before i have to get running to the store:
be gentle with yourself. i know stumbling feels like failure and failure probably feels like a permanent state, but this is one of those rare instances where you only actually fail once you totally give up hope.
celebrate every milestone if you want! alternatively, do what i do and totally ignore it if that's easier. i found not thinking about it at all helped a lot more, but i know some people who've taken the first tack and met with success. it really is all about you and what works best.
on that note, addiction displacement is how a lot of folks i know quit. i quit booze cold turkey but i had to swap to weed when i went to go quit smoking a few years later, as a for instance.
idk sorry if this is scattershot, i am in a bit of a rush but feel free to DM me if you'd like :3 and even if not, i wish you the very best of luck
Wish I could hug you, thanks for the advice :)
My brother did the same thing, went cold turkey and he ended up having a pretty bad seizure. I’m gonna wean down as best I can and try to find a hobby or something (displacement, as you said) to replace the habit. I also need to find a new line of work, but that’s a long term goal.
Thanks again for the response, it made me feel a lot less alone.
People get offended because they know it’s bad for them and you’re showing the restraint that they themselves sometimes wish they’d have.
The other side is that drinking makes them vulnerable and you not drinking puts you in a power position over them. Sometimes predators don’t drink because of that. But obviously that doesn’t justify their reaction to you not drinking.
(This is the perspective of someone who does binge drink occasionally)
Yeah true, I haven’t really thought about it from that perspective. I feel like I’ve always subconsciously avoided those sorts of sober-drunk power dynamics though. I don’t like to be around drunk people. It’s like going to a concert where everyone else is raving but you’re really not feeling it at all. Being the only sober person is an extremely off-putting feeling for me. And I’m not sure if it’s the autism, but bars induce a visceral feeling of disgust. It’s not a moral thing, it just physically feels gross. So if people are going out to drink, I’m not tagging along.
I have genuinely never had a sip of alcohol in my life
That's actually me! Just never seemed like the right thing. And know I'm regularly taking other depressants, so it's not at all safe.
I know someone who started drinking heavily at university, 18-21 or so, and in the span of ten years he needed double hip replacements. Apparently alcoholism can make your body stop absorbing calcium/vitamin D so he has the bones of an elderly person at 32.
It's such a horrifying drug to normalise. I didn't even know it could cause osteoporosis on top of the seizures and liver failure and cancer.
I'm sorry for your loss comrade. My mom died from her alcoholism problem too. I'm an alcoholic as well (it runs in the family). Shit is bad. I remember seeing a bit on tv about how alcoholism is a killer right alongside fentanyl but that gets all the attention because it's illegal.
I remember seeing a bit on tv about how alcoholism is a killer right alongside fentanyl but that gets all the attention because it's illegal.
too true. plus fentanyl can kill instantly so easily, and while someone can drink themselves to death in a night it takes a lot more effort than fent.
hope youre doing well, the chronic pain and management of said pain my friend went through is something i'd only wish on the worst people in the world. And she was not a bad person at all, she was very kind and always thinking of other people before herself. But sometimes you have to be selfish...
yeah I'm also getting to an age where I'm starting to see the effects of alcohol abuse in people I knew from school. Several deaths, liver problems, organ problems. A friend of mine who's several years younger has a calcium deficiency and has lost teeth. Alcohol seems to have an endless list of problems it causes. It attacks your liver, that's where your minerals and vitamins get sorted out. You mess up your liver and it hurts you everywhere else, your body can't fix itself and your immune system goes to shit.
I've had five sips of alcohol in my entire life, I hate it. It should definitely be regulated. Alcoholism is horrifying and I really hope any comrades with a proclivity can overcome it.
Also read up on Korsakoff syndrome. Absolutely terrifying disease associated with alcohol abuse that traps you in a time loop since you lose the ability to form short term memories. You wake up in the same day over and over wondering why it's suddenly 2042.
I stopped drinking a bit ago and it rules. Not in the pocket of BIG HANGOVER anymore
I had a much easier time quitting hard drugs than I've had quitting alcohol. It's so insidious, and so accepted to be an alcoholic. I really haven't faced many life consequences for my drinking in my life. Lots of health complications, but nothing the world threw at me.
Yeah I have done just about everything except crack and had years-long habits with a number of them. I had to piece together a new personally when I quit hard drugs. I quit cigs during COVID. But alcohol is just so baked into society and such an easy way to help cope with capitalism that I find it hard to imagine ever completely quitting drinking.
I'm an alcoholic and can casually smoke crack. It's got the immediate addiction aspect of any upper and you'll feel like getting more any time you don't have any, but really only the first hit is good and I've never wanted to blast more boulders the next day.
Yeah I've done enough [other things] that I've never felt like I was missing out not doing crack. But it is the one well-known substance that I've legit never bothered to do when I had the chance, and never sought out on its own.
I had some roommates that were older jeroim addicts who got on methadone only.cause covid hit, and basically if they happened to be going by where it was sold it'd be asked if anyone wanted to throw down and if I had some cash I would and we were all very share and share alike in most ways including drugs, so sometimes I'd just get a holler from down the hall asking if I wanted a hit of whatever.
I think that it's unironically very messed up that we are not expected to put CWs on posts glorifying alcohol and drug usage when we are expected to put CWs on animal products.
I think that if we can be considerate enough to vegans to CW meat then we can also be considerate to people who are grappling with addiction or have lost loved ones to substances.
Truly sorry for your loss, OP.
Yeah, this is why I made the drug comm in the first place. Drug chat is cool and fine, but it should be in its own contained area where everybody can ignore it if they want.
I didn't mean you comrade, I didn't think for a second you were glorifying alcohol. My heartfelt apologies if I made you feel attacked or sad.
all good, i didnt feel attacked, and you didnt make me any sadder than i already am.
Alcohol is worse than heroin. Heroins problems come from it being unregulated. So us addicts have to get filth from the streets that we don't know how strong it us.
Alcohol is regulated and still kills tons of people and ruins lives.
Yep, this is why I fundamentally do not believe anyone interested in the prohibition of drugs actually cares about saving lives. Alcohol is at once the most dangerous and most accessible drug. Meanwhile Weed, LSD, and Heroin are all treated equivalently more severe by the US federal government.
If we can accept alcohol being legal, we can accept Heroin being legal. What we ought to do is make it illegal to profiteer in any way from either substance, while we give adult users a safe supply.
Unfair to compare injection sites which are focused on harm reduction with bars which are financially incentivized to increase the consumption of alcohol.
i am unironically a prohibitionist when it comes to alcohol, the muslims were right. though we should treat it like a medical issue rather than a criminal one, like we should with any drug problems. it should at least be illegal to advertise alcohol or give it fun packaging, like they do with cigarettes in some places.
never ever giving up weed tho, maybe i'll switch to vapes and edibles instead of smoking eventually but its more expensive that way.
Prohibition was a disaster in the US tho. You can't even stop people from fermenting sugar in prison.
i switched from smoking to edibles after 18 years of smoking. I was coughing up black shit for months and now im good on that.
Check out vaporents on reddit, there's tons of flower vapes that get you the same high off less weed since they're more efficient. The terpcicle from trww is an all glass vape for around 40, just need a decent torch
It's very unfortunate that alcohol is such an extremely simple molecule that is just intrinsically connected to carbohydrates. It just happens. Monkeys get drunk of fermenting fruits lying around. Boil potatoes, let them stand around until it smells funky and you're already half the way to vodka. Even if you eliminated all remembrance of alcohol, some dude would drink a bottle of grape juice that was a little too long in the sun and enjoy the feeling it gives him.
Addiction often stems from the circumstances in your life. It comes from desperation, suffering, needing to forget or to feel something, the need to distract, to numb or the desire to fit in. It comes from poverty, isolation and the lack of a future, for which it would be worth being sober for.
Capitalism enables and enhances all these feelings and makes this drug so extremely available at the same time. It remains the true enemy and is again at the core of our suffering. Alcohol will undoubtedly remain a problem in any society, but in ours it is a scourge.
It's the worst drug. And people look at you like you've lost your mind if you say you don't partake
In my experience they straight up don't know how to engage with you. Typically they get defensive about their own habit after you say "no thanks".
Wife and I drank casually (but still too much) and stopped last year. We lost weight and our baseline sense of well-being is much higher. Once you get far enough away from drinking, it becomes alarmingly clear that people are straight-up poisoning themselves, and have no idea how to socialize without it.
I work in the live entertainment industry which means I'm often sober working in a room full of drunks and it truly is like watching everyone slowly become brain-damaged
Typically they get defensive about their own habit after you say "no thanks"
this feels very similar to how people often perceive it as a personal attack when someone at the table says they're vegan
I feel like that's changing, at least in my circles/generation. A lot of us still drink, but give mad respect to those who quit, its objectively just (kinda fun) poison.
Alcohol consumption among millennials is plummeting, and Gen Z never fucked with it much to begin with.
I've heard Gen Z doesn't like to drink because they've grown up being filmed all their lives and don't want to be caught on camera being an idiot
And people look at you like you've lost your mind if you say you don't partake
I hate it so much. Some people can't even process the phrase "I don't drink"
I consider myself lucky that my body started outright rejecting alcohol around 25. Prior to that I was drinking about 3 liters of liquor a month. Half a beer triggers a multiple day migraine now. It's the perfect excuse to not drink as well, so if you're getting pressured feel free to use it.
Similar story for me. It wasn't always a migraine trigger, but then one day it was always a migraine trigger.
It has probably saved my life many times over that I have a strong chance of going directly to hangover when I drink, the fun effects completely skipped over, often enough and badly enough to develop Pavlovian aversion. If my body allowed me the loop of feeling good or normal as long as I'm topped up, I think I would always be in danger.
wife has been sober now for over 10 months after 20+ years of hard alcoholism. was hard watching her slowly kill herself and nothing you can do about it. you cant fix an addict just support them when they decide to fix themselves
i know that feel, i drink occasionally but ill never touch another drop if that what she needs to stay strong
I did a lot of the popular/common drugs, among a couple of others, throughout high school and only tried alcohol in my early 20's. As soon as the effects started to settle in, I immediately came to the conclusion that it was the most dangerous drug I had put in my body by a decent margin. It's still genuinely somewhat surprising that it's legal at all, and I would be in favor of prohibition (obviously with not criminalizing users) if it wasn't a futile endeavour given how entrenched it is in the majority of cultures. If relatively safer drugs like cannabis were legal instead, I seriously doubt people would resort to alcohol so much to alleviate emotional pain. I've seen it destroy a lot of people in my life because it was the only legal emotional crutch they could afford because mental healthcare in this shithole is abysmal at best.
