CW: Alcoholism, binge drinking, blackouts
spoiler
I've spoken before about having a parent with serious alcoholism problems before here somewhere, but I personally relapsed after trying to get sober for awhile and feel really shitty about it. I got wasted early in the day, and then went through shit I had to get done at home drunk around 3-ish throughout the day and just kept taking a gluggluglugglug kind of swig from an 80 proof bottle after each chore, and eventually ended up going to bed early, then woke up completely confused and thinking I was in my back yard instead of my bedroom for some reason and it took me like 10 minutes to figure out where I was while being scared and pathetic and alone. I don't want to fucking be like this anymore. I've been to AA meetings before and was really offput by the weird pseudo-Calvinist shit and would appreciate some kind of secular and preferable left-friendly options for getting sober because I'm in really bad shape mentally right now and don't really have any faith in the typical avenues where people go to when they want to get help.
hey so i think it's important to reframe how you see this. yes, you stumbled. but think of yourself as someone who is in the process of learning to be sober. people aren't immediately perfect from the starting gun, it takes time and practice. try not to focus on perceived "failures". instead focus on this
this is your way out. it's the most important step and it's the hardest one, and you've already got it done.
for advice, i recommend addiction displacement to something less harmful. it's not ideal but it has a good success rate in my experience. weed is a good choice if you can get it, but lots of things can work depending on what you have trouble giving up. for me it was the hand-to-mouth motion (former smoker and alcoholic) so weed was a natural choice. maybe for you it's just the escape from your feelings, or pain relief, or social lubrication, whatever. if you can figure out the reason why you drink then you'll be well-positioned to move forward.
idk if this is coherent it's 6 am and i am dead but i hope you make it through! it's possible and life on the other side of booze is absolutely worth struggling for.
Weed's definitely accessable and I might start trying that out as a displacement, but I've had some not fun paranoia kinda inducing experiences with it in the past so I might wanna read up on that more, but thank you. And yeah, the hand to mouth thing is super relatable, former smoker, now current vaper also. I'm a weirdo pseudo-hermit, so drinking has always been way more of a self-medicating thing for anxiety by myself than a social lubricant and I actually also have really bad anxiety about worrying if other people think I'm fucked up, so I guess those two kinda reinforce each other into pushing me towards drinking alone and isolationism which I definitely need to work on.
Okay, something you should know is that someone might try to suggest Phenibut as a way to get over alcohol addiction. Avoid that shit with 1000000000 foot pole. Extraordinarily dangerous shit.
Duly noted. I had a friend that went through a whole ordeal being prescribed benzos and how hard it was for them to get off them eventually too, so I'll add that to my "list of shit I'm really wary of alongside benzos and opioids."
Yeah phenibut is legal, you can just order the shit online, it's advertised as a nootropic. I'd rather withdrawal from opiates and benzos at the same time than go through phenibut withdrawal again
not uncommon! it could just be that it's not for you. or it could be that you overshot a bit and ended up too high. you could try indica-dominant strains* which tend more towards a sedate body high. personally i smoke (vape actually) a lot of pot, to the point where it barely impacts me at all anymore. not exactly a ringing endorsement for a fun-time drug but as far as daily vices go it's probably one of the easier ones to manage** and i rarely suffer paranoia from it (though i used to quite badly).
eyyyy samesies~
sounds like you've got the root cause pinned! unfortunately i can't offer anything but well wishes when it comes to overcoming anxiety. but i do wish you the best of luck! self-improvement isn't fun but it is worthwhile.
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*there's nerd controversy over how useful these labels are but
** i would warn that while it won't "make you lazy" it can make you comfortable with the idea of not being productive, which can be good! it can also be bad, as i'm sure you can imagine. just something to be wary of if that's a path you take
Shit, sorry I didn't reply, my inbox had a bunch of notifications because I've been Extremely Online™️ today and have been bad about going through them. I've never quite been a stoner and mostly just smoked occasionally with friends when they offered but I did remember preferring indica and some hybrid my one friend had that was really nice. I went to a Smash local once with him and my then-bf and we went out for a smoke and hit his vape cart then all sat outside basically doing the Beavis and Butthead laugh and talking about stupid bullshit and lost track of time and all got DQ'd in pools and got roasted by the locals who knew us for coming back clearly stoned out of our minds, hahaha. Aww, that memory kinda cheered me up a little.