Obligatory Simpsons vid:
Try playoff hockey. intensity is ramped up 10 fold
The Simpsons’ take on soccer. 3 mins, but worth it.
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oh ya, agreed. thats pretty good action.
If I make it to June 27 this year (alive & no alcohol), it will be an even 40 years without a drink. No regerts.
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Really good article aligned with this topic here.
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I think that question “Would your life would be better with less alcohol? is more helpful.
I’m not planning on staying at zero but will aim for the Canadian low risk category.
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There may be two questions–
1 should I cut back?
2 can I cut back?
there was some discussion on this in the other thread.
With the idea that Alcoholic was a relative term, with each person associating the term to the worst alcoholic they ever knew. "joe drank a 1/5 a day and died of liver failure at 55. He was an alcoholic, I’m not like joe’. This allows almost everyone to justify their drinking since its not as bad as what they perceive as the worst kind of drinking.
As some one that spent a lot of their live with substance addition issues, I can spot others like me in the wild pretty quickly. There really does seem to be a difference between the normal users and the problem users. most of the problem users have been like this since most of their adult lives. They mostly have the same background of depression, family issues, trust issues, trauma, family history of alcoholism, etc. Its just easy to blend in with the crowd in your 20s when everyone is doing it. it gets really obvious in your 30s when most people are settling down.
I think it can be problematic if people only ask the second question, as there’s a tendency to equate answering “yes” with “then it’s not a problem,” that if not an alcoholic then it’s okay.
I mentioned it b/c I asked my wife to cut back when we had a kid. And she actually agreed. But after several months of failing, she realized that she just couldn’t moderate. So now she’s cold-turkey.
But I agree with you. I think it’s a problem with Mental Health issues in general…
Something can be a minor but very real problem in your life that you should consider dealing with.
Or something can be a “disease”-- an enormous problem that dominates your life and informs your identity.
A long time ago, I remember some people saying that “ADHD is not real”. And I basically like, okay, whatever, but taking these pills definitely helps me live a normal life.
Going to AA for the first time today after my partner caught me with liquor after I promised I would stop drinking liquor and very little else. I literally cannot lie to them about anything in the future or we’re done. Feeling so fucking miserable.
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Are you going to AA to satisfy your partner or because you believe you are an alcoholic? Watching my STBX oscillate in & out of a 12 step program and at times declare that he is committed to it and at others angrily state that he doesn’t actually have an addiction… I can tell you that if it’s the former (ie you are going just to shut your partner up) it may just prolong the inevitable.
So really think about why you are going, and everything that led up to this point. Be honest with yourself.
And if you are an alcoholic, encourage your partner to get to an Al-Anon meeting. In my case being in an Anon group with others who had experienced something even a little bit similar to what I was going through was invaluable for my own sanity and also helped me understand his addiction better. (It did not cure STBX’s addiction, of course, and after way too many relapses and too many years of deception, I am done. But my experience is not yours and I know many addicts with many years of sobriety.)
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I’ll be pulling for you. You’re probably the age when alcohol dependency starts to set in. Once it does quitting becomes several degrees more difficult than prior to that dependance.
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AA is a collection of meetings. There are various types. Open, speaker meetings are good. There is some jargon, but it’s just mostly listening to people tell their stories. Some focus on the past, some the present and future.
There are Step meetings, where one of the 12 steps is discussed.
Beginners meeting. Self explanatory. This may be the best one to start with.
Big Book meeting. If you don’t know what the Big Book is, you will soon enough. At these meeting a concept or chapter in the Book is discussed.
Men’s/women’s/LGBQT meetings. Exclusively for the ‘gender’ involved. People are sometimes have less inhibitions in a group of the same gender.
My suggestion is to go to a beginner or speaker meeting first. Unless you have a friend with whom you are attending. The other meetings, while always welcoming of new-comers, can get quite detailed, and you don’t want to get lost.
But like Twig said, do it for the right reason. It’s not a punishment to go to AA (though court-ordered AA can seem like it). It is part of a recovery process.
When listening to others’ stories, look for what you have in common, not what’s different. Do not fall into the trap of “I don’t need to be here, I’m not nearly as bad as that guy, or I never messed up as bad as her…”
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This was posted here before, I believe, but the low success rate of 5-8% should have you questioning whether it’s the best option -
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I thought that meant Starbucks for a sec, but then I saw the other thread. Sorry to hear.
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Thanks. It’s been brewing a long time; I just haven’t shared until now. His addiction is not alcohol so I don’t want to derail the thread too much, but suffice it to say that living with an addict who is not in recovery is extraordinarily difficult.
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