To really like being drunk?

[GrabtharsHammer]

I'm an alcoholic and I'm aiming for sobriety. I'm finding it really hard. I'm in two different groups (not AA, it's not for me). They dont expect abstinence straight away, it's more CBT based.

I've drunk a litre of vodka tonight and I love this feeling. I feel normal, if a bit buzzed.

I usually drink half a bottle of wine during the day so I can do the school run, I don't go in the playground in the morning so it's easier but I feel I need a drink to face the pick up. I'll then drink another bottle of wine in the evening. I don't really get hangovers but the financial hit is the main issue. Thatvand the fact my family hate it.

I crave sobriety. I love the idea. But I can't see how I can say goodbye to feeling like this ever again. Stone cold sober feels jagged and painful and it's not something I can imagine committing to.

Dh hates me drinking. He's exhausted this evening and wants to go to bed but won't leave me because I'm half cut and he doesn't trust I won't do anything silly (history of self harm and overdosing).

I won't, because I feel happy and chilled, but I want to stay up and watch shit telly. I'm basically ruining his life, and I know this, but I can't bear the idea that I'll never feel this way again.

We've tried having him control my drinking but it doesn't work. And I know from therapy that I have to control it myself or there's no point. But I feel like I'm stuck at a point. I know i need to stop drinking entirely but I'm scared.

I have bipolar 2 and BPD so my emotions are generally all over the place, and alcohol is like a comfort blanket.

The old adage about reaching rock bottom doesn't really apply because I've been there and life is generally good now. How on earth can I convince myself that alcohol is no good when it seems so nice?

I know, logically, that we'd be much richer and my health would improve, but I can't seem to take that step forward. I've done loads of paper exercises, like the costs and benefits scale and the hierarchy of values and all of that, but I can't seem to make it stick.
Am I just an awful person? Too selfish to quit?

At school pick up, what if one of the other parents smelled it on you? Noticed you were different? I'd report it to ss if I saw anything like that.

Sorry I'm hammering your thread, I honestly feel like begging you to stop for the sake of your kids. And your husband. Even a laid back husband has a limit. There's no way I'd keep my kids around that kind of behaviour. Please please think about what you're doing, before you take that first drink, think about all the advice you've been given on this thread.

I'm an exw of a dead alcoholic. As my older children start to go out, socialise and drink I worry every day that they will become him.

I left when it all got too much. I hated him at that point. I begged, pleaded and sobbed for him to stop. He would for a day or two and then he would cause a row so he would be justified in drinking again because I'd pissed him off.

And, importantly here I think, he thought he was a funny, life of the party drunk. He wasn't. He was a twat, knob head, rude obnoxious drunk. But he would swear blind he was a great guy drunk.

And he lied. Again and again. And thats what you do. How can you profess to having a great husband but lie and manipulate him to get what you want? He is great but he wont be forever.

Everyone's story is different. And I wish you all the luck in the world. You have a mountain to climb but the view from the top is pretty bloody good, I reckon.

Grab I didn't want to go to AA either I went to my GP and they sent me to drink sense Lovely people who suggested all sorts of things including controlled drinking any recovering alcoholics on here know that isn't the answer because taking one drink just leads to another
When it got bad enough I finally gave AA a call alcoholism never gets better only worse I now understand the reason I didn't want to go was because I knew this ment stopping drinking
Well it took me 2 years in AA to finally stop and stay stopped I didn't give up trying
My only regret is not going sooner I only drank for a few years and had not been drunk or in blackout until I was over 40 but that 3 or 4 years nearly killed me
Now over 10 years sober I found the best thing about AA is it was their 24/7 365 days a year and held me up when I struggled
Alcoholism is not just about the drink that is just the tip of the iceberg it's the only disease mental issue that can fool you into thinking it's not that bad

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't AA religious? That's one of the things that puts me off contacting them.

No, AA isn't religious. It's spiritual but that's very different. I got sober through AA and I'm not religious. You have to sort of offload to a "power greater than yourself" but that can be anything. A friend used his dead parents. Some use the group. I used trees.

AA has to work for people of all faiths and none.

Grab I am not in the slightest bit religious I believed a bottle of vodka held all the answers
AA has no rules Remember it was started a very long time ago and the reading can seem a little out of date now or even strange
But I was so low I didn't ever think I would be normal again until I walked into a meeting shaking like a leaf from the DTs and just sat and listened I couldn't argue that these people had a solution and they had been through what I had been through and came out the other side
so no I am not religious and I came through

Aa isn't religious at all as prawn said, it is offloading to a peer greater than you, or meaning you are not the centre of the universe. - if you don't believe there is a power greater than you, think of alcohol as the first, an inanimate object which has you craving it every day.

Yes, that's right. Booze is a power greater than the drunk. I am an intelligent woman but alcohol had me imprisoned. When I first got sober I was looking at trees silhouetted against the sky. I realized that I could tell the species of the trees by their shape: one was a horse chestnut. It occurred to me that, just as with the trees, there was a natural shape I and my life should have, and that my drinking was screwing this up. So when I prayed, I prayed to trees. Makes sense to me, anyway.

This thread makes me a mixture of angry and sad. I feel like this is an insight into my mother's reasoning when I was younger. You've had an outpouring of real life experiences from the children of alcoholics and you're still not understanding that no matter how much you personally expose you children to they will still be suffering. It makes me angry that you don't think that is a significant thing. No matter what you're like when you're drunk you are drunk and your children know. They might not know you're drunk but they know you are not yourself. They'll be wondering what they're doing to cause that change in you, why it's more important than them. Your daughter is obviously struggling with it from your recent threads about it. I am glad you are stopping, you are doing great for getting through the day but it is hurtful to pretend that your children are fine during this. I am teetotal. From my childhood I can tell as soon as someone has had one drink in my family. One drink. It's written all over their face.

I'm a child of an alcoholic. A dead one. I know through personal research the traits it has created in me. Only recently I have really begun to understand the profound affect of my fathers alcholism. I love him and hate him. At the moment I truly hate him. I am also cross at my mother for being an enabler but I know she's fine. Where my pain is what I've seen in my brother who himself is turning into an alchoholic. Grab you are destroying your kids. I can't even touch on the massive affect your drinking has on them. It's awful.

I can tell if someone I know well has had a drink on the phone within just a few words. And I don't mean slurring or anything obvious/tangible like that it's hard to explain.

I very rarely drink and have never been drunk. I've had long periods of complete abstinence in order to protect myself from becoming an alcoholic.

I've tried al-anon, maybe it was the group I went to but what put me off was that we were expected to not expect the drunk to take ANY responsibility at all. I get its an illness but it's one with an element of choice (however small you believe that to be).

As a result of my childhood I've had a lot of counselling (in my case there was a lot of abuse and not just from the drunk) but it's not been focussed on being the child of a drunk.

Various friends and family members have had varying experiences/degrees of success with al-anon and similar. Everyone's different.

But I agree I think op is deluding themselves in thinking their children/husband don't notice at certain times of the day. I suspect they're possibly biting their tongues to avoid awkward conversation at best, arguments at worst (sorry op but addicts are fantastic liars, even when speaking online anonymously).

I still think you don't quite see the problem for what it is. I realise that you have made a decision to stop drinking. And more power to you!

But you assume that we are all imagining you to be "abusive or angry or emotional." I can only speak for myself but that isn't the image I see when I think of an alcoholic. It's the emotional absence that can be so damaging, the placing of alcohol above everything else in one's life. Children know when they are the low men on the totem pole. You don't need to shout and scream to be affecting them negatively.

So I'm not entirely certain that you are aware of how damaging it can be to grow up with an alcoholic parent. At one point on this thread you wrote, "I think it doesn't affect them so it doesn't affect them." You labeled this sort of thinking as "cognitive dissonance," which I agree with. But you clearly have been trying to justify your drinking for a long time by believing that your children are not being harmed. I'm glad you've had a wake-up call and are determined to make changes in your life. But in order to make those changes, I think it is essential not to minimise the harm that has already been done.

I wish you nothing but the best and I truly hope that you are able to turn this around. If you have the chance of rehab, grab it with both hands.

I am a middle aged daughter of a dead alcoholic father.
I have had a fuckton of therapy for the PTSD, acute anxiety and depression his addiction caused.
As a child I always knew. I learned young how to feel fear and trepidation. The nightmares. The utter panic of leaving my mother alone with him.
He never once as much as raised his voice to me. Once I was in bed and presumed asleep, the tears and tantrums started. I still sometimes need to sleep covering my ears.
My mum left when I was 9. Never saw him again. Was the happiest day of my life.
I don't drink. I am terrified of drunk people, the unpredictability of them triggers the anxiety.
And I bet, on his death bed, my father would have honesfly believed I was unaffected by his alcoholism.

I feel so ashamed, my parents have abused alcohol, and I hated seeing them drunk, yet I can't stop drinking altogether. I'm determined not to drink when they're with me but it's hard. I guess I've justified it by saying they're too young to know what's going on, they're 6 and 4.

Gast
It worked that way for my brothers and sisters too all of them have continued on to have issues with alcohol and expose their children to that. I was the only one who went teetotal and I'm an outcast for it. It really is a horrible vicious cycle. Well done for realising there is an issue though, you can still turn it around.

My personal opinion is all children of alcoholics have issues with alcohol themselves. Admittedly based on my own observations and experience. They either become addicts themselves (well known, learned behaviour, possible genetic elements etc) or they fear alcohol and addiction and avoid it far more than those without this experience do.

I fear becoming an addict and am very wary of when, why, where and how much I drink (my father for years denied his alcoholism by proudly claiming there 'was not a drop in the house' his perception with a father who drank mainly at home was that alcoholics were always completely secretive).

My brother is just completely teetotal I think reinforced by his job (police officer so weekend brawls, dv and drunk driving incidents have made him feel it's just heinous).

My sister is addicted to an Orc medication. And in complete denial. She is turning into my father (I'm Nc with them both).

My mother is also teetotal but enables father and sister.

Any addict that thinks the addiction has no effect on their loved ones is kidding themselves.

Orc is an errant word no idea where that's come from!

or they fear alcohol and addiction and avoid it far more than those without this experience do.

This. Totally this. Even though DM has not drunk alcohol for 40 years, and I have no recollection of her ever doing so.

or they fear alcohol and addiction and avoid it far more than those without this experience do.

Yes, I'm completely teetotal. Drunks terrify me and that's not reasonable or rational but it's true.

It also depends on the people involved. I didn't really know my mother drank (and she only drank lager and only once she was home from the school run). It doesn't sound like it was as bad as many people experience and she was able to give up completely.

My family are mostly psychiatrists and I know how hard it can be for them to help alcoholics. We'd have people coming to the house with the shakes, with liver disease, the real full works. I don't like people on the thread blaming the poster. It's a disease as much as having cancer or chicken pox and it's very hard to treat and deal with but definitely worth trying. I am very lucky that I never much liked alcohol as it has certainly been in the family in the past the generation 2 back had some alcoholics too.

A disease, yes, so is gambling, but they're not the same as cancer or chicken pox. That's incredibly offensive.

I too think it's offensive to compare to cancer etc. Honestly that kind of comment does in my experience tend to come from people who haven't been at the brunt end of addiction.

I prefer to think of it as an illness rather than a disease. A disease is something you can catch. Alcoholism seems to be quite a lottery, but often with a really strong genetic element.

Folks you do realise that not that many years ago Cancer was talked about the same way alcoholism is now....learning disability was talked about the same way and HIV was also talked about the same way.

Has anyone here ever heard someone say they wanted to be alcoholic?

My brother is an alcoholic, he's 44, he won't make fifty,they told him six months ago he will be dead in two years if he doesn't stop drinking, he still drinks.
My father was a functioning alcoholic, a binge drinker and then sober and then another binge. My mother was teetotal. My father was damaged being the son of two alcoholics, his brother committed suicide at 19 after the toll of their childhood became too much.
My grandma was damaged because her own father was an alcoholic. Alcohol scares me, I'm teetotal, the hardest thing is now my dc are adults is the worry that they too will become alcoholics. Three of the four don't drink at all the other one doesn't like the taste but likes to be drunk and I worry about him enormously.
With my family's history and my dh's family's history (teetotal son of an alcoholic) I know our genes are dodgy and I have to hope that the damage stops now.
Your drinking could affect generations to come too.