That alcoholism can be cured in certain people?

[teenagehurtbag]

I'm a 30 year old woman. Have drank since I was around 12, it was always problematic for me since my first sip. I had never been able to say no, if I had one drink then I needed 100 more, my personality and behaviour would change completely. I binged most weekends from the age of 14 to 24.

At age 24 my binges turned daily, I would drink at a minimum 1.5 bottles every single night come rain or shine. I would promise myself every morning that I wouldn't drink that night but I always ended up doing it anyways. I functioned find from 24 - 27. Was able to keep being a mum and go to work/university and keep on top of everything and whilst everyone knew I liked a wine, no one knew the extent.

Summer 2019 when I was 27 my drinking got to an unmanageable level. I would drink from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed. I would sleep in between and get up and drink more as soon as I woke. My daughter (5 at the time) had to go and live with her dad. All I cared about was alcohol. I was so ill, lost so much weight.

In September 2019 I got help, started counselling. In October 2019 I stopped drinking for 6 months. I really really enjoyed this break from alcohol. It changed everything for me. I got my daughter back in the December 2019.

I started drinking again in March 2020 when lockdown hit. It was a conscious decision and I set myself rules. No drinking when my daughter was with me/coming home, no drinking 2 nights in a row and no drinking in the day.

At first I thought I was doomed as the fact I had to set those rules were enough of a concern. However, 2 years later and I have stuck to each of my rules, have managed to graduate uni, start my masters in September. I can actually drink like a normal person now. For instance the other day I went out with my friends and had two cocktails and went home and didn't drink for the rest of the day.

So many people say drinking in moderation isn't possible and at first I'd of agreed, but two years on and alcohol has about the same grip on me as a McDonalds Big Mac burger

Maybe I wasn't a true alcoholic. Maybe I was drinking to mask depression etc. but every professional I met with during that time claimed I was an alcoholic and on the fast track to lolling myself.

AIBU to think some people can be cured?

I think there’s some sock puppeting going on.

@milkyaqua and your point? How is that relevant?

I think it’s that your attitude to alcohol clearly isn’t very healthy, so you’re probably not the one the OP should listen to.

Oh bless you...
Been there, done that, and it took at least another ten years to realise how much I'd been kidding myself. You'll get there.

For me it was when my daughters reached the age where they would be encouraged to drink- did I really want them to have the same attitude and drinking habits as me? And what kind of example was I setting?

I am over two years sober now, and at this point it is so much easier. Moderating meant constantly having to keep myself in check and think about my drinking, justify any deviation from my self imposed rules, thinking about could I or couldn't ii, counting down until I could. I was constantly thinking about drinking even if I wasn't doing it. So much effort for what? It is not what normal people do.

And alcohol doesn't actually do what you think it does. It doesn't make you happier, or more relaxed, or confident, or fun. You can be all of that without alcohol. I have realised that my depression and anxiety were made worse by drinking, if not caused by it. I have off days still but that is normal and it passes quicker without a drink, (or the hangover).

And problem drinking is not always caused by trauma or unhappiness. I drank because everyone else did, to fit in and give me confidence. I had a great childhood and have been lucky enough to never experience any major trauma or event. But alcohol is extremely addictive and mood altering, and can get its hooks into any of us, even if most over users don't want to admit it to themselves.

Hi OP, I’m not sure if you are still reading this thread. However I wanted to post as your words really struck a chord with me. I was your DD 30 years ago.

My Mum was a raging alcoholic. Like you she would sometimes manage a few years of ‘moderate’ drinking. Then she would slide back into black outs, wetting herself, terrible behaviour towards her family. She was very high functioning and maintained a very important job until retirement.

I can’t begin to put into words how awful being the child of an alcoholic is. I lived my whole childhood in confusion and fear. Secrecy, shame and perfectionism still dominate my adult life.

The most painful realisation for me, was that my mum loved alcohol more than me. She loved it so much she wouldn’t seek counselling or try abstinence, even to protect me from the damage she was inflicting. I fear, in your willingness to risk relapse, this is the message you are communicating to your daughter.

if you won’t do it for yourself, consider your daughter. Accepting that you are an addict, committing to the life long work of recovery and practicing abstinence would be the most amazing gift you could give her.

My mum is now dying slowly and agonisingly from alcohol related dementia.

I wish you all the best OP and hope you fond the courage to give your daughter the life she deserves.

I had sympathy for you (if this post is even real) until you went sober, got your little girl back in December and were back on the booze by March. If that is true then you are a lost cause. And how dare you subject your child to a future full of Mummy's lies about how much she drinks. There is no control when you are an alcoholic and you will always be an alcoholic. Quit bragging about 'only 2 cocktails' - it was probably more and will be more quite soon. And you will lie to yourself again.
Your child may not have seen you drinking but do you think she doesn't smell it on you, that her tummy doesn't flip over when she realises Mummy is reverting to type?
You need help and support to beat this. I dare you to walk into AA and say I only have 2 cocktails' a day

Mood altering yes, drink makes people nasty and violent and is a factor in alot of violence and crime that carried out. So its not for the better, it also makes your face age and you stink of booze, people also take to their cars when they drink and have killed people and are also more likely to cause accidents. I cannot see anything remotely good about being a drinker.

You lost your daughter for a short while... wasn't that enough to make you not ever EVER want to touch a drop again??
I just can't get my head around this.
It's like you forgot to put on your seat belt and were in a bad car crash yet escaped with only v minor injuries. So you go out without seat belt fastened again because you were ok last time...

You don't control alcohol..it controls YOU.
You are an alcoholic and always will be
My fiance's son lost his childhood and then lost his dad to alcoholism when he was mid teens
At the exact same time he lost his maternal grandad to alcoholism
IT RUINS LIVES
Please don't do this to your child

It's a specific kind of thinking. I went through my childhood with alcoholic parents, then as an adult I told them I couldn't have a relationship with them unless they sought help to stop drinking. Guess what - they refused to do it, and I walked away. They never even replied to me. I can't understand it on an emotional level. I just rationalise it by telling myself that unconditional love doesn't exist.

Hi just wanted to reiterate what's already been said. If you lost your daughter as you were deemed too unfit to look after her and then you drank again, it's likely that you have an alcohol problem.

I'm a recovering alcoholic many years sober now but I used to tell myself all the excuses under the sun as to why I could drink, how I was in control.

In my opinion an alcoholic can never control their drinking, once the first drink goes down. You may well be getting away with it for now but it won't last, it will get you and when you start, you know you can't stop as you've already done that.

If you believe you are in control of your drinking, then stop. Stop now.

Can't?

Don't want to?

The very fact that you have to have rules in place is a problem. It seems that you are also home drinking? It seems that you are drinking alone?

I get the idea you have come here for people to tell you well done on controlling it, instead people have been honest and said you are kidding yourself.

If you are in control then stop. Can you?

One little read academic paper with a sample size of 42 does not over ride decades of almost universal consensus that the first step in overcoming (or rather living with) alcoholism, is admitting it.

Either this thread’s a wind-up or it’s childishly, dangerously naive.

which is it, op?

@SeptemberSongs I'm sorry for what you've been through, but with all due respect your mum didn't "love" alcohol more than she loved you. Alcoholics don't love alcohol, it's a disease of the mind, body and spirit and is not a choice.

I like how people are highlighting the metal load of being an alcoholic. The OP is still doing that dance amongst her rules. I don't doubt she counts and thinks and plans. She isn't free of the mental load in the way that sobriety brings.

Most alcoholics hate alcohol oddly enough but the effect it has on them can make it almost impossible to stop. Once you have passed the physical dependency and detoxed it out of your system, the next drink is a choice. BUT that first drink triggers something in alcoholics which means we just can't stop.

My only choice is not taking the next drink one day at time. If I pick that drink up then have no choice, it takes over.

The OP is playing with fire, she's an addict who has lost everything including her child and still thinks she can control it. It will end in tears.

Absolutely this. I HATED alcohol, but thanks to unresolved lifelong trauma and broken mental health services, I was self-medicating - when you're trying to stop flashbacks in their tracks, the promise of an MH assessment in 11 months' time simply doesn't cut it. When there's a bottle right in front of you that can silence the hell in minutes, can anyone honestly say that doesn't seem to be a viable - if fleeting - way out?

I was involved with SS for a long time. It reached PLO stage. I was bluntly told that I'd been emotionally abusing my beloved, treasured, adored DC. There is nothing, NOTHING, I love more on this Earth than those little boys. I was trying so hard to function for them, whilst I was sinking.

Alcoholism is a cruel mistress. It's a parasite that relies on its host to survive, whilst simultaneously wanting to kill them. I loathed every drop, and loathed myself for being a slave to it. It was never love, it was the most abusive relationship I'd ever been in.

With all due respect, unless you've been a child being raised by alcoholics and all of the emotional abuse and neglect that that entails, you really shouldn't be commenting on this (and quite frankly, even as that former child, I wouldn't be correcting the words a person who has been through that experience chooses to use to describe it).

Why are you telling people that they shouldn’t be commenting! Perhaps they were commenting from the perspective of an alcoholic. As I mentioned, I am an alcoholic and I find it truly absurd when people say that the alcoholic “picked alcohol over them or loved alcohol more than them. Now don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of shame about my alcoholism and the impact it has on others, I wouldn’t wish me on anyone. But it is definitely no true that I loved alcohol more than them, or picked it.

I am not going to tell you that you shouldn’t be commenting on it because you are not an alcoholic. Because I think it is beneficial for people on both sides of the equation to comment.

@Teeturtle Because I was addressing a specific comment in which a person was telling a child of an alcoholic how to feel about their upbringing. I couldn’t care less how absurd you find it. Being raised by an alcoholic means you come second to the addiction and your needs are neglected. Whatever form of words is used, it is extremely damaging to grow up in the chaos of an alcoholic and I find it incredibly distasteful when people try to correct the expression of trauma that results so as not to hurt the feelings of the alcoholic parent.

Your or anyone else’s experience as an alcoholic is relevant to a discussion about alcoholism, but not to any survivor in how they express the traumatic situation they grew up in. I can’t believe I’m actually having to explain this.

Everyone with a drink problem wants to be able to drink normally. Every single one. Everyone has tried, and tried, and tried. Rules about when you can drink. Or where you can drink. Or how much you can drink at any one time.

Normal people don't do that. If you're doing that, you almost certainly don't have a healthy relationship with alcohol.

It took me about 15 years after realising this to stop completely, with all the problematic behaviour in between. I wish I'd stopped much earlier, I wasted a lot of life.

And of course I still sometimes would like to have a glass of wine in the sunshine when it's summer. But it pretty quickly wouldn't just be one, especially if I convinced myself I was cured and could drink normally. Know how I know? I've tried it. Lots of people have. That's how we know, and why we don't advise other people try it. Because you lose a lot of time and energy and memory, until you manage to stop again. If you manage.

I'm pleased you're still more or less in control of your life, OP. I'd encourage you to think about all the time you spend thinking and planning and making sure you don't drink too much, and worrying the next day that you did, and feeling shit with the hangovers, etc etc - is that really all worth what you get from a few cocktails? Even if things never get any worse than this (and I wouldn't put money on that), is it really worth the effort?

The disease model is actually only one model for understanding alcoholism. Recent research suggests that cognitive and behavioural models might be more useful.

However, it’s really interesting to read about some different experiences of addiction. I truly applaud anyone who has recovered from alcoholism, what an incredible thing to do.

I suppose my point is, whatever my Mum’s feeling about alcohol truly was, my interpretation, as a confused child, was that she didn’t love me enough to stop, or seek help. So my question to the OP is - does she want her child to feel this way? It’s a feeling that has stuck with me throughout my life, perhaps other children of alcoholics can relate.

That's how it is for the families, it's awful to live with an alcoholic. They call it a family illness because it harms the family and loved ones in the path of the alcoholic.

To to be honest I was sober a fair while before I started to gain an insight into my own illness. I totally refused to accept that I suffered from any illness in the beginning, I just drank too much.

A sober alcoholic's biggest regret is the harm they've caused to their loved ones. But a drunk one is only focused about the next drink.

Physically getting off the drink is only the first part, you then have to learn how to live happy fulfilled sober life. I never say I've recovered because there is something in me that means when I start to drink I cannot stop. So I can never drink again.

I'm coming to terms with leaving a "falling down and break stuff in the house" binge drinker who wouldn't accept I can't go into pubs. Getting shitfaced was more important to him than my sobriety. If I drink again, I'll probably die of it. So I'm heartbroken but I've left.

Perfectly put MuminBrussels

Love it or hate it, it's irrelevant, and surely individual. The primary relationship is with alcohol (or for an addict, their drug of choice, or for a gambler, with gambling).

However it plays out, that little girl of the OP's is on some level secondary, is being emotionally abandoned, and in her heart and body on some level, she knows it.

The fact the OP chose to return to "controlled drinking" after a few months off alcohol and after a month of rationalising her drinking is a demonstration of how she has chosen alcohol over her little girl - although she would deny that, and rationalise it, as she has in this thread.