You're not an Alcoholic!

[dogsaremybusiness]

I watched a documentary last night, and this woman was saying that alcoholism ran in their family (she was one), and she kind of blamed her Dad because he was an alcoholic too.

It transpired though, that her Dad enjoyed a drink between the ages of 21 and 29, and then he never touched another drop, for the following FIFTY years until his death.

However, he made money touring around and giving pep talks to alcoholics and recovering alcoholics.

AIBU to think that if you drank in your 20's (which most of us do) and then you are Tee total in your 30's, 40's, 50's 60's and 70's that you are NOT a fucking alcoholic, and maybe you just enjoyed making money by claiming that you were?

Really got my back up, as I am the DD of an alcoholic, and do really struggle to keep my own drinking under control.

Just want to thank the OP for this thread.
It's good to see drinking being discussed. It takes big girl pants to join the alcohol threads and many people drop off. @dogsaremybusiness The more we discuss in a rational way the better

No gc yet but thanks for the heads up. It is a fear of mine that it will resurface somewhere, but I truly hope not. My ex had a difficult childhood in a way my own children didn’t (I removed them from the situation when very young). I feel my ex’s issues were deeply rooted in his authoritarian childhood rather than genetics, but I don’t know if that makes any difference. His own father wasn’t an alcoholic, just incredibly strict.

How do we know that this guy hasn't kept updated on guidance and advice? By your estimate only someone who has been an addict in say the last 10 years is qualified?

That reminds me of what Matthew Perry (Friends) said. He had his first drink as a teenager and it had such a profound effect on him that he was hooked from the off.

Yes, you can be an alcoholic at any age and after a short period of drinking. But it's possible to have guilt feelings and also to want more alcohol after the first drink, without being anywher near an alcoholic.

yes you can be an alcoholic at any age for any length of time

YABU

I dont understand this line of thinking

If i was in a dv relationship in my 20s, and i became an advocate, worked for a charity became a speaker etc... do I have to stop 10 years after? 20 years after?

Lots of people with experiences of childhood abuse, traumatic incidences use it within their careers

People are different and so are alcoholics in how they deal with it.

Perhaps he was a raging alcoholic for those years. Perhaps it was a constant struggle for him, as it is for some people, to stay sober. Some people do make it their life's work once sober.

I'm sober 7 years and it's not really a huge part of my life. I forgot about my 7 years anniversary last month. I don't think about alcohol at all in terms of me drinking it in general. But I count myself lucky in those terms because there are people who have to fight to stay off it every single day.

I try to take the time to make sure people are aware of the help they can actually access under the NHS because it's not particularly well known, but otherwise I have no crusade.

Certainly there is a genetic vulnerability towards alcoholism, but people tend to take two paths, either they (like my sister) are overly aware and therefore always very careful with alcohol, or they end up following the route of their parent. Either way it can effect their lives.

Sure it depends if he was an alcoholic in his 20s or not? Thats 10 years of his life, its quite a long time to be an alcoholic for. It depends entirely on what his drinking was like in that period. Plenty of people are alcoholics in their 20s, and I mean the proper drinks a bottle of spirits+ a day, all day every day not a MN has more than one glass of wine alcoholic

Most people in their 20s dont drink heavily everyday till their 29. Not really. He obviously felt his drinking was out of control enough to not touch a drop for the rest of his life.

You don't have to be actively drinking to be an alcoholic. Alcoholism means both that you're currently dependent but also that you have the tendency to become dependent if you drink. So a person who has experienced dependency but has gone teetotal and isn't currently dependent on alcohol would still describe themselves as an alcoholic, because they know they are susceptible to becoming dependent again if they have a drink. This has been the normal way of using this word for decades now. It sounds like this man may well have had an issue with alcohol but was successful in keeping it under control afterwards and wanted to share his approach with others with the same issue. I really don't see the problem.

There isnt a particular definition of alcoholic.

Ive worked within services and the definition is broad. Its not an American thing

Yes historically it was used for people who are physically dependent but its such a broad scope that it excluded lots of people who needed alcohol help.

There isnt a specific line of when someone becomes an "alcoholic". In hospital for example we used to identify those who were physically dependent because withdrawal was dangerous, but actually realised there was another cohort of people who were having to leave critical hospital treatments to seek alcohol despite not being physically dependent.

Often people who have problematic alcohol use like to use any technical definition to explain why they arent alcoholics. I only get headaches not shakes, I drink 5 not 6, I never lost my job etc

The reality is that it's anyone where alcohol is creating a consistent difficulty in their life, impacting their normal function and who would feel unable to manage without alcohol use

Some people could manage a day without, others several days.

why though? They could still be going to meetings, researching, doing little rituals that help them stay off the booze. And if that helps people actively drinking to give it up, then no harm done. Unless of course it’s one of those documentaries set in the US where people have to pay $$$$$$ to join each course and then have to sell it on etc like the twin flame university 😂

My FiL was hospitalised for failing liver and pancreatic damage from alcoholism at 27. He recovered and never touched another drop. He died at 80 from a bladder cancer likely connected to alcohol consumption earlier in life. I’m not sure why you think someone can’t be an alcoholic in their 20s? I do think there are a lot of (esp American) celebrities who describe what I would consider ‘within normal range’ alcohol over-consumption in their 20s as alcoholism and use it as an identity prop and it is annoying. Equally, alcoholism is horrible and some people really do have experiences early on where they realise it’s stop drinking or die and they choose stop drinking.

It'd be like someone who had a hip replacement 50yrs ago giving tips to someone having one today. Their experience would be totally irrelevant.

This is bunkum. You really don't know what you are talking about. Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in 1935 & the Big Book was published in 1939. The message & path to recovery hasn't changed in 90+ years. The experiences of someone who drank alcoholically 50 years ago are just the same as someone who is currently drinking alcoholically.

I've thought this when hearing celebrities describe themselves as having been alcoholic when to me what they're describing is more like a phase of problem/binge drinking rather than chronic alcohol dependence. They describe how they got drunk and disorderly at 19, went to rehab and then go on to call themselves "sober". I don't think this is the same experience as being alcohol dependant for decades and experiencing the terrible physical and social issues that go along with it.

Ok decided to research this person (Richard ‘sandy’ Beach for anyone interested)

“He had a very serious drinking problem while serving as a U.S. Marine Corps fighter pilot. He eventually ended up in hospital with delirium tremens, hallucinations and other effects of alcoholism. He got sober on 7 December 1964“

^ I wouldn’t say that was a casual party drinker. That was a man who’s seen too much and got in to trouble with drinking.

He was making money out of talking about heavy drinking/being an alcoholic in his 20s, 50yrs ago. If I was an alkie I'd want and expect someone with a bit more recent knowledge to share their alleged words of wisdom.

If you have a dependency on alcohol then you're an alcoholic. And if you're an alcoholic then you're an alcoholic forever, even when you're on the wagon.

My friend is an alcoholic. Drank from age 15 until she was mid 20s. One thing that kept her drinking was people saying it was normal for students to drink loads. What they didn't see was that she had to drink to have fun. She was constantly looking for opportunities to drink, a lunch time pint, wine and shots after uni and before we went out she'd drunk enough to put the rest of us under the floor but was totally fine. I don't think in the 3 years of uni she went 24 hours without alcohol. It affected her uni work, her friendships, her relationships. At 26 she stopped drinking. She's mid 40s now. And she won't have alcohol in food, in trifle or anything. She says a drop would set her right back.

So YABU. If he thinks he was an alcoholic, he probably was.

As you are not an alkie your opinion on this isn't worth much & you reveal your true self with your snarky "alleged words of wisdom". When I first got sober & attended AA meetings I was inspired talking with people who had been sober for decades.

I know Americans who claim to be alcoholics who we simply wouldn’t consider to be alcoholics in the U.K.

• “His talks were recorded and distributed on tapes/CDs and later digitally.
• His famous “Drop the Rock” talk has subsequently been turned into books/digital publications, including editions published after his death.
• I can’t find reliable evidence that Sandy personally received royalties from those recordings, and sources discussing AA circuit speakers specifically say royalties from recordings were generally uncommon.
• The Drop the Rock book that is now sold under his name is actually a 2023 independently published edition, nine years after his death, so that isn’t evidence that he was monetising it during his lifetime.”

I agree with PP above thanking @dogsaremybusiness for this thread. I think so many of us make assumptions about alcohol - what is acceptable, what we individually deem alcoholism to look like [and generally that excludes the habits of our own families or social group], that it’s normal to spend our late teens/twenties drinking like a fish.

I do think we need to have more open and non-judgmental discussions about it, really.

Surely it's subjective to the individual though - how they feel about their own drinking. Maybe they stopped before they got really bad but accepted that if they have any alcohol they may get really bad and can't trust themselves around alcohol?

Being able to moderate your alcohol intake is something lots of people take for granted and it's easy to think we'll, they didn't get raging drunk all the time so they aren't an alcoholic. But if they were putting rules around their drinking ( I can only drink after 6pm, I can only drink at weekends, I'll only have low strength larger etc etc) that's something people who do not have a problem with alcohol don't need to do. And anyone who thinks those things are normal needs reconsider their own relationship with alcohol.

The problem is that many people associate "Alcoholic" with homeless, unwashed, unable to function, unemployable, etc.

The reality is that an alcoholic is anyone who has an unhealthy relationship with alcohol, who drinks more than is healthy for them and/or who cannot control their alcohol consumption when drinking. Many alcoholics can abstain for periods of time and/or function in society and the workplace while still being alcoholics.

The theoretical "rock bottom" is different for different people. Some never can stop, some stop when they realise what they are doing to themselves. Some stop young as this person seems to have, and some die from drink.