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.

My uncle is an alcoholic. He hasnt drank now for over 40 years but still attends meetings and if he drinks again he won't stop. You dont understand alcoholism.

My dad didn’t stop dinking till my mum divorced him for leaving me asleep on some chairs at the pub. I have a lot of respect for people who quit before they do anything that fucks up their lives.

Exactly this.
DM is coming up 50 years sober. She still refers to herself as a Recovering Alcoholic. She attends AA. She doesn’t drink,she would like to drink, but knows from experience that one drink would send her back to addiction. She can’t take it or leave it, or drink a little bit, or even stop once she’s started. She has no control - admitting this is one of the principals of AA.

Sorry but you clearly don't understand what an alcoholic is .if you hammered it for 9 years and got sober you will always be a recovering alcoholic always ask anyone who goes to aa

My FIL was an alcoholic, drank himself to death in his mid 50s.

My dh is an alcoholic. Doesn't touch drink now, but he is still an alcoholic, if he starts to drink again he won't stop.

His brother is an alcoholic. Slowly killing himself. We went NC years ago. We will be there for him if he ever accepts he has a problem.

His other brother is an addict. His poison is gambling. After he lost tens of thousands of pounds, and nearly his family and their home has been going to gambling anonymous for years.

So addiction is currently not impacting our life as the family we do see has it under control. But I never forget the risk of it is there and it worries me that whatever drives addiction in dh's family could have been passed onto my dc so I talk to them about it sometimes.

I don't seem any issue with anyone discussing addiction whether directly or indirectly impacted.

YABU. It’s the same thing as when a recovering drug addict still considers themselves an addict even after not taking a single drug in a long time!

people often associate alcoholism with someone who gets up and needs a drink straight away, they drink all day, stagger around the town pub to pub but this is really not the case. You could only drink at the weekends and still be an alcoholic.

My SIL hasn’t drank since her early thirties. She considers herself a recovering alcoholic (she doesn’t live nearby so never seen it first hand!). It wasn’t drinking every day, it was non stopping when she did, that in itself can be a form of alcoholism. She is now t-total and considered herself in recovery and cannot risk having 1 single drink.

my ex, whom I have a child with is similar. He drank non stop every weekend, not every day, but spending hundreds out in the pub each week, I believe he was an alcoholic, for years he stopped drinking, had to avoid any form of temptation - nights out, weddings, pubs, certain friends (his closest friends aren’t the issue, but the ‘drinking buddies’ were). He don’t drink for years but sadly has relapsed since he’s split with his partner (not me)!

as for me, I’m totally tee-total, people often assume this is because I’ve previously had a problem with alcohol in the past, which is not the case, I have just never been interested in alcohol. I drank a little in my late teens and very early twenties, but lost interest.

What, so anyone has gone sober because of alcoholism is no longer an alcoholic??

Sadly I don’t have that channel but hopefully it will come onto normal tv

Alcohol doesn't "run in the family"
This is just what you tell yourself to justify your drinking.

Take responsibility, you are in control of your actions. You do not have a compulsion to do something just because a parent also did it ?

I don’t think you’re comparing like with like.

Smoking is also a very serious and often ultimately fatal addiction but it’s not something which alters mood or behaviour.

Smoking cigarettes won’t change people’s relationships with their spouses or children. It won’t create scenarios where people feel they have to dance around or cover up behaviour on behalf of the addicted or create embarrassing or frightening situations. It doesn’t trigger domestic violence.

It doesn’t change people’s capacity to do their jobs or prompt them to burn through the family budget in a single weekend. It’s obviously very bad for physical health long term but it won’t land you in A&E having a stomach pump or in a traffic accident.

There is a reason why people in rehab are allowed to smoke cigarettes but not drink.

Cigarettes are an awful addiction but they don’t cause the same level of collateral damage that alcohol does.

My grandma was an alcoholic, she lost her eldest 2 children to the care system, she was in mental health institutions, she nearly died. She had her last drink at 30 and has been sober for almost 50 years. She’s still an alcoholic, don’t be dense.

@nofacenonamenonumber Actually alcoholism does have genetic component so you’re incorrect.

Why does age come into it?

Surely, someone can become dependent at any age, and once dependent may well still feel the pull and have to have methods to avoid going back for the rest of their lives.

I, for example, shall never be anything other than a smoker to some degree or another. A current smoker sometimes, a paused or quitting smoker at others, but never someone who doesn’t have to go through agonies every time they stop and desperate pangs when I do. It gets easier, but I’ve restarted too many times to know now that the desire is always there and the potential to fully restart is only one or two social cigarettes away. And I started at 15 and was certainly addicted pretty quickly after that.

Are you suggesting that you can’t become an alcoholic until you’ve reached a certain age? Or is it a certain period of struggle before you can say, ‘yes! I’m a recovering alcoholic!’?

And presumably then this counts for all addictions? ‘Sorry I don’t believe you were a heroin addict as you were still a teenager’???

Addiction doesn’t work like that. You don’t reach a certain amount of something and then, suddenly you’re addicted. Sure few people struggle after their first drink / smoke / injection, but it’s part of a journey for some that can quickly turn to addiction. Just as some people seem able to partake in things, enjoy them - even serious drugs - and just walk away whenever and not feel the same desperate yearning afterwards. The many (hateful) social smokers I know for instance.

You’re wrong. Children with an alcoholic parent are at a much higher risk of developing alcoholism (some studies show six times greater). The risk is increased even where a child hasn’t grown up around the alcoholic parent.

That’s 2 nights off - 2 nights is nothing

my ex dh can not drink for 2/3/5/7 days if have no money

but will buy booze as soon as has money and will drink a bottle of spirits neat in an hour or so

you can’t not not drink after a few days or a week. So you have a problem with alcohol

2 bottles a night if too much. You sound more of a binger drinker

i do sometimes go and read the long standing thread. To try and get some kind of understanding if that’s the right word of why some can’t not drink on there

they want to not drink but something will tip them over the edge and will drink and back to day - of being sober

Not every experience of being an alcoholic or living with an alcoholic will be the same.

I havnt watched the show, think it sounds worth a watch so will do, but witnessing the alcoholic behaviour of a parent is not the only way they can pass these issues on. An addictive personality trait can pass from generation to generation.

I lived with an alcoholic father from birth until I was 7. He was abusive to my mum, physically and emotionally. He put the gas on and threatened to blow up the house with us in it on 1 occasion. The last we saw him was after he had smashed all our windows after they had seperated and my mum went on a night out. We saw him the next day and they both realised he wasn't safe in our lives anymore. I briefly saw him for a few months when I was 16 until mum found out an put a stop to it. Then again when I was 18 for a few months until I realised for myself he is not safe. He died 10 years later.

Just because I havnt seen him in 20 years does not mean I am safe from him passing this trait on. It use to drive me mad when my mum commented when I had periods of getting carried away with the drinking, saying you got to be careful as your dad was an alcoholic. I know now I am older she is right and I got to keep myself in check. I have periods where I don't know when to stop, especially if I am feeling down. I can see me getting close to the dependency and have so far managed to pull myself back each time. This may not be the case forever. It has nothing to do with his influences but everything to do with that addictive trait ingrained. I get easily addicted and cant stop many things. Smoking, a certain drink that I drink 2 litre of every day and have to take it up to bed to drink more each time I wake, cant play video games as I would never stop, if im watching a series that is plentiful I will watch every spare second I am in the house, stay up stupid time in the morning every night, lucky if I manage to wait until I finish work to start again, until they run out, then I take a break before doing the same again with another 1. So I think this trait has a stronger pull than influences

Like autism and asexuality. The criteria for autism have been expanded so wide that people are diagnosing themselves with it, whereas they probably just have some quirks. Meanwhile others are declaring themselves asexual simply because they're not obsessed with having sex.

Interesting. Now you come to mention it there are definite ADHD traits. Proof, perhaps, that ADHD has always existed, it just wasn't diagnosed. And therefore people self medicated.

As just mentioned the alcohol thread is long standing. It was started by a poster called drybird in 2020.
It is a great source of knowledge. People recommend books, podcasts and various support groups. It has no affiliation to AA or Smart recovery. I've posted every day for years because I'm grateful to wake up sober.
However it's a support thread so the people 'holding the thread' ask that you're committed to sobriety whilst you contribute to the thread. There are moderation threads again long standing that sometimes people feel more comfortable with.
As a whole most posters are women. Personally I believe female alcoholics are different. They carry the added burden of shame. Female drinkers are judged more harshly.
I posted a statistic up thread of 27% of alcoholics have experienced CSA. I don't have the stats for other abuse but I bet it's pretty high.
Most of the people I've met at AA have trauma.
I had private therapy and it was hugely beneficial. I'd recommend that for anyone with a drink problem. Male or female. It's often cheaper than the booze!

This is part of the problem of proving genetic link of alcohol.

Its hard to untangle the genetics of alcohol, genetics of linked conditions that might make people prone to alcohol (eg adhd, mental health conditions), the link of childhood or social environment, and traumas that tend to run along family lines.

Being the child of an alcoholic might mean that you too have a more turbulent childhood, more likely to have adverse experiences, disrupted schooling ,more likely to grow up in care all of which are more likely to impact your mental health which you might be genetically loaded for as well as genetically loaded for addiction

I know someone I am quite close to who pretends to be an alcoholic to his family for very dysfunctional reasons. He drinks socially, doesn’t tell his family and goes to regular meetings as he tells me he enjoys them. Believe me he is not an alcoholic and this is his view too. I don’t know if the man referred to in this case is an alcoholic or not but it’s not beyond possibility that he is monetising the situation and may not be an alcoholic but only he really knows.

You don’t have to be currently drinking to be an alcoholic. There’s a reason that one of AA’s sayings is “One day at a time.” A recovering alcoholic has to make the decision every day to not have a drink. It is not an easy one and done moment. Sometimes that decision not to drink is very hard, sometimes it’s easy. But the temptation is always there.

This is the most stupid thing anyone’s written in a while.

Alcohol addiction isn’t race to the bottom. I’m sorry you suffered with an extremely violent alcoholic father @OP,but that doesn’t belittle the experiences of others who have become powerless over alcohol. True, a lot of people drink more in their twenties, usually when they have few responsibilities and a bit of spare cash!! But most will have a few hangovers, carry on with their daily life with no problem and generally “grow out of it” as they get older.

Is interesting that males drink more in their youth (unless it takes hold) then give up when they marry and have a family. They concentrate on their careers and want to earn as much as they can. A few beers will be accepted in business but not a drunk.
Alcoholism in females usually occurs after motherhood. A famous book is 'mummy was a secret drinker'. For me motherhood was hard but an absolute a walk in the park to caring for elderly parents.
I do think it's waining. 60% of people wish to cut down or abstain from alcohol. That will mean a better life for our children I hope.