Do I have a drinking problem?

[freshie247]

My advice is you best change your ways before they become so ingrained that you can't change them.My other axiom is,if you have to take a drug to feel normal,it goes against the whole idea of drugs,which is IMO,altered states of conciousness.

[Woodsy]

is this the same alias that fucked around on his lady constantly?
hu.
maybe i am totally around the bend and posting as 2 people........

powstash has a point, maybe alias should be shared alias so we can ask questions and explore things anonymously ( cuz the majority of y'all are known to me fairly well)

anyhooo, I have asked this same question, even sought counseling for it at the behest of my former girlfriend.
advice I got there was interesting, amounted to staying an "ametuer" drinker, and paying attention to it.
like many above I think asking this question is a great sign of self awareness, just dont lie to yourself about it.

I have also been thinking that skiing/riding promotes a drinking lifestyle. apres ski is about more than raclette.
As the season wound down I have been on the road selling Utah, Salt Lake and my resort and hotel in particular to ski clubs, wholesalers, travel agents, etc
these events are fkin booze fests.....
drinking every night put a big dent on my desire to indulge, a good sign I suppose. Also being in Austin made me realize I dont drink as much as folks here do, damn.
but many I know here, and know well, some of whom posted above, also drink more than your average folks in the world.

going no where with his really, just have been noticing.
doubt I will have anything stronger than a sprite for a few days, even with a fridge full of bootlegged beer.
but I may be a sexaholic.

[marshalolson]

just found this thread, and felt comelled to post:

as far as drinking on the job, it is totally allowed at my shop, infact, the shop usually pitches in to the beer fund everyday. usually we will have a drink or two before we open at 11, almost always a drink or two at lunch, and several after work/after the mountain bike ride. is this bad? does this meen i have a problem? often i will not have any drinks, but often we will have 10+ during the day! i have total control, never getting wasted or whatever (though some co-workers have been known to...) and can not drink at any time, but this is obviously not normal.

what do you all think?

ps: feel free to swing by and knock a few back anytime

[lemon boy]

AA-

I only know a very little about any of these, I am just aware of their existene and am not promoting any one over another.

The most obvious is Rational Recovery http://www.rational.org/

Unfortunately their site seems a little OTT against AA.

A bunch of others: http://alcoholism.about.com/od/non/

[bad_roo]

I have never drunk a beer.

But let me give you my advice anyway...

[Tippster]

Holy . I just read this...

Yes, you have a problem. No, it's not the end of the world. Get help, but I would avoid AA (especiallythe Allanon offshoot) unless you are looking to include "God" in your cure. Believe it or not there are some decent programs through the YMCA and a plethora of support groups on the web. Google "alcohol support groups & (your City)," it should give you some starting points.

Good Luck, mang. A functioning alcoholic (you) only stays that way for a relatively short time.

[teledave]

I just waded through this whole thing.
To all that are struggling with their vices, I wish you good luck. I can't really offer any more advice than that, but there have been plenty of options and analysis offered by others.
We all bring our own experiences and bias' to this message board and it's one of the things that makes this place what it is.

[Keoni]

Glad to see I'm not the only one with a problem.



Someday, I'll deal with it.

[alias]

functioning alcoholic my ass. Hell, I was just hitting it hard for a few days. I've now gone 3 days without a drop, watching others drink turning down beverages and have not had even a twinge of desire.

[meatdrink9]

Nothing to see here

[MacDaddy]

Good thread, and I'll treat my reply as a confession. Seeking some feedback, or penance.

As many of you know, I like to drink. Sometimes I like to drink allot.
Some weekdays I’ll drink only 1 (AB)Alcoholic beverage-this on any given day like a glass of wine with dinner, or a beer, after softball. I can stop after this, no problem.

Other days not necessarily in that same week, but usually. I will drink 12 AB, most likely during a weekend get together. This is where my wife says I have a “problem” of not being able to stop.

Well not quite correct, I’m sure I could stop, but I don’t want to, it feels too damn good at the time. I’m sure my inhibitions are clouded in the murky depths of my 3rd triple Red Bull and Stoli, but if I’m not belligerent, and stumbling, what’s the problem? Hmm? Am I really in control I ask? I guess If I have to ask, I should know my answer! Tough to truthfully answer that one!

I know the consequences on my body if I drink repeatedly, but I manage to only drink on average 2 days a week with one of the days being a binge drinking day. I religiously drink 2-4 liters of water a day does this help?
Weird thing-I find that if I consume more than 7 ABs, 3 days in a row I can’t drink any more on the 4th day! My body can’t handle it. My face gets blotched, and red, and my head feels like it’s going to explode. I think its dehydration, but it could be anything so I wont, and don’t drink on days like that. I wonder what it really is?

Is my binge drinking affecting my health even though its once, sometimes twice a week? I have had the liver test and I came up negative, but I was sober and hadn’t had any thing to drink for at least 4 days prior? Does this matter?

Doest it matter that some months I will go up to 10 days with out a drop?
I recently gave up drinking for 28 days, and yes I felt great, I lost weight, but I (couldn’t/didn’t) hold out for the whole Lenten season I like I had set out to do! Loser? in my eyes yes! But I wanted to enjoy some super fine wine one night and I chose to drink only wine, and some whiskey with friends. I abstained from vodka and beer for the whole observance of lent. but still failed to not drink! Problem?
I'm curious to read what ya'll think.

I actually think I am addicted to women and sex but that’s a different thread. How do you get help for that!

[basom]

I actually think I am addicted to women and sex but that’s a different thread. How do you get help for that!

this can be as destructive a force as alchohol. and there is lots of help out there.

[Viva]

Yo Daddy! Check it out...more coming...

[Viva]

Brain Sabotages Sobriety, Right on Cue
Pavlov's Progeny Provide Pictures of Alcoholism

Brian Vastag


JAMA. 2004;291:1053-1055.

New Haven, Conn—Ivan Petrovich Pavlov never had it so good. He may have won the 1904 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine—but only after collecting buckets of bodily fluids from his famously hungry dogs. A century later, his scientific progeny measure anticipation with brain scans, not drool pans.

The feisty physiologist would likely be pleased. Researchers peeking into the brain with sophisticated imaging are beginning to map the neurobiology of craving. While discovering why alcohol and other drug habits can be so hard to kick, they are also documenting the brain damage caused by alcoholism.

"Clearly, chronic alcohol use changes the brain," said Raymond Anton, MD, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, speaking at a recent meeting on neuroimaging of alcohol disorders held at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn. Many of these changes sensitize individuals with addiction to specific cues—the sights, sounds, smells of their drink of choice. Even if they don't drool, the brain betrays them. It appears that deeply entrenched neural patterns light up the brain's memory, pleasure, and reward circuits moments before a sober alcoholic recognizes the familiar urge.

One key question is how, exactly, these preconscious moments undermine sobriety. "In recovery, can this response predict who will relapse?" asked Daniel Mathalon, MD, PhD, an imaging researcher at Yale. "That's a question we're now equipped to try to answer," he said.


TAKING THEIR CUES

The most popular technology for this type of research—functional magnetic resonance imaging—clicks snapshots of the brain's activity as a patient lies inside a scanner. Wearing goggles or watching a video screen, the patient views a sequence of images designed to arouse craving. Or, to heighten the urge, an assistant plunks down a bottle of the patient's favorite beverage, letting him or her smell or sip it.

In some experiments, researchers give patients a trivial task to keep the conscious parts of their brains distracted. In others, patients are explicitly asked to rate their desire to drink. Computers collate all of the information, compiling pictures of which brain areas respond to which cues. Mathematically intense comparisons with control subjects can then isolate specific responses unique to alcoholics.

The most recently published cue-response study comes from a group at the Medical University of South Carolina, headed by Hugh Myrick, PhD (Neuropsychopharmacology. 2004;29:393-402). The group did not find any significant differences between 10 social drinkers and 10 alcoholics, perhaps a testament to the technical difficulty of neuroimaging research.

However, the team did identify several brain regions in the alcoholics that responded more intensely to images of alcohol vs images of other drinks. Three areas in particular stood out: the nucleus accumbens (a pleasure center), the insula (responsible for taste memory), and the cingulate (which gauges emotional response to stimuli).

These results partially match reports from cue-response studies in individuals addicted to cocaine and heroin, said Myrick. In addition, activity in the three brain regions corresponded to the alcoholics' self-rated desire to drink, strong evidence that these regions are involved in craving.


THE "HOWS" AND "WHYS"

While alcoholics may some day be helped by treatments that diminish craving by targeting salient brain regions, for now, the technology plays a more basic role. "I see these neuroimaging techniques helping us with the hows and the whys," said John Krystal, MD, director of the Center for the Translational Neuroscience of Alcoholism at Yale. "And someday . . . they may be helpful with the ‘what,' which is the diagnostic issue."

Their most consistent finding is that the brains of alcoholics are smaller, by about 5%, than brains of nonalcoholics. Especially vulnerable is the prefrontal cortex, known as the seat of "executive" brain functions such as reasoning. Some of this damage appears reversible, as scans have shown brain expansion after just a few weeks of sobriety. But when a relapse strikes, the gray and white matter shrivels up again, as if hiding from the boozy assault.

In addition, it appears that alcoholism rewires how the brain performs routine tasks. Stanford University School of Medicine behavioral scientist Edith Sullivan, PhD, recently completed a series of experiments testing the cognitive skills of alcoholics. In a presentation at the Yale meeting, she reported that alcoholics tend to perform at the same level as nonalcoholics, but their brains work much harder to get there.

During a verbal memory task, in which the subject was asked to identify a lower case letter that had moments before appeared in upper case, "Alcoholics recruited more widely spread brain areas [than controls] to achieve the same performance," said Sullivan. Similarly, the brains of alcoholics labor to remember the arrangement of colored dots. Whereas control subjects solved the task by activating the "where" circuitry of their brain (originating at the back of the prefrontal cortex), alcoholics used the much more processing-intense "what" circuitry (originating at the front of the prefrontal cortex). It is as if each time they saw a blue dot, they had to remember not only where it appeared, but what exactly it was.

Sullivan's conclusion: "Although alcoholics have impaired executive function, under certain circumstances they can overcome it. But," she added, "only at the expense of brain processing power." To use a computer analogy, when confronted with multiple tasks, the brains of alcoholics grind away like a 1980s-era PC, while normal brains glide through the challenge with the alacrity of a 3-gigahertz processor.

These findings match clinical reality: alcoholics in professional jobs, such as lawyers, tend to score in the normal range on single-task cognitive tests. But these same drinkers often complain that they have lost their edge in court, the classroom, or wherever they encounter the need for complex thinking.

[robrox]

Wow---that's a lot of booze. If you are paying retail you are drinking more than you know. You cannot fill that hole with booze....

I've tried, it doen't work....

Have you missed a few wake up calls? I'm sure you have...If you continue drinking that much, please mail your driver's license to your DMV and don't get another until you can enjoy drinking without drinking more than one!

Need a ride someplace.....call your pals, call a cab....hell if you stop drinking so much you might be able to afford scheduled limo service.

[powder11]

I used to be an on or off drinker. I would either drink a whole bottle of Jack or not have anything and think it was under control. I thought it was ok because I only drank a couple days a week. I realized it wasn't cool anymore when I drove from VT to Boston in a full on black out and woke up not remembering shit about the day before. Having to ask others what I had done or how I got home became all too frequent. I quit cold turkey over a year ago and my quality of life has gone through the roof. I found myself living the dreams I always fucked up through drinking. It made sense when I started to see that I was living a better life without drinking. I found alcohol was the obstacle to me living a good life and was really an inhibitor to good times. The "good old days" weren't so good and the people who were drinking buddies disappeared along with all the drama. Some people can drink without consequence, its all about being honest with yourself and deciding what you want to get out of life. In short I knew drinking would eventually be the death of me. I don't go to AA or anything, but I'll never touch it again.

[ill-advised strategy]

Something that helped me:

HALT. Hungry Angry Lonely Tired.

The acronym is cheesy, but it helped for me to understand the mechanisms that prompted me to consume.

[bigsugar]

I tried just quitting cold turkey myself. It didn't work for me. I could go months without drinking, but it could all go to shit at the drop of a hat. More Important than that, I was never happy. I would literally pout about not being able to drink. I pretty much gave up on sobriety at the end of this past summer, but that led to relationship problems, depression, etc. I finally decided that I couldn't do it alone, so I tried AA and I've never felt better. There are still days when I am depressed, confused, etc., but they are far outnumbered by the days I am genuinely happy, productive, and content.

Don't take that to mean it'll work for everyone. I was not religious when I went into AA, and I'm still not in the traditional sense. They claim "spirituality" as opposed to religion; they draw a solid line between the two, but it still looks blurry to me. It can be damn weird for someone who is a little standoff-ish with religion as I was/am. Especially the organized type. But whatever, it is helping me.

My problem is deeper than the drink....the drink was just a symptom. That's the case with many alcoholics.

[Blizzard7763]

My problem is deeper than the drink....the drink was just a symptom. That's the case with many alcoholics.

I have never heard it that way, but I think that may be the case with me.

A big problem is that I am in a place I seriously hate. I only drink 2-3 times a week, but it's generally a whole lot. I never thought about stopping, because I always thought "it's ok, it's only a few times a week". I don't know how well it will work out, but once I sober up, I'm going to stay that way for a while.

I have been sort of worried about it since I started reading this thread, but never really thought about myself as having a problem. The other day, my sister said she was worried about me drinking too much, and that bothered me more than anything.

So, with that, I'm going to quit for a while, and see what happens.

Wish me luck, I guess.

[Woodsy]

FYI for all:

most locales have some sort of Substance abuse counseling provided by the state/city/county. These are the same programs that drunk drivers, substance abusers, etc. are compelled to attend.
The one in SLC is graduated pay based on income level. Not expensive at all for me, and I do ok.
It was good to talk to someone about this and get grounded by a real person who is objective towards you and has training.
Glad I did it, confirmed what I thought.
I drink more than average, but not problematically. but I best watch it.

The whole sex addict thing tho, are you serious base?
between recent non stop dating and/or porn I am beginnng to worry.

[skifishbum]

Get help, but I would avoid AA (especiallythe Allanon offshoot) unless you are looking to include "God" in your cure. .

Your missing the mark abit here. The key word is "higher power", this doesn't have to mean a deity or god. Your higher power can be a snowflake or a milloin snowflakes gathered into a mass pow dump. A tree or the whole forest. The 12 step progam works for a hell of a lot of people in a lot of situations, but is not the only form of help.
My higherpower is god spelled backwards. Another wise man once told me his was G.O.D. (group of drunks) I have never had much problems with booze or pot, but the white drugs kicked my ass for a while. Help in many forms is available if you feel substances are scoring on ya.

[Blurred]

Curious how 'alias' is doing.

I decided to quit for 'a few days' on new years eve. That snowballed to where I didn't drink a drop of alcohol until February 17th. I got a lot of shit done in that time.

Maggots are a bad influence in the alcohol department...

[truth]

I have always loved drugs. All sorts. Every kind you could name and then some.

Fortunately, I bore easily.

Only nuns should have habits they never break.

Where's my nun?

Anyway, it's good to ask yourself questions about your habits. And it's generally a sign that you know what the answer is.

Here here! Buster for Vice!

[rideit]

well, I know that I drink WAY too much, but still get what I need to get done....but usually only what I need to get done, aside from my own play time. This last Peru trip was absurd...I would say each day was 6 hours of biking, 3-6 beers, then about 1/3-1/2 of a bottle of Pisco (40%) each night. And then get up at nine, and do it again. Ouch. I would like to try and hang up the sauce for a bit this summer, as I have a LOT going on...but summer is traditionally work-ride-drink season, every evening. Which is both very fun and very not fun, all at the same time. A true connundrum.
Oh, and I am Irish. Alias, If I know you, PM me, why the fuck not.

[skieurmalade]

well i gotta get drunk

and i sure do dread it

because i know just what i'm gonna do