A (not so) brief primer on addiction and moderation

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Since I've seen a few members allude to difficulties with alcohol, and I've tried a number of different tactics to reduce or stop my intake, I thought some of you might find it useful or interesting if I wrote a bit about it. I'll mention up front that I have no training in medicine or psychology, and anything I write here should not be construed as advice, but rather one person's perspective and should be taken in that context. You also won't find a sob story here. Except for a brief period in 2012 when things got bad, I've never suffered catastrophic consequences from alcoholism, and even with the consequences I did suffer, I can't say with any certainty that my life would be better if I'd never drank.

This ended up being a lot longer and more of an autobiography than I anticipated, but hopefully will still be informative or entertaining for some of you.

Addiction is typically defined as escalating pursuit of a behavior in the face of mounting consequences. It does not have to involve a substance, but substances that cause chemical dependence can make things more difficult. It also tends to run in families, as there is a strong genetic component. Yet being genetically pre-disposed to addiction does not mean that someone is doomed to become an addict, just that they need to be more careful than others. It's my belief that most addictions are caused by people trying to self-medicate, either to run away from certain unpleasant feelings or to embrace positive ones, and a person can only be cured by learning to deal with those emotions without resorting to the object of their addiction. Attempts at sobriety without addressing these deeper issues are doomed to be temporary stints, at least in my experience and observations.

Looking back, it's easy to see that I was prime addict material. Growing up scrawny, among the youngest in my grade level, and in a neighborhood and schools that could best be described as "ghetto-adjacent", I learned to be the consummate diplomatic ninja. Since I couldn't win by fighting physically, I had to fly under the radar and when I did show up as a blip, to convince potential bullies that I wasn't the droids they were looking for. For a skinny, nerdy upper-middle class white kid in majority-minority school settings, I managed to skate by relatively unbullied and unscathed, but the habits I picked up in doing so would come back to haunt me later in life. Despite learning how to socialize, share living quarters, and finally mustering up the courage to talk to girls, I emerged from college without many social skills, understanding of self, or any idea of what I wanted to do with my life. After spending the next few years bouncing around the Stockton-Tracy area, being unemployed, working as a teacher's aide and substitute teacher, and living with my mom and stepdad on 2 separate occasions, I finally landed a job in San Francisco as a bank teller, which would lead to becoming a personal banker at Wells Fargo.

By this point I was 26, and things seemed to be going well. I was finally working in an industry where I could imagine a future, and had already been promoted in less than a year. I had virtually no debt and since I didn't need a car in the city, I made enough money on my meager earnings to pay expenses, fund a 401(k), and still have a few hundred left over every month to save or spend as I chose. That's when I met Eddie (not his real name). Eddie was a couple of years younger than me, and excelled in every respect that I lacked. Where I would think of a witty retort but not say it, Eddie had no filter and was lightning-quick. Where I was an energy-matcher and would only amp up and become talkative if my conversation partner was already there, Eddie could walk into an awkwardly silent room and pump everyone up in short order. With his friendship came a whole group of people who liked to go out together, host barbeques and sleepovers, and generally live life to the fullest. This was the social experience I had always wanted in college but could never find, but I carried too many insecurities and anti-social habits from the old days to fully participate. That's where the alcohol came in.

My sober self was always a beat late to the conversation. By the time I had vetted a comment and determined it fit for public consumption and unlikely to result in embarrassment or ridicule, someone else had already chimed in and moved the discussion in a direction that made my contribution obsolete. I would walk away with a belly full of laughs, feeling like part of something only to find out that others were surprised to hear that I was present that night. A couple of drinks, however, would change everything. The filter disappeared, and I would chime in immediately and fearlessly, and everyone loved it. If my comments weren't funny, they were probably intelligent, and if they were neither then I had another one right lined up right behind. I was no longer just Eddie's quiet friend, but an accepted member of the group, and it felt amazing. Those early drinking days were also mostly free of consequences. Since I hadn't built up much tolerance yet, I would feel drunk after 2-3 drinks and stop for fear of getting the whirlies, which isn't enough to cause a hangover for a 180 pound adult male. Things quickly progressed from there, though, and as my tolerance mounted, 2-3 drinks turned into 4-5, then 6-8, then double digits. After a while, my body was so used to intoxication that I wouldn't pass out until after I could no longer walk, which took anywhere between 14 and 22 drinks. By this point, I had gained and then lost my first serious girlfriend, which left me feeling devastated and defeated. Now I wasn't just drinking to be uninhibited, but to chase away feelings of loneliness and loss. To top it off, I was now working as a brokerage assistant in an office full of assholes who interpreted my attempts to be helpful and diplomatic as an invitation to use me as a combination stress ball and punching bag. By the time I realized that I should have been standing up for myself instead of internalizing the problems and trying to be even more accommodating, it was too late to save my reputation and any chance of furthering that particular career was DOA.

From my point of view, I was screwed no matter what I did. I couldn't stay in my current job, but I also couldn't leave because I had no prospects and no energy to look for something else after being treated like dirt all day and getting drunk most nights to cope. I couldn't take a pay cut because I had a mortgage now, and had no idea what else to do with myself even if I could. The train was speeding toward the cliff and there was no escape except the sweet oblivion of massive amounts of booze. At 30 years old, I found myself at a career dead-end with a disintegrating social life brought on by getting shitfaced and alienating everyone, and had racked up 4 ambulance rides to the hospital after falling down in the street at a total cost of $24,000. I was at the end of the line, and my only options were to either make drastic changes or die.

I was never much of a risk-taker or particularly good at sales, so leaving a steady paycheck for a 100% commission sales job wasn't something anyone would have expected me to do, and that was the point. I couldn't stay where I was and couldn't proceed, so I cashed out my 401(k) and took my one shot in life. I figured I'd wash out after 6-12 months, but would gain so much perspective working for myself that when I was forced to go back and work for another bank, I would avoid the kind of bad situation of the previous job. Being in control of my own schedule and activities probably saved my life. I don't know if it would have been at the hands of a mugger, bar patron, or liver failure, but there's a significant chance that I would be dead if I had continued apace. Yet independence also brought new stressors and worries. After having drifted through life letting my parents call the shots, then friends, then bosses, I was in control of my own destiny for the first time and kept waiting for someone to come along to tell me what to do. Weeks turned into months, and my savings dried up at the same time that collection agencies were taking legal action to get me to pay up for the ambulance rides and hospital visits. I couldn't pay without depleting my savings, which would bring my little experiment to a screeching halt, so I charged full-steam ahead and drank the worries away. My addiction was no longer immediately life-threatening, but I was still putting away 50+ drinks per week, enough to be fatal over the long term. While I knew that I had a problem, I didn't want to label it as addiction without knowing how I could solve it.

By that time, I had entered into another relationship with a level-headed entrepreneur who was deeply in touch with her feelings, and helped me to get in touch with mine. She helped me realize that the diplomat persona I had crafted to get through childhood was a lie, and that I was precisely none of the things I had spent my life pretending to be. I didn't quite know what to do with this information, but it felt good to know. My best friend Tom, however, was a narcissistic sociopath who drained much of my time and energy, and who spun a frenzied web of misinformation in order to maintain his alpha male image, when in reality he was simply a moocher looking to take whatever he could con people into giving. It wasn't until he tried to blackmail me into letting him stay rent-free at my condo and we had a falling out that I was truly free of all ballast and poisonous influences, and could finally become the person I had the potential to be. My girlfriend broke up with me shortly after that, ironically because my addiction had improved to the point that I could finally admit to myself that I was an alcoholic. Her family doesn't drink, and neither did any of her friends growing up, so she didn't know how to spot the signs of addiction, and even though I wasn't consciously trying to mislead her, I certainly didn't imbibe to the same extent around her that I did around Tom or Eddie. It must have been quite a shock for me to suddenly start talking about addiction, and after attending a couple of Al-Anon meetings (a support group for loved ones of addicts), she decided that dating an addict wasn't what she signed up for.

By the time I realized what I was struggling with, I had been drinking heavily for about 5 years, enough to become chemically dependent, but not typically long enough to put me past the point of no return. I didn't think that I needed to become a teetotaler, but I knew I needed help. I had tried periods of sobriety from a couple of weeks to 58 days, but it always ended due to the fact that the eventual goal wasn't to go cold turkey and abstain forever. I knew enough about Alcoholics Anonymous to conclude that it wasn't for me, but I tried SMART Recovery and Moderation Management meetings and found them to be helpful, but not something I was likely to leave the house to attend on a regular basis. That's when I came across a drug called Naltrexone, which blocks the brain's opioid receptors. By taking a pill an hour before drinking, the Naltrexone prevents the brain's pleasure center from reinforcing the association between alcohol and pleasure and causes the urge to drink to weaken over time. While the US medical establishment is caught up in the cult of AA and its belief that the only effective treatment for any level of alcohol addiction is to never drink again, Naltrexone-based moderation treatment is widespread and highly successful in Finland under the Sinclair Method, with far better results than abstinence-based models. It was just what I needed at the time, and although I still continued to drink more heavily than recommended, my drunken nights and hangovers were now infrequent and mild enough to stay ahead of obligations every day and to plan and push my goals forward at least one day per week.

I've never been shy about asking for help, and I knew that I would need it if I were going to realize my ambitions and kick addiction to the curb for good. A Yelp search and a few calls brought me to the therapist JC Chance, who I started seeing every week as I worked to pursue my goals and reach my potential. I firmly believe that seeing a therapist is the single best thing a person can do for him/herself, especially when there's nothing "wrong". JC has been awesome and I have learned more about my personality, why I do the things I do, and how to position myself in the last 8 months than I ever knew before. With understanding has come a much stronger drive to be successful in my career (26 months in and gaining momentum), use my creative talents to write and make music, and moderate my drinking once and for all. I'm not quite there yet, but I think I now have the right mindset and tools.

Tools

Naltrexone: This is awesome, and it became much easier to resist the temptation to drink the day after I started taking it. It's not widely prescribed in the US and it's prescribed incorrectly when it is, since the FDA recommends taking a 50 mg pill every day and abstaining from alcohol use. This is nonsense, since Naltrexone doesn't help with abstinence, it only prevents the brain's reward center from strengthening the connection between alcohol and pleasure, and taking one every day can cause people to lose interest in exercise, sex, and other pleasurable activities. Naltrexone wasn't a silver bullet by itself, but put me in a position to take the other necessary steps that had been out of reach.

Combo Breakers: The key to not getting unintentionally smashed is to alternate between alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. This is easier said than done when you're self-medicating social anxiety and have both chemical and psychological addictions, but it can mean the difference between a fun 2-3 drink night and a 10-12 drink disaster. A bartender told me that the perfect combo breaker is soda water with bitters. It has a strong, vaguely alcoholic taste (bitters are 40% alcohol but make up only a tiny portion of the drink by volume) so it is satisfying and doesn't get slurped down as quickly as water.

Therapy: If everyone in the world saw a therapist once a week, all of society's ills would virtually disappear. No matter how open you are, there are things you can't speak freely about to your friends and family, either because they would worry, misinterpret, or maybe just have heard it so many times before. No matter how thoughtful you are, there's a big difference between thinking about something and saying it out loud. I know there are people out there who manage to overcome problems and achieve success without seeing a therapist, but I honestly can't fathom how. If you're in the SF Bay Area, JC Chance is the man. He's very soothing and nurturing, but has also been around the block and won't be surprised or shocked by anything you have to say.

Cost / Benefit Analysis: One thing they teach in meetings is to sit down and write the benefits and drawbacks of indulging before allowing yourself to do so, and then marking them as either short or long term. This typically ends in a short list of short-term benefits and a long list of long-term costs, which then stares you in the face and makes you feel silly for even considering giving in. This works just as well whether the goal is moderation or abstinence.

Breakup Letter: Another tactic I tried during an abstinence period was to write a breakup letter to alcohol, as if it were a girlfriend I was in an unhealthy relationship with. I tried to make it inspirational and emphasize all the positive things I was working on in life and how much easier they would be to achieve if I weren't drinking. Every time I felt the urge to drink, I would re-read the letter and for 2 months it kept me off the liquor. The downfall was that I didn't update the letter so it became less relevant to my current life as it got more out-of-date. If I were to try that tactic again, I would re-write it every month.

Marijuana: There's a big YMMV on this one, and I haven't used it enough yet to speak authoritatively about its effects on me, much less anyone else. Nonetheless, this has been a big help lately in avoiding drinking at home. While the impetus to drink in social settings comes from a desire to be quicker, less filtered, and less concerned about how I am being perceived, the desire to drink at home comes from simple chemical dependence combined with stress and self-destructive impulses. Once every 1-2 weeks I find myself in a conundrum where I'm stressed and tired and want to stick to healthy habits and continue fulfilling all my goals but don't feel energetic enough. As the impulse to sabotage and thereby let myself off the hook mounts, I can either give in and drink the feelings away, which entails staying up late and perhaps letting it get out of control to the point of having a hangover and needing to recover, or I can resist the urge to drink but exist in a state of angst, unable to go to bed until sheer physical exhaustion overtakes me around 4:30 AM. Smoking weed short-circuits that process, providing the same relief as booze but without the late bedtime or hangover. So far I've had to toke up almost every night, but that's probably because I'm also trying to go to bed and get up earlier, and probably should have achieved a well-rested state before making changes to circadian rhythms. Weed is known to lead recovering addicts back to their addiction, so I can't recommend it to others, but so far it's been a big help for me.

[madd0ct0r]

Thanks for sharing this. It's good writing.

[Raw Shark]

[snip] Marijuana: There's a big YMMV on this one, and I haven't used it enough yet to speak authoritatively about its effects on me, much less anyone else. Nonetheless, this has been a big help lately in avoiding drinking at home. While the impetus to drink in social settings comes from a desire to be quicker, less filtered, and less concerned about how I am being perceived, the desire to drink at home comes from simple chemical dependence combined with stress and self-destructive impulses. Once every 1-2 weeks I find myself in a conundrum where I'm stressed and tired and want to stick to healthy habits and continue fulfilling all my goals but don't feel energetic enough. As the impulse to sabotage and thereby let myself off the hook mounts, I can either give in and drink the feelings away, which entails staying up late and perhaps letting it get out of control to the point of having a hangover and needing to recover, or I can resist the urge to drink but exist in a state of angst, unable to go to bed until sheer physical exhaustion overtakes me around 4:30 AM. Smoking weed short-circuits that process, providing the same relief as booze but without the late bedtime or hangover. So far I've had to toke up almost every night, but that's probably because I'm also trying to go to bed and get up earlier, and probably should have achieved a well-rested state before making changes to circadian rhythms. Weed is known to lead recovering addicts back to their addiction, so I can't recommend it to others, but so far it's been a big help for me.

Based on personal experiences and those of others I've talked to, pure Indica and Indica-heavy hybrid strains are good for drinking less because they produce a feeling of relaxation or drowsiness and have more CBDs, which lower anxiety. I avoid pure Sativas and Sativa-heavy hybrids entirely for this purpose, as they energize me while doing nothing at all to my anxiety level, and many people report heightened anxiety or even paranoia. Both interact with alcohol in a way that multiplies the effects of both strains and the alcohol itself.

[Thanas]

I can't really say anything profound or insightful, but this was good reading and I thank you for sharing it.

[GuppyShark]

This was an interesting read (I drink a lot - it hasn't gotten to problematic levels, but I can see the cliff in the distance and am wary of it).

I wasn't aware of Naltrexone so I will tuck that nugget away in case I need it in future.

Thankyou.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Thanks for the comments, everyone!

Based on personal experiences and those of others I've talked to, pure Indica and Indica-heavy hybrid strains are good for drinking less because they produce a feeling of relaxation or drowsiness and have more CBDs, which lower anxiety. I avoid pure Sativas and Sativa-heavy hybrids entirely for this purpose, as they energize me while doing nothing at all to my anxiety level, and many people report heightened anxiety or even paranoia. Both interact with alcohol in a way that multiplies the effects of both strains and the alcohol itself.

I've tried both, and never noticed a difference. They both knock me out when I take them solo, and enhance the experience when taken with alcohol. Then again, you never know quite what you're getting when buying from dealers, so maybe my "Sativa" was more Indica than advertised.

[Meest]

Glad you find it easy to ask for help, think that's a big step for a lot of people. Similar story just replace alcohol with other avoidance things like gaming, entertainment etc. Agree with therapy being a big factor, especially if you can find a form of CBT specialist, can literally turn around the way you think. Also sounds like you're finding a way to deal with the anxiety, curbing that early is great. You seem to have hope and ambition, use your tools but remember you're the one doing it just with some help, with persistence you will need the tools less, give yourself the credit and thanks for posting, people if different situations can still get hope and help from your story.

[Raw Shark]

Based on personal experiences and those of others I've talked to, pure Indica and Indica-heavy hybrid strains are good for drinking less because they produce a feeling of relaxation or drowsiness and have more CBDs, which lower anxiety. I avoid pure Sativas and Sativa-heavy hybrids entirely for this purpose, as they energize me while doing nothing at all to my anxiety level, and many people report heightened anxiety or even paranoia. Both interact with alcohol in a way that multiplies the effects of both strains and the alcohol itself.

I've tried both, and never noticed a difference. They both knock me out when I take them solo, and enhance the experience when taken with alcohol. Then again, you never know quite what you're getting when buying from dealers, so maybe my "Sativa" was more Indica than advertised.

One of the many advantages of legalization: the FDA is in on it here now, making sure that you know and get exactly what you pay for.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Apologies for the necro, but I thought this would be better to post here than in Venting.

It looks like I'll need to start another 60-day abstinence period. I haven't been drinking often, but when I do it's been balls to the wall and the consequences keep getting worse. I've been trying to take my mind off of working crazy hours lately yet still being unable to pay the bills on time. Yesterday I opened about 3 months worth of mail and found that the medical companies are already threatening collections. I had thought that the payment clock would reset when I submitted my insurance info and I would have another couple of months. This is not a type of stress that I handle well at all, particularly since you never know when they'll actually pull the trigger so the deadline is fuzzy.

A few months ago I decided that the commissions at my primary job were so unreliable that I was just going to work enough hours at my alcohol-delivery side job to pay all the bills so that I wouldn't get any deeper in the hole. The problem is the gap between working and getting paid for said work, and also an accident on an electric scooter (not alcohol-related) that broke my toe and left me with unexpected medical bills and a couple of weeks with no compensation since I'm an independent contractor. This was right at the time when I needed money the most. The result is that now I'm 2 months late on my mortgage and my HoA payment, and several months late on the medical bills and they're all threatening legal action. The only way to make it go away without running back to ask for more money from my parents (which I swore I would never do again and they're not in a position to provide anyway) is to work 7 days a week for an extended period while dealing with all this bullshit and also somehow maintaining contact with my clients at the main job, which is causing me to come unglued. Since I still don't have any other coping mechanisms, this all means that as soon as I take the first drink I'm boarding an express train to oblivion-town where I don't have to think about any of this.

The good news is that I can actually pull it off and get out from the financial burden in a few more weeks without being foreclosed upon. The bad news is a few weeks is a very long time to be stressed out, overworked, and miserable. The drinking may help forget for the evening, but it's a short term loan with a very high interest rate, and it makes the finances and the stress a lot worse in the morning. If I'm going to get through this, I have to give it up, but that's easier said than done.

I've tried abstinence periods before with varying degrees of success. The ones that lasted longer than 45 days did cause my habits to reset, and for the first few months I would be a fairly responsible drunk before old habits came creeping back. The trouble is that it gets harder to maintain each time. It takes a stark force of will and black and white thinking, and that gets more difficult as I gain experience and see the pro's and con's more clearly. In a way, it's easier to just quit forever and be in recovery than to moderate, but I know that I couldn't pull it off at this point in my life and I still have this vision that I can be perfect someday. Perfect people don't have to go into recovery, so neither should I.

Quitting entirely would mean having to endure dinners with my parents and stepparents and bear their antics with no shield, finding a new social circle as my current friends all drink heavily, having to explain on first dates why I'm not having a glass of wine and to make that first impression with the full weight of stress upon me, and having to socialize while at the mercy of the mood that I walked into the room with and not having the lubricant to switch gears. It doesn't hold a candle to the competing vision of the future where I simply moderate and can use alcohol for those situations without getting hammered and making an ass of myself, waking up feeling like death and realizing that I've slept through an important meeting, or having someone ask if I remembered the awful things I said / did the night before.

If I'm going to do 60 days again, though, I need a plan. I've been wanting to try adding acamprosate to my naltrexone regimen, but my general doctor doesn't know much about addiction and hadn't heard of the treatment. It's a new one, and no one knows the mechanism that makes it work, but it seems to cause addict-brain to function more like normal-brain and reduces the cravings and fuzzy logic that is super-convincing when you want an excuse to drink but in hindsight makes no sense whatsoever. The naltrexone prevents the habit from ramping up via the brain's reward system, but it does nothing to reduce the urge to drink to push away stress and feelings. My hope is that an abstinence period to reset back to baseline plus adding acamprosate will get me to a place of moderation. As I continue along my path of self-improvement and adding to my life the creative and performance-oriented things I've always secretly wanted but was afraid to fail at, I should be able to moderate the coping behavior of drinking.

[General Zod]

Have you considered cutting out dinners with the parents and relatives instead?

[madd0ct0r]

your second to last paragraph is justification of your current behaviour, not good reasoning.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Have you considered cutting out dinners with the parents and relatives instead?

I've cut back from once a week to once a month, which helps.

your second to last paragraph is justification of your current behaviour, not good reasoning.

It's an assessment of my options. I can either decide to be happy with the current behavior, which I'm not, or I can try new strategies to keep moderating. Quitting for good might be a long-term option and a bridge that I may need to cross at some point, but it only works if it's the central focus of a person's life, so it wouldn't work currently even if I wanted it to and thought it would be necessary (which I don't on both counts).

I know from experience that I can go a couple of months dry if I need to and that Naltrexone has been a big help, although not a silver bullet, so there's good reason to think that adding another helpful medication could get me to where I'd like to be. I'm already close in terms of frequency, I just need to find a way to resist the urge to get smashed when I do consume, which involves having outlets so that feelings don't get bottled up. 3 years ago I was at 60-70 drinks per week and now I'm averaging about 25, so there's been a lot of progress, and I have every reason to think it can be done.

I'm not poo-poohing the idea of teetotaling, but it's a last resort to be undertaken after less extreme measures have failed.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Quitting entirely would mean having to endure dinners with my parents and stepparents and bear their antics with no shield, finding a new social circle as my current friends all drink heavily, having to explain on first dates why I'm not having a glass of wine and to make that first impression with the full weight of stress upon me, and having to socialize while at the mercy of the mood that I walked into the room with and not having the lubricant to switch gears. It doesn't hold a candle to the competing vision of the future where I simply moderate and can use alcohol for those situations without getting hammered and making an ass of myself, waking up feeling like death and realizing that I've slept through an important meeting, or having someone ask if I remembered the awful things I said / did the night before.

As maddoctor said, this is all bullshit rationalization and justification.

Plenty of people can get through all of those situations without alcohol at all, never mind in moderation. Everyone has awkward and uncomfortable interactions with relatives, I doubt yours are so far outside the norm as to be unique. It's not that difficult to learn to deal with those situations without drinking. And who cares if your friends all drink? I have several good friends who rarely or never drink but still hang out with people who do heavily and requently, often acting as DDs and such without feeling put out. And if you really are utterly dependent on drinks for first dates, you must be an extraordinarily boring individual. Do something fun and original instead; it will be more fun and memorable, and is more likely to be successful.

None of those are good reasons.

Now, I understand the desire to be able to drink in moderation rather than being a total teetolar, and I don't know enough about you or your history to be able to tell you how to act in that respect. But, ultimately, your health is far more important than some incredibly minor social inconveniences (the kind that are faced by everyone at some point, anyway), and you are radically overselling how difficult it is to socialize without drinking, even with friends who are heavy drinkers.

[General Zod]

My purely unprofessional gut instinct gives me the impression that you're drinking to make up for the lack of control you feel you have in other areas of your life.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

As maddoctor said, this is all bullshit rationalization and justification.

Plenty of people can get through all of those situations without alcohol at all, never mind in moderation. Everyone has awkward and uncomfortable interactions with relatives, I doubt yours are so far outside the norm as to be unique. It's not that difficult to learn to deal with those situations without drinking. And who cares if your friends all drink? I have several good friends who rarely or never drink but still hang out with people who do heavily and requently, often acting as DDs and such without feeling put out. And if you really are utterly dependent on drinks for first dates, you must be an extraordinarily boring individual. Do something fun and original instead; it will be more fun and memorable, and is more likely to be successful.

None of those are good reasons.

Now, I understand the desire to be able to drink in moderation rather than being a total teetolar, and I don't know enough about you or your history to be able to tell you how to act in that respect. But, ultimately, your health is far more important than some incredibly minor social inconveniences (the kind that are faced by everyone at some point, anyway), and you are radically overselling how difficult it is to socialize without drinking, even with friends who are heavy drinkers.

You're trying to understand addiction coming from the perspective of a non-addict, and it's never going to work. Normal brain and addict brain don't work the same way, and an addict can't reason their way out of compulsive behavior, just as a non-addict will never understand why we can't just snap out of it and quit the destructive behavior.

To beat addiction, a person has to learn to fill their lives with things that are meaningful and sustaining, and it takes years of hard work and the kind of introspection that most people can't even dream of. If successful, the result is a person that is much happier than most and with a greater sense of purpose. If not, you get a burnout and eventually a corpse. Trying to project solutions onto someone trying to beat addiction using your own experience is a completely futile endeavor.

I can't speak for all addicts, but for me there is almost no such thing as an adequate social experience. It's either the most amazing, best thing ever, or it's a disaster and no one will want to be my friend ever again. That's an exaggeration, of course, but it should illustrate that the amplitude of emotional response is very high. In order to get to amazing, one has to take the risk of disaster, and when your brain's wiring is extra sensitive to these things, it becomes exhausting to constantly walk that tightrope. A couple of drinks, though, and that rope gets thick enough to stand on with both feet. A few more and it's a bridge with guardrails. If I really go for broke it will touch the ground and I'll feel like nothing can hurt me, even though the reality is that everything can, and in a quest to not be vulnerable I've made myself extremely so. For you and most other people there's no tightrope and therefore no siren call to make it go away.

To just sally forth into the world with a declaration not to drink but without making other changes is a fool's errand. Sure, I could walk the tightrope for a week, even a month or two. But a year? The rest of my life? Not going to happen. That's why I decided to quit trying to play life safe and start pursuing the skills that can allow me to be recognized as a talented performer, even at the terrifying risk of failure. The more time and effort I put into things that are meaningful to me and the more I am recognized for those things and can be happy with the way that others are perceiving me, the less I'll feel like I'm walking a tightrope and the less I'll want to drink. This is also a prerequisite for maintaining abstinence, and I've seen nothing to indicate that I can't pull off moderation in its place.

If you still think I'm making excuses and bullshit justifications, that's your prerogative. I started this thread to give perspective to other addicts and to hopefully shed some light on addiction for normal people, but you're under no obligation to see things my way.

[madd0ct0r]

' I'll tell you what. Your writing has a good lyrical turn.
I know where you are coming from. It's taken years and getting to a near perfect situation before I stopped noticing I wasn't drinking and all it takes is a night out with old friends and that craving is back for a month again.

I don't think your approach is wrong. Being busy, finding meaning and finding other ways to wind down your flight or fight response is needed before dumping the crutch. But that is very different to doing all this purely because it would let you drink at social occasions.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Thanks! It actually added quite a bit of clarity when I had to defend what I wrote. Even though I bristled at first, it's good to be called on my shit and forced to examine it more deeply.