this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
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For me it's not so much that I want alcohol as it is I want to not be stressed out. Alcohol facilitates that. I can de-stress without it but I rarely have the time I would need to do after a workday. Having a beer/drink when I get home gets the ball rolling so I can enjoy things again rather than just sit around with fried nerves.
I'm an alcoholic and reading your replies you are definitely one too. "I can take it or leave it" is such an addict thing to say. Also drinking doesn't help with stress, it just kicks the can down the road making it harder to deal with in the future
Don't project your problems onto me. Its one drink when I'm on edge after work and it does help with stress, it takes the edge off enough that I can do things that I enjoy which reduces my stress.
If my reddit account still existed I could point you to posts written by me 10 years ago identical to the things you are saying
I've been doing this longer than 10 years and it hasn't escalated. I actually drink much less now than I used to because I'm not going out partying all the time anymore.
I was drinking like that for almost 20 years and one day I started drinking daily and I've never had it under control since
Sorry you're having problems. I'm not. I don't even like being drunk or the consequences the next day. As I've said numerous times in this thread it's not about the alcohol it's just the only thing that works quick enough to be effective. I've tried other methods to destress and while some of them work they weren't effective enough to get the job done in the 1-2 hours of free time I have on a week night. It's either have a drink or stare at the wall waiting to go to bed because everything I try to do just makes it worse. I'm certainly open to healthier solutions but so far no one has had anything to offer me besides judgement for doing the one thing that works.
To be clear this isn't a daily occurance it's just when I have high stress days at work.
Its insidious how the progression goes. Im in the same boat. Recovering alcoholic, 18mo sober, AA meetings. I too was deeply insistent tgat my drinking was normal, controlled, and healthy, right up until it almost killed me
Yeah, that's alcoholism.
Um, no. Problematic use of alcohol, perhaps - "alcoholism" implies addiction, impact on relationships and rest of life etc, which is not implied in the previous comment. A lot of people use a beer or two to deflate after work or stress without it necessarily being a problem. You have to look at the whole picture.
Um, yes.
At least with a pretty high certainty, the "I can do without" is a lie. If you need alcohol that much to "de-stress", then you are functionally unable to live without alcohol. And that is extremely problematic.
Perhaps you should be a bit more cautious about diagnosing people you've never met based on very little information. You assume a lot and jump to baseless conclusions.
The original comment describes a situation of constant stress, and alcohol as a shortcut to destress. That person even says that it's not the alcohol in itself that is desirable. Nowhere does this person talk about excessive consumption.
As an alcoholic, I can say with complete certainty. That some one who drinks everyday to "de-stress" IS one or very much is in danger of becoming an alcoholic if it goes on long enough.
Second, specifically mentioning "it's not the alcohol" is usually a huge red flag, it means they're worried they may actually have a problem and are over compensating.
I get that you are trying to be helpful here and that's a good thing, but I suspect you try too much to fit what OP is saying into the mould of your own experiences. And again, you assume too much and to boot, you assume that OP is lying, which means suddenly anything could be true or false.
OP does not drink every day.
Or it could actually be true. People simply use alcohol in this way because it works. It might end in a destructive pattern of abuse or it might not, but actual alcohol problems come with a lot of other symptoms and patterns, none of which are on display here.
Thanks for actually reading what I said.
Idk, I moved further away from my favourite bar and now I drink maybe twice a month. Used to be my daily routine to go grab a few cold ones after work and chat with whoever else was there.
Plenty of people do the same. Now if you start doing it at home, alone... Yeah you've got a problem.
I mean I'm not saying you are or were am alcoholic but you can definitely be an alcoholic who regularly frequents bars
Oh definitely. My point was that for some people it's the environment they chase, whereas for others it's the substance.
I disagree. I don't need that drink, it's just helpful because I don't have unlimited free time to do breathing exercises or run or whatever other stress management would otherwise work. I have maybe 1-1.5 hours after I get done with everything else I need to do to try and watch a show or play a game or something else that's fun and if I'm still stressed from work I can't enjoy those things. If I have to use other methods to calm myself first I won't have enough time to actually do the fun thing.
I rarely drink on weekends unless it's socially. It doesn't even occur to me to do so.
Soooo, you can't relax without alcohol.
That doesn't sound odd to you?
Did you even read my reply? I CAN, I just don't have enough time on a week night to do so. I've tried numerous methods of doing so and so far having a drink is what works in the timeframe required. I'm certainly open to suggestions for better alternatives.
Again, you CAN'T, obviously. Otherwise you wouldn't keep doing it. It's a coping mechanism you found and now you got so used to it, any other method just doesn't cut it anymore. That's a dependence.
You can argue all you want that it's a time issue, but we both know that's not true.
Then why do I not drink when I have several hours available to relax instead of just 1-2?
No one starts out at the deep end of the pool. It took me 15+ years to get bad...
I'm not saying you are or aren't, but that behavior, if kept up long term, is problematic for many people.
You also seem overly defensive about the implication you could have a problem.
I say this as someone who was exactly like you. Then it was 3-4 after work, and drinking "socially" every weekend... Etc etc... And so forth.
Not judging, just throwing it out there for you to think about.
I appreciate your concern but I've been handling things this way for ~12 years now and it hasn't escalated. If anything I drink less now than in the past. I'm not worried. I don't even like getting drunk. What I'm defensive about is the implication that I'm an alcoholic from someone that knows next to nothing about my life and is probably unqualified to make that determination anyway. Especially when they ignore half of what I'm telling them and just says that I'm lying. As I said before if anyone has any better ideas I'm open to suggestions but so far nothing else I've tried gets the job done.
They're not overly defensive, they're just regular defensive because everyone is ignoring what they say and calling them a liar & an alcoholic over and over. They're being very reasonable and thoughtful, they're not calling people ugly names or insulting anyone's family. How is that overly defensive?