Stories of Alcoholism

I wish you the best and hope talking and posting about it helps, even if just a little. Addiction and depression are no joke.

Thoughts and well wishes and if you ever need to clear your head, lace them up and run til you can't run anymore! Beats the $hit out of staring at the bottom of a bottle.

I never stare at the bottom of a bottle because I always buy a fixed amount +1,

;)

hcpc wrote:

this thread has been very underwhelming. i want some dark stories. so far we have a guy who squandered his career as a physician, but seems like he can easily get it back if wasn't such a coward. a couple guys who dabbled in functional alcoholism, but get sober before it ruined there life. someone who drank four beers after his runs. and someone who smokes some weed because he's sad.

i went through the college (and a couple years post college) binge drinking phase, but largely i have nothing to contribute to this thread. where are the true alcoholics?????

Dark stories you want? I am a hardcore alcoholic and have been since my freshman year in college. That was 40 years ago. Even though I began drinking heavily as a freshman I was fast enough to walk on and do well at 18. I have been drinking heavily ( I mean heavily like you can't believe) for 40 years and continue to this day. I failed at school but shaped up later and got my undergrad at 30 - with a 3.96 G.P.A. all while drinking heavily. I remember reading how someone - maybe W. C. Fields - used to drink massive amounts daily but that was nothing like I could. I would sometimes drink 1.5 litres of wine in the morning - and follow that up with a few beers in the afternoon and another 1.5 liters of wine in the evening. I would not do this on occasion. I would do every day for years. For years. I am keeping this short. But, at 40 I developed cirrhosis. Usually you die after 4.5 years with that. It used to hurt trying to sleep at night. My liver would hurt so much. But after the age of 43, my liver no longer hurts and I continue to drink massive amounts day after day after day. What is funny is that even in my late 50s, I am still an elite athlete. My running times are among the best in the world, I life weights 7 days a week and am an accomplished tae kwon do practioner. How crazy is that? I should have died 14 years ago but am probably the fittest person for my age in the world.

Just to add what I just wrote. Am I the most pathetic person alive? Perhaps. I have been drinking massive amounts for 40 years without any time off. I tried AA a bit but never liked it. If ever there was a "functioning alcoholic" - then that would be me. I make 6 figures - but that is mainly because I am very smart.

Heh. I'm a practitioner of a few martial arts myself. I run too, and drink, and sometimes combine the two! I learned that if you chug about 2 cups of vodka on an empty stomach, you can practically run shirtless through below freezing temperatures.

Teach me, Sensei!

Agreed. The cannabis is an escape from the reality that I can’t connect with people (especially women) or display enough value to warrant an actually courtship/relationship, despite plenty of great dates, chemistry, laughter, etc. This coupled with the fact that I’ve always wanted to be a father and husband can lead to some negative thoughts patterns.

You should run in NYC.

Boo boo you f**k wrote:

TTH wrote:

Amazing isn't it? Good luck moving forward a day at a time.

35 years sober last March.

Oh shut up. You’re not a hero. You’re a dick.

You're right. Not a hero.

We know what you are though.

GoldenMiles wrote:

Can we talk about other addictions? There was a period where I drank every day for about a year after I quit drugs, so I definitely identify as an alcoholic, but it wasn’t my DOC.

I do go to AA meetings in addition to NA ones, though.

The OP never responded back to me, so F it, I will just talk about addiction in general. After all, alcoholism is just another kind of drug addiction. It is the same disease as meth addiction or heroin addiction.

I've talked about my addiction problems before on here, so I won't go into much detail, but my entire adult life (I'm 31) has been deeply marred by addiction. For very long chunks of my life, it defined me to my core. I hate it. It feels like a curse. Many times in the past I have wished that I wasn't prescribed Vicodin when I was in high school. Until that point (senior year), I was very much against drugs and drinking and partying (probably like many distance running nerds on here). I looked at my disapproval towards partying as a sign of my individualism--that I didn't need to "fit in." I didn't even take things like Tylenol. I had been prescribed opioid painkillers before for getting my wisdom teeth out, but didn't want to take them and didn't. Then I came down with some sort of mouth infection my senior year, and it was so serious and painful that I hadn't eaten in days. The doctor prescribed me something like 30 Vicodin for the pain. I begrudgingly took a single 5mg Vicodin and didn't think much about it.

I know it sounds like a cliche, but once that 5mg Vicodin kicked in, it felt like a switch had been flipped in my brain. It's been over ten years since that night, so I'm starting to get a little fuzzy on the specifics of how I felt, but I obviously liked it so much that I was willing to immediately go against all of my principles, because I kept taking that Vicodin over the course of the next few days, in increasing dosages, even after the point where I didn't need them anymore for the pain. I had just entered into my first serious relationship, and the girl had an alcoholic mother, so one of the things that attracted her to me initially was that I didn't want to just get high, unlike so many other people in her social circles. Honestly, I hear it said so many times that so many addicts are in denial, but either I'm just lucky or have a high sense of self-awareness, because I knew from very early on that I was an addict. Maybe I just have always had low enough self-esteem that it wouldn't exactly surprise me to label myself with a derogatory term like "addict."

Once my girlfriend found out that I had been taking Vicodin recreationally, she asked me to please stop. I agreed with her that there was no point in me continuing to use them. I remember I made it a few days--maybe a week--and then I found someone in school to buy more opiates from (this time I purchased OxyContin and snorted it). I don't know if I thought I was an addict before that moment, just one or two weeks after the first time I'd ever gotten high, but after then, I knew I was in my bones. I wasn't a liar up to that point. I never broke the law. I was every law-abiding distance nerd on here to a T. I was terrified of authority and always scared of getting in trouble. I had just entered into a happy relationship with the first girl I ever loved, one who I would have a five-year relationship with. But from the point I went and bought that OxyContin and did more drugs after I'd promised to quit, I was willing to lie to anyone and everyone about my usage. I still, to this day, pride myself on never lying about things I've never done (like bragging, trying to make myself seem like a better, more successful person than I am), but it becomes so habitual to lie about things you DO do (like shoot up heroin every day before you show up at work, or dig through garbage to find a bunch of used needles that you threw away after promising yourself you'd never shoot up anymore coke again) that it's like breathing. After all, you can't tell the everyday world that you're a drug addict and expect to get away with it. It helped that I was such a straight-edge for so long, because my parents didn't catch onto the fact that I was a drug addict for YEARS, until I'd gotten myself into legal trouble and had to tell them.

Various personality traits lend themselves towards addiction. I tend to be a very obsessive person in my interests. It's why I found out about LetsRun in high school and posted on here, following the sport, whereas almost no other runners do so. When my interests turned towards drugs, I followed the same path. I used to be OBSESSED with finding out information about drugs, and I would go to all kinds of online message boards to learn about them. In those early twilight years, when you haven't started to have any serious consequences, it seems like a magical world newly open to you. Me, a depressed/melancholic person all my life, finding out I could change my mood to happy and content simply by taking a pill...it was a staggering discovery to me. I remember at the time feeling like what I felt like high on opiates was how "normal people must feel." I felt that if there was a way to live high forever on opiates, I would take that. I didn't take them to get intoxicated. I took them because they were like an anti-depressant to me. They got rid of all of my insecurities, fear, inadequacy. Another personality trait that strongly gets linked to addiction is an all-or-nothing complex (I feel like distance runners have a lot of these same traits, too). Just a few months or a year prior, I was completely against even having a beer or smoking weed, but after I had entered the world of drugs, I wanted to find the drugs that would make me feel the best possible. That's a dark hole to go down, especially when I wasn't attracted to psychedelics or mind-enhancing substances. I just wanted what would be most pleasurable and what would kill the pain of life the best. Because of that, I went down the rabbit hole of IV heroin and cocaine usage.

What is there even to say about being an IV drug addict? It's a bad life. I've had it much better than so many others I encounter at meetings. The woman who led the meeting tonight lived on the streets for years, whereas I've never once been homeless. I graduated college. I've had various decent jobs (although I've fucked up a ton of them due to drug use). But I've had all kinds of bad things happen to. My health has suffered tremendously. But it's the psychological effects that take the biggest toll. I've heard that you are emotionally at the age you were when you first became an addict, so now that I'm trying to get sober (something, by the way, I've been trying to do for years, with literally countless numbers of relapses), I feel like I'm stuck in high school emotionally. It's a tough thing to deal with, but I'm only 31, so I'm not too old. I've decided to go back to school to become a nurse recently, so I'm working towards that. I got out of rehab recently, separated from my girlfriend of 7+ years (as you can imagine, drug addiction was the reason why), and moved back from Los Angeles to the East Coast to live with my parents to go back to school.

As I mentioned earlier, I also can relate to alcoholism, despite heroin and IV cocaine being my drugs of choice. When I first tried to quit drugs in my earlier 20s, I started drinking very heavily as a way to cope with life. I used to drink almost a bottle of liquor to myself every night, blacking out pretty much constantly, since I would drink it so fast. I knew even then that I wasn't really clean in any way when I was drinking so much. Unsurprisingly, the year or so of alcoholic drinking led to a relapse on other drugs.

I would drink moderately during the week, 1/2 bottle of wine or 4-5 beers a night, then Friday and Saturdays id go large.

One night i completely passed out on the street, my buddy tried for 10 mins to lift me up and get me to a taxi, but couldn't do it, so had to get a member of the public to assist.

A photo of me passed out on the sidewalk popped up on a social media site, my wife saw it, god knows who else saw it and the shame was unbearable. I only looked at the photo for a few seconds but the image haunted me continually for several weeks.

That was my rock bottom moment, a big wake up call and i haven't drunk since.

Can you explain the difference between dry and sober? I don't see how one can dry but not sober. I could see how one could be sober but not dry but you are saying the opposite.

I’ve never been to AA but have a good friend who goes and hasn’t had a drink in I think 15 years now - anyway, it’s my understanding that it’s an AA definition. Dry is not drinking at all but they use the word “sober” to mean more. On top of nor drinking they have also changed their lifestyle and gone through the 12 steps. So they live a “sober” lifestyle due to a new lifestyle, new thinking etc.

It’s helped my friend immensely, but there is a weird cultish-like thing with AA. The whole 12 steps and “sobriety” vs not drinking thing. Anyway, it works for him so that’s all that really matters.

Rojo:

When I first quit drinking years ago, I retained a lot of the habits I’d had when drinking: secretiveness, dishonesty, and, importantly, a desire to drink. I was resentful and angry for twelve years despite the fact that I wasn’t drinking. When I truly got sober, though, over a period of years my thinking and behavior changed, some of it AA-related, some of it because I’ve seen the same therapist for almost fifteen years and have worked though every little demon I had, and some of it because I just wanted to make sure that I was a better man than I’d been when my kids were very young. I rarely crave a drink and am a happy person on a daily basis. That’s how I’d define sober as opposed to dry.

Still Sober

Yeah, “dry,” as you said, is basically an AA phrase meaning that you aren’t drinking, but you haven’t tackled any of the problems that led to your drinking in the first place. It’s an AA phrase, but I think one can easily be sober even if you don’t practice the 12 Steps. Do what works best for you.

Regarding AA/12 Steps groups, for YEARS I hated the idea of going to them. I, too, thought they seemed like a cult, and, as someone who did not grow up religious, the Higher Power thing and the fact that the whole program seems religious was a big turn-off. Beyond that, I just HATE the idea of groupthink, so it’s tough for a person like me to buy into the whole program. I started going to meetings a little under a year ago, because the last rehab I went to was built around the 12 Steps.

I still have issues with AA/NA, but I’ve found that it’s definitely worthwhile for anyone to try out a few meetings. You don’t have to be dogmatic to go. Mostly it’s nice to get to know your fellow addicts if you’ve been going long enough. Personally, I share a lot at meetings about my own issues with the concept of a Higher Power or how I used to be suspicious of “the program.”

NahSon wrote:

hippie chick wrote:

you need to find yourself a hippie chick. or heck, most of the girls i run with all smoke weed.

You should run in NYC.

Shoot, just *live* in NYC.

If I had any fewer moves I'd be reclassified as a statue, but I had *tons* of "female companionship" after I moved to New York...despite a low income (I was a track coach) and unprepossessing appearance.

And as far as stories about alcoholism: I have one or more close family members who are alcoholics and it's pretty much destroyed their family, messed up their kids' upbringings, and so on. Don't want to go into more detail, because it's painful to dwell on and because I don't want to be outed.

For a variety of reasons I am virtually certain that I too am an alcoholic; I hope never to be absolutely sure. Fortunately, I never took that first drink.

I was very interested in this thread and I did go back and find the earlier thread that is 20+ pages long...and read a lot of it over the past 2 days.......I felt like nobody that is a good runner fell into this trap. I was very successful in my 20's - under 2:50 for the marathon...

I am female and in my 50's and I am an alcoholic. I am in denial. I have family history and I feel like I wasn't as bad as my other family members so I might still be okay. The earlier thread had a lot of good sharing since I thought I was the only serious runner that did things like them. My sibling went to jail for drinking DUI's and I never fell that low. One of my parents is 30+ AA and that was their ticket to help.

I drink daily. My running has suffered and I have gained 10 lbs. I thought finally gaining weight would get me to stop but it didn't. My teenagers have now started to notice this past year. I drink on my way home from work and since I've had a big job I blamed it on stress from work and stress from kids. My husband has of course noticed and I did an out patient program last fall for 12 weeks. Found out (since I tested it) that even with the drug tests 3 times a week they don't look at your results unless you don't show up. I attended faithfully for 12 weeks and by the end was drinking a few after the drug test before the 3 hour session and a few on the way home.

I hide my bottles of wine. I am the first person to take out the trash to help it get hidden. I sweat like a pig when I do run and was trying to blame it on menopause. I can't sleep at night and wake up every morning early only to tell myself S-T-O-P but then by 5 on my way home I am stopping at the grocery store to buy cheap wine. The closest gas station that sells wine knows me by name.

It is very hard . I talked to my doctor a few years ago and they have been testing my liver yearly and so far I am fine so I thought running helped get the alcohol out. I want to get back to my skinny clothes and the addiction is winning. I see a lot of my college team mates larger than me so I think maybe I'm still okay.

My latest plan is when we drive to see family tomorrow I will not drink over the Thanksgiving weekend and maybe I can get a clean streak started. My last good streak was 2 years ago for 17 days. My husband travels for work and has his hobbies so I would drink since I could and because I am bored. I watch a lot of TV when he is gone all weekend doing his sport.

I have tried AA several times and I don't like the "our father" part or a higher power. I go to church weekly even though I don't like the "prayer of confession" since it is a good family thing to do and gets us together now that a couple of my teens work.

I hate when my kids and husband remind me I already said that the night before. I hate afterwards when I bail on runs. I'm in my 50's so does it even matter if I can break 20 for a 5k anymore? I'm at 23 right now but without alcohol I could be close to 20.

I know I need an in-patient treatment but since I pull down over 130k a year my frugal husband (who makes more than me) doesn't want me to leave my job for this.

I am inspired about what I read on the other thread and see that if there are other runners out there that are in my situation and were able to come out of it themselves there is hope for me.

BTW he has noticed that I take out $200 in cash weekly. This is for wine and the kids things they need and my lunch for work (but i do bring lunch 3x a week). Since I make good money I told him it was for these things and since we cut our own grass, I don't have a cleaning lady and color my own hair most of time. I also don't buy a ton of expensive clothes so I feel my spending is within limits.

I am amazed at how many of you were able to just get through the first few days. I feel if I could just get through the first couple I would be on my way. Going to parents and considering asking my 17 year old to not leave me alone. Don't let me go get gas, store or grocery for the next 5 days to help me. He knows I have a problem just weird asking your kid to help you.

rojo wrote:

Can you explain the difference between dry and sober? I don't see how one can dry but not sober. I could see how one could be sober but not dry but you are saying the opposite.

Dry = simply not drinking or using your drug of choice without treating, in some fashion, the underlying issues related to the addiction. Probability of relapse is pretty high.

Sober = not using along with treating, in whatever fashion necessary, the underlying issues related to the addiction. This often involves significant changes in ones life including changes or severing of personal relationships. The potentiality of relapse is lower but certainly not eliminated.

If you're pulling down that much, I'd wager that the firm which pays you provides Employee Assistance which should guide you towards potential recovery and also provide in-patient options if necessary. This should be done anonymously although don't be surprised if it becomes general knowledge. This is the route I took many years ago which essentially saved me and I dealt with everyone else's reactions and got through it. It can be done. In fact it became a strength builder after some time.

While AA was not for me.....for the most part I drank alone much like yourself and I recovered alone....I attended often enough to hang on to one suggestion which is to take it a day at a time. Just worry about today. Don't worry about tomorrow which you can deal with tomorrow. Anything further can be overwhelming to an addict.

I definitely meet the medical definition of alcoholic, but functional. I can still support my self. But yeah, I'm throwing back at least 50 drinks per week at this point. Sometimes closer to 80.