A reader writes in and asks:
“I am 24 years old, and am having a really tough time admitting my disease of alcoholism. I know that I fit the description of an alcoholic, such as sometimes losing control when I drink, a change of personality, and blackouts. There are several times when I can have a couple of drinks and be fine, but I am never sure when that will be. I guess I am just scared of thinking that I will never have a drink again in my life! I am only 24 and not married, and the thought of not being able to drink champagne at my own wedding freaks me out! Also, all of my friends drink, and my social life revolves around drinking on the weekends. I am so scared and do not know what to do. I am also afraid of hanging out with friends and others, such as my boyfriends family, and not drinking because I have a hard time letting loose sober. Any suggestions would be great!”
There are a couple of issues to address here:
Diagnosing Alcoholism
It sounds like you are still on the fence with your diagnosis of yourself. There are a couple of stages when it comes to breaking through denial. The first stage of it is when you realize that you are, in fact, an alcoholic. Now you may or may not actually be an alcoholic, no one can determine that but you. I can’t tell you that you are. But recognize that admitting to being an alcoholic is only the first part of breaking through your denial.
The second part of breaking through your denial comes when you actually accept your alcoholism on a really deep level and decide to do something about it. This is the point of surrender. Most people in recovery would argue that no real change can occur until a person reaches this point of surrender. If you haven’t accepted your disease at a really deep level, then you’ll just keep trying to control your drinking and continue to dabble with experimental drinking.
Do people suggest that you might have a problem with alcohol? If they do, and if this angers you, then let go of your anger about it. No one can tell you if you are an alcoholic or not. You must ignore these other people fully and find out for yourself. Yes, they are probably just trying to help you but if you have resistance to the idea then they are just getting in your way.
No one can diagnose you. Only you can say if you are an alcoholic.
Fear of life without drinking
I can definitely relate to this fear of facing the rest of your life without drinking. Before I got sober (but was considering it), the idea of facing the rest of my life without the crutch of alcohol was unthinkable. Truly, it was terrifying. The reason this was so scary for me personally was because I medicated all of my fears with alcohol. I drank to overcome anxiety. So the idea of being completely sober, forever, was about the equivalent of either torture or death. We’re talking super-mega scary. I think most alcoholics have a similar stance regarding the idea of having to face the rest of their life sober.
But here I am at 7 years plus of sobriety, and I obviously no longer have this dreaded fear hanging over me. Instead, I’m excited to live sober today, and have no worry that I won’t be able to self-medicate in the future. The fear has been overcome. I’m not sure exactly when I got over this fear (it wasn’t during my first week of sobriety, I can tell you that much), but I know that sometime in that first year I was completely relieved of the obsession to drink and use drugs. The craving just left me and I was completely free.
If we really wanted to expand on this here, I think we could fully explain how the creative approach to recovery fully eradicates the fear or sobriety and the emotional loss experienced with giving up alcohol. In other words, once you start living a sober life with real passion and purpose, those fears will slip away and you’ll no longer mourn the loss of your old best friend.
Emotional attachment to alcohol
Speaking of which, there is an emotional element when it comes to giving up drinking. This can be more powerful than you think. We tend to romanticize the idea of social drinking, even after we suffer great consequences due to our drinking. Many people will feel like they are “missing out” on something if they get sober.
I definitely felt this way in my early sobriety, especially when I was at a social function where others were drinking. But it’s actually ridiculous if you think for a moment and watch “normal people” drink alcohol. You’ll notice that they don’t even get drunk! In fact, I’ve actually seen someone set down half a glass of wine at the end of dinner and walk away from it, leaving it unfinished. These are clues for you when you start to romanticize the idea of social drinking. You’re not a social drinker, and if you picked up a drink to give it a try, there wouldn’t be anything social about it. It would be about you getting properly sauced up. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you could drink socially and have fun with it.
Today I know better when I see people drinking socially. They aren’t really drinking (not to get drunk, anyway). At first, my brain tells me this looks like fun, but I remind myself that I never had fun with 1 or 2 drinks. Drinking like that wasn’t fun for me at all. These days, I have more fun sober than I ever had during my years of drinking. Life is worth living again. I really thought that if I quit drinking alcohol, that I would never have any fun again. Turns out I was miserable while I was drinking, and life is a blast when you’re sober!
Good luck to anyone out there who is wrestling with the decision to give sobriety a try……
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
great post on a common dilemma. the prospect for young folks facing the idea of never being able to drink again is
terrifying for some. even as a 50 year old, the idea didnt thrill me! thanks for a good perspective on the issue.
I think you could be a bit more helpful. The question to me sounded more like “Now what do I do with people”. In many places and especially in the 20 somethings there is nothing else to do. I know all my friends are drinkers. Right now i’ve been avoiding people so I can avoid drinking. But this can’t last forever. I need to overcome my social phobia without Alcohol. Why is there no help for people like myself? And nothing else to center a social get together around?
You are right, Anon….I could be more helpful to the 20 something crowd. But I happen to be firmly planted in the 30 something crowd, so there are better qualified out there in this arena. I do know that there are some huge organizations that focus on young people in recovery that do all sorts of stuff (at least in my corner of the world). If you get involved with “traditional recovery” then surely you will find similar resources where you are at…..
Hello anon (1.31.09)
You sound so lost,defeated, angry and despairing of the fact that your life is nothing but alcohol. If you think there is nothing out there for you then you are kidding yourself. Do you really want to find something, or are you just hiding in fear, that the answer is only a phone call away, you would rather wallow in your own self imposed misery, knowing that when you can’t bear it any longer you will go out and get smashed. Or, are you taking it all a bit too seriously and you are not an alocoholic at all. Test yourself. If you do get smashed, what do you turn to first thing the next morning, is alcohol or pain relief. Do you drink all day, do you do nothing at all except think of alcohol? I know what social phobia is , I have had it for decades. I use alcohol to do something with the end of my day, otherwise I would not have done a damn thing. I now realise, that it is just self imposed. If I drink at home, then I can’t go out, because I have been drinking, which solves the problem of meeting people, so I feel happy because I do not have to face up to them, but then, I feel disgusted the next morning that I have given in to drink, again!!!!! You can go round and round like this forever. If the people are your real friends then they will help you, if they are not then find other friends that do something that doesn’t involve drinking. I know this is hard, but you seem to be so worried about it. Are they really your close friends? Ask them what they do when they are not out in a social situation. Do they worry that they are not drinking? Learn to trust your real friends and find out from them. Is there really nothing in your life that you cannot do instead? In my twentites, that is all I did, then I didn’t worry about it and didn’t worry about not drinking. Maybe be nice to yourself, and look at how much you really drink. Write it down if you have the courage, face up to it now. Don’t leave it as long as I have, I am in my fifties.
i can relate to evry single word in this article but i am drinking right now and my question is this. if im on this earth then why should i not live life the way i want to? how much of this is just about making people happy? cause i knnow im happy. i know making myself happy means that i drink after work. why cant this be ok? maybe i havent gotten to that first step of accepting it.. how long does it take to get to that?
@PC- If you are happy drinking after work every day, then drink!
But–listen carefully now–get really honest with yourself about how much of the time you are truly happy. Measure it. Right it down by the hour.
At some point, you may say “Good God. I am miserable 90 percent of the time, only to have “fun” being buzzed for like 3 hours each week, if that.”
That is when you quit drinking. But, most people will get to that point, and still hang on to the memories of the “good times.”
This is known as denial….
That was an awesome article. I just went to therapy today for the first time today because I’m having a difficult time grasping the concept of not drinking again. This put everything into perspective, thanks!
Okay, I am in my 20s and can still tell you that there are many things to do without alcohol. I am not an alcoholic, but my husband is. As such, I don’t drink around him…which leaves me drinking very little. I try to be supportive of his decision and he appreciates that. Each of that says you can’t find anything to do in your 20s but drink needs a reality check. Let’s think about this honestly: there are 3 game consoles out there-wii, xbox360, and ps3 (and don’t say you don’t have the money to buy one…look at the money you spend on alcohol). There are thousands of movies out there for each genre for you to pick from. There are hundreds of board games and card games to play (we LOVE spades). There are malls, coffee shops, restaurants, and parks. There are even groups out there who are sober people trying to learn together to live without alcohol. Many AA places have listing for such groups. Please just be honest and stop trying to make excuses for yourself. I like to have a few drinks every now and then, but that’s it. I was even hard for me to let my husband admit he was an alcohol due to social stigmas. But you know what? I love him more than any of our “friends” that would think bad of us because he chooses not to drink. Anyone that would really slander you for not drinking is threatened that you could actually admit this and they can’t. I am VERY proud of my husband for admitting this and stopping-you can too.
I am in my early thirties now. I had a first drink almost at 20 y.o. (I grew up in a country with drinking age at 16)…Next drink I had was a year later – not getting smashed, just a little tipsy. In social situations..Third and fourth time was a little bit more – since I became secure with the amount of alcohol I thought I could comfortably tolerate. Then…I had my first complete and total black out after having just 3 drinks…I thought I was drugged at that time – but my later experiences proved that I CAN happen to me just like than – One moment I am almost sober, just laughing, having fun – the next moment I wake up (I was SO LUCKY to always wake up in normal situations) the following afternoon…fumbling for any memories of the previous night…
10 years later of trying to control my social drinking at a normal level (sometimes, successfully – for several years in a row) I HAD to come to a realization that I DO HAVE some form of alcoholism, or some type of enzymes missing in my body to process alcohol correctly, even in small amounts…
But the price of this realization was 2 beautiful relationships destroyed by just ONE incident of my “social” seemingly controlled drinking behaviour leading to a blackout (and a complete change of personality – as other people tell me about it afterwards)…Some things you just cannot erase out of people’s memories – one time is enough!
I will rather have to accept idea of being sober, drinking club soda, bored and boring socially from now on, than to be a gravedigger of my own love life and happiness ever again…
I am 26 year old male who has been binge drinking for about 5 years now. I literally get smashed 3 nights a week sometimes more. In that time I have completed a university degree, kept and found an unreal job and slept with several drop dead gorgeous women. I can honestly say drinking is ridiculously fun, as long a you don’t let it completely control you i dont see a problem. On the hand if you have bottles flooting in the top part of ur toilet bowl, and are drinking cheap vodka straight with breakfast then u should probably seek help.