Alcoholism Support Group

christopher - I'd say you spend an awful lot of time with drinking. Controlling your drinking to make sure you can drink again the next day - well that's just too much work - don't you think?

Also - you may not think you're an idiot when you drink but you might want to check that out with the people you are around when you drink.

I totally relate to your fear of a life without alcohol and I felt exactly the same way when I was deciding to stop drinking. Waves of fear would come over me when I thought I could never, ever drink again. How I resolved that fear was to decide that if my life is not perfect and exactly what I want it to be by the time I'm 75 that I would get rip-roaring drunk. The pressure was immediately lifted.

To the AA members who follow a very strict program - that is probably heresy but it worked for me. As long as it works, I feel just fine about that viewpoint. I was able to get past my fear with that thinking process - and maybe that could help you too.

Hello christopher87,

Four years ago around this time I could have written that post, almost word for word. I drank for several decades and probably had a drinking problem since the day that I took the first drink. For many years I had the hangovers, the puking and the headaches but I still had control over alcohol. Then it all changed in a relatively short time. The hangovers and the sickness etc. were gone and I could drink as much as I wanted without too much apparent damage. Then I started to drink a measured quantity every day and rarely went over it. The trouble was that the quantity gradually increased and eventually, it was a case of time or money running our rather than me having had enough to drink.

Like you, I could not imagine a life without alcohol but then I found that I could not have a life with alcohol either. The trouble is that drinking had distorted my thinking as happens with every heavy drinker. It gets to where you cannot distinguish fantasy from reality and most decisions that are based on that type of thinking will be wrong decisions. It was only when alcohol had me beaten and I went to AA meetings that the head started to clear and I could see that I had not been living in the real world for a long time.

You say that you need to stop – that you need to quit. However, saying it is often not enough. Very often, a plan of action is required and for me that plan was found in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. Without AA, I would still be promising myself that I would quit – TOMORROW.