Welcome to the site and wishing you success in your recovery! You mention your resolve not to drink Monday through Friday of this week. Are you planning to resume drinking over the weekend? I only ask since I tried this before and was binge drinking on the weekends, which isn't a real solution. Hope your plans include embracing sobriety completely to give yourself the chance for a new life.

Peace!

Thanks for coming here Susan. It's a great community with all kinds of recovering alcoholics here. I was a closet drinker with a home office (which made it REAL easy) I could put down 14-15 lite beers a day and have a constant buzz but not falling down drunk or even staggering. I was certainly not functioning anywhere near my abilities though and my poor wife was battling a demon that she didn't even really know. She was close to leaving me and my relationship with my kids was almost non-existent. I was a walking zombie -- emotionally and mentally. I was also VERY VERY TIRED of the lies, the shame, the pain, etc. I was ready. We are here for you every step of the way. You are worth finding your best self and you can DO THIS!! Much love, PG

Thank you for the reply, Robert.... you bring up a very good point about returning to drinking over the weekend. I am not sure how to answer but it certainly seems like it would be a step backwards.

I am not sure if I'm afraid to be honest with myself or what... I keep telling myself that since I enjoy the feeling of being "buzzed" that I would just drink on weekends. However, come Monday I would be extremely sick and hungover.

Thank you so much for letting me know you tried it - I take it you've embraced total sobriety?

Hi PG and thank you for the post - I very much appreciate hearing your personal experiences as I think I'm in the closet as well. LOL No one knows how much alcohol I consume, I have figured out great ways of concealing it. Putting water in the Vodka bottle to make it look like none is missing, hiding beer cans under the bed so they're not in the trash, using neighbors trash cans for bottles, cans, etc so they're not in mine, etc.

I like that you said "you were ready", because I think I am. This is no life for me.

You're so welcome. Yes, for a time I decided to only drink on the weekends, which I did until until August 7th when I finally made the commitment to quit for good. When I was drinking only on the weekends, it seemed like I was trying to make up for my abstinence during the week. I ended more worthless and hungover over the weekends than before.

Quitting completely 5 1/2 months ago was truly life changing for me. I now feel more liberated and contented that any other time in my life.

I hope you have the same experience. It is so worth it....

I would hide and drink. I would hide how much i drank, I was lying to myself even about how bad I was drinking.

For me it took going to meet up with some other alcoholics, admitting the problem and finding the solution.

I am greatful that I dont drink on even weekends now...

See I used alcohol to filter my life. but in the end it was just crap, today I am sober and happy, you can too

1is2many

Hello Susan,

You are very welcome to the forum and I wish you well.

I sincerely hope that I am wrong about this but I fear that you may have a lot of pain and bad times ahead and I will tell you why. Some of the things that you have described in your posts would indicate that your drinking has gone past the stage where you can control it. People who find themselves in that position will do everything in their power to try and hold on to the idea that they still have control but it is only an illusion. When someone told me that my drinking was like that, I didnt believe them and looked for a second opinion, hoping for a more favourable outlook. I wanted to shoot the messenger but it didnt really matter because reality soon caught up with me and it was no longer possible to deny that I had a problem.

The fact that you can go for weeks without drinking is a red herring and is of no consequence. You stated: when I do start drinking I don't stop and that is where you can get an important clue. The reason you cant stop is because your body has undergone a change in the way that it breaks down alcohol. Once you take a drink, your body develops a CRAVING for more alcohol so you take a second. The second drink makes the craving stronger so you take a third and before you know it you will have taken a whole lot more. A person who has undergone this physical change can never go back to normal or controlled drinking as the first drink will always set off the craving for more.

A normal or social drinker does not have to control her drinking or go weeks without drinking, not to mention posting on an alcohol forum. Such people will take a couple of drinks and stop or they may even drink a huge amount but they will not be looking for more the next day. An alcoholic on the other hand becomes obsessed with drinking and will come up with many reasons to justify it. What you are proposing to do now is to use your willpower to fight the urge to drink from Monday to Friday and I am an expert on that because I tried it for quite a while. It worked for a short time until there was some sort of special reason to drink on Wednesday night. Then the gap between Sunday and Wednesday seemed very long so why not take a few on Monday night? I was completely unaware of it at the time but for me, drinking had become an OBSESSION. Of course I dressed it up in ways that seemed to justify what I was doing and I would have been very angry with anyone who hinted that I could be an alcoholic. Anyway, my weekend drinking soon became all day, every day and I couldnt stop no matter how hard I tried.

Like I said, I hope that I have you figured out wrongly but experience tells me that you are going to struggle. Your only safe option may be to admit defeat and quit drinking entirely. If you dont take the first drink you will never again experience a craving for more.

Hi Susan! I am new to this forum also. I have tried to get sober off and on for a couple of years, to no avail. I have also called in sick, or barely made it through the day because I felt so hangover. I could also go days without drinking. I would feel great and tell myself, see, I can do this. I would wait until the weekends to drink. I spent countless weekends recovering, needing naps, and not able to function. The nights drinking were fun, but mostly a blur. A friend or my husband would have to help me home, and I wouldn't remember much. If I was drinking at home, I usually would pass out somewhere and my kids or husband would find me. I know that when I don't drink, the next day I am going to be my best self. Now my goal every day is to find something to do that doesn't involve drinking. If I can't, I go to bed early and wake feeling great. I have been to one AA meeting. I was scared, but it was wonderful. They were people just like me. I plan on going to more and am reading the AA book. I wish you the best on this journey. This support group is a great start!

I quit drinking with the help of an outpatient program followed by AA.

My parents were binge drinkers and did not use AA but they went through an inpatient 28 day program which apparently did not help because they both died from their disease.

I hope that the deadly aspects of this disease is motivation enough to stop you from drinking and to reach out for all the help it takes to quit. Despite my parents death, I did not quit drinking until I lost everything that meant anything to me and nearly died on top of that, spending 3 days in the hospital.

It wasn't until I went to an AA meeting that I found what had been missing in my life....I found, the Spirit of Survival! I stopped being a victim....drinking myself into oblivion.....and I became a survivor.! That is the only thing I can think of to name that missing piece of the puzzle......The support and spiritual connection that I found through AA has brought me a sense of peace and serenity, and a happiness, I never knew existed!

I wish the same for you and for everyone here.....

God Bless!

Hello again everyone and thank you 1is2many, PJ, Ire, and Bob for the replies. I truly do understand the "craving" concept now as when I start to drink, I'm almost in a panic mode to get another one down, don't let the glass get half empty, etc. Before I know it, I'm blitzed. And, I LIKE it. I like the feeling of being buzzed... the warm feeling that kind of slides over you after that first drink. I've found that if I need to take a narcotic (broken ankle years back) I like that feeling when it kicks in. I work at nights so when I'm going to bed, it's about 8am (MST) so I may research relaxation techniques instead of chemical techniques. Does anyone have any suggestions? And thank you for looking after me! You are appreciated.

When I was newly sober, I used to end my night reading the big book, and then turning on a meditation to fall asleep to. They didn't have to be AA meditations. They could be any meditation.

Hello Susan,

The following passage from the Big Book (Alcoholics Anonymous) may be of interest as it deals with the feeling of being buzzed:

"Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinksdrinks which they see others taking with impunity." ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, The Doctor's Opinion, pg. xxviii.

While not everyone would agree with the AA approach, what it sets out to achieve is to bring about a change of thinking so that there is more balance in the areas of attitudes, opinions and outlook so that there is no need to resort to alcohol in dealing with lifes issues. There are probably other ways of arriving at the same destination so it is a matter of finding out what works for you.

Many years ago I worked an irregular shift cycle so there were many mornings when I tried to get to sleep at 9am. There was no Google at that time so I developed my own simple method of switching off the mental computer and it went something like this: I imagined that the door and the curtains on the window were closed tight so that nothing, including thoughts could get into the room. Therefore, stuff that happened at work during the night, things that I had to do during the day, worries about money and all other thoughts were blocked off and could not enter the room. I imagined the one window was open and the wind was sucking out all negative thoughts and carrying them away on the breeze, over the distant hills. The only things that could enter the room were the bird songs and the aroma of the flowers from the garden. Any of those blocked thoughts that came to my mind were not dwelt upon but were drawn out by the wind and carried away. That was a simple approach but it was remarkably successful, almost all of the time.

I have started reading an interesting book called Mindfulness a practical guide to Finding Peace in a Frantic World, by Mark Williams and Danny Penman, published by Piatkus and it could be beneficial for many conditions. I have only read a couple of chapters so I cannot do a review but it looks very promising. There is also a CD included with the book but I have not listened to it yet. The only reason I bought the book was because someone had given me a gift voucher for Christmas and for some reason this book stood out among a collection of similar titles.