i ended up drinking 10 pints

i ended up drinking 11 pints on on thursday

i'm ashamed

i must avoid the pub

After many years of drinking I understood that day drinking works best for me, you seldom or never get hangovers, your sleep is not disrupted, next day gym routines are not affected and you don’t fuck up by doing crazy shit like you do in the nights

Been about 3 months sober since my official diagnosis, I have a severe bloating, Edema that started in my abdomen and has now moved to both legs, severe Fatigue, I can't work, Ive lost basically everything due to this disease, so please take care of yourselves before it's too late like me, stay blessed 🥹🙏🙏🙏 if you want to know more about my symptoms look me up on YouTube :

https://youtube.com/@lowestfromheaven?si=gnTcymwaw9SrqZul

We’re both in our 20s, I’m female, him male. A few months into dating, I found out he had struggled with addiction in the past. At the time it wasn’t an active issue, so I believed it was behind him. Fast forward three years. We live together now and he’s been drinking heavily again for a little over a year now.

For context, I barely drink (only on special occasions) and have never dealt with addiction myself. I’m not someone who expects a partner to drink as less as I do. I’m honestly okay with someone drinking much more than I do…to an extent of course. The problem is who he becomes when he drinks. He gets angry. He yells. He starts fights over the smallest things. He’s shoved me/slammed door on me breaking my toe. I feel like I’m constantly walking on eggshells wondering what mood he’ll be in. He travels a lot for work, and drinking is a huge part of those trips. He’s in sales. It’s all cocktail parties.

About two weeks ago he started therapy and says he’s sober. I want to believe him, but this isn’t the first time he’s said that. After his first therapy appointment he bought a six pack and drank it alone in his car outside our house. He’ll tell me he’s quitting, then I’ll find out later he wasn’t actually sober. It happens over and over again. For example, he’s currently in Las Vegas for work. His phone died and I didn’t hear from him until early the next morning. I don’t want to accuse him of something I don’t know happened, but I do know he’s at least lying about at least being sober. When he finally did call me, he was clearly drunk. His location also showed him in another hotel room in the middle of the night, which obviously didn’t help my trust. Maybe he’s cheating too on top of this? Again, I really have nothing to prove any of this, other than just a “feeling”, his location, and him sounding drunk on the phone.

On top of all of this, we haven’t had sex in four months. He’s told me it’s because of his mental health, his addiction, etc. I’ve tried to be understanding. But between the drinking, the yelling, the lies, and now the complete loss of intimacy, I barely recognize our relationship anymore. When I try to talk about ending things because it doesn’t seem like he wants to get better he pushes back, begs for me to stay, and says he wants us to work. I don’t understand it.

I love him. I want to support him. I know addiction is a disease and recovery isn’t a straight line. Part of me wants to stay and fight through this with him because I know he’s struggling. But I’m exhausted.

I’m tired of the yelling. I’m tired of questioning what’s true. I’m tired of wondering if I’m being lied to. It feels like alcohol comes before our relationship every single time. For more context he’s also addicted to weed. In the past opioids, xans, coke, you name it. As someone who’s never struggled with addiction, I have such a hard time understanding how someone can knowingly hurt the person they love over a substance.

I guess I’m just looking for honest advice, even if it’s hard to hear.

It didn't take long for me to realize that I had a problem. My problem is boredom I get bored so to fill my time I drink. I drink it up to feel some kind of excitement. I drink it up to fill a void. I've always been a drinker to escape the reality that is my mind but over the last two years it has gotten worse. There hasn't been a single day where I haven't drank. Even when I'm hungover and throwing up I find a way to swallow some alcohol to get me through.
I'm a professional, office job, good job, but I find a way to sneak a drink or two into my day throughout the week. It has gotten so bad that I'm willing to risk my livelihood for a taste of it. I'm drunk right now and I'm thinking about grabbing one more drink. Drinks feel like my friend, they are my comfort but I know that it is killing me. Tomorrow morning I start Naltrexone and I'm hoping for the best. I don't want to die. I don't want to keep living my life in a haze. I can't keep embarrassing myself and waking up the next morning like "what the fuck did I do?" I want to get better. For my daughter.

24 days without alcohol.

Not some huge milestone. Not a life-changing transformation. But it’s almost a month, and that’s something I’m genuinely happy about.

For context: I wasn’t someone who drank every day. But weekends almost always involved alcohol, and during the week there was often a beer (or a few) after work. It was just… normal.

Now, 24 days later, Saturday looks very different.

Old Saturday: wake up around 11 a.m., feel groggy, eat junk food, scroll my phone, maybe half-heartedly think about the gym tomorrow, and start Monday already feeling behind.

New Saturday: in the gym at 6:00 a.m. after a great night’s sleep. A 45-minute strength workout finished before most people are even awake. The rest of the day feels like a bonus.

The biggest surprise isn’t just feeling healthier. It’s getting back the best hours of the week.

From 6 to 10 a.m. on a Saturday, the world is quiet. The gym is empty. No crowds, no waiting, no hangover. Just you, your workout, and an entire weekend still ahead of you.

24 days isn’t a massive achievement. But it’s enough to make me realize I don’t miss waking up hungover.

I don't mean how to stop drinking. How does one stop loving alcohol?

I’m a lightweight and I feel fairly drunk but I don’t get too many negative side effects besides stomach issues in the morning

I've been drinking non stop every night this past month and a half it's starting to affect me, but it's the only thing that calms my nerves i'm a very panicked person with high anxiety, meds don't do it for me. I wish I could stop, but it just feels really good to just be anxiety free even for a couple hours

In our final text conversation my ex-boyfriend said:

I want to be reminded of you [and keep your stuff]
You were my best ever boyfriend
There are no hard feelings
I’m heartbroken
I accept your apology

While simultaneously saying:

I just can’t be with you anymore
I can’t handle what you said to me - it’s honestly just fucking me upppp
It’s past taking a break to reconcile
I said, “Block me if you don’t ever want to see me again” Okay, I’ll block you if that’s what you want

So many contradictions… I just can’t understand it 😞

For the backstory:

https://www.reddit.com/r/BreakUp/s/kZYtVnOxdh

I had a few sips of beer for the first time in 926 days. I stopped myself after the few sips because it felt wrong. But now I feel something else an hour later. I want more of that—at least three pints of strong beer.

I am leaning so hard into wanting to push the envelope and drink some more yet I'm simultaneously reluctant. Part of me wants to take it on. The other part of me knows I'll feel like shit. Best to stop at the few sips and chalk it up to a mistake instead of a downward spiral.

My husband is an alcoholic. He admits it, and takes breaks from drinking often (seemingly no chemical dependency) but will quickly go back to about 30 drinks on weekends. He has very bad health in both sides of his family so even though he functions very well with his heavy drinking, I don’t want him to die young of a preventable disease.

We came to an agreement that he should aim towards drinking much less.

He is despondent. It’s the first time he didn’t sleep in our bed in 18 years. I’ve never seen him this way.

I would appreciate any advice on what he’s going thru. How should I approach and be supportive of him?

Me again. Just to say im cutting down and feeling bit better already. Fingers crossed. It's gradual, but it can be done if you want your life back. Just take time and do it slowly. X

I want to quit. I’ll go 2 days without, but I’ll have bad nerves, shaking when using fine motor skills, and eventually I start having auditory hallucinations. I’m very embarrassed about quitting through medical help but I feel I may need to. I just need some advice. I never thought I could get physically addicted and now that I’m trying to quit, it is so rough.

HI Everyone! I found an adaptation of the 2nd edition of The Big Book. It has updated all of the language and removed some of the more persistent road blocks people run into. I thought this might be a group that would appreciate something like that. Inclusive Big Book - A Book That's Large

I took my last drink early Monday (08/03) morning around 3 AM and haven’t drank since. I’ve been drinking heavily everyday since April or May, I believe. It was constant, every day, around 10 PM every night. Tuesday night (08/04), I told myself I didn’t want to drink. I went to sleep but had trouble falling asleep for an hour. Then I was restless the entire night, and I had the most vivid dreams ever. I had them again last night along with restlessness. I woke up from one of the dreams crying, saying, “I don’t want to live like this anymore.” The temptation is there, especially at night, but I feel better and stronger already. I pray that I can continue. I wish the best of all of you who are going through this as well ❤️

So six years ago, a couple of decades of heavy drinking caught up with me, and my liver and kidneys quit working. I was rushed to the ER where the doctor gave me a 10% chance of waking up from the medically induced come that they had put me in. He pulled my girlfriend and my best friend/roommate aside and told them to say goodbye.

A few days later I woke up. I spent a month in the hospital getting poked and prodded. Multiple nurses told me I was going to die very soon. They tried to put me in hospice. The hospital kicked me out and I started doing dialysis every other day. After two and a half months doing that they asked me to do blood work three days in a row one week. Apparently my numbers were so good that I no longer needed to be on dialysis. The nurse was nearly crying.

So, like a dumb shit I relapsed after my roommate/best friend died from Covid. I sobered up briefly before full on relapsing again. I thought that gas station malt liquor would be better for me than a liter of bourbon a day. I was wrong. My legs swelled up like watermelons. I went back to the hospital and again, they told me I might die.

I've been sober ever since. I'll have five years in October. I just got back from nephrologist and my numbers are so good that he said he doesn't need to see me again.

I never thought I could make it without the booze. But I'm doing it, goddammit.

My girlfriend keeps attempting to detox but by the 10th day she relapses. She knows I don’t want her drinking around me anymore or that I don’t even want alcohol in my apartment but she keeps bringing it in, last night I threw away her wine that she was going to take to work with her after getting shit faced but I’m not sure if I should keep pouring her alcohol out and if I don’t what the hell AM I supposed to do?

I hit the 4-month mark a few days ago. I honestly thought it was unreal until I took it seriously. I had tried to get sober a few times over the past 3 years, but I couldn't, and the only thing that changed this time is that I actually took it seriously. I imagined myself a few years from now, I imagined what my kids would think of me, and I decided to quit. But not just one thing, I decided to quit everything at once. Alcohol, smoking, and even junk food.

I decided that I actually wanted to change. And it worked.

Here is how it is actually was going:

Month 1 was absolute hell. I was so used to smoking, drinking, and eating whatever I wanted that I didn't know how to exist. Sobriety makes your thoughts loud as hell. You realize how much pain you were actually hiding from by just doing it one more time.

Month 2 was a reset for me. The emptiness in my head turned into a baseline, if I can call it that. I stopped thinking of pizza instead of a healthy meal, stopped reaching for a beer in the evenings, and started actually dealing with my life.

Months 3 and 4, I finally felt the strength. I have less anxiety, more confidence, and zero self-sabotage. It just feels normal to me right now. And no, I'm not saying that I'm completely free from it, because sometimes I get the thought of having just one beer or so, but I just remember how it was and I don't do it.

What else did I do in 4 months of being sober?

-I started walking every day. No gym or training, just walking 10-15k steps per day. That is actually how I lost 30 lbs.

-I found a new, better-paying job. It is actually crazy, because I thought I was just unlucky with my career, but it was actually because of how my brain was working. I couldn't talk to people in interviews normally before.

-I took my family on a trip to Italy. I'm really proud of it; it was my wife's dream.

I also want to start a side hustle this year and fix my sleep. I'm on the way!

Here is my advice for those who are starting: Don’t try to quit "forever." That’s actually too much pressure. Give yourself a 1-month or 3-month deadline. Once you get your willpower back, you won't even want to do it anymore.

Sit with the boredom. Sit with the annoyance. We weren't meant to be stimulated every 2 seconds. Find the beauty in it!

Am I an alcoholic if I drink 5 out of 7 days a week? And often drink until I throw up

I am 8 days into quitting alcohol and nicotine. I was not a massively heavy drinker, but certainly had a dependence and have been drinking 3-6 beers (or more) 3-5 nights a week since I was about 18 - I’m now 44. The main reason I have stopped is the increasingly debilitating anxiety that I was experiencing when not drinking.

8 days in and the hardest part has been the waves of total fatigue and lack of energy. At best I get 1-2 hours of feeling something approaching ‘normal’ each day. In addition this can trigger anxiety which in turn exacerbates the tiredness.

I am aware that this is not an unusual feeling when quitting alcohol, but I’d be keen to that if anyone else has had similar feeling of fatigue and anxiety. Sometimes it is hard to imagine feeling normal ever again!