Thank you for doing this thread. It's been a very fascinating, honest read with none of the normal bull****. I thought this was an excellent piece of writing.

Good questions.

As of right NOW I am not going to therapy, and I go to a meeting 2x a week. But I also want to add that my work has been crazy this summer. Lots of personnel problems at the restaurant, and my chef went on vacation for a month. So I have been basically living at the restaurant.

I am going to find a new therapist, but at the moment I am not going to one. I broke up with my last therapist ha. It wasn't helping me to the extent that I thought it should; I am super picky with therapists (as I should be imo). Plus up until very recently, I wasn't insured, and therapists in NY are really pricey.

At first I went to meetings every day, and now I think a couple times a week works best for me. I don't start to feel weird or anything if I miss meetings for a couple weeks. I don't like to go every day, I actually find it counterproductive. And for me, therapy once a week is the right amount.

I think meetings are super helpful in a lot of ways that I have already mentioned. But like I said before, too many people (IMO) seem like they are not actually trying to get any better. A lot of people come in with the same problems week after week and use the meeting as their time to talk about those things. I find that stuff negative and if I'm not enjoying what I am listening to, I leave. On the other hand, as a general rule, I usually ALWAYS hear at least one thing that makes me glad I went.

Therapy, for me, is at least as important as meetings. I can't stress enough how much it helped in the beginning.

As far as the emotions coming up, I would say for the most part I do a good job now. The main things I struggle with are 1) anxiety and 2) anger/frustration. I am not the type of person to get sad and stay sad, so for me, those are my main issues.

The #1 thing I want to say here in response to that question is to stress that when I drank or used, I was never ACTUALLY coping with any emotions. I repressed them and they got worse, or they came out ineffectively after I would get drunk or lit on blow. So now, when I have an emotion, I actually cope with it at least a little bit right away, by not flying off the handle, letting my anxiety go crazy, or getting super angry. I have learned that I actually manage things pretty well. Then if it's something that is really on my mind, I can talk about it in a meeting or in therapy, or with a friend.

Communication is so incredibly important. Although I keep saying I had a good childhood, my parents weren't great communicators. I just never learned it was ok to open up and express things as well as I should have. I am not saying it's their fault; it was my fault. But I now I know how to talk and express myself and communicate properly. I see so much of people's personalities being shaped by how they cope with their emotions. I am pretty even-keeled because I don't hold too much in. Or at least I am very actively learning how not to.

I would say the same thing about the things I don't like about myself. The first time I told a therapist I felt like a dork my whole life, I felt a gorilla get off my back. I had been overly concerned with how people viewed me my whole life. And a lot of the ways that I acted were in response to that. After I opened up about that in depth, almost on cue I started to feel more comfortable with myself. Again I can't stress how much it can help just talking to someone. Like, I will be in a funk, upset about smthg or whatever. Then I will go to a meeting and say it, or say smthg to a friend, and it will just be like I am released from that burden. I dont have too many bad days these days. I know a lot of people learned this stuff early on, but I never did. Most of this stuff is amazingly easy and self-explanatory. If I had known I could feel good about myself by talking about it instead of drinking and trying to hide that I felt that way, maybe things would have turned out differently for me. My whole life i never talked about that stuff.

Thanks man. I want it to be exactly that. I know when i was trying to get sober i heard a lot of the same sh*t over and over and it never helped me. Being honest to yourself and others is the most important part of sobriety. The only advice that ever helped me was the really honest, gritty stuff.

But thanks again, it means a lot to me.

how would you move from town to town without a car after robbing a drug dealer? riding rails, hitchhiking, buses?

I only rode rails once ever, actually over the continental divide when i was in high school.

Greyhounds and hitchhiking were my ways to get around. Flights those rare occasions when i had the money.

I dont really like telling stories about my drinking days but i am about to hit the hay and feeling refective. I was questioned 3 times that i can remember in airports if i was too drunk to fly, but never stopped from boarding. I had a seizure once standing in line in colombian customs. After questioning me for drugs (i really didnt have any) they let me go. i had 2 more on the descent into salt lake city from bogota (was throwing up uncontrollably) and was taken straight to the ER when we landed. What a life huh? And that was two YEARS before i was able to get sober. Go figure. I am so lucky.

Thanks for making the thread. Though I am not an alcoholic or drug addict (except for may be weed) I do have an addictive personality and can relate to some of your feelings about different things in life. Good luck with soberity.

Clyde
Its nice of you to answer the trolls too but you don't have to, next time just report the users post and the mods will take care of it.

These threads are welcome here, I am glad he didn't discourage you.

LFS , a former mod and someone I consider a friend found posting here helpful for his recovery and In his name these threads will always been honored here.

OP - you should write a book.

You write very, very well about your experiences; you can even use a semi-colon correctly.

Well done turning your life around, and all the best for the future.

He didn't have to report the post - the guy was a bit of an ass for saying what he did, but the OP answered the guy with honesty and basically blew him away.

The response to that post showed how strong the OP now is. Kudos!

As a sous chef do you taste / have to taste food with alcohol in it? Like sauces or desserts? Is that a problem?

Thanks a lot. You know, I thought about writing a book. I do honestly think a lot of what I have to say about my story are things that I haven't seen written in books about addiction. But I also know there are just SO many addiction memoirs out there, and stories about addiction are all so similar. On top of that, a book just feels so self-indulgent. I like this give-and-take, being asked first. A lot of what I have written down in this thread I would have never been able to write on my own, without being prompted. I haven't consciously stepped back and looked at my experiences as a whole (let alone written about it) before this thread.

Thanks again.

I make sure its cooked off if I taste it, and even then, I try to taste the minimum amount. If I accidentally taste alcohol (and I have) I go somewhere and spit it out. My tastebuds are permanently very sensitive to it. I have put wine up to my lips before and just wiped it off after I realized what it was (I really like the taste of wine, and don't want to risk anything by tasting it).

One time actually not too long ago, I tasted and swallowed chinese cooking wine on accident thinking it was something else. It wasn't a large amount but I immediately felt nauseous. It was really weird; I suppose it could have been a placebo effect, or it could be because it's nasty and super salty. Also maybe that's what happens after you don't drink for a long time. But I had some weird things happen to me when I relapsed; there are some strange things that are possible when you're a late-stage alcoholic. Getting really drunk off small amounts, etc.

I think it would take two drinks, and they would have to be on purpose, for me to be off to the races and not able to control myself. I'm not THAT afraid of taking a sip. But it's something I avoid anyways.

As an alcoholic myself, I'm curious to know if it ever made you happy?

I mean, it helped numb me and make me less inhibited at times, attributing to my overall level of happiness. It definitely helped alleviate a lot of things (worry, anxiety, etc) and in that sense it didn't MAKE me happy, but it contributed to it.

A lot of the best memories I have involve drinking. But all I did in social situations was drink, so of course a lot of my memories involve drinking.

Any sense of happiness disappeared towards the end, though. And even looking back, I can say, yeah I was happy...but I was happy for a lot of other reasons. Alcohol could have contributed to that sense of happiness, but alcohol itself wasn't the reason.

I also think we drink for reasons we don't even know about. Like, I think I drank sometimes as a function of being happy and not really knowing how to process that happiness. Or I would be sad/anxious/etc, so I would drink to numb that sadness. So in that sense I guess I was happy.

Alcohol is ethanol, a depressant, but what it does to your brain is pretty complex. I think if you are really looking for an answer to whether or not alcohol makes you happy, you should research what alcohol does to your brain.

This is one of the search results, and it's a pretty good read about how alcohol affects your brain. This describes what goes on a lot better than I can.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddis...-your-brain/2/

"Alcohol directly affects brain chemistry by altering levels of neurotransmitters — the chemical messengers that transmit the signals throughout the body that control thought processes, behavior and emotion. Alcohol affects both “excitatory” neurotransmitters and “inhibitory” neurotransmitters.

An example of an excitatory neurotransmitter is glutamate, which would normally increase brain activity and energy levels. Alcohol suppresses the release of glutamate, resulting in a slowdown along your brain’s highways.

An example of an inhibitory neurotransmitter is GABA, which reduces energy levels and calms everything down. Drugs like Xanax and Valium (and other benzodiazopenes) increase GABA production in the brain, resulting in sedation. Alcohol does the same thing by increasing the effects of GABA. This, by the way, is one reason you don’t want to drink alcohol while taking benzodiazopenes; the effects will be amplified, and that can slow your heart rate and respiratory system down to dangerous levels.

So what we just discussed accounts for the depressant effects of alcohol: it suppresses the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate and increases the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA. What this means for you is that your thought, speech and movements are slowed down, and the more you drink the more of these effects you’ll feel (hence the stumbling around, falling over chairs and other clumsy things drunk people do).

But here’s the twist: alcohol also increases the release of dopamine in your brain’s “reward center.” The reward center is the same combination of brain areas (particularly the ventral striatum) that are affected by virtually all pleasurable activity, including everything from hanging out with friends, going on vacation, getting a big bonus at work, ingesting drugs (like cocaine and crystal meth), and drinking alcohol.

By jacking up dopamine levels in your brain, alcohol tricks you into thinking that it’s actually making your feel great (or maybe just better, if you are drinking to get over something emotionally difficult). The effect is that you keep drinking to get more dopamine release, but at the same time you’re altering other brain chemicals that are enhancing feelings of depression.

Over time, with more drinking, the dopamine effect diminishes until it’s almost nonexistent. But at this stage, a drinker is often “hooked” on the feeling of dopamine release in the reward center, even though they’re no longer getting it. Once a compulsive need to go back again and again for that release is established, addiction takes hold. The length of time it takes for this to happen is case-specific; some people have a genetic propensity for alcoholism and for them it will take very little time, while for others it may take several weeks or months."

In the end, no, it didn't make me happy. But I definitely thought it did. Hope that helps

Are you married? Kids? Girlfriend? How did/does it affect your relationships?

Where are you living now? You sound a lot like an old friend of mine, and I'd like to come visit you and see.

I have a girlfriend. I need specifics as to what you mean. It doesnt really affect anything, and at the same time it affects everything, I guess?

Before I got sober, I was unable to have healthy relationships, because I was mentally unhealthy and didnt think highly of myself. I was capable of loving, but I needed reinforcement and I often couldnt get enough from just one girl (I couldnt have found that from any number of girls, of course). So I was never faithful, and obviously the whole drinking thing took its toll. That being said, I was always in some sort of relationship with a girl or girls.

Since I got sober, 'it' (my sobriety) has affected my relationship just like its affected everything -its made it something so much better than anything I was ever capable of before I stopped drinking.

The only other thing is that early in sobriety I worried a ton about dating and stuff, how if my girl and I went out with other couples, her friends, etc, how me being 'the sober guy' would affect everything. The only thing I can say about that is that people dont care. At least not the ones that matter anyways

I live in NYC

I have a friend who seems to be substituting food for booze and I am a little worried now. He has always been a good drinker but more and more I hear him say "I should get some food" and then hours later he is hammered and didn't eat. Is this a strong sign that the booze is taking over the mind?? He also drinks a lot alone which is very hard for me to understand...and yes does black out so he says.

ah leather saps, i use to see them in older films



When you hit the guy with the sap was it a surprise attack? it seems like it would be really hard to pull off knocking someone out seeing how small the sap is, like did you enter his house and start attacking or did you wait for him to not be paying attention?

glad you are in recovery tho

I definitely don't like taking a description of someone and trying to determine whether or not he/she is an alcoholic. As it's a progressive condition, its not like a person is either one or not one. Usually the person is somewhere in the middle. By the time they are labeled an alcoholic, they have long been functional but dependent on it. I have definitely also seen people who I could see were alcoholics from the first time they drank (both people I am talking about were from the same family - Native Americans with a gigantic family history of alcoholism). But that's an extreme - for the majority of us, it takes years to progress.

Your friend could be going through a rough patch, and is drinking a lot to cope. I know people like that who aren't true alcoholics.

But in a vacuum, with what you said, I would say your friend has a problem with alcohol. I have no idea if he is an alcoholic. If he is a long way progressed, he is definitely already hiding how much he is truly drinking, and you're catching snippets of it.

Lol my sap was bigger than that.

I always waited til I was out of their line of sight and went for the temple. It rocks the brain against the skull and makes it easier for the person to get knocked out

Thanks for the well wishes

This will seem out of left field but were you drinking when you wrote this?

Still sober? Great thread btw.