**** those people. Jesus christ.

SJ,

You have every right to be super upset. You also have the right to stop showing up.

sj, that is really ****ed up. I'm sorry that happened to you. IMO the people in my life that have had trouble understanding my sobriety have their own issues that they are avoiding. If their intent is to get you to start drinking again, don't reward them. I know plenty of people who, originally at least, got sober out of spite. Also, FWIW you are still sober imo. This isn't a slip, you haven't gone out. You've lost nothing, and you've learned you can't trust these people. Rise above it, and them.

A lot of people just don't understand. They have never intended to have a couple drinks and then woken up 2 weeks later in a haze. They have never craved a drink first thing in the morning to get their mind to feel like its not in a vice. Only a few people in my life really understand my relationship with alcohol and have seen how dark it can get. They have never tried to get me to drink.

I've also hid it from a lot people close to me, and they are the ones who will get a bit more pushy in trying to get me to drink. I usually try and see that their intentions are mostly guided by ignorance, not malevolence.

That said, people also just do bad things to each other. You have every right to be upset at them. If you had the cake, and didn't drink more after, that's a huge win for your sobriety.

Thanks guys, for the kind words. It means a lot.

I've had some time to process it. A lot of it comes down to their passive aggressive probing in response to my not being open with them about my problem: its extent, duration etc. The fact is, while "I quit and that's it," ought to be a good enough answer, we're not perfect, and people's feelings get hurt when they're close to you and they get a closed-off and curt response to a genuinely concerned query.

This can lead to dramatic family theater of this sort. I didn't deserve it, and I didn't bring it on myself, but I can understand it. The birthday girl was not involved and had no knowledge of the shenanigans, so I made an effort not to make a scene and ruin her day, but I made it clear that this was not acceptable and I will not stand for any sort of repeat.

And yeah, thanks LFS, I'm not resetting the clock.

Sj - props man. You obviously get it but i want to beat the dead horse that it isn't on you at all, and hope the people surrounding you realize they can't pull that **** in the future.

anyone here drinking non alcoholic beer?

I drank some non alcoholic beer while I was not drinking. I like the Holsten one the best. Bitburger Drive was OK as well. Basically everything else was awful but the available options in the US would be different I assume.

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Definitely true, and I'm one of those people, but slipping a sober person alcohol without their knowledge/against their will goes far beyond just "not understanding." They're garbage humans.

Yep. Every time.

If talk like this (pot) is frowned upon in this thread let me know. I started drinking some non-alcoholic beer; I drink it when I smoke weed. I've cut way, way back on booze but if I smoke nothing sounds better. It's odd because it's not the booze buzz, it's simply the cool taste of a beer I want so bad. This way I don't feel bad (mentally and physically the next morning) after tossing back 5 or 6. I was also really conscious of whether it would make me go right after regular beers, but thankfully it hasn't (obviously different for everyone). I did this a fair amount this summer sober barbecuing. Soda/tea/whatever just doesn't seem as good with something off the grill, non-alcoholic beers fit perfect for me there too.

But yeah, there aren't good craft NA beers that I've seen, maybe I've just missed them. I mean I'll have an Odouls with a burger and be fine though, not seeking out some blue ribbon winner.

Non alcoholic beer is incompatible with craft beer. You have to go for a lightly flavoured pilsner style or something so that it tastes vaguely like an alcoholic one. Brewdog from Scotland make a 0 alcohol hoppy ale. It's awful.

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It's hard to articulate why I would not be comfortable drinking non-alcoholic beer. I do know of people who started there and graduated to the real thing pretty quickly, so that's definitely part of it. But it's more like I'd feel like I was grasping at how I used to be, and that's definitely a bad idea. A couple of years ago my business partner took me and a couple of other people to a baseball game. When I was going to get something to eat I asked if I could get him anything and he wanted a beer. I was like "I can handle that", but after I bought it I picked it up to bring it him and it definitely felt very wrong. I asked one of the guys with me to carry it. I used to feel the same way if I took a route through the supermarket that brought me down the liquor aisle, but that's lessened with time.

Everybody ultimately finds what works best for them. I know people in AA that have no problem taking painkillers for back issues or whatever, but that's just not an option for me. I bet I know people in the program who smoke pot. If they're able to do that and live a sober life, then all power to them. I just know I cannot.

Objects and locations can be powerful inducers. After I'd quit smoking cigarettes for more than a year, I went to Las Vegas for the WSOP. I had lived and smoked in that city for 8 years and everywhere familiar that I went set off a major craving for a cigarette, where I hadn't had any cravings at home for months.

SJ - that is super ****ed up, i am sorry to hear that. Some people are just ****ty.

I stayed away from NA beers until i was like 5 years sober. I liked clausthauler and odoul's amber. It can be an effective tool to shut up the "why arent you drinking!!?!?!!!?" people but if you are not rock solid in your sobriety it can be pretty dangerous.

Is it dangerous because it looks/tastes like "real" beer, or because of the small amount of alcohol (O'Doul's is 0.5% ABV or something), or both?

Thanks man. No permanent damage ldo, just pissed me off to no end.

I think a big problem with it is that getting sober and not dropping back into old ways requires a reinvention of one's life. If someone can't do without beer, their commitment to doing the hard work of changing their lives is questionable - it reflects a desire to hang onto parts of their old lives. I'd say there's a correlation between drinking non alcoholic beer and failing at sobriety, but I'm not sure there's direct causation.

What do you guys think about the Cloninger typology of alcoholics?

I think it's a bit out of favor with experts in the field, and obviously these classifications are somewhat artificial - people are all different and can't be neatly categorized. Nonetheless, the description for the Type I alcoholic is like they've met me. I don't think I'd describe myself as either shy or sentimental, but those are frequently features of the sort of personality I have. The rest is all totally on point. Also, much of the description of a Type II alcoholic is antithetical to my situation.

To weigh in on this I feel like I'm a combination of both type I and type II. I've been drinking since college, but for most of my life it's mostly been heavy weekend drinking. I'm also genetically predisposed to alcoholism as on my mom's side my grandfather was an alcoholic and my uncle basically drank himself to death. So that seems like I would be a type II. But the whole part about being an aggressive risk taker and a history of violence is totally foreign to me. But the emotional stress triggers as mentioned in type I ring true to me and the "Type I alcoholics are more commonly shy, anxious, pessimistic, sentimental, reflective, and slow to anger" is much more on point. So yeah I'm not sure about these types of characterizations.

Anyways as for me I've been thinking about giving up alcohol for a while now. I don't think I'm dependent on it, err I can go a week without it and be totally fine, but eventually I'll be craving it. And it doesn't have a terribly negative impact on my life, being that I still play live poker for a living, so I can just sleep in and be a total POS for the day and not do anything, but it does kill my motivation to do things I would otherwise enjoy. But I also think it's the reason I've kept playing poker, as it's great for traveling, but also because it lets me stay in my alcoholic lifestyle.

Lately I've been drinking much more than the weekend fare. I'm the type of person that doesn't blackout much, but I just really like being buzzed. Like I just enjoy sipping slowly on a bottle for a long period of time. If I'm not drinking I feel like an empty shell, but when I'm buzzed I feel like I have a much more emotional connection to things, people, movies, whatever. And I realize I'm using alcohol as a crutch, but I just don't like my sober self all that much. Too dull.

And when I think of my life highs in the last few years, watching the sunsets in Thailand, the stars in the Tajikistan desert, ****ing on a sand dune in India, staying in a yurts in Kyrgyzstan, all of those have been aided by alcohol. It's hard to imagine enjoying life as much without that additional buzz.

So I guess I'm kind of rambling, but I want to give alcohol up, and it's led to some semi-depressive episodes, but also some great life highs. And I'm not really sure how to go about it, or if giving up the highs is worth it, despite the lows. So if any of you guys would like to weigh into my situation, I'm all ears.

RE: the "types" of alcoholics, I dunno. Sure, people arrive at the problem in different ways, have different habits and histories around it, absolutely. But I think drawing distinctions between types lends itself too easily to "well, I'm not like that guy because..." or "I know it wasn't that bad because I never did X, Y, or Z". If looking at different types of alcoholics leads towards different protocols that more effectively treat each type, then I'm all for it. FWIW I'm basically a word-for-word Type II in the explanation posted.

But I will say that I believe it's possible to have a drinking problem but not be an alcoholic. I know people who drank WAY too much and changed their behavior for one reason or another. I was certainly the drunkest of my college friends, but they were with me mostly every step of the way. That behavior changed for them as they grew up, mine didn't. But if you looked at us together when we were 20 I'm not sure we looked all that different. I think the danger is somebody like me thinking that I'm actually like them, that "this time it'll be different". At some point I came to the realization that the problem was me, or in me.

cardsharkk04, it sounds like you probably know it's a problem. Unfortunately imo someone if your position probably won't/can't really change when continuing to drink is still a reasonable option. If your pattern follows mine, you'll go from only feeling "good" when drunk, to actually feeling WORSE when drunk, and much much much worse in the aftermath. And then the road narrows and there are only a couple of options left. And hopefully you'll remember then that sobriety really is an actual option.

Nobody can diagnose somebody else as an alcoholic, but in my experience "I'm the type of person that doesn't blackout much" is not the kind of thing a normal drinker says. FYI.

All of this. Your post reads like you already know it's a problem and are looking for confirmation. Perfectly possible you will learn to control your drinking, but there are several huge red flags in your post.

My opinions on alcohol are complex, but one thing that I'm absolutely certain about is that alcohol is incapable of solving problems in the long term, it's only capable of creating them. Using alcohol to "solve" problems is a certain ticket to misery. So if it's true that you "feel like an empty shell" when not drinking, you should start thinking about solutions to that which don't involve drugs. Not everyone goes through life feeling that way. Our brains are not fixed, they are changeable.

You've painted this dilemma where you have a choice between either drinking or not enjoying life as much, but it's a false choice. Billions of people live drinking little or no alcohol and many of them live full and joyful lives. You're not fundamentally different to those people. The more you habituate your brain to the idea that your choice is between alcohol and BOREDOM, the more true it will become and the harder the road back gets.

Ha, yes I do realize it is a problem, I'm just gauging the extent I guess. I drink much more than your average person, and I know it's not healthy. But the thought of going out with friends and going to the bar or whatever and just enjoying myself totally sober seems like such a foreign concept, sadly. I guess the empty shell thing was a tad much, but I do enjoy the enhancement of my emotions on alcohol. Anyway I'm going to India in a few days, have a two month visa, and my goal is to be alcohol free that entire time, just to prove to myself that I can do it and see how I feel. That would be much longer than any period of abstinence I've had so far. I'm thinking it should be easier there, away from my normal group of friends and drinking buddies. So we'll see how it goes.

Also Chris, congrats on the Richmond win! Just curious, did you celebrate in any way?