My late father, who died about a month ago, was a functioning alcoholic. He died of necrotizing fasciitis (flesh eating disease), but his alcohol abuse was truly his killer. His health had declined so much over the last few years of increasing abuse (his mother passed away 2.5 years ago and he drank much harder after her death) that his body had undergone some serious physical changes. His bloodwork was a mess; he had almost no white-blood cells left, and his organs were in overdrive. When this disease chose him, it was like a high school bully picking on a third-grader, he had absolutely no chance. He was 58. He was never abusive, never chugged shots or binge drank, he just consumed a steady nightly diet of alcohol while watching television or at holiday parties.

I had another big paragraph typed up here but I deleted it and just want to keep the rest of this short. Growing up I learned the most valuable piece of advice from him, yet it was a piece of advice that he never delivered orally, it was "don't ever turn out like me". I was never embarassed of him, I didn't ever feel uncomfortable bringing friends/girlfriends home to meet my parents, but I just didn't ever want my children to feel like they missed out on me because I was too busy drinking.

I went through my binge years in my early 20's and at times I could tell that I was starting to carve myself the same path through life that he took. I made a conscientious decision at some point to stop drinking, I fondly remember stopping cold-turkey for about 3 years until I felt like I could enjoy a drink or two socially and not have to finish off a 12 pack or whatever.

I rarely drink now, I think I've had about 4 beers a month for the last few years and the last time I got drunk was at my cousins wedding in June 2009. Coming from an Irish-Catholic family, alcohol is everywhere and it's hard to avoid, but sometimes I just have to look around me at the families it has ruined to know I'm on the right track.


ps, good luck with quitting, I hope you can do it for your kids and wife's sake.

won't drink gin + taste for "martinis" = fail

In all honesty, you just have to get used to not drinking when you're in a social situation where most are drinking.

You can come up with excuses, but having to lie every single time someone else is drinking sucks, especially considering the situations will come up fairly often for the rest of your life.

Just tell them "no thanks, I don't drink." My company has a lot of drinkers, and we just hired a new guy who doesn't drink. At first everyone was super pumped to get him drunk (he's never drank, he's not a recovering alcoholic or anything), but now people just understand that he doesn't drink and it's pointless to ask/encourage him to drink.

It really is just a matter of telling the people flat out "No thanks, I don't drink." You can even throw a "My family has a history of alcoholics." in there at the end, but whatever you say, it needs to be straight forward and honest. You're doing yourself a great disservice by making up a lie every time you're in that situation. Obviously people will notice, and obviously it will look "out of the norm" at first, but it will literally take 2 times out with someone before it becomes normal to them that you don't drink anymore.

Don't over think it, don't put added pressure on yourself. People really don't care if you drink with them. And if they do, they'll get over it in about 2 minutes.

Best of luck.

Good luck on this path LFS. Based on your story much of your identity appears to be tied to drinking. As such, this drastic of a change may prove to be a seismic shift in how you see yourself and how you relate with others. The fact that your wife doesn't drink could be a big factor in your ability to abstain.

Anybody choosing to improve the conditions of their lives should be encouraged and supported.

Blah, people who drive drunk piss me off.

In any case, good luck with this. In all sincerity I really hope you succeed.

TYVM Max.

Well first I want to say that Im still drinking at this point so I dont have any good answers for you really. Basically the only people I know who drank like me and are really sober now go to AA.

I have been to 2 very highly regarded 30 day treatment programs. The first I was sent to by my mother when I was 16 and I was already drinking and using various drugs pretty heavily. This was also shortly after my father had died from cirrhosis when he was 44. Obviously I was 16 and thought it was a huge crock of ****.

The second was 3 years ago, when my wife and I decided that we both really wanted me to stop. I went and stayed sober for an extended period of time.

I really struggle with the AA concept for various reasons that I dont really feel like discussing. I decided to stop going and started drinking again.Besides a few months here and there stuggling with sobriety I have been drinking ever since.

I know alot of people who drink alot but they dont drink like I drink, and it doesnt have the negative impact on them that it does me. At this point I really truly believe that AA is the only way for people like me to not drink. I didnt want to write this really cause I didnt want to de-rail your thread into a Pro AA/anti-AA discussion like I have seen in another OOT thread.

What is/was your drink of choice? Just getting past the college lifestyle of powerdrinking or no drinking at all, thinking about giving up the juice altogether.

Good luck LFS. If you're interested in getting back into shape, check out the health and fitness forum on 2+2 - it's one of the best I've found on the net due to a handful of posters that keep the signal to noise ratio high.

I know someone who has been off the sauce for 20 years as of last week, and he still harbors this weird fantasy that he would like to keep a fully stocked bar in his house so he can offer friends and family whatever they want when they visit -- this despite the fact that a healthy percentage of his friends and family are either alcoholics or abstaining alcoholics.

He has made it 20 years, but it seems to me that he is torturing himself a little bit unnecessarily, because growing up and spending his whole life in and around "drinking culture" he just can't accept that a person can be normal and not drink. He has spent the last 20 years feeling like someone with two problems: He can't handle drinking, and he cannot drink. (Instead of seeing the former as a problem, and the latter as the solution to that problem).

Maybe this is just a non-issue, and it only seems like a big deal because I'm an outsider to the whole thing, but I would guess that a weight would be lifted off of his shoulders if he could fully and totally accept that he is okay just as he is, and lots of people in all walks of life for a wide variety of reasons choose not to drink, do not keep liquor in the house, etc., and he isn't missing out on anything or being a bad host or an abnormal person for being among their ranks.

Maybe with your wife being a non-drinker, this will be easy for you to come to terms with, but I definitely get the feeling that for some people, it may come as a bit of a surprise (i.e. people who seem to honestly believe that "everyone" in college binge drinks).

Good luck LFS, threads like this make me glad I never started.

Good luck LFS. Alcoholism/alcohol abuse has been a somewhat prominent theme in my family, and it seems to have reached a head in the past year or so, both in good and bad ways as people are starting to recognize the issues and that they need to be addressed in better and healthier ways.

In an unfortunate way, I think it's good that you have seen alcoholism via your mother so that you do have an idea of where you don't want to end up, especially with your kids. As you mentioned, it forced you to grow up and I know it forced me to grow up dealing with my family.

It will definitely help with your weight loss, though! It may take about 6 months or so before your metabolism stops being wacked out, but after that you will likely see pounds just fly off!

Hmmm. This will involve taking advice from Thremp. Like, lots of it. Only you can decide if you're ready for that.

LFS' timing is interesting because I recently stopped drinking for a TBD amount of time. This will be the first major holiday weekend that I can remember where alcohol won't be a component. And as of right now I'm looking forward to it, not dreading it.

We're coming up on party season and my nemesis is house parties with open bars when I'm not driving. Green light city. I suppose my solution to this will be to drive myself, or offer to be a designated driver for others. Which I suppose some will appreciate so it's a win-win.

Anyway, who cares what people think if you say you don't drink? Strangers don't care and neither them nor friends require a detailed response. Just say "I'm taking some time off". I'm (embarrassingly) known for the quantities I can drink and remain lucid so when I've taken sabbaticals in the past friends have actually been supportive, heh.

Best of Luck LFS (and everyone else in a similar situation), maybe we'll have another drunken escapade in LA down the line...or maybe even a sober one!

Someone who wishes to remain anonymous asked me to post this:

This is pretty telling.

How serious is your wife about you quitting drinking? What would she do if you started again?

Has anyone here accomplished going from unrepsonsible binge drinker/alcoholic to responsible social drinker (1-2 drinks only) + never drinking alone? I would like very much to hear a success story like this.

This sounds like an awful goal. End goal of quitting alcohol should be quitting alcohol, not seeing if you can control it.

She is probably less serious about it than I am. She actually thought that "I'm never drinking again" was overly extreme, but that may be because she thought I wouldn't be able to completely quit.

I don't think there would be any wifely consequences if I began drinking casually again. If I started drinking heavily again I might hear about it, but it's not like she'd leave me or anything. Even as an alcoholic I'm a better husband and father than most imo. Maybe the threat of losing the family would be a good deterrent to drinking again, but I'm glad it never got to that point and that our relationship could survive it.

Good luck LFS. Regardless of your motives, do it for your family in any case.

A couple of people mentioned it, but gym/light recreation will help in making you feel a lot better about yourself. Not to mention adding a couple of hobbies that will occupy your time and hopefully get out more.

Surprised that nobody in your family really talked about it until they heard you were quitting. Kind of scary to be honest if they just assumed you were going to be like other family members.

If you're serious about this you should probably try to convince your wife that you really do have a problem you want to quit. Being accountable only to yourself isn't giving much backup.

What do you mean? I'm sure there are plenty of people here (myself included) who went from doing ******ed amounts of irresponsible binge drinking in college to being a responsible social drinker who can have a drink or two without losing control.

Irresponsible Binge Drinker in College =! Alcoholic

i mean, i don't know if i'm a 'success story' but i went from being a marginally-functioning drunk in college (drinking every day to the point that it affected my social life and health, although somehow i kept my grades very high) to being a successful non-profit administrator by my mid-20's. i got married and i'm buying a house and in good health overall. i'll have more than two drinks if i'm out with friends but i go out pretty infrequently and don't drink much outside of that. don't get out-of-control drunk and it's not an issue with my wife, who has about the same proclivities that i do.

even when i was drinking heavily i didn't feel that quitting entirely was the solution for me, and i'm glad i can enjoy alcohol socially. i feel better about myself taming that issue and handling it with some responsibility than i would about just shutting it off entirely. but i understand that there are some people who need to just quit - my father in law is like that, a very laid back guy and a great dad who decided for the sake of his family that he needed to just walk away from it, and hasn't touched the stuff in 20 years. maybe if some of my issues had cropped up after i had kids i would have felt differently about it. so i understand how LFS feels and i think the way he's going about it is the way to go if you can - quit on your own terms, for yourself and your family, using your own will. gl LFS

Glad you got to make the decision the way you did rather than being forced to for any more serious reasons.

I see a lot of myself in you description in the OP. Luckily, as I've gotten older I have found that my binge-like moments have become less and less frequent. Moreover, I find that there dinners/events etc where I have certainly kept my drinking to a minimum. Was this ever the case with you do you find yourself in the "go hard all night" at all times?

In any case, good luck to you.