Answered questions(16)
Triggers in Recovery
How can I know if I am ready to face my triggers? I like to play recreational hockey and I have been playing for 20 years. I am 2 months sober now. I am not sure if I should play hockey this coming season because hockey and going out for beers is very mixed together in my head but on the other hand twice a week games are the only thing that keep me sane. And what is the point of being sober if I can't do sports? I am not embarrassed to be in recovery. I am thinking about telling everyone on the team that I am trying to maintain my sobriety and asking them to not let me come out with them for drinks after games. This way I can still play but I have some insurance that I will not go out and drink after.
Read answer →Cured of Alcoholism
My husband quit drinking 3 months ago and he is doing great. He had to go to a 2 month outpatient treatment program after his second DUI and he was going to AA but he stopped a couple of weeks ago and says he is doing fine on his own and that he doesn’t need any help any more. He was pretty bad for a while last year and I am actually shocked at how easily he has been able to make this enormous change. He used to drink until he passed out in front of the TV every night for years. He told me last night that he plans on going with his buddies for a weekend of ice fishing as soon as the lake is solid enough. These weekends, as far as I know, are pretty much all about drinking with the guys and very little about the actual fishing. He says he just won’t drink and that he is totally fine now and that I shouldn’t worry about it. I am very worried about it but I don’t know if I am overreacting. He has been doing so well so should I just trust him when he says he is cured? Or should I make this a very big deal and insist that he not go. I have threatened to leave him and take the kids away before and that was one of the reasons why he quit.
Read answer →Am I an alcoholic?
How much do you need to drink to be an alcoholic? I drink daily but will rarely have more than 6 beers unless it’s on a special occasion. My wife wants me to stop because she says I’m an alcoholic and it’s not healthy to drink every day. I have told her that my drinking doesn’t effect my health doesn’t effect my job and since I am not walking around drunk all the time or causing problems then there is no reason why I should have to give up one the few pleasures in my life. I work hard all day. I’m all grown up - why shouldn’t I have a few drinks after a long hard day?
Read answer →Sex in Sobriety
My wife of 10 years was a very heavy drinker who eventually decided to get some help for her drinking about 6 months ago after it became clear that she was flirting with alcoholism if she maybe hadn’t already passed that line. I had been encouraging her to get some help and I am really proud of the way she has managed to stay sober since then with only a couple of small slips and that she is still really keeping things up by going to a lot of AA meetings. She is a lot less moody than she was when she was drinking (then you never really knew what you were going to get). She has lost 20 pounds and she really looks 10 years younger. The problem is our sex life has really been affected by this change in her lifestyle. Before, she would have a few glasses of wine and get in the mood and we’d have sex and I’d go to bed and she’d head downstairs again and finish off a half dozen more glasses of wine as she watched movies and or looked on the internet. Now we go and stay in bed together but she is never in the mood and we have only had sex a few times since she quit. She says she’s not sure why she feels so differently now and she has asked me to just be patient. I am of course ready to do everything I can to support her in this but I would like to know if this is a common side effect of sobriety and if it is something that is likely going to pass in time?
Read answer →Limits on Alcohol Consumption
I have a question about recommended drinking allowances. As far as I understand it, moderate and safe drinking for men is no more than 2 drinks per day. But is this the case for men of all sizes? I am 6 foot 8 and about 300 pounds and there is a little bit of fat on me but I’m not in bad shape and I am almost as muscular as I was during my college football days a decade ago. If I go out for a beer with a much smaller male friend of mine, I can have 2 beers easily to each one he has and still stay sober enough to drive home. I don’t know this for a fact, but I bet I could have 6 or 7 beers and still not exceed the legal limit whereas my smaller friend would be well over and pretty intoxicated by that point. But as for safe drinking for my longer term health, do my liver and kidneys and other organs care that I not getting drunk? I mean, is the blood alcohol concentration that I hit on a daily basis what is most relevant when determining how much harm alcohol is doing to me over a lifetime, or is just the total amount of alcohol I consume? If it is the latter, I should drink no more than my smaller friend, even though I only get half the effects he does from that same amount.
Read answer →Drinking without Hangovers
My brother is a functional alcoholic. He drinks every night and gets up to go to work 5 days a week. He is visiting right now and last night we shared a case of beers. This is not something I do very often but it is something he does every day. Today I had the worst hangover I can remember ever having in my life. It is 8 in the evening now and I am barely able to take in solid foods even now! My brother has already been drinking for hours and he was up at 8 this morning working on the broken lawnmower I had been complaining about – right as rain. Why can he drink and not get hungover? I am trying to understand why he drinks so much. Do alcoholics become so used to alcohol that they no longer become hung over after drinking. I cannot imagine drinking again for a long while after the way I felt today.
Read answer →AA Meetings: Do I have to talk?
I think I want to try going to an AA meeting. I am definitely drinking way too much and if I look at myself honestly then I have to admit that I am an alcoholic. I am very shy. I don’t know if there is a word or condition that describes how I am but I will never willingly put myself into a room full of strangers where I might have to say something with everyone looking at me. What I want to know is if I go to a meeting do I have to say anything or talk about myself. From the movies I’ve seen it looks like this is what people do. Can I just sit in the back and choose not to talk if I don’t want to. I f I don’t have to talk to anyone I might have the courage to go and try one out. If I have to get up and say something then there is just no way.
Read answer →Alcohol Self Detox
I know that alcohol withdrawals can be dangerous. I plan to stop drinking soon and I plan to do it at home but I want to be sure I can get to a hospital if I need to. How can I know if my withdrawals start getting dangerous? If things start getting bad I can always reverse them just by having a drink or two (or more likely a bottle of vodka) I suppose.
Read answer →Alcoholism as a Disease
Why do people say alcoholism is a disease for life when I know loads of so called alcoholics who have managed to stop drinking for a while and then are able to be social drinkers for ever?
Read answer →Sleeplessness and Nightmares in Sobriety
I quit drinking after a long run of literally years of getting kind of or very drunk every night. My doctor helped me quit with some downers that made it not too bad to stop. Now that I am not on the downers anymore I am going crazy with the dreams I am having every night. I think that I forgot what it was like to really dream since I was always knocked out with alcohol but I remember dreams as being kind of nice way back in the day. Now though my dreams are often nightmares or kind of disturbing and they are so crazy and they seem to last all night. It doesn’t really make sense but the dreams are so vivid and intense that the sleep is exhausting. I am really getting fed up with it. I don’t want to start drinking and I don’t use drugs but I am sick to death of these long nights. Is there anything I can do to have a more peaceful and restful sleep?
Read answer →Holiday Relapse
I was 6 months sober but relapsed last night after running into some old friends and hitting a bar with them. They did not know I had quit drinking and I just lost my resolve for a moment and before I knew it I had 6 pints in me and the night was still young. I know I need to get back on the wagon but I am pretty tempted to wait until after New Year’s Eve to do it. I think that since the damage is already done I might as well give myself one last holiday season to party through before quitting for good this time in the new year. I went through a pretty tough detox before I quit drinking last time. Will drinking with friends for like a week or so before I quit again be long enough to give me problems with detox again? I think that only a week of drinking cannot be enough to get my body so dependent again, but I am not sure and I do not wish to go through that detox again. I have already had a few drinks this morning.
Read answer →Treatment and Sober Living
Do I need to go through a rehab program before I can get into a sober living house? Most of the places I have talked to are saying that I have to go through treatment first. I don’t think I need rehab again since I have been through it twice already. But both times after finishing rehab I relapsed pretty quick back to drinking. Now I think my biggest problem is just the people and place that I live in and with. I think if I tried to make a fresh start away from all that temptation it would be better. I am in Ventura County but I am currently unemployed and I have no children so I could relocate to anywhere. I am still drinking but I am ready to stop when I get things lined up. Any information or advice you have for me would be very welcome.
Read answer →Low-Cost Recovery
How can I get help for my 48 year old son who is an alcoholic. He now has no job, no money and no insurance but wants help. I live on a fixed income and can not help him financially.
Read answer →Holiday Parties with Alcohol
I am invited to my boss’s house for a Christmas party next weekend, as I have been for the last couple of years. All the other guys from the shop will be there also. I quit drinking a couple of months ago after I realized that it was really getting out of control. I have not told anyone this. I have been going to aa. Not long before I quit drinking I was working OT at the shop after hours by myself trying to finish up an order that needed to be rushed. I was drinking and I got kind of drunk and basically ended up really screwing up the burring and I cost the company like 5 grand when they had to redo it from scratch. My boss was pissed and there were rumors going around that I had been drinking and that was why I screwed it up so badly. My boss asked me point blank if I had been drinking and I told him no and he asked me if I had a problem and I told him no. I don’t think he believed me but he gave me another chance. He said if he ever found me drinking at work I would be fired. I know that the party is going to be a booze up and I don’t want to drink but I think that if I don’t it is going to be really obvious that I do have a drinking problem and that I was drinking like everyone says I was the night I screwed the order up. I feel like I have to drink and lose my sobriety just to prove to everyone that I am not an alcoholic, which I am. My job is like a real good anchor for me right now and I feel like if I lose it I will really be in trouble. Not to mention that it is pretty hard for a machinist who is fired for drinking on the job to find other work after that. Everyone knows everyone in this industry. Should I just drink for one night and then start over again? I can’t think of what else to do.
Read answer →How Long to Become an Alcoholic?
How many years of drinking does it take for a person to become an alcoholic? My brother has only been drinking for less than a year and I know this is true since I got him drunk for the first time on his 18th birthday 11 months ago. He has been depressed for a long time and I thought a crazy night out might help. But since then he has been drinking a lot and sometimes I have come home and found him drinking by himself alone watching TV. I am worried about him but it seems like you can't become an alcoholic this fast so I am not sure what I am worried about.
Read answer →Cutting Down vs. Quitting
I have a bad drinking problem and whenever I start drinking I always end up getting totally loaded even when I didn't really mean to. I know I have to cut way down or I am going to end up a bum on the street but I do not think I am ready to stop drinking forever. I was thinking about trying to drink on alternating days and then on days when I am hungover just popping a couple of valium ad taking it easy with drinking. Maybe after I get used to this (half the drinking I am currently doing) I will be able to make further cuts to go down to a couple or even one day per week. Does this sound like a reasonable plan to try. I realize tat it is not really fitting within the 12 step model but it is something that might work for me.
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