Well, since my last relapse. Two years ago today, I cleaned out at least a pint every evening. I was in debt and still blew 50$ on booze a day. Two years ago today, my brother found me in a puddle of my own sick for the last time. Just about overhauled everything in my life since then, I have a different job, live in a different house, hang with different people. Sometimes I miss those things, some of them all the time. But I'm never going to miss the life I was living.

Merry Christmas, and to always moving forward!

I know when people quit smoking they say they switch to lollipops to curb some of the craving because it satisfies their oral fixation. What’s the equivalent for that when you’re trying to quit drinking? My main issue right now is coping with the inescapable and crushing weight of life and work. Usually I turn to alcohol so I can breath get through it but now that I’m trying to quit it’s not an option and idk if there’s a way to breath again

Relapsed last night after 78 days. Was so proud of my two months but the holidays were too much to overcome.

Back at it today. Cheers all.

My wife is an alcoholic. She has hidden alcohol from me 4 times (that I’ve caught) and just yesterday admitted she had been drinking heavily during the day for nearly a month while I was at work.

The last time I caught it was right before our youngest child’s birthday. Things have been very rocky, and I told her last year if I caught it again I would be done. She knows I’m at the end of my rope…as her addiction has caused her to lie and make horrible decisions. Even our wedding night, I got covid and was horribly sick in bed. She stayed up drinking and opened all of our presents even though everyone begged her not to do that.

Yesterday she comes up to me and says she wants to go back home across the country for a week for her sisters baby shower. She asks me to come but considering we both have kids from previous marriages and my work, that I just can’t get off of work and change everything around that quickly. I tell her I have reservations about her going that I am scared she will make bad decisions. Furthermore she didn’t even realize until today that when she wants to go is on our 2 year wedding anniversary. Didn’t even realize it. I know she’s taking the steps to repair her relationship with her family, to get better but do I have the right to be upset? How do I as the spouse of an alcoholic put aside my feelings for her recovery. I just don’t trust her at all, but at the same time I know it’s important she goes. It did hurt that she’s been selfish our entire marriage and didn’t even remember our anniversary. I’m a lost soul of an alcoholic spouse and am at the end of my rope. Any guidance would be very helpful.

I’m so grateful this book was given to me day one when I was ready to get clean. This was the best way for me to shut my head up and listen in the very beginning. I went everywhere with it for the first year.

I guess the question is, how did alcoholism start for you?

I'll make my story short. I'm in my twenties with an history of depression/anxiety. I never was an heavy drinker but this year I've started the habit of drinking alone while very depressed. Only little/moderate amounts (1 or 2 beers and one drink), but I take medications AND Xanax so it doesn't take much to get me tipsy. I never crossed the line of getting full drunk, however much I wanted it. This was a everyday habit for at least 1 month. After that I got told to stop and went on a sober streak of 1 month. It wasn't easy but it was feasible.

Then one day I wake up with incredibly strong cravings. I was shaking. I ended up drinking the usual dose and started back the cycle. Now I do one or two days sober (resisting cravings) and then I drink again, not very much but alas. When I don't drink, I have nausea, headache and vertigo, my hands shake a bit (and people have noticed).

I don't understand if I am developing a problem or if I'm already IN the problem and neck deep in denial... Mainly I'm shocked that I'm having withdrawals with how little I drink. (confirmed it was withdrawals by my doctor). Where do I go from here?

My significant other of 6 years broke up with me this morning because of me relapsing so much. We live together, we built a life together, I don’t know where to go now.

A year ago, I decided to accept help and my life was changed. I got on Naltrexone, signed myself up for an out-patient treatment program, and the rest is history. I have zero regrets. PM me if you have any questions, I would love to share what I have learned.

I know there are many unpleasant symptoms to get over following a bender/binge. But does anyone get really nasty eyes? I noticed after I fall off the wagon and get over a bender, my eyes are buggy and look orange/brownish? It's gross. Almost like owl eyes. Anyone else? It's one of the most embarrassing issues during recovering. I know it goes away eventually, just wish there were ways to expedite. Anyway - does this happen to anyone else?

I want to share my story about living with a narcissist and being under financial control. I am a middle-aged woman who married young and had children early. Coming from a poor background without higher education, I didn’t know how to secure a better future for myself. I worked with my husband for years, handling administrative tasks and traveling for meetings, but throughout this time, I endured emotional, physical, and financial abuse.

The stress and abuse even led me into alcoholism and several destructive incidents. After countless fights, therapy, and raising my children (who are now almost grown), I finally took a major step and enrolled in university full-time. I’ve also been sober for 1 year and 6 months, which I’m proud of.

While my husband has supported the idea of me pursuing a degree and was okay with me stepping away from work, he still exerts financial control over me. This holiday season has been particularly hard. He doesn’t give me pocket money or help with basic personal expenses like skincare or haircuts, I haven’t been to a hairdresser in a year. My daughter had to cut my hair when she came home for Christmas.

Recently, I asked him for a small amount of money ($40) to go to the movies and buy snacks with my daughter. He freaked out, saying it was too much and claiming we wouldn’t have enough money for food tomorrow. To clarify, we’re not financially struggling. He spends more than that amount daily on himself, but when it comes to me, there’s always an excuse. He makes investments I know nothing about and hoards money under his control.

In one argument, he accused me of only caring about money and said I could only be happy if I had money. His words and actions are incredibly humiliating and make me feel unworthy. It’s devastating that I can’t even go out with my kids or buy them anything myself.

I have two years left to finish school, and I’m holding onto the hope that I can build a life for myself afterward. For now, living under his financial control is degrading and isolating. I just wanted to share my story because this situation feels unbearable, and I know others may relate to this kind of struggle.

As the title suggest I simply hate this term, and I've been seeing it thrown around a LOT lately. In my opinion an alcoholic is an alcoholic. Most of us start of as "high functioning" before we reach a point where all we do is drink, and think about drinking, and ruin everything with our drinking. It's a progressive illness, you dont start off in the deep end. But eventually it becomes unmanageable.

I think way too many people use the "high functioning" excuse to compare themselves to others, to make themselves feel better, and to justify their drinking. I see so many people say "I have two jobs and am a good student I can't possibly be an alcoholic" or "I only drink at night after work and after the kids are asleep, I can't possibly be as bad as the jobless bum who neglects their kids to drink".

To me all alcohol abuse is dysfunctional (and usually numbing and dulling feelings you should be coping with) but that's just my two cents. Coming from someone who would fall into that "high functioning" category during my drinking days. Sure i'll get a lot of hate for this but with the holiday season and the sheer amount of people I've hear say it, it's driven me nuts.

Hello I had a peth test done at 28 days sober but the results came back 280. How long should I wait this time round if the results were that high?

I’m not proud of it, but after managing to stay sober for two months. I had to much to drink yesterday and blacked out. Now I’m wondering if there’s some sort of a mental technique to help remember that exactly happened, as it scares me not knowing how I behaved and if I did something horrible. I just want to know what happened and, or why the fuck I overdid it so badly, because I am not even hangover In the long term I will simply stay sober again, so that something like this won’t happen again 😕 I’m so ashamed of myself!🫤

I recently found out that it’s only some people who experience a mind blowing feeling of euphoria from drinking alcohol. I had no idea but it’s made so many things make sense. I would describe it as the feeling of love pumping through my veins and I always wondered how others had the willpower to have just one or two drinks once in a while. But now I understand that it’s just not the same experience to them. I’m 4 years off the liquor and this revelation has helped me beat myself up a little less about the 2 decades I wasted on alcohol so I thought I’d share.

My (18) mom has been a severe alcoholic all my life. I’ve done the crying, begging, screaming, and deep talks since i was 7, nothing has ever gotten to her. Am I at a dead end? She’s tried the home detoxes and gets too sick because of how severe her addiction is, i’m at home maybe one night a month now, and am still greeted by her swaying stance and vodka breath. She’s broken 3 bones in the past 5 years from falls. Please god help

for those of you who have recovered, what advice do you have for me? i really like this guy, he has 555 amazing qualities, but i need to express that i cant go deeper unless he kicks this habit. i asked him if he wanted to stop drinking and he laughed and said "no, it's fun." so i dont think he is ready yet, but deep down i know he doesnt want to be this way because he came to me early on and expressed he has a problem with drinking. should i just back off and step away to protect myself? it's the holidays and i love getting drunk too, but i'm not an alcoholic. im caught between being an enabler and also holding back from falling for him because of the alcohol thing. the alcoholism hasnt directly affected us yet. for example, i had a bottle of wine as a gift. yesterday was christmas day and he asked if we could hang but not drink which made me happy. so i left the wine at home. and then he told me he drank a lot since we last hung out and that he was basically trying to sober up, which i think he does better when im around. however, he asked me out to have drinks tomorrow night. im preparing to express that i can't go deeper than we have at this point, which is essentially a budding friends with benefits of all things except sex. but i want to go deeper emotionally with him. any advice appreciated.

for deeper context here is another post in dating advice: https://www.reddit.com/r/datingadvice/s/hoHJCFvmXa

Hello, I'm less than 24 hours sober. I don't even want to talk about yesterday. I've been dealing with shame and guilt all day. Anyway, happy to have landed here. I went to a SMART meeting this morning.

It’s time again. I can tell I’m ready. Fattest I’ve ever been, spending every dime I have, weird interactions with friends and family, can tell people are noticing, exhaustion, brain fog, falling behind on cleaning/bills/hygiene… and the list goes on. Looking for some thoughts on my alcohol use. I’ve quit for 4-6 months 5 times in the last 10 years. With plenty of one month breaks aswell. I travel for work and am what is usually considered a “functioning” alcoholic as much as I hate the term. I hold my licqor better than anyone I’ve ever met other than my brother and dad so it takes a good 2 years of everyday heavy drinking before it starts getting noticeable to myself and others. Bartenders at my regular spots are always the first to notice.

Most nights I have 10-15 drinks and on weekends it can be 25-35 pretty easily. When I do quit I have zero withdrawal symptoms. I mean just the normal hangover the next day then back to normal. The symptoms with sleep and weight take longer to start feeling better but I’ve never experienced any kind of dts or any other major symptoms.

This is where I’m asking for thoughts and help openly even (or maybe espically) if it’s hard to hear. I’m trying to ask this open minded sincerely. I’ve had issues with 12 step programs and other addiction treatments due to personal beliefs but I think I’m at a point I’m willing to shut up and try and listen. The lack of withdrawals and being able to get back into shape on a few months always leads me right back to the bar. I really feel like I’m blessed with some magic drinking genes that mean im invincible and idk if it’s getting older but I’m realizing this cycle is going to kill me sooner than later and I am starting to think I might want to actually experience life outside of this.

Sorry for the ramble but thanks for reading if you did and appreciate any advice.

The saying within AA is, you see someone, you see what they have, you want what they have. Well, I saw someone, I saw what she had, and I wanted what she had. She also had 12 years sobriety and was very much involved with AA, and matters pertaining to AA, such as events. Anyway, I asked her to be my sponsor and she agreed. However, no step work began and on several occasions, she invited me to AA events that she would be attending. So, these were things that she was going to be doing whether I participated or not and that felt as if I was just tagging along. At times, she would send me the Daily Reflections and I would respond. Initially, her responses were detailed, then they became basic and at times there were no responses at all. It didn’t appear to me that my relationship with her was working so I got another sponsor.

With this current sponsor, the second time that we were supposed to get together for step work, she forgot. Nevertheless, she did meet with me through zoom. The third time that we were supposed to get together for step work, I waited for her on zoom for 30 minutes. She later told me that she had gone to sleep.

At this point, I do not feel a connection with either of them.

I am feeling very discouraged with sponsorship. I feel that many say that they want to sponsor but once they begin to sponsor, they don’t take it very seriously.

I would like to know others experiences with sponsorship. Has it worked? Have you been disappointed?

I’ve been sober for 5 years 10 months and 13 days. I’m still young I didn’t drink for very long compared to my grandfathers who died of alcoholism. But I did drink a lot I don’t remember when I had my first drink because it was just trying it out and I thought it was gross. Because it was beer. But I do remember trying hard liquor when I was in early high school then my mom was murdered by my stepfather when I was 16 about to be 17. So I drank. I drank a lot I got blackout drunk for the first time on my 17th birthday which was about 2 months from the day I learned my mom was dead. That was 10 years ago. I still don’t remember what happened that night just what I was told. All I remember was I was mixing many many different types of alcohol. I got blackout drunk a lot of times after that winding myself up in a lot of bad situations. Now I’m almost 6 years sober and I can feel it in my body, the days I would’ve drank so much that I stopped remembering. Those days have been coming up a lot lately. I guess lucky for my sobriety that I lost my ID and I don’t steal anymore. But I don’t know man it’s rough.

so basically I (20 M) had an alcohol problem for the better part of 2 years but i stopped around 5 months ago. Last year I would drink alcohol and sleep walk and do things in my sleep that were just incomprehensible to me like piss in the corner, run around the house and take my clothes off, or attack people that I loved while asleep. I’ve had drinks and gotten blackout drunk since I was in highschool, and ive drank way more than I ever have now, but earlier this year I have gotten drunk and got into a physical altercation with my now ex girlfriend (not asking for remorse as I have been sober now for months) and I cant understand why. I would get drunk and move around in my sleep as my friends have told me and I can’t seem to understand why as I used to out drink my friends in my highschool/early college years, I used to mix pills with alcohol and weed (not recommending) and nothing would ever happen besides falling asleep in a funny place. Since I started sleepwalking and doing physically weird things in my sleep I put down the bottle for good (especially after what happened with my ex) and I just want to know if theres a reasoning behind this? I’ve done things that I would never do in any consciousness while drinking just last year, is my liver failing? Can i not handle alcohol? I’m not asking for a reason to drink again, I’d just like to know if theres a medical term/reasoning towards this.

21F, really starting to recognise I have a problem recently. With a few years now I think iv been an alcoholic. Fucking constant cycle of drinking cause I’m feeling sorry for myself and feeling sorry for myself because of drinking.

Been seriously contemplating the last few days giving it up. Going to try not drink today , I have an event tmo drinking event and I’m going to try and abstain but honestly I don’t think I’ll be able.

I didn’t do anything horribly bad last night, I wasn’t mean or bad . didn’t eat all day yesterday and had way too much to drink (again) all I want this morning is to have a drink. Threw myself down in the hall at my house and was hysterically crying over fuck knows what. My boyfriend videod me and made me watch it this morning. No recollection . Not going to make any drastic decisions today while I’m feeling sorry for myself because I know they don’t last if I make one in this state of mind

Just a rant , thanks for reading

Have any of you tried magic mushrooms? I did them one time and completely lost my desire to drink, going over a year now. I was a pretty decent drinker, borderline alcoholic. Anytime I’ve had a drink in the last months, socially or something, I only take a couple sips at most. Worth a try for people that struggle.