Alcohol and Substance Abuse Counselling Thread

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yeah. that is fairly similar to the historical profile of AA in Australia. i actually liked the meeting with the "old school" approach. it appealed to my need for space.


the point raised about women and alcohol (and drugs) is true too, sinsboldly.
THe women do get ravaged by the grog, and we also fall prey to a lot more on the streets...so there are the associated issues of violence and the delights of doss house conflicts and sexual crimes against women.

tell you what - give me nice old WP anyday. sitting here knowing i am a woman with AS...with the laptop in my little single bed with cotton sheets, a room with brass objects on the window sill and a day of peace before me at 5.48 in the morning. Better than the past.

ps. your new avatar is really really cool.

Thanks millie.

I think I still identify alcohol with socializing from time to time which is hard. Many of my neighbors have invited me over for a drink and well....drinking was part of my lifestyle. Not easy to be around people who are doing the drinking unless I'm with a sober friend. Might be why I react like I do on this subject.

And Merle, you brought up a very good point about the older men in those meetings. I find it very annoying to have a guy treat me as if I were a kid or have no idea what I'm talking about which is probably another reason why I have trouble going.

alcohol is ruining my life again. i know this seems like a broken record, but im seriouly f*****g depressed and want to die. ive had anywhere since mothers day atleast 20 to 24 beers! i always seem to want to quit the day im hung over and then when i feel better the day after, alls i can think of is getting drunk and how cool it would be. its too much of a pleasurable feeling and hopefully when i move out this friday i'll finally quit for good. now i cant even see people drinking and them having a great time, thinking gee i could also drink. and get all sloppy and s**t, jesus...rant over.

hey, richardbenson! yeah, I was the 'periodic' drunk, and always seemed to go on a bender I couldn't quit, and then when I was just too sick to stomach another drink I would sober up for a nother couple of months. Then I would forget how sick it made me and go on a bender again.

bummer, dude.

Merle

I started drinking by myself at 14, never really hit me until I was about 20 or so how bad my problem was and didn't actually do something about my drug problem until I got my dui at 21....don't move to Arizona, Sheriff Arpaio is a racist f**k who doesn't give a s**t about civil liberties (as well as unjust dui laws, I don't care what you think, drug addiction is a MEDICAL PROBLEM not a criminal one, treat it like one)...Right, anyways I managed to quit drinking Aug 5, 2008 and started up again today. Good for me in a sad kind of way right? Well no not really because I really became a pot head in that time and wow did that give me some really bad paranoia, I was thinking my roommate (who's a computer science engineer) had rigged small cameras in my ceiling fan to film/stream to his computer how f*****g stupid I was acting alone in my room (small indication of my self loathing maybe, I don't know). I managed to quit that because I spent all day every day inside my room, afraid to go outside. Going to the grocery store was/is a challenge. I finally saw, once I was sober for a few weeks how sad it was getting...ha compared to how it was before, you can tell I have issues coming to terms with....myself.

But it wasn't over, I got into ecstasy, coke and amphetamines (adderall) because of some close friends (ie friends I've followed around for the past 4 years because I don't know how to make new ones). Before all this happened I was basically an alcoholic or at least a drug addict in that I think about it all the time, not necessarily use a lot. I'm sure I use plenty don't get me wrong, but its only a lot by comparison am I right? Oh well. But yeah, I was drinking a lot, "college" etc, but it got to the point where I was doing it by myself a lot as opposed to with close friends...the same ones yes. I'm about to take a pill of adderall and finish this 40 because I've finally come to the realization how much my friends have been tiptoeing around me, inviting me only to do certain things because they know how I'll be a let down or throw off the vibe with my awkwardness for other things...I could literally hang out with them and say maybe two sentences and at the end of the night, just leave unannounced. Happens a lot. I don't blame them I guess and thankful they've put up with me this long but at the same time they should have just been honest, have things get worse for me before they get better, then move on and deal with my problems/find new friends.

It's important to note around the time between my summer between freshman and sophmore years of college I got into pharmaceuticals...pain killers mostly, vicodin-percocet-valium....later oxycontin but that was maybe a handful of times total to this day. Needless to say I don't remember much from when that was going on and I'm sure I was mostly alone since I would just snort them and watch Lost, House or something...it didn't f*****g matter.

So I guess now that I'm finally writing this out it comes in waves or maybe just personal fads....: drinking at 14 through high school, a little marijuana here and there. More drinking then lots of pharmaceuticals...some more drinking (DUI), lots of pot for a year and a half, then, ecstasy/coke/adderall...sober, back to beer, for today anyways. I mean I've tried mushrooms twice, and it was a wonderful/hellish awakening and I thought how I shouldn't do drugs and how meaningless it was, it literally didn't make sense to me (while I was all cosmic) why people including myself even did drugs...life/earth/people were so amazing and connected! Enter the the glorious comedown where everything seems perfect then bam, you're back to this sh***y mindset you thought you'd rid yourself of.....what the f**k.

I hope I didn't offend anyone with my language but think of it this way, this a thread about drug abuse which, I think, is much more of an issue than simple words that were made up a long time ago...

I'm 22 and don't know how to "act my age" which is a ridiculous statement in itself but at the same time I know I'm behaving....pathetic.

So, are you thinking of talking to some people that might have a way you can get out of all of that? It might be worth a try.

Merle

^I've been seeing a psychotherapist for a few months now, I'm a lot better since I started seeing him, but I have a lot of s**t to overcome I think. I saw another thread about awakening to how you really are and the things you do, it applies to many areas of my life right now. It just makes it that much more overwhelming, which is ironic because I feel I just get scared like a kid would and I'm trying to overcome that while all this awakening is starting to happen more and more often...budeprion has been helping.

Not to change the subject here, but I don't see why it's reasonable to expect someone abstain from pot. The fact that within a few hours, my brain is so overloaded with meaningless information never gets properly addressed by anthing else. I find it so hard to concentrate that I go to a gym almost daily to exhaust myself. I take zoloft and I talk my problems out here and even chime in, but I can not get my mind to focus (or even want to focus on my nursing studies without some inspitation), in fact I really don't feel like doing anything right without pushing myself.

All the advice on abstinance comes from people who have made some sort of self discovery and have great functioning of their brains. I'm glad they can think so clearly, I don't like my approach being put down when it works so well for me. I'll just let the world know that I don't care what I do to my lungs (I get my cardio) or my short term memory, I have bad short term memory now and I'm dead sober.

Well I relapsed.

Not sure how to be a person or friend to anyone without drinking and using.

I'm in that boat. That Abraham Lincoln quote about fooling people ties into that pretty well. You just can't like eveyone all the time. People are so ficle that if you don't keep things interesting or likable for long enough, they'll get the wrong idea and call whatever friendship you had off. I'm not saying it's true about everyone, but I've been living it long enough to know that it feels easier to be drunk around people to get along with them.

honestly, for all the hand holding and hugging AA invaded my space with, I did find a fellowship of folks that I could safely be with and NOT drink. I wish the same for you, MissC.

sorry to hear about your dissappointment with yourself. Remember, it is a disease that tells you you don't have a disease.

Merle

every single friend i got have an addiction to something or other,
me myself to pot/weed/hash but so far its not an obstacle for me and theres no comparison to alcohol addiction, which to me seems as awful as any hard-drug addiction.

i wish for everyone in here to find their way around all of it.

*throws a couple of good vibes around*

:]

For me, realizing that although I'm not physically addicted, there is a psychological addiction forming any time I do anything (just a fact of nature). Trying to use it as a tool to treat symptoms isn't flawless, but I will live to see another day and I like my approach better than the DEA / Mormon inspired approaches. A pot habit won't kill you, plain and simple, stupidity can kill you, but let me tell you, I'm prone to my stupidity when I'm sober, I can end up in the middle of a delusion so easily that I can do things that make me feel like an idiot afterwards, at the very least, I don't get mad about it after smoking a joint.

yeah, thats how i feel it, i _am_ addicted, but i see no problem with it. i even told this to my social services appointed people, cus they have to ask about drug-use. and they took my word for it too :I which surprised me.

people have to be careful about the delusions, like ive often heard teens go "you cant get addicted to cannabis, cus theres no physical addiction, only psychological addiction" well thats an addiction they should all be very aware of this.
if pot-smoking - in their environment - will become problematic, then an addiction would be very bad for them.

i always feel bad for alcoholics and hard-drug users tho, because their addiction becomes more problematic and more apparent. i got two all-out alkie friends, and theres no end to the s**t they get themselves into :I

just know where you are, map your existence, and be honest about it. im not even worried about my pot-smoking, cus i know its a substitute for the joy of life. when i get more real joy, ill smoke less, ive watched it happen. in spain im torn between the best hasheesh in europe and the complete lack of interest in getting stoned

but as long as im joy-less, hell, im gonna get stoned.

Alcoholism isn't a disease, it's a behavior.

I have been treating alcohol as an allergy for twenty four years now, and have had excellent results. Have you considered the mental and the spiritual componants of the condition as well as the physical? Have you had any sustainable results from just changing the behavior only?

I have. Twenty four years of it. I would be interested in seeing your results of not treating the whole condition. How has that worked for you?

Merle