Alcohol and Substance Abuse Counselling Thread

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Changing playgrounds playmates and play things is good.

Sometimes the playmate is the user.

Some choose to stop
Some choose to slow down.

If I were being HAMMERED by a club, I wouldn't want it to slow down. I also wouldn't want to be hammered by a different club.

Sugar is always calling my name. I HAD eleven years without cookies (my favorite sugar) now I have 69 days and 18 hours.

Hi,
I'm new, to being aware I'm an aspie (v.proud though!) self diagnosed. And new to using forums. I'm also dyslexic so apologies in advance for mistakes!
I am a long time cannabis smoker. I rarely drink alcohol.
This feels like I'm talking to thin air! So I would really like to connect with someone before I share more. I would love to see a map of the forums(probs doesn't exist?) because I just don't get it! Don't know how to find my way
around!! But I do have a feeling that for the first time in my life, I've found my tribe! But, will I be excepted? Anyone out there want to connect?
Love and blessings to you all!

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I think I may have just discovered why I drank.
I'm alexithymic so I have no proper cognition of emotions, and I think that may have been the problem in what I feel, and the only thing I feel aside from nothing / neutral as I prefer is a form of "mental agitation."
Not anger. Just ... Unsettled? A form of energy, like anti-calm. I hate this feeling of mental churning. Of the interplay of emotions I can't perceive, understand, or process. I drank to shut it off, shut the mind off, stop the spinning, and just slide. And I noted this because tonight, I really feel like drinking into unconsciousness and that is why.
What were/are all your reasons?

Like a lot of you here, I drink too much. I have done for a long time, up and down. Both of my parents drank too much, my younger brother almost died last year on account of his consumption (which in his case was around 40 UK units per day). Currently I drink every other night, somewhere between 10 and 20 UK units depending on how I feel. It began when I fell out of sixth form, I lost the only thing that I had going for me, which was my grades; I've always been intelligent, but I've long suffered depression on account of loneliness owing in part to my social difference from the norm.

I was going steady for a while on 4-6 units per day. I managed to get through education and got into a good university, but that change wasn't something I could cope with. I fell out, drunk a lot more for a while, then I found myself in a relationship with somebody I met on an autism dating site. It was the best thing that ever happened to me, honestly. It lasted two years and I ruined it with my drinking. I didn't do anything bad on account of the drinking, but my girlfriend wasn't comfortable with it and the pressure to drink less stressed me out to the point where I would have hidden spirits in my room for the sake of feeling safe... which I would ultimately drink because that's what an alcoholic does.

Let me be clear, I've never been one to drink during the day. I don't do that. I drink in the evening, a lot. Alcohol makes me uncomfortable but it isn't as bad as trying to sleep while cognizant of reality and my own failure to live up to what I'm capable of.

Today is exactly 4 months without any sauce. The only time I was close to falling off the wagon was about a week ago when I poured out some old wine and smelled it. I love the taste and smell of wine. Actually, that was the same day my ex Aspie friend pulled his crap. However, he certainly wasn't worth me going back to the way I was before. My gastritis is now totally gone and my sleep is off and on, but I got me a new Royal Albert China tea set for drinking nighty night tea - unspiked, of course.

Congratulations on four months' Sobriety!

Before you know it, it will turn into four YEARS' Sobriety!

"I'm not addicted to the opiates, the opiates are addicted to me"

1 year today, hurrah !

Hello! I'm pretty new around here--but I thought I would pop into this topic for extra support and to offer my own. My husband (also a neurodiverse) and I have been sober for 1 year and 1 month today.

We both have a very difficult time relating to and socializing with others--and we are very much the stay-at-home-and-avoid-the-insanity type couple. I am also prone to panic attacks & complete meltdowns/shutdowns and I suffer from chronic pain. We are fully aware that we used large quantities of alcohol with the intention of dulling our senses and making life more bearable. However, as many of you probably have experienced, alcohol only offers a temporary respite--and made our daily lives even more miserable. Our obsessive personalities quickly led us to bingeing behaviors--and our mental and physical health began to suffer sorely.

Last August, we made the concerted decision to become teetotalers. The first couple of months were extremely difficult, but I comforted myself every day by marking an "X" on my calendar. The "X" has become one of my new healthy rituals, and I still continue to mark one every day that I am sober.

So many congrats to you!! You are past one of the hardest parts! The first few months were quite difficult for me.

Wow!! *throws confetti at you* That is wonderful!

^ thanks
What I cannot understand at this point having been off the bottle for a year now is "functional alcoholism."
At the moment I'm staying with two of them, and I just don't understand. They're older than me, and yet they seem capable of drinking until drunk at night, then getting up in the morning and going to work and being functional.
They've been doing this for years with very little fluctuation or escalation. How can one be a stable addict? As in isn't the definition of addiction somewhat inclusive of needing more and more?
I know from my own problems that it starts out a few drinks at night just to make sleep easier and chill out, then it goes from three to five, then five to ten, then I'm drinking a bottle of whiskey a night and am completely destroyed all the next day, until I start drinking again the following evening.
I don't get how people can manage it without their whole life going down the toilet, until they're sitting across from a doctor reading a test result and telling them they'll die if they don't stop.
They're alcoholics, there's no doubt about that. I just don't understand how any alcoholic can manage to drink without thinks getting bad to worse.

Your quotes on functional are appropriate.

Many might be at work doing well but have unsuccessful relationships. Or perhaps super controlling that area to support another Addiction such as gambling.
Addiction is multi layered.
I have worked with street people to folks whose family names are in Street Signs.

Be safe, well and creative

Me
Still too old to know it all

There is a difference between being functional and feeling good. I would drink quite a bit to get myself to sleep before I had to go to work, wake up with a "hangover" of sorts not feeling great, but able to function and would be somewhat ok after 3-4 hours and "functional". At times I knew I wasn't giving work 100%. Not drinking anything now, when I wake up, I feel crappy for 5 min and then snap right out of it and am ready to go feeling good and sometimes great. That's the difference. It will catch up with them at some point with some sort of health consequence be it GI, Cardiac, Liver - the body can only take so long of that existence. I just got tired of medicating the symptoms I was having.

I'm having a wee problem now with all the stress I'm under with school - in the back of my mind I keep thinking that maybe just one drink will help with this anxiety because it's bad. But there is no way I could do all the school work I do if I went back on the alcohol. No way. So it's relaxing tea and coffee for me. (Hey! That rhymed!) Got a test to take now then 3 papers to do. Knock them out a little at a time and pray.

9/17 Was 5 months on the wagon!

Oh! I have also saved at least $2000 over these 5 months - usually spent at least $100 a week on Johnnie Walker Red.

There is a difference between problem drinking and alcoholism.

In most peoples recovery a psycho social or biological urge can lead to thoughts or actual use.
Some switch .. to food ... Gambling... Sex or other substitutes.

Some say the alcohol was used as "the solution" which led to more problems.

Me
Still too old to know it all