How many drinks?

[Penneywize]

Good on you Surviva. I'm actually far more interested in your story than anything else going on in this thread but I guess it's up to you if you ever want to divulge more.

A good friend of my father's is 64 years old and has been on and off the wagon his entire adult life. He is perpetually either in a state of drinking heavily or not drinking at all. The heavy drinking phases usually start out with him drinking only a little bit here and there, but it escalates rather quickly. He'll reach a point where he's drunk every day by 4pm. Eventually, and this occurs I would say once every 2-3 years, he goes on a bender that usually ends with him collapsing and ending up in hospital. Then, he gets sober for 6 months or so, going to AA meetings and such... then he'll slip... and rinse and repeat.

It's really quite sad, since the guy is a quality human being. Unfortunately his behaviour is difficult to correct since his work is high-paying (works in oil exploration or some shit, aboard ships about 6 months out of the year) and conducive to this kind of start-and-stop alcoholism. But I think, more than that, a deeper personal issue prevents him from reaching a stable middle ground.

Anyway, tangent, etc etc. Just thought I'd share.

[surviva316]

. . .

Unfortunately, there are literally millions of stories like this. I (somewhat controversially) don't consider myself an alcoholic because it is actually surprising for me to not drink. I simply stopped it altogether because I can't trust myself to do it in moderation. Anyway, I'm only saying this to say that I'm not hugely into AA and stuff and can't empathize to the point to where I could be very helpful with how this guy straightens his life out because me straightening out was very easy.

Anyway I'm very close with someone who works with a LOT of cases like these and I have a staggering respect for what he/she does for free on their own free time. These things are just so out of anyone's control (even the person who's going through it) that it is tears-worthily frustrating to even think about cases like these.

This is why, even though I disagree on a lot of fundamental bases of AA, I am a huge supporter of them and similar support groups. I kinda have a Platonic view of a lot of the stuff: even though I think a lot of it's untrue, I still think it needs to be forced down the throat of some people because it's their only hope. People have to get that right balance of feeling like they are worthwhile people who deserves to be treated better than they treat themselves AND simultaneously feel that they are accountable for their actions to some conception of a higher power that's outside of their selfish selves (even if that "higher power" is, say, their kids or something). All of the really dogmatic stuff they include in their broad nets that they cast out (your only hope for sobering up is to show up for 90 meetings the first 90 days, everyone who shows up to a meeting has a disease that makes it incapable for them to not drink unless they have the antidote of AA, etc) is completely necessary so that there's no wiggle room for people who are on the brink.

The fact that much of this isn't true in regards to me, for example, (I mean, wtf, not everyone who feels the good of not drinking outweigh the bad of drinking is an alcoholic; that's actually a pretty detrimental thing to spot) doesn't all that much matter because I'm not a hopeless wreck who can't be trusted with my own self-destructive thoughts.