Alcoholics and problem drinkers not-really-that-anonymous.

[Ashley Allison]

Go Rachel! It sounds like you are on quite the journey and I know the road is hard because I am living some of it too.

I have been pondering quitting quite a lot lately.  It makes me do stupid things and especially lately causes me to get angry for inconsequential reasons quite a lot lately.  I have tarnished academics, my body, work, relationships, and straight out time with this nasty habit.  One very weird effect, is that drinking actually increases my dysphoria in the immediate days post-op, especially the next day.  I am on an especially long attack of dysphoria right now after drinking 2 week ago, and further drinking since then (the fourth) has not helped it.  Drinking has ruined a lot of things in my life, and I want to try quitting; though these are just words, and to mean something they have to be action.  I also want to quit drinking to see whether doing so alleviates my dysphoria to a level that is manageable.  Consuming my day/ days after each night of drinking with fantasies about living as a woman and feeling out of place in my body is no way to live.  Sometimes, I wish I quit when I started cognitively recognizing this trend about 5 years ago.  If my dysphoria had continued in sobriety, I would, I like to think, be at a stage in my transition where I felt comfortable in my body and social role.  As it stands, that didn't happen and the drinking and negative actions related to it continue.

Lots of hugs!
Ashley

[katrinaw]

We are all backing you Rachel... best wishes

hugs
Katy

[rachel89]

So some good news, in spite of feelings of GD eating at me throughout the day, I was able to avoid the bottle.

[Laura_Squirrel]

So some good news, in spite of feelings of GD eating at me throughout the day, I was able to avoid the bottle.

Good. Keep it up!

[katrinaw]

Well done Rachel 
So proud of you

hugs
Katy

[Devlyn]

There ya go! The longest journey begins with a single step. 

Hugs, Devlyn

[sparrow]

So some good news, in spite of feelings of GD eating at me throughout the day, I was able to avoid the bottle.

Awesome!  Sometimes I "self-medicate" with marijuana... when it starts to impact my life, I quit for a while.  In the first few days after quitting, GD hits the hardest.  When we use chemicals to dull the pain, the pain seems sharper once the chemicals are gone.   It gets better.

[StrykerXIII]

Recovered alcoholic here...four years clean and counting.

[Alex_or_Ben]

I'm not sure what I call myself.. a problem drinker?  I think and behave like an alcoholic around alcohol.. but I don't physically depend on alcohol to function.  I have had gone to AA in the past, and I felt overwhelmed with their stories and experiences, since I could not really relate to theirs.. I just felt overwhelmed, so I stopped going to AA.

I drank some yesterday because of feeling angry and frustrated about the gender dysphoria and how going to the gym doesn't help eliminate the gender dysphoria completely.  It started when someone asked me for my name and I blurted out my birth name instead of my chosen name.. my anger grew and grew after that.. and I ended up reaching for alcohol.  Ugh.  I tend to tell myself that choosing alcohol is better than my self-harm habit since it's very negative.  But either one is very bad for me.  I was lucky with yesterday choosing a beverage with a lower alcohol percentage, but still it's no good especially since I'm on medication and I need to quit drinking again.

I wished I had a positive way to manage my anger without drinking.  I get angry and frustrated when I think of my dad's drinking and how my mom allows him to drink like that.. My dad is an alcoholic pretty much.  He can't live a day without alcohol.

Alexander

[rachel89]

i'm a lot like Alex_or_Ben when i drink. I don't really get withdrawals or thing like that (at least nothing super obvious), but I pretty much go overboard when I do drink. when I don't feel like there is anything I can do about GD or get upset in someother way, I just drink. Sometimes it can seem like its is better to feel nothing, than having to put up with GD sober and feel sad and disgusted.

[Laura_Squirrel]

I pretty much go overboard when I do drink.

That's how I was back in the day. I would suck down at least a fifth (sometimes two) a night once I became of legal drinking age and moved out on my own. But, eventually, I said: "This is just ridiculous" and I just quit. Sure, if I wasn't doing drugs in addition to drinking. I don't know how I would have been with the withdrawal thing.

[rachel89]

So, I made through the weekend without alcohol.

[Stanna]

Congratulations! One day at a time Rachel. For me, it took a couple months to get rid of the monkey on my back telling me that you can have just one drink, that won't hurt anything. But having decided that I was not "trying" to quit drinking, but that I was "done" drinking, my resolve got me through the rough patches. Now I no longer feel the desire to drink again and that is a wonderful thing.
I wish you the best with your struggle. Believe me it will get better.
Hugs, Stanna

[rachel89]

I think I have identified how I get looped into these week long binges sometimes. This doesn't apply all the time, sometimes i just drink simply because I want to or because i'm an alcoholic. The going out and drinking to much "for fun" isn't where my problem would be unless i were to get behind a wheel or something like that (I'm already  terrible driver when awake and sober). Lately there has been nothing fun about my drinking, its not more fun than getting I am morphine for a broken leg, even if it feels better, the situation still kind of sucks. I notice myself self-medicating for anxiety and GD. I know how to manage the GD, but the resources to do it aren't really there at the moment. I feel that the GD and anxiety play into each other, but I am self-medicating for the whole anxiety aspect. I need something better to cope with anxiety, whether it be a legitimate medication or talking to a therapist, or various other techniques. My anxiety started around 4:00-5:00 this afternoon. I am sorry but I have self-medicated with alcohol again.

[sparrow]

Quittin's hard.  Keep trying, you'll get it!  As they say, the first step is recognizing that you have a problem.  Understanding the patterns that lead to problem drinking, as you've mentioned here, is a necessary step to breaking those patterns.

[rachel89]

being an addict sucks. It just sucks.

[Kellam]

Hey Rachel. Firstly, Yay for you on confronting your addiction! I had to quit drinking just shy of four years ago now. I had been drinking alcoholicly for the better part of a decade, most of my 20's and into my 30's. I started around ten or eleven  and had abused the stuff through my teens. It was one of my biggest coping mechanisms. Quitting was the hardest thing I had ever done and it still feels that way. It was so worth it.

The first weeks are the toughest but you can do it. Starting this thread was a brave step. I used a secular non 12 step peer support group to help me. I know we can't share links here so if you want the organization's name pm me. They have online forums and face to face groups worldwide.

It is difficult to deal with the flood of anxiety that comes when you drop the bottle. All the stuff you self medicate for is increased by extra anxiety from the chemical change your brain is going through. I ended up with a bad case of insomnia. To combat it and to feed the dopamine receptors in my brain that were crying out for their fix I exercised. Not heavy stuff. Walks, bicycling and basketball were my go to sources.

Anything you need, ask. Most of all keep working. Even if you slip, don't give up or feel defeated. Relapse, believe it or not, is part of recovery. Disentangling your psyche from the binding grip of addiction takes time. You have the strength, this is within your power. Go girl go! We are here rooting for you!

[rachel89]

thanks for the advice, but the whole anxiety thing started before I picked up the bottle.

[rachel89]

so I am beginning to be ale to make a distinction between times I am having an anxiety attack and times I just want to have a drink. yesterday, I had a pretty bad one and self-medicated with alcohol accordingly. So the good news is that I am not in the middle of an anxiety attack right now, but the bad news is that I still feel like having a drink. I am  hoping for no more anxiety attacks this week, so I can just confront my urge to drink without also having to deal with an anxiety attack. I don't think I am ready to deal with the anxiety attacks sober, but I am realizing it is possible to not drink when I am not having an anxiety attack.

[Eva Marie]

Rachel - you have already taken the first few steps toward improving your life by stopping a habit that's going to eventually kill you. There is more than one way to sobriety - find the one that works for you and stick with it - if you have a slip up forgive yourself and just get back on the wagon again. You started drinking because of <reasons>, and if you can dig down and figure out what those reasons are and then deal with them that will really help you stay off the sauce. Like many others here I've also been down this road and dealing with my feelings that resulted from me being trans was my cause for drinking - I transitioned and the need to get plastered every night vanished. This is a tough monkey to deal with and I wish you well on your journey to a life without an alcohol dependency.