Me reading this after falling off of the sober wagon

It fucking sucks...

I have genuinely never had a sip of alcohol in my life. It’s just amazing how people still almost constantly try to get me to start. They seem offended as if I personally attacked them when I refuse. Could you imagine someone getting offended because you didn’t want to do heroin with them?

Almost everyone in my family is some form of an addict, and they all say they could definitely quit anytime they want to, even the one who mixes alcohol with coffee in the mornings and who gets drunk almost every night. The societal level of denial when it comes to alcohol is amazing, people treat addiction like it’s just a snack-eating habit and not drinking literal poison. A lot of my family basically just treats it as a snack that they “munch” on throughout the day. The physical and cognitive decline over the decades is readily apparent.

I clearly remember the amount of pressure I was under to start drinking myself to death the second I turned 21. I said no. One of the best decisions I ever made. But how is a 21 year old kid supposed to make a clear-minded decision when drinking is almost universally normalized and encouraged, so much so that they’ve probably already gotten dangerously drunk several times over by the time they’re 16? (at least, that was the norm where I grew up)

I know someone who started drinking heavily at university, 18-21 or so, and in the span of ten years he needed double hip replacements. Apparently alcoholism can make your body stop absorbing calcium/vitamin D so he has the bones of an elderly person at 32.

It's such a horrifying drug to normalise. I didn't even know it could cause osteoporosis on top of the seizures and liver failure and cancer.

yeah I'm also getting to an age where I'm starting to see the effects of alcohol abuse in people I knew from school. Several deaths, liver problems, organ problems. A friend of mine who's several years younger has a calcium deficiency and has lost teeth. Alcohol seems to have an endless list of problems it causes. It attacks your liver, that's where your minerals and vitamins get sorted out. You mess up your liver and it hurts you everywhere else, your body can't fix itself and your immune system goes to shit.

I've had five sips of alcohol in my entire life, I hate it. It should definitely be regulated. Alcoholism is horrifying and I really hope any comrades with a proclivity can overcome it.

Also read up on Korsakoff syndrome. Absolutely terrifying disease associated with alcohol abuse that traps you in a time loop since you lose the ability to form short term memories. You wake up in the same day over and over wondering why it's suddenly 2042.

I stopped drinking a bit ago and it rules. Not in the pocket of BIG HANGOVER anymore

I'm sorry for your loss comrade. My mom died from her alcoholism problem too. I'm an alcoholic as well (it runs in the family). Shit is bad. I remember seeing a bit on tv about how alcoholism is a killer right alongside fentanyl but that gets all the attention because it's illegal.

I had a much easier time quitting hard drugs than I've had quitting alcohol. It's so insidious, and so accepted to be an alcoholic. I really haven't faced many life consequences for my drinking in my life. Lots of health complications, but nothing the world threw at me.

I think that it's unironically very messed up that we are not expected to put CWs on posts glorifying alcohol and drug usage when we are expected to put CWs on animal products.

I think that if we can be considerate enough to vegans to CW meat then we can also be considerate to people who are grappling with addiction or have lost loved ones to substances.

Truly sorry for your loss, OP.

Alcohol is worse than heroin. Heroins problems come from it being unregulated. So us addicts have to get filth from the streets that we don't know how strong it us.

Alcohol is regulated and still kills tons of people and ruins lives.

It's very unfortunate that alcohol is such an extremely simple molecule that is just intrinsically connected to carbohydrates. It just happens. Monkeys get drunk of fermenting fruits lying around. Boil potatoes, let them stand around until it smells funky and you're already half the way to vodka. Even if you eliminated all remembrance of alcohol, some dude would drink a bottle of grape juice that was a little too long in the sun and enjoy the feeling it gives him.

Addiction often stems from the circumstances in your life. It comes from desperation, suffering, needing to forget or to feel something, the need to distract, to numb or the desire to fit in. It comes from poverty, isolation and the lack of a future, for which it would be worth being sober for.

Capitalism enables and enhances all these feelings and makes this drug so extremely available at the same time. It remains the true enemy and is again at the core of our suffering. Alcohol will undoubtedly remain a problem in any society, but in ours it is a scourge.

I consider myself lucky that my body started outright rejecting alcohol around 25. Prior to that I was drinking about 3 liters of liquor a month. Half a beer triggers a multiple day migraine now. It's the perfect excuse to not drink as well, so if you're getting pressured feel free to use it.

i am unironically a prohibitionist when it comes to alcohol, the muslims were right. though we should treat it like a medical issue rather than a criminal one, like we should with any drug problems. it should at least be illegal to advertise alcohol or give it fun packaging, like they do with cigarettes in some places.

never ever giving up weed tho, maybe i'll switch to vapes and edibles instead of smoking eventually but its more expensive that way.

It's the worst drug. And people look at you like you've lost your mind if you say you don't partake

I did a lot of the popular/common drugs, among a couple of others, throughout high school and only tried alcohol in my early 20's. As soon as the effects started to settle in, I immediately came to the conclusion that it was the most dangerous drug I had put in my body by a decent margin. It's still genuinely somewhat surprising that it's legal at all, and I would be in favor of prohibition (obviously with not criminalizing users) if it wasn't a futile endeavour given how entrenched it is in the majority of cultures. If relatively safer drugs like cannabis were legal instead, I seriously doubt people would resort to alcohol so much to alleviate emotional pain. I've seen it destroy a lot of people in my life because it was the only legal emotional crutch they could afford because mental healthcare in this shithole is abysmal at best.

wife has been sober now for over 10 months after 20+ years of hard alcoholism. was hard watching her slowly kill herself and nothing you can do about it. you cant fix an addict just support them when they decide to fix themselves

i know that feel, i drink occasionally but ill never touch another drop if that what she needs to stay strong

I need to quit drinking but it's very habit forming and I frequently find myself just being like. where's my drink? I'm playing games at my desk, where's my sip of ambrosia? I'm taking a shower when I get home from work, where's my shower beer? like everything I do when I'm drinking gets associated with it and then it feels like it's missing. And part of my drinking is self medicating for insomnia so it's especially hard when it's like "well fuck I have work tomorrow I wanna make sure I fall asleep" but the thing is I always have fucking work tomorrow.

it would help if weed still like, got me stoned, but it really doesn't hit me like it used to, like I literally physically cannot smoke enough fast enough unless I'm taking edibles. And no, a tolerance break isn't a solution because then I have literal weeks to months of just fucking torment

Have lost family members to the stuff. It's horrible. I'm sorry for your loss.

my dad's been an alcoholic most of his life. he's in his early 60s but walks worse than his parents did when they were in their 80s and has a good deal of health problems :/

he was forced to go to rehab a year ago and has been sober ever since. i'm proud for him but wish it could've happened in my childhood instead of right after i go to college. we have a better relationship now at least, spending more time with him now than i did in late high school

there's defo still some permanent mental effects but it seems like going sober's even made his temper a lot better, he's even kinda sharper and a lot less reactionary

Alcohol is dangerous, I limit myself to birthday and the 3 winter holidays since I've seen what it does to family, but totally cutting it off makes what little social life there is odd, especially here during the holiday. Seems the only thing reported in your typical rural paper is yet another death of despair or yet another drunk driver induced fatal accident.

My maternal uncle was a heavy drinker, ended up with an ulcer and drank himself to death with the combination. One of my many cousins was training to be an electrician and had a huge alcohol problem, he ended up falling off the roof he was working on during his apprenticeship, he lived, but he obviously lost his apprenticeship but broke his ankle and its been totally fubar since. He does retail now and blows his small paychecks almost entirely on booze, he long lost his house and lives with my uncle. He's only a little older than me and already showing signs of Korsakoff's.

Alcohol truly is the worst. I once saw it referred to as insidious and that's always stuck with me. It is a creeping poison that winds its way around your heart and strangles you to death. It's a fucking nightmare substance. And you can get it at any grocery store or gas station.

Very sorry for your loss, comrade. Alcohol is fucking horrible. Very few drugs come even close to how awful alcohol is.

I have a real nasty relationship with alcohol too, always had. I'm one of these people who don't drink often, but when I do, I go all in and do stupid shit. There's a whole bunch of alcoholics in my family, on my mother's side. Last time I drank was around August last year. I drank half a bottle of very strong liquor all by myself, much to the pleasure of my buddies who found it very funny.

They didn't know that I was on a pretty fucking dark place that day, and had no intention of drinking until they goaded me into doing so. It was my bad decision, so I don't blame them, but still it shows how alcohol can be very pernicious in that it's pretty much a requirement in most social occasions.

I woke up the next day half naked in my bed with zero memories, no idea how I got home, and my clothes were piled up next to my bed and covered in vomit. It was the second worst hangover in my entire life and I decided that fuck it, I'm not going to drink anymore, and yeah, I'm still keeping that promise!

I'm sorry that you lost a compatriot.

"The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken." -- Samuel Johnson

Coming from a drug addict like me let me tell you that the truth is in Dr Johnson's aphorism.

shit

I went to a family event this weekend. I was offered a shot. I was ridiculed by several people. Alcohol almost killed me and I was in a coma for the entire summer of '21. They all knew this. It's sad how socially acceptable alcohol is. I didn't have the shot.

I'm sorry for your loss, comrade. I lost my oldest friend to a death of despair stemming from alcoholism and everything about the decline, death, and then loss is just truly awful.