Interesting experiment

[bill_schubert]

I spent most of my life after graduating from college drinking one thing or another, beer or bourbon, or gin.  The syndrome really started in once I joined the Navy and was no longer doing any drugs.  It was nothing extraordinary most of the time but it definitely had something to do with the ending of two marriages and the endangering of the third.  Not just my drinking but both of us.  The stories are a bit of a yawn.  Same as everyone else.

But my "Third Mate" as she called herself on a t-shirt she made a while back started to develop a really bad personality shift when she would drink and it was not conducive to a happy relationship.  I told her so and really started tapering off myself.  Until I found that I also had a pretty bad personality shift and so started taking, or not taking as it were, my own medicine.  And I suggested she do the same.

In retrospect it does make me sad and makes me wonder as our marriage immediately improved.  I was more relaxed and happier as was she.  I sadly wonder about marriage one and two.  So at our tender age we're experimenting.  Neither of us have quit drinking.  We just don't.  

She decided, however, that we needed some beer for the soccer match yesterday and so got some.  I'm a sucker for Tripel Ale and she got one of my favorites.  So I drank a bottle.  This is beer stronger than wine so a bottle of it, two and a half glasses, is not like drinking a lite beer.  But that was all.  And by the time I went to bed I was not really feeling any effects.

This morning I feel off.  Not hung over.  Not physically much of anything.  But just off.  A little depressed.  And I don't like it.  And I wonder that I spent most of my life not hung over but not quite all I could be.  Off.  Such a strange thing to discover.  Not really earth shattering but definitely another positive development and reason to just not have any alcohol at all.  Another way to fight the constant barrage of marketing and pressure.  

So I still haven't quit but not right now, thank you.

Comments

[spacefem.livejournal.com]

when I was in high school I gave up sodas on my track coach's recommendation, and then could never stomach them again. so much bad stuff. alcohol isn't the same at all, but I notice similar effects from going without it... if I don't drink all week, then have a couple glasses of wine, I feel like I've lost the evening. I don't read. I don't paint. I don't exercise. It's just hours, lost. when I drank most nights I didn't think of it. but the more days I live my life without alcohol, the more of a difference I see when I do shrug and have a drink. alcohol is just less and less worth it.

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

Well put. And you're years ahead of me.

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

I think you've had an important realization ...

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

I think so too and I think I'll appreciate it better tomorrow.

[msconduct.livejournal.com]

At least you have many more days ahead to put your knowledge into practice.

Having addictive genes and/or an addictive personality is really difficult. I have neither: I've never been drunk, never smoked or taken other drugs, and if I think I'm developing too strong an attachment to something unhealthy I find it easy to stop. Those things are merely the luck of the genetic draw and have zero to do with my moral character. I wish this was better understood. Twelve-step programmes are so intrinsically entwined with morality, and that's just wrong. It's bad enough having a genetic bent towards addiction without having to feel that makes you a terrible person. What's more, when the problem has a moral dimension it means that effective treatments are ignored. Naltrexone is very effective in helping alcoholics stop drinking, yet is rarely prescribed in the US, I think because it's seen as letting the bad bad alcoholic off the hook. It's incredibly frustrating.

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

You definitely hit the nail on the head about morality. It is only in the very recent time that morality is less a part of addiction recovery research and that is not true all over. We have too much religion and not enough compassionate science.