Me reading this after falling off of the sober wagon 
It fucking sucks...
Stay strong comrade. It's not about total abstinence so much as trying to reduce consumption. At least, that's always been my attitude. I've seen people fall off once and then say fuck it and go on benders because of it and I don't think it's helpful to live in that binary.
It's never too late to try and improve and sobriety streaks are only as meaningful in of themselves as the importance they have to you if their lengths are helpful to be healthier long term. I went through a really bad wagon crash after two years dry and it really fucked me up for months until circumstances in my life changed enough to cut back again.
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)
Definitely never start. I’ve been heavy drinking for a decade and it’s almost completely destroyed my life. I have squandered ever opportunity and meaningful relationship I’ve ever had. I have profound brain fog and cognitive impairment and im not even 30 yet (and I’ll be surprised if I even make it there). Never let anyone convince you to start drinking
it's never too late to quit btw, i was in a similar position (started at 14, kept going for a decade+) and it's been years now since i've touched the stuff.
you can always escape 
I quit at 35, don't wait that long comrade
People get offended because they know it’s bad for them and you’re showing the restraint that they themselves sometimes wish they’d have.
The other side is that drinking makes them vulnerable and you not drinking puts you in a power position over them. Sometimes predators don’t drink because of that. But obviously that doesn’t justify their reaction to you not drinking.
(This is the perspective of someone who does binge drink occasionally)
I have genuinely never had a sip of alcohol in my life
That's actually me! Just never seemed like the right thing. And know I'm regularly taking other depressants, so it's not at all safe.
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.
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 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.
too true. plus fentanyl can kill instantly so easily, and while someone can drink themselves to death in a night it takes a lot more effort than fent.
hope youre doing well, the chronic pain and management of said pain my friend went through is something i'd only wish on the worst people in the world. And she was not a bad person at all, she was very kind and always thinking of other people before herself. But sometimes you have to be selfish...
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 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.
Yeah I have done just about everything except crack and had years-long habits with a number of them. I had to piece together a new personally when I quit hard drugs. I quit cigs during COVID. But alcohol is just so baked into society and such an easy way to help cope with capitalism that I find it hard to imagine ever completely quitting drinking.
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.
Yep, this is why I fundamentally do not believe anyone interested in the prohibition of drugs actually cares about saving lives. Alcohol is at once the most dangerous and most accessible drug. Meanwhile Weed, LSD, and Heroin are all treated equivalently more severe by the US federal government.
If we can accept alcohol being legal, we can accept Heroin being legal. What we ought to do is make it illegal to profiteer in any way from either substance, while we give adult users a safe supply.
Bars are just supervised injection sites for alcohol.
Unfair to compare injection sites which are focused on harm reduction with bars which are financially incentivized to increase the consumption of alcohol.
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 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.
Prohibition was a disaster in the US tho. You can't even stop people from fermenting sugar in prison.
It's the worst drug. And people look at you like you've lost your mind if you say you don't partake
In my experience they straight up don't know how to engage with you. Typically they get defensive about their own habit after you say "no thanks".
Wife and I drank casually (but still too much) and stopped last year. We lost weight and our baseline sense of well-being is much higher. Once you get far enough away from drinking, it becomes alarmingly clear that people are straight-up poisoning themselves, and have no idea how to socialize without it.
I work in the live entertainment industry which means I'm often sober working in a room full of drunks and it truly is like watching everyone slowly become brain-damaged
I feel like that's changing, at least in my circles/generation. A lot of us still drink, but give mad respect to those who quit, its objectively just (kinda fun) poison.
Alcohol consumption among millennials is plummeting, and Gen Z never fucked with it much to begin with.
I've heard Gen Z doesn't like to drink because they've grown up being filmed all their lives and don't want to be caught on camera being an idiot
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.
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.
Have lost family members to the stuff. It's horrible. I'm sorry for your loss.
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
my main addiction is weed. I wanted to stop smoking, so i just stopped buying flower/vape cartridges and it turns out if i don't have it, i don't miss it. But alcohol is def more physically addicting. Weed for me was just the ritual of "guess i better smoke 4 times a day." Working from home made it much worse.
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
Very similar except mine never actually quit.
CW venting and gross medical stuff
spoiler
I'm convinced he has Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome and he's had cognitive evaluation that placed him as like, pre-dementia but he lies his ass off about the severity of his drinking to doctors and has gotten even more stubborn and shitty as his faculties have declined and doesn't want to try anything or get better.
Super heavy alcoholics reach a point where they have severe enough digestive issues that they're getting little to no nutrition from what they eat at the same time that they're drinking a full caloric daily value of booze, so they never have an appetite at the same time their body is malfunctioning and eating its own fat/muscle/bone trying to get a bare minimum of vitamins and minerals necessary to function. When the liver gets overwhelmed, the skin tries to compensate and shed toxins getting greasy and sweaty, then the skin can't keep up and starts getting psoriatic sheds and cracks that bleed and scab.
It's fucking horrifying to see and something I'd beg anyone struggling with alcohol to do everything in their power to avoid. I can't speak for everyone, but from what I've seen, there's a point of severe alcoholism that once someone passes, they lose the ability to get themselves out of it and would need a medically supervised gradual detox and rehab.
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
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.
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!
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.
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.
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