I agree with everything in this article. Drinking alone is the best, particularly if you like to write while listening to music. The flights of fancy I used to go on!
I wish I could still do it, but I found myself waiting for the liquor store to open up at 7:00 am to get rid of the shakes. Then when I tried to stop I couldn't. Long story short, after several rehabs, more stints in mental health lockup than I care to remember, and burning through more sponsers in AA that I can count, I finally was able to stop.
"Cunning, baffling and powerful" is how Bill Wilson, founder of AA called alcohol for those of us who are "real alcoholics" or if you prefer
“Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each non-existed in an entirely different way.”
— Stanisław Lem
p.s. There is a tradition of the Drunken Zen Master but it's archaic. We all know better now.
Most "real [1]" alcoholics try over and over to stop like myself and Bill Wilson. The following story from the Big Book illustrates the problem [2]
Yet he got drunk again. We asked him to tell us exactly how it happened. This is his story: "I came to work on Tuesday morning. I remember I felt irritated that I had to be a salesman for a concern I once owned. I had a few words with the boss, but nothing serious. Then I decided to drive into the country and see one of my prospects for a car. On the way I felt hungry so I stopped at a roadside place where they have a bar. I had no intention of drinking. I just thought I would get a sandwich. I also had the notion that I might find a customer for a car at this place, which was familiar for I had been going to it for years. I had eaten there many times during the months I was sober. I sat down at a table and ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk. Still no thought of drinking. I ordered another sandwich and decided to have another glass of milk.
"Suddenly the thought crossed my mind that if I were to put an ounce of whiskey in my milk it couldn't hurt me on a full stomach. I ordered a whiskey and poured it into the milk. I vaguely sensed I was not being any too smart, but felt reassured as I was taking the whiskey on a full stomach. The experiment went so well that I ordered another whiskey and poured it into more milk. That didn't seem to bother me so I tried another."
Thus started one more journey to the asylum for Jim. Here was the threat of commitment, the loss of family and position, to say nothing of that intense mental and physical suffering which drinking always caused him. He had much knowledge about himself as an alcoholic. Yet all reasons for not drinking were
So the problem here is going into a type of trance or hypnotic state, where you forget that you shouldn't drink. Have you ever gone into the next room and then forgotten why you went there or driven for many miles in the car and not noticed anything, but suddenly you "wake up" and notice where you are? That's a kind of trance. Stephen Wolinsky has a good book called "Trances People Live" [3] That I found helpful. Some people are always in an emotional bind that looks like a trance.
In order to quit drinking I had to wake up and remain awake, develop situational awareness, use tools like meditation and Cognitive Behavior Therapy, and a big one is deal with my traumas. I had some that I ignored or laughed at and minimized, but turns out traumas caused me to "space out" more than anything.
You ask an alcoholic why they drank again and they can't tell you why. They don't know. Drinking because you went in a trance state is a really difficult problem to solve and the reason most alcoholics don't recover.
Hope this helps.
Edit: I forgot to add that doing the 4th step is like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and doing the 5th step is like Cognitive Processing Therapy (for trauma) so you can get those for free in AA
[1] I use the term real because some of us in AA use it to distinguish ourselves from people that have 1 too many glasses of wine in the evening and then go to AA as a social club and call themselves alcoholic. I avoid meetings with too many of those.
I have very strict rules I follow for alcohol consumption, if for no other reason than I'm the son of a man who was a functioning alcoholic for most of his life.
I've read the big book, and consider it a source of wisdom, even if I perhaps don't follow all of the tenants contained within.
The serenity prayer, which is AA adjacent if not (now) directly part of the AA wisdom is my personal lodestar, it's great wisdom on how to deal with life's challenges.
From it I ascertained that the first two questions one should ask are when encountering something in life are, "is this actually important?" and "is this a problem I can actually solve or make a meaningful difference in helping solve?" - anything one can answer "no" to either of those questions one should just let go of, and try to focus one's energies on other problems.
I don't drink that much, though it goes up and down over time. I do have a few rules I follow: I never drink on Mondays. I take January as a month of sobriety.
The Monday rule is two fold. First it is a weekly check on alcohol seeking behavior. It is also because all the reasons I can think of for drinking on a Monday are not reasons I want to be drinking. Having a rule helps avoid bad habits.
> From it I ascertained that the first two questions one should ask are when encountering something in life are, "is this actually important?" and "is this a problem I can actually solve or make a meaningful difference in helping solve?" - anything one can answer "no" to either of those questions one should just let go of, and try to focus one's energies on other problems.
This puts succinctly something I try to practice that I likely got from the same source. My parents were both in AA for the entire time I knew them and I was carried along to many meetings and, later, went along with them of my own volition. I have a great respect for the organization and, especially, the people humble enough to recognize their need for support.
> From it I ascertained that the first two questions one should ask are when encountering something in life are, "is this actually important?" and "is this a problem I can actually solve or make a meaningful difference in helping solve?" - anything one can answer "no" to either of those questions one should just let go of, and try to focus one's energies on other problems.
This is also a teaching of stoicism. Focus only on those things you can actually change and understand that your reaction to external things is under your control
“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…”
– Epictetus
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
― Marcus Aurelius
What tools do you, or other HNers for that matter, have to share about breaking alcohol addiction? Especially covering the hard parts: what are the major hurdles to overcome?
We’re not all alcoholics. Substances affect people in vastly different ways. A key problem is that people do not understand this, that substances and substance abuse don’t work the same across the board and one person’s experience does not extend to the rest of humanity. It is more like there are tribes that don’t understand each other.
I thought I was an alcoholic beyond help but it turns out I was just selfish. I used to drink to get drunk almost every day when I was living with someone, they drank too but not to the excess I did. Then one day they were gone, they passed away and suddenly I found myself alone and responsible for maintaining a home and taking care of several animals. I realized I could not risk something happening to me in my drunkenness and have no one around to help me or call for help, end up dead and leave my animals alone in the world with no one to care for them. So I quit, no shakes, no depression just a few cravings now and then for it but far greater of a feeling of loneliness and missing my best friend in the whole world than wanting a drink.
I don't know if it makes a difference but my alcohol of choice was beer and I consumed between 10-15 every night for around a decade. I still would consider myself an alcoholic because if I drink even one beer, I am going to keep drinking until they are all gone, but I guess I have the ability or wisdom to choose not to have that first drink, or maybe I'm just co-dependent without anyone to make it happen. Lucky for me I suppose.
This is true. I feel for people that struggle, I really do but it should also be acknowledged that many good and enduring relationships—-romantic and platonic—-were catalyzed by alcohol. Maybe the alcohol wasn’t strictly necessary but empirically it sure helps. That’s not something we should be so quick to dismiss when weighing costs and benefits.
My favourite way to blow of steam is what I call drunken arma3.
The sheer insanity of that game suits a few (by which I mean 2-3 beers, not much of a drinker) every couple of weeks.
It’s incredibly relaxing.
I drank way too much in my twenties (shitfaced every weekend which was normal in the uk back then), stopped entirely for my thirties and now stick to 2-3 once every few weeks.
Not been drunk drunk in 14 years, good on you for getting yourself sorted.
Gabapentin is often prescribed for depression. It can be taken with other antidepressants. I’ve heard it can cause severe weight gain via water weight and bloating.
This is poetic, but if you break it down into a syllogism, it's clear that this is totally stupid.
Removing the flowery language, here are the claims and supporting arguments, along with my rebuttals.
* Drinking alone helps you understand yourself better.
- No it doesn't. It distracts you from that endeavor. If you sit at a table with no TV or phone and do nothing, you will have a significantly more interesting and honest dialog with yourself if you are sober.
* Drinking alone lets you drink a lot of alcohol fast, in your preferred cocktail or beverage.
- Yes and this is why it is dangerous. Drinking tasty alcohol fast is a great way to get addicted. Or at the very least damage your health, both short and long term.
* Drinking alone provides you with comfortable silence.
- Drinking has nothing to do with this. Alcohol is a non-sequitur. You have to orchestrate the silence regardless of whether alcohol is involved.
That's it. It's just repeating these 3 points in different ways.
This magazine or blog or whatever seems to either be an elaborate joke or bait or something:
>Are you guys for real?
>Yes. While there is some satire involved, we believe to the very core of our >souls every word we write.
>Who are you?
>We are a group of functional alcoholics based primarily in Denver, CO. Included in our ranks are published novelists, filmmakers, English gentlemen, barflies, punk rock musicians, comedians, outright dastards and admitted boozeheads.
>Do you mind the word alcoholic?
>No. We are taking it back from the fascists. Soon it will be considered a compliment.
>This magazine or blog or whatever seems to either be an elaborate joke or bait or something
Or you know, part of the once respected in some circles tradition of self-destruction with style, before everybody started jogging and going vegan to live to 100 years old as a "productive" boring member of society...
I definitely used to think that way. It's the type of thing that is a lot of fun to be a part of, until it isn't anymore. It's a thrilling way to self identify, until it becomes your entire identity.
I’d just take them at their word they are functional alcoholics who formed a community around being alcoholics. If you think of it as a religion, maybe it makes more sense?
Instead of drinking, all of these can be accomplished by taking a “spiritual retreat” for a weekend.
It could be a trip into the woods, a religious retreat with other people, or a stay at a quiet hotel far from home.
I’ve done all three. When I have to make the long drive to my parents for a mandatory family get together, I’ll book a hotel halfway to take time for myself.
The idea is to get away from your normal environment and sit down with yourself. I usually bring my kindle and a notebook.
I had kind of spiritual retreat when I had to isolate for ten days with Covid. I was scared that I wouldn't be able to cut back on my alcohol usage, but it turns out I hardly drank at all. I poured myself a beer most nights but only drank a little bit of it. That really brought it in focus for me how much of my drinking is driven by self-medication for social anxiety and boredom.
Ethanol destroyed my brother's life and two of my best friends lives, and did serious harm to all of the lives they were connected to. It is a deeply selfish drug. I recommend that everyone never, ever touches it outside of ceremonial use.
I've definitely had realizations drinking alone. It's not a state you want to be in all the time, or even often, but it can be useful. It's sort of like a random jump in the mental search space to get out of local minima.
(Though perhaps I could train myself mentally to be able to enter these more loose states w/o alcohol, and that would be even better?)
Alcohol isn't special in this regard. There are many ways to shake oneself out of their standard mental cycles. There are lots of other drugs, and there are also plenty of non-drug techniques and experiences.
Thanks. Alcohol is a poison and getting drunk has nothing to do with finding yourself. I wish people would quit romanticising addiction.
I quit a bit over a year ago. Never properly addicted, but Australian culture has it so firmly embedded it's scary. I'm a better person for it, and I don't miss it.
If I want to feel wasted the next day I'll do 120% in the garage gym. Under the bar I both find myself, experience euphoria afterwards, and retain the ability to be wrecked the next day should I choose to.
>* Drinking alone helps you understand yourself better.
- No it doesn't. It distracts you from that endeavor. If you sit at a table with no TV or phone and do nothing, you will have a significantly more interesting and honest dialog with yourself if you are sober.*
This pre-assumes you can have a honest dialog with yourself sober.
> No it doesn't. It distracts you from that endeavor. If you sit at a table with no TV or phone and do nothing, you will have a significantly more interesting and honest dialog with yourself if you are sober.
I've had plenty of interesting insights into all sorts of things while inebriated that remained interesting and insightful long after I'd sobered up. Maybe this doesn't work for you but that doesn't mean it doesn't work for anyone.
> * Drinking alone helps you understand yourself better.
- No it doesn't. It distracts you from that endeavor. If you sit at a table with no TV or phone and do nothing, you will have a significantly more interesting and honest dialog with yourself if you are sober.
I don’t think that the fact that you disagree with a statement qualifies that statement as a syllogism.
I read those three statements as being distinct (for example “preferred cocktail” is a different subject from “comfortable silence”) though I will concede that all three statements do share a general theme of “the author enjoys drinking alone.” However, discussing various reasons for enjoying something does not qualify a statement as a syllogism.
While I also do not generally agree with the author, I’m not a big fan of “things I disagree with are Wrong in terms of fundamental logic. Anything I don’t like but Others do is wrong because those Others lack the fundamental Brain Power to Understand The World(tm) like me. To disagree with me is to commit an Aristotelian error of the highest order.”
It’s honestly an incredibly depressing attitude to come across, and it’s pretty much universally held by people that spend a lot of energy being “Not Mad” at not getting invited to parties.
Maybe you might feel differently about who is the arbiter of logic if you cracked open a nice beer?
I wish I could source it, but I recall reading an anthropological study of drinking that mentioned that solo drinking is universally shunned across all cultures.
I would never say there is no insight that could be gleaned from this -- people are different, after all -- but I agree with the other comment that this justifies an unhealthy adaptive strategy. We have deeper and healthier modes of self-knowledge than this.
I think being a loner is generally seen as unusual though isn't it?
I enjoy drinking alone, exercising alone, traveling alone, sitting alone, working alone. I don't really think I'm that weird by objective standards, there are also things I like doing with people (I'm married and have a family), but as a sometimes introvert, I definitely value time alone, including relaxing with a beer.
Related, when I went to university, I lived in residence and i remember sitting by myself at meals and having people come and basically think they were doing me a favor talking to me, because only a loser would want to sit by himself. I found it both annoying (because I wanted to be alone) and condescending (because people see you alone and come talk to you like you must have no friends) - all that to say, society seems to look at you funny if you enjoy being by yourself, so I wouldn't read too much into sllo drinking being shunned specifically.
I used to feel very strange when doing anything alone. The lizard brain in me was embarrassed that I'd appear to be a loser with no friends. Then I went on a 2.5 month bike ride across the US. You get real good at being alone doing that. Hours every day spent with no company but the wind and occasional passing cars. Then you'd arrive at camp for the night and sometimes there's be other people there, but often you'd be alone. I'd go eat alone, visit museums alone, and do all the other touristy stuff I wanted alone. It was amazing. It actually made the interactions I DID have so much more meaningful. Particularly with other people doing the same bike ride I was doing. Those were such fun conversations. It's funny, being alone is a skill just like anything else and if you don't exercise it you won't be good at it :D
That doesn't surprise me. Going against cultural mores and breaking taboos has a long tradition among gnostics and explorers of our internal landscape. It's not a safe and stable life path but it can certainly be rewarding.
- From "Social and Cultural Aspects of Drinking" [0]:
"The most important of these cross-cultural constants in the social norms governing alcohol use is the near-universal taboo on solitary drinking. The fact that drinking is, in almost all cultures, essentially a social act, is recognised throughout the anthropological literature, and ethnographic data from a wide range of cultures indicate that solitary drinking is at the very least ‘negatively evaluated’, and often specifically proscribed."
- Drinking and masculinity in everyday Swedish culture [1]:
""Drinking alone should not be done. To drink alone is to be anti-social (by not wanting to share); it is commonly thought to be an indication of alcoholism. And alcoholism is shameful: to be labelled an alcoholic is a condemnation beyond words…""
- Also touching solo-drinking: "America Has a Drinking Problem" [2]:
"He and his onetime graduate student Kasey Creswell, a Carnegie Mellon professor who studies solitary drinking, have come to believe that one key to understanding drinking’s uneven effects may be the presence of other people. Having combed through decades’ worth of literature, Creswell reports that in the rare experiments that have compared social and solitary alcohol use, drinking with others tends to spark joy and even euphoria, while drinking alone elicits neither—if anything, solo drinkers get more depressed as they drink."
- From Kasey Creswell, "Drinking Together and Drinking Alone: A Social-Contextual Framework for Examining Risk for Alcohol Use Disorder " [4]
"The context in which drinking occurs is a critical but relatively understudied factor in alcohol use disorder (AUD) etiology. In this article, I offer a social-contextual framework for examining AUD risk by reviewing studies on the unique antecedents and deleterious consequences of social compared with solitary alcohol use in adolescents and young adults."
"drinking with others tends to spark joy and even euphoria, while drinking alone elicits neither—if anything, solo drinkers get more depressed as they drink."
I wonder how much of this is "set and setting", something that is well known with other drugs. Maybe people tend toward depression when they drink alone because that's what they expect to happen?
My 2022 New Year's Resolution is to try out complete sobriety (caffeine excluded; this effectively means alcohol and cannabis). I've never considered myself to have a 'problem' with substances like some people I have known, but I sure have spent plenty of time in my life intoxicated alone. The resolution isn't an ambitious thing because I've been going this way for a while anyway.
Over the years I've slowly come to a realization: These substances have various effects, but at the heart what they really do is make me less aware. Sometimes I guess it's a good thing. Alcohol makes me less aware of the part of me that is self-conscious in social situations, and of how others perceive me. Cannabis makes you feel more aware of experiences, but it proves to be an illusion. I guess they're really not that bad on the balance, but as I grow older and I have spent more and more time thinking about cultivating awareness - of the present moment; of my body and mind and senses; of things in life that are truly important, and which maybe even make me anxious to contemplate - I find that I simply don't enjoy intoxication as much anymore because there's something I enjoy more about awareness.
More and more I hear this nagging voice when intoxicated. It says: "I'm bored; I'm nervous; I'm scared; I'm sad; I'm worried; I'm self-conscious; I'm restless; Someday I will die. What I'm doing right now is trying to be less aware of these things. But maybe they aren't just to be ignored or avoided. Maybe they're an adaptive part of the human mind. Maybe there really is something worth being anxious about."
With weed, after I switched to vaping concentrate I found the experience much more empathetic. Like if I was watching something I would deeply feel whatever the characters were experiencing. Maybe it’s illusory but it does feel like I’m connecting to something quite deep. I haven’t really heard other people say that so I wonder if it’s common.
I always drink alone these days, Covid killed whatever superficial drinking groups I had joined. Though I tend to prefer to go out, as opposed to being at home. I’m stuck in the apartment for most of the day anyway.
I’ve never been bothered much by it in the past, but I think I’m quickly getting sick of it. It frankly gets boring, hanging out at bars all night aimlessly drinking. Yeah I talk people on occasion, but we’re normally a little a drunk for the conversation to be interesting or mean anything. Still I prefer if to aimlessly doing anything else, especially sitting at home.
I’ve been called out once or twice, by people curious about who I was or why I was always out alone. My relatively young age probably doesn’t help with attracting negative connotations. However, last week, I stopped by one of my regular bars, and the person next to me effectively called me out as a loser (with much nicer language, and beating around the bush). It ended up agitating me a bit because of how blatant it was. I know it, you know it, but does it really have to be announced out loud?
Sounds like a terrible bar, don’t go there.
I’ve had far more positive experiences going to bars alone than I ever had in groups. Despite what people think it’s still totally possible to strike up conversations with strangers. Sometimes getting to know a stinger is more exciting and mentally engaging than small talk with some mild acquaintance.
On the contrary I always hated going to bars in groups. You’re just paying extra to hang with the same people you could have just split a 12 pack with and had pretty much the same experience at home or at a park or beach. The chances of you having any interaction with anyone outside your group at a bar are minimal if not non existent.
Yeah going to bars is pretty boring, it just doesn't achieve anything, plus it negatively affects your mental and physical health. It's like paying to slowly kill yourself.
Perhaps they called you out because they're concerned about you.
The realistic alternative to going to a bar alone (as somebody who has gone to bars alone) is drinking alone at home. That isn't really any better for you because at least there is a decent chance to have some social interaction at a bar (unless you specifically avoid it).
Thinking that somebody else at a bar calling him a loser is looking out for his best interest is a little ridiculous
Getting called out for drinking alone seems odd and I've never heard of that happening to anyone I know anywhere. Do you live in a college town?
Seemed common in SF and other major metros I've lived in. You're not going to find many people doing it at hipster bars but it's definitely normal at neighborhood watering holes.
Does anyone here enjoy coding after a few drinks? I don't do this often but on a Friday evening if I feel the fancy to work late and am working on a known problem space-- I pour myself a couple of shots on gin, mix with a bit of lemonade and code away.
I get a lot done in this state as I am purely churning out code rather than constantly second guessing myself, looking for a more optimal ways of doing it or refactoring the code I have written every few mins to improve class/package structure, variable names and so on. Obviously I would never merge to master after a session of intoxicated coding.
And this code looks better than you think on a Monday morning when sober.
I once came home after a work night out, and started coding on...erm..something.
I remember thinking at the time that I was onto something brilliant, only to excitedly pick it back up the next day and look at my code and realize it completely indecipherable. I don't even know what my idea was lol
Not anymore, but when I did, I've taken on some hairy tasks that were otherwise overwhelming and the code just flows.
Didn't work all the time though - sometimes I'd just be noticeably tired and stupid. And when I hit my 30s that tended to happen more often than not so I hung it up.
Now, with a good night's sleep, the very early morning hours (5am) is when I can get the flow state consistently.
Before I had to give up alcohol completely, I occasionally enjoyed a glass of wine and a good book on Saturday mornings. Sometimes a shot of scotch once or twice a month. I preferred quietly enjoying a drink alone to drinking with friends. I never needed alcohol to have fun.
I don’t see an issue with the occasional drink. The problem is people talking like the author does, don’t do the occasional drink.
Readit News
I wish I could still do it, but I found myself waiting for the liquor store to open up at 7:00 am to get rid of the shakes. Then when I tried to stop I couldn't. Long story short, after several rehabs, more stints in mental health lockup than I care to remember, and burning through more sponsers in AA that I can count, I finally was able to stop.
"Cunning, baffling and powerful" is how Bill Wilson, founder of AA called alcohol for those of us who are "real alcoholics" or if you prefer
“Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each non-existed in an entirely different way.”
— Stanisław Lem
p.s. There is a tradition of the Drunken Zen Master but it's archaic. We all know better now.
Yet he got drunk again. We asked him to tell us exactly how it happened. This is his story: "I came to work on Tuesday morning. I remember I felt irritated that I had to be a salesman for a concern I once owned. I had a few words with the boss, but nothing serious. Then I decided to drive into the country and see one of my prospects for a car. On the way I felt hungry so I stopped at a roadside place where they have a bar. I had no intention of drinking. I just thought I would get a sandwich. I also had the notion that I might find a customer for a car at this place, which was familiar for I had been going to it for years. I had eaten there many times during the months I was sober. I sat down at a table and ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk. Still no thought of drinking. I ordered another sandwich and decided to have another glass of milk.
"Suddenly the thought crossed my mind that if I were to put an ounce of whiskey in my milk it couldn't hurt me on a full stomach. I ordered a whiskey and poured it into the milk. I vaguely sensed I was not being any too smart, but felt reassured as I was taking the whiskey on a full stomach. The experiment went so well that I ordered another whiskey and poured it into more milk. That didn't seem to bother me so I tried another."
Thus started one more journey to the asylum for Jim. Here was the threat of commitment, the loss of family and position, to say nothing of that intense mental and physical suffering which drinking always caused him. He had much knowledge about himself as an alcoholic. Yet all reasons for not drinking were
So the problem here is going into a type of trance or hypnotic state, where you forget that you shouldn't drink. Have you ever gone into the next room and then forgotten why you went there or driven for many miles in the car and not noticed anything, but suddenly you "wake up" and notice where you are? That's a kind of trance. Stephen Wolinsky has a good book called "Trances People Live" [3] That I found helpful. Some people are always in an emotional bind that looks like a trance.
In order to quit drinking I had to wake up and remain awake, develop situational awareness, use tools like meditation and Cognitive Behavior Therapy, and a big one is deal with my traumas. I had some that I ignored or laughed at and minimized, but turns out traumas caused me to "space out" more than anything.
You ask an alcoholic why they drank again and they can't tell you why. They don't know. Drinking because you went in a trance state is a really difficult problem to solve and the reason most alcoholics don't recover.
Hope this helps.
Edit: I forgot to add that doing the 4th step is like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and doing the 5th step is like Cognitive Processing Therapy (for trauma) so you can get those for free in AA
[1] I use the term real because some of us in AA use it to distinguish ourselves from people that have 1 too many glasses of wine in the evening and then go to AA as a social club and call themselves alcoholic. I avoid meetings with too many of those.
[2] https://anonpress.org/bb/Page_36.htm
[3] https://www.google.com/books/edition/Trances_People_Live/yyy...
I've read the big book, and consider it a source of wisdom, even if I perhaps don't follow all of the tenants contained within.
The serenity prayer, which is AA adjacent if not (now) directly part of the AA wisdom is my personal lodestar, it's great wisdom on how to deal with life's challenges.
From it I ascertained that the first two questions one should ask are when encountering something in life are, "is this actually important?" and "is this a problem I can actually solve or make a meaningful difference in helping solve?" - anything one can answer "no" to either of those questions one should just let go of, and try to focus one's energies on other problems.
Also, I'm glad for you, that you found sobriety.
The Monday rule is two fold. First it is a weekly check on alcohol seeking behavior. It is also because all the reasons I can think of for drinking on a Monday are not reasons I want to be drinking. Having a rule helps avoid bad habits.
This puts succinctly something I try to practice that I likely got from the same source. My parents were both in AA for the entire time I knew them and I was carried along to many meetings and, later, went along with them of my own volition. I have a great respect for the organization and, especially, the people humble enough to recognize their need for support.
This is also a teaching of stoicism. Focus only on those things you can actually change and understand that your reaction to external things is under your control
“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…” – Epictetus
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” ― Marcus Aurelius
How some people can function while drinking every night is beyond my comprehension.
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I don't know if it makes a difference but my alcohol of choice was beer and I consumed between 10-15 every night for around a decade. I still would consider myself an alcoholic because if I drink even one beer, I am going to keep drinking until they are all gone, but I guess I have the ability or wisdom to choose not to have that first drink, or maybe I'm just co-dependent without anyone to make it happen. Lucky for me I suppose.
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The sheer insanity of that game suits a few (by which I mean 2-3 beers, not much of a drinker) every couple of weeks.
It’s incredibly relaxing.
I drank way too much in my twenties (shitfaced every weekend which was normal in the uk back then), stopped entirely for my thirties and now stick to 2-3 once every few weeks.
Not been drunk drunk in 14 years, good on you for getting yourself sorted.
Gabapentin is often prescribed for depression. It can be taken with other antidepressants. I’ve heard it can cause severe weight gain via water weight and bloating.
I don’t even take my full low dose during the day as I don’t like the way it makes me feel (though it’s a very effective drug for me).
NAC a couple of hours before your drinking escapade.
A five hour energy drink the morning after. The B’s + folate really help to feel”normal” the after.
Adult drinking is preparing for and mitigating the day after effects. :)
Removing the flowery language, here are the claims and supporting arguments, along with my rebuttals.
* Drinking alone helps you understand yourself better.
- No it doesn't. It distracts you from that endeavor. If you sit at a table with no TV or phone and do nothing, you will have a significantly more interesting and honest dialog with yourself if you are sober.
* Drinking alone lets you drink a lot of alcohol fast, in your preferred cocktail or beverage.
- Yes and this is why it is dangerous. Drinking tasty alcohol fast is a great way to get addicted. Or at the very least damage your health, both short and long term.
* Drinking alone provides you with comfortable silence.
- Drinking has nothing to do with this. Alcohol is a non-sequitur. You have to orchestrate the silence regardless of whether alcohol is involved.
That's it. It's just repeating these 3 points in different ways.
Or you know, part of the once respected in some circles tradition of self-destruction with style, before everybody started jogging and going vegan to live to 100 years old as a "productive" boring member of society...
I hope they all end up ok.
It could be a trip into the woods, a religious retreat with other people, or a stay at a quiet hotel far from home.
I’ve done all three. When I have to make the long drive to my parents for a mandatory family get together, I’ll book a hotel halfway to take time for myself.
The idea is to get away from your normal environment and sit down with yourself. I usually bring my kindle and a notebook.
That's like saying to someone "instead of kinky BDSM you could accomplish the same by making sweet tender love".
I don't think it works for everybody.
(Though perhaps I could train myself mentally to be able to enter these more loose states w/o alcohol, and that would be even better?)
I quit a bit over a year ago. Never properly addicted, but Australian culture has it so firmly embedded it's scary. I'm a better person for it, and I don't miss it.
If I want to feel wasted the next day I'll do 120% in the garage gym. Under the bar I both find myself, experience euphoria afterwards, and retain the ability to be wrecked the next day should I choose to.
But it'll be a good kind of wrecked, more likely.
- No it doesn't. It distracts you from that endeavor. If you sit at a table with no TV or phone and do nothing, you will have a significantly more interesting and honest dialog with yourself if you are sober.*
This pre-assumes you can have a honest dialog with yourself sober.
I've had plenty of interesting insights into all sorts of things while inebriated that remained interesting and insightful long after I'd sobered up. Maybe this doesn't work for you but that doesn't mean it doesn't work for anyone.
- No it doesn't. It distracts you from that endeavor. If you sit at a table with no TV or phone and do nothing, you will have a significantly more interesting and honest dialog with yourself if you are sober.
I don’t think that the fact that you disagree with a statement qualifies that statement as a syllogism.
I read those three statements as being distinct (for example “preferred cocktail” is a different subject from “comfortable silence”) though I will concede that all three statements do share a general theme of “the author enjoys drinking alone.” However, discussing various reasons for enjoying something does not qualify a statement as a syllogism.
While I also do not generally agree with the author, I’m not a big fan of “things I disagree with are Wrong in terms of fundamental logic. Anything I don’t like but Others do is wrong because those Others lack the fundamental Brain Power to Understand The World(tm) like me. To disagree with me is to commit an Aristotelian error of the highest order.”
It’s honestly an incredibly depressing attitude to come across, and it’s pretty much universally held by people that spend a lot of energy being “Not Mad” at not getting invited to parties.
Maybe you might feel differently about who is the arbiter of logic if you cracked open a nice beer?
There's also something perverse about associating this with Zen given that abstaining from intoxicants is the fifth precept (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_precepts#Fifth_precept).
I would never say there is no insight that could be gleaned from this -- people are different, after all -- but I agree with the other comment that this justifies an unhealthy adaptive strategy. We have deeper and healthier modes of self-knowledge than this.
I enjoy drinking alone, exercising alone, traveling alone, sitting alone, working alone. I don't really think I'm that weird by objective standards, there are also things I like doing with people (I'm married and have a family), but as a sometimes introvert, I definitely value time alone, including relaxing with a beer.
Related, when I went to university, I lived in residence and i remember sitting by myself at meals and having people come and basically think they were doing me a favor talking to me, because only a loser would want to sit by himself. I found it both annoying (because I wanted to be alone) and condescending (because people see you alone and come talk to you like you must have no friends) - all that to say, society seems to look at you funny if you enjoy being by yourself, so I wouldn't read too much into sllo drinking being shunned specifically.
Drinking alone is more dangerous than drinking with friends.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/america...
http://www.sirc.org/publik/drinking5.html
And there's some related HN discussion on the article here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17488786
Deleted Comment
"The most important of these cross-cultural constants in the social norms governing alcohol use is the near-universal taboo on solitary drinking. The fact that drinking is, in almost all cultures, essentially a social act, is recognised throughout the anthropological literature, and ethnographic data from a wide range of cultures indicate that solitary drinking is at the very least ‘negatively evaluated’, and often specifically proscribed."
- Drinking and masculinity in everyday Swedish culture [1]:
""Drinking alone should not be done. To drink alone is to be anti-social (by not wanting to share); it is commonly thought to be an indication of alcoholism. And alcoholism is shameful: to be labelled an alcoholic is a condemnation beyond words…""
- Also touching solo-drinking: "America Has a Drinking Problem" [2]:
"He and his onetime graduate student Kasey Creswell, a Carnegie Mellon professor who studies solitary drinking, have come to believe that one key to understanding drinking’s uneven effects may be the presence of other people. Having combed through decades’ worth of literature, Creswell reports that in the rare experiments that have compared social and solitary alcohol use, drinking with others tends to spark joy and even euphoria, while drinking alone elicits neither—if anything, solo drinkers get more depressed as they drink."
- Pandemic related, "When Drinking Alone Becomes A Problem" (2021) [3]
- From Kasey Creswell, "Drinking Together and Drinking Alone: A Social-Contextual Framework for Examining Risk for Alcohol Use Disorder " [4]
"The context in which drinking occurs is a critical but relatively understudied factor in alcohol use disorder (AUD) etiology. In this article, I offer a social-contextual framework for examining AUD risk by reviewing studies on the unique antecedents and deleterious consequences of social compared with solitary alcohol use in adolescents and young adults."
---
[0] http://www.sirc.org/publik/drinking5.html [1] https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/97802030... [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/america... [3] https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/psychology/news/2021/creswell-a... [4] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/096372142096940...
I wonder how much of this is "set and setting", something that is well known with other drugs. Maybe people tend toward depression when they drink alone because that's what they expect to happen?
Over the years I've slowly come to a realization: These substances have various effects, but at the heart what they really do is make me less aware. Sometimes I guess it's a good thing. Alcohol makes me less aware of the part of me that is self-conscious in social situations, and of how others perceive me. Cannabis makes you feel more aware of experiences, but it proves to be an illusion. I guess they're really not that bad on the balance, but as I grow older and I have spent more and more time thinking about cultivating awareness - of the present moment; of my body and mind and senses; of things in life that are truly important, and which maybe even make me anxious to contemplate - I find that I simply don't enjoy intoxication as much anymore because there's something I enjoy more about awareness.
More and more I hear this nagging voice when intoxicated. It says: "I'm bored; I'm nervous; I'm scared; I'm sad; I'm worried; I'm self-conscious; I'm restless; Someday I will die. What I'm doing right now is trying to be less aware of these things. But maybe they aren't just to be ignored or avoided. Maybe they're an adaptive part of the human mind. Maybe there really is something worth being anxious about."
Having a drink alone is pretty harmless. Getting wicked drunk alone is depressing.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/america...
I’ve never been bothered much by it in the past, but I think I’m quickly getting sick of it. It frankly gets boring, hanging out at bars all night aimlessly drinking. Yeah I talk people on occasion, but we’re normally a little a drunk for the conversation to be interesting or mean anything. Still I prefer if to aimlessly doing anything else, especially sitting at home.
I’ve been called out once or twice, by people curious about who I was or why I was always out alone. My relatively young age probably doesn’t help with attracting negative connotations. However, last week, I stopped by one of my regular bars, and the person next to me effectively called me out as a loser (with much nicer language, and beating around the bush). It ended up agitating me a bit because of how blatant it was. I know it, you know it, but does it really have to be announced out loud?
Perhaps they called you out because they're concerned about you.
Thinking that somebody else at a bar calling him a loser is looking out for his best interest is a little ridiculous
Seemed common in SF and other major metros I've lived in. You're not going to find many people doing it at hipster bars but it's definitely normal at neighborhood watering holes.
Second, it’s never cool to call someone a loser. Maybe they were self projecting. Find another bar.
I get a lot done in this state as I am purely churning out code rather than constantly second guessing myself, looking for a more optimal ways of doing it or refactoring the code I have written every few mins to improve class/package structure, variable names and so on. Obviously I would never merge to master after a session of intoxicated coding.
And this code looks better than you think on a Monday morning when sober.
I remember thinking at the time that I was onto something brilliant, only to excitedly pick it back up the next day and look at my code and realize it completely indecipherable. I don't even know what my idea was lol
Didn't work all the time though - sometimes I'd just be noticeably tired and stupid. And when I hit my 30s that tended to happen more often than not so I hung it up.
Now, with a good night's sleep, the very early morning hours (5am) is when I can get the flow state consistently.
I don’t see an issue with the occasional drink. The problem is people talking like the author does, don’t do the occasional drink.