This is a thread for ILXors ON THE WAGON (and for the Wagon Curious)

The fact that there are people who can have two drinks and not immediately want another is genuinely amazing to me as someone who is genetically predisposed to alcoholism.

Yeah, this. At home my brains switches off after two drinks. It's time to grade, finish a movie, mop the floor, etc.

I feel for you guys, that must be tough to manage/navigate. I definitely hit a max pretty quickly after a couple of drinks, when it shifts from feeling good to feeling bad. And in the rare instance I have too much to drink and wake up with anything close to a hangover, another drink is the last thing I want for a couple of days. Not too different from when I eat too much food and just think, ugh, what have I done? If I eat a huge dinner I'll likely skip at least breakfast but sometimes lunch as well the next day. Brains and bodies are weird, though I wonder how much of it is also, I dunno, reverse conditioning? Like I mentioned, didn't drink until I was an adult, and neither of my parents drank or smoked or did anything like that, so maybe my psychological/physiological default is *not* drinking?

i hear the genetic disposal as a fear but as far as i can tell ive never actually had that- my issues around the booze have always been very runnof the mill learned behaviours around peer groups tbh

and ive probably noted it but my parents split the functional/non functional drinker behaviours between them so

Some people don't have it even if their parents were addicts! I wish to God I didn't but I very very clearly do and, yes, it sucks.

You'd know if you did. I knew from the moment I first tried alcohol as a late teen that my reaction to it was very different to most of my friends.

i would say that anything i did too much of was self-medication as well as liking to be high. this will sound terrible but cigarettes really did help me! i had very bad ocd/physical tics as a teen and as soon as i started smoking at 19 they faded away. anxiety. stress. alcohol always made me feel better. i never went to doctors. or got any psych help. for decades. pretty common i know.

i always wanted to do drugs alone too. so sad! and, uh, maybe a warning sign. but i've been low-level depressed on and off since i was a little kid. and i had fun over the years drinking with friends but i was happiest with a bottle of wine or some (a lot) of beer in front of the t.v. or late at night all Yessed out on ilx.

haha, sorry you guys, i still need to find a therapist!

Weirdly, the genetics skipped a generation in my family. Both of my grandfathers were alcoholics; mom's dad died sober, dad's dad died in the throes of the DTs. Neither of my parents is a problem drinker, at all. Whereas I 100% identify with ENBB's posts. Much more often than not, I cannot stop at one or two. So, it's much, much better for me not to stop.

My brother shares these tendencies, but seems to be able to stop (or at least know when he's had too much). My sister almost never drinks, she's a regular but not daily weed user.

*Better for me not to start, obvs.

The genetics thing is really interesting. My mom's mother was a pill head who killed herself and her father was a drunk. From what I've been able to gather, at least 2 of her 3 siblings were/are alcoholics. Don't know about their kids because I've never met any of my cousins on that side.

Totally get the better not to start thing. In general, because of all the above, it's much much easier for me to abstain than it is to moderate.

I really love drinking but I don't think I have been drunk-drunk in decades. I don't do the weekend binges; never have. I prefer a steady trickle that leads to maybe a pleasant buzz.

Unfortunately the result of 30 years of that has been an almost superhuman tolerance. I don't know what it would take to get me hammered, and I don't want to, because it would be really bad for me. Lately I what I want to do is keep it to two glasses of wine when on a date with my wife, and Champagne at New Year's.

Like a lot of people, COVID was not kind to me.

i hear you about the tolerance. and now i just think: jesus, it makes me tired to think about how much i would need to drink to get really drunk.

my fave thing used to be coming home from work and making dinner and getting buzzed on beer and wine in the kitchen. it made me really happy. to cook for maria and the kids and listen to some tunes. as i got older i did learn to just call it a night after we ate. sometimes.

. In general, because of all the above, it's much much easier for me to abstain than it is to moderate.

I used to be a night owl and I’d stay up till 1 or 2 getting buzzed or more. Now lights out at 10:30 and I get up and ride my bike at 5 in the morning. I’m still trying to wrap my brain around who I am now. Started seeing a therapist to sort that out. Drinking through the pandemic and a lot of personal upheaval in the past few years has left me with a lot of processing that I never got around to.

To be clear, I am not on the wagon but it's something I think about often and will prob do at some point. Maybe. I know abstinence is easier just from times I've temporarily stopped but yeah. It's a very weird feeling. At times I've been angry, jealous, and sad about it. I will say I'm better at moderation than I ever have been but really that's more a statement about how much of an actual wreck I was in my 20s and I honestly think it's mostly because I just can't hack it anymore. Went out with some gen z coworkers last month and omg. I was reminded exactly how old I am the following morning.

Because I don't really drink at home or during the week, I didn't get caught in the pandemic drinking thing but completely understand how and why other people did.

Cow_Art, I can relate. I had to cut WAY back for health reasons, and I was not prepared to get hit with 50 years of trauma and depression and anxiety all at once, with no shock absorbers (so to speak).

I've said this before, but for my own survival I just had to start thinking of myself as someone who doesn't drink. It's a lot easier now than it was seven years ago.

One of my good friends wound up in rehab this time last year after spiralling following the death of a friend who he listened to od and die while on the phone w/ him. He is in AA and has almost a year sober now. Talking to him about it has been very interesting. I might go to some al-anon meetings for adult children of alcoholics. Could be interesting, I think.

Jimbeaux - that's very interesting. I remember years ago I couldn't imagine not smoking because I just identified as a smoker. I guess sort of similar.

And so a thread about sobriety turns into a discussion of the merits of various brands of edibles LOL

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux)

i mean, "california sober" is a thing, although we call it "oregon sober" here because, uh, we're oregon. also known as "west coast sober".

xxp My mom has been involved with an organization for adult children of alcoholics for years, she's found it very helpful.

I've heard very good things from several people. Will report back if I wind up going.

"I couldn't imagine not smoking because I just identified as a smoker."

i really had to learn to mourn my smoking. like it was the loss of a person. just to deal with the emptiness and grief. it was really rough. but i think dealing with it as something that was...dead?...somehow made it easier over time.

I love bars but have to stop drinking. My strategy is to pivot to non alcoholic beers. Tried this successfully on Monday. Half the price and I stayed half as long. And of course was able to go home lucid and present.

maria likes to try the non-alc beers when we go out or in stores. there are more and more good ones all the time. she's also into kombucha and hops drinks. i am not really. and non-alc beer just makes me want a beer.

Have been drinking NA beers for a while and not sure it’s a great idea. I know many in recovery warn against it; it makes a lot of ppl crave the real thing as Scott says. Tread carefully!

i heard a comedian, maybe neal brennan? talk abt non alcoholic beer
a friend in recovery had suggested he avoid it & he was like, “here’s how i know i’m ok: because if l drink three of these i don’t immediately need to go out score some coke. i think i’m ok with these.”

my youngest sibling is a big booster of ACA and AA culture in general... mind you there's no pope of AA so there's wide variance between individual groups. they've really gotten more involved with this queer aa group lately, and i'm super happy for them.

anyway, they've recommended ACA to me as well... i looked into connecting with an ACA group but my mental health condition at the time was not super conducive to that sort of thing. maybe once my DBT program is done i'll look into it again. ACA seems like a pretty interesting org... a lot more and more these days you start thinking that maybe it's not the substance itself that's the problem. like, with me, i qualify because my dad was an alcoholic, but he quit drinking before i was born. he was a shitty dad, but most of the trauma and abuse i went through i got from my mom, whose only addiction is cigarettes.

and there's varying sorts of groups... zoom, in-person, people who are strict about parents being alcoholics and people who are like, oh, your parents were shitty even though they weren't alcoholics? come on in!. and then you have groups like the LGBTQ+ exclusive groups and the one that's all about entheogen-focused recovery. which sounds weird until you realize that bill w was a really strong supporter of timothy leary towards the end of bill w's life. not my thing, personally.

---

the thing about addiction... whatever it is... to me, i feel like people focus in too much on the substance and not on the larger patterns

i used to really want to do all kinds of drugs. the main reason i didn't was because i was poor and didn't know anybody i could score drugs from. (i didn't get out much.) then i started estrogen, and i have this whole schtick where i talk about how estrogen is the best drug ever, i feel better than i ever have in my life, i love everyone, i have more energy _and_ am more relaxed at the same time, the high lasts for a week, and the only side effect is that i grew really nice tits.

i mean i guess E is just as much a drug as T is. it's more than just the drug, though, isn't it? drugs are a coping mechanism, and whether or not you're likely to do drugs has a lot to do with how much it is you need to cope with.

it still gets portrayed as an individual failing, though, and it fucking drives me crazy. with me, it's food. i know how to eat a healthy diet. my mom was a dietician. she also used food as a substitute for love. combine that with my body image issues...

and i get blamed personally because plenty of _other_ people have no problems maintaining a healthy weight and being physically active. so obviously _i'm_ the problem. and this drives me nuts because i'm a fucking data analyst, like, run the numbers, see if there's a fucking _pattern_ when it comes to obesity. you think, what, americans are obese because we're lazy, gluttonous pigs? you think maybe it has something to do with the constant insecurity we experience, with the lack of a social safety net, the sort of thing that leads you to eat when you can as much as you can, no matter whether you're hungry, because you don't know when you'll be able to eat again? i mean this is simple fucking shit, to me, but people have trouble wrapping their heads around it.

with me it's not so much that i'm food-insecure... it's just the only need i had that ever got fulfilled, so somatically, all of my needs manifest as hunger. if i eat when i'm hungry, i'm going to be obese. i have, of course, discovered that if i don't eat when i'm hungry, eventually i stop being hungry. also, i stop having the energy to get out of bed. my most successful diets were the "i'm too depressed to eat" diets. hell, i lost about 20 pounds over three months earlier this year from it. could've lost more if i'd burned more calories by, say, getting out of bed.

a lot of these diets, i know what they are, they're a way of tricking your brain, because my brain sometimes gets weird ideas about what food i need and how much i need that... aren't totally congruent with FDA recommendations. like i went gluten-free a few months back. i don't think i'm gluten-intolerant. my entire diet was just made up of gluten and i wound up feeling like shit every time i ate gluten. for whatever reason not eating gluten seems to help, so i'm going with it. i mean, there are probably other things that would help more, but those things are mostly out of my control. feeling like i have _control_ over my eating, that i'm not a contemptible, lazy glutton, that's also, you know, that's really helpful too. come to think of it.

my mom was a dietician.

and despite that i still regularly misspell dietitian, smdh

Calstars, I am a musician (of sorts) and therefore I frequently spend four or five hours in a bar with my best friends, once or twice a week. That is tough to do while being completely abstinent.

That said, I do like a lot of NA beers, especially the Athletic ones. NA Heineken is basically indistinguishable from Heineken. My other go-to is Ritual Gin Alternative. Spicy and good.

Athletic is what I was drinking on Monday, the golden ale and the 'IPA.' I think the GA was a little bit better. Would have NA Heineken in a heartbeat.

i miss wine...wine is so good.

Calstars, Upside Dawn?

That’s the one

i heard a comedian, maybe neal brennan? talk abt non alcoholic beer

A comedian friend of a friend of mine, years ago, at an open mic, had a funny bit about replacing beer with non-alcoholic beer, and it, too, becoming a habit. The punchline was something like, "my name is (redacted), and I am a non-alcoholic."

I have a friend now who readily concedes an addictive personality. He apparently used to drink, though I never saw him drink, and eventually went to AA for smoking pot, though I never saw him smoke. Lately he's been fishing a lot, and he admits that even that has started to become a problem.

I had one of those Revive kombuchas a couple of years ago and it kinda tasted like beer

I would probably drink more of the "hop water" type drinks, but they are so damn expensive for what they are - water with hop flavoring, so not even a NA beer. That must be extremely cheap to make (no malt, no grains), but they still go for $10/6-pack.

I sampled one that was called Hop Water years ago and thought it was pretty good, but it sold for the same price as actual craft beer.

I stopped drinking alcohol completely during the pandemic, but marking the end of the working day with a non-alcoholic beer is a really important element of winding down for the evening.

"Lately he's been fishing a lot, and he admits that even that has started to become a problem."

i don't play video games but years back i thought maybe it would relax me and take my mind off things so i found one that i liked and i played it for an equivalent of months, made maria hate the sight of it, got tennis elbow, and became 8th in the world on Playstation.

Alcohol was never more than a means to an end for me, non-alcoholic booze just seems like the worst of all worlds. Unpleasant taste and I don't become more sociable? Sign me up.

If the NA equivalent of tobacco existed, though, I'd be in. Standing outside the bar smoking with the other remaining reprobates, now that's a pleasant time.

i don't play video games but years back i thought maybe it would relax me and take my mind off things so i found one that i liked and i played it for an equivalent of months, made maria hate the sight of it, got tennis elbow, and became 8th in the world on Playstation.

― scott seward

i got addicted to one of the match 3 games, i've had to quit it cold turkey a couple of times now. never spent a dime on it... something about a box that flashes pretty colored lights at me and tells me i'm a winner in response to my performing trivial actions, god, i could do that all day and night

so in unrelated news it turns out that i have pretty low self-esteem

If the NA equivalent of tobacco existed, though, I'd be in. Standing outside the bar smoking with the other remaining reprobates, now that's a pleasant time.

― papal hotwife (milo z)

i've had ex-smokers tell me that the NA equivalent of smoking is like literally breathing, that a lot of the reason smoking cigarettes feels good is because it requires you to breathe mindfully

i've never smoked tobacco but breathing mindfully _does_ feel good. that should be a habit, replace "smoke breaks" with just being able to step outside for ten minutes to breathe mindfully with other people. but it isn't, because we live in a dystopia.

Non-alcoholic beer definitely helps for me. There's a ritualistic aspect to my drinking, I get home after a day's work and sitting down with a drink is a signal that the working day is over. Having a NA beer kind of helps with that.

If the NA equivalent of tobacco existed

there are all kinds of herbal 'smoke mixes' out there, but it's probably just like smoking a campfire or something, likely not very satisfying

Smoking for me was the whole ritualistic aspect beyond either the communal or solo time-out aspect - packing the pack, flipping around a lucky one, gotta find my lighter, no lighter, oh hey man you got a lighter I can borrow, people bumming, pointing with a cigarette in your hand.

Too bad about the whole waking up feeling like an elephant sat on my chest and shit down my throat aspect (and cancer/etc.).

When I was 18 the head shop sold catnip cigarettes (I think they were supposed to get you 'high' but we just thought it was a funny thing). 12 hour headache city.

Non-alcoholic beer definitely helps for me. There's a ritualistic aspect to my drinking, I get home after a day's work and sitting down with a drink is a signal that the working day is over. Having a NA beer kind of helps with that.

Same here. I don't drink very much anyway - but I had to cut down on drinking after a concussion (which I got while sober!).

After a while, the rush of pulling a cold beer of the fridge after work was the same for me, whether it was alcholic or not, so I started sticking to non-alcoholic more often.