Worried about my drinking

Ok, before you look to the left and see my location, etc... I am an alcoholic. I know this, and up to now I have just justified it with being 22, and having a total bachelor pad.

But the other day, something happened while I was drunk that made me really worry about my drinking.

Being memorial weekend, I had a barbeque, and invited a bunch of friends over. Well, we had just gotten done with the first round of food, and I had a good buzz going. Me and my brother started arguing (nothing new there) and a friend of mine ( a girl ) decided to jump in the conversation and push my buttons ( again, nothing new. Alot of my friends will push my buttons, just to see me angry ) . Well, what worries me is that when she started trying to make me angry, I stood up and approached her. I put my hand on her shoulders ( where those pressure points are, we all know THOSE pressure points ) and began to press down ( I do this to all my friends to cause pain, but not physically hurt them, including my brother- except in real fights with him, like all brothers get into, I try to hurt him ) My brother, already pretty heated, tackled me and seriously fought me (punches, kicks, etc..) saying that I was going to hurt her.
Now, where my problem is; I actually, at the instant I put my hands on her, could see myself really hurting her. Not punching, but submisive moves (as is my style in a physical dispute, ie; a fight). Now, before I go any further, no one hates women-beaters more than me. It is disgusting. Period. I hate the filth and scum that beats women. Nothing is more repulsive and disgusting.
But I became worried at putting my hands on her, and being able to see my rage taking over. I do NOT want to become some piece of sh*t that hurts women, yet at that instant, i could see myself doing just that. I am scared of becoming what I hate. Really scared. Any suggestions ?
I don't want to stop drinking, as I am still young, but I am scared of what continued drinking will do to me.

Drink can have a Jekyll and Hyde effect on some people. I had a friend (past tense) who was like that. Great bloke sober but a complete ******* drunk. He stuck with the drink and moved onto coke and I haven't spoken to him for 4 years neither have any of the others of that group of friends.

I can be a fairly nasty person when I'm drunk too so I don't drink that much anymore, plus I get hangovers from hell which I didn't 5 years ago.

If alcohol doesn't agree with you and makes you more violent maybe you should cut back on the booze a bit. Better to be sober with friends than a lonely drunk with a reputation (justified or not) for hitting women.

Have you tried another drink? My Ex-mate was particularly bad when he drank vodka and much less so on beer.

Why don't you dont drink your next peg at all, that will take care of all that will follow it.....

Life and human relations that you can trust on are not with replay button or with alternatives, once gone they are gone, even when you cant control your urge to drink try to keep it in mind , if you value them enough, it will take care of your drinking on its own.
but as i say it depends a lot on how you value your friends, matter of choice....

PS: I have never tasted any alcohol so i don't know how it feels when you drink and get addicted but i take care not to start, rest is taken care by itself.

I would look closely at what Aspman said. I am fairly lucky in that drink doesnt really have a big effect on my personality. Whereas one of friends at the time could not even drink a glass of bacardi with out going totally crazy and i mean crazy. He'd no longer feel pain and was super aggressive.
If i was you I would change my drinking habits. I'd check what i drink and the type of drunk i am with whatever drink. Sometimes it is a case of being allergic to certain things in the drink. If you cant find any definiate link between what you drink and you aggresivity then you will need to either cut down or stop.
Drinks that have the most effect on people in my experiance would be :
cheap Whiskey (boubon,jack daniels,whiskey)
Bacardi,
tiquella,
I tend to stick to wine and guinnes :p.

I would suggest consulting your friends. The problem imo was more them than the booze. They willingly and intentionally provoked you just for grins and giggles. I might as well ignite a stove, place my hand on a glowing burner, then hold the stove responsible when I no longer have any fleash.

Drinking excessively is dangerous. Beating women is wrong. Provoking anger in a drunk man is both.

Thanks guys, I got a little to think about.

/edit. I love Guiness, that and Bodingtons/

I think everyone goes through a little of that, especially in the states where some may not have been exposed to alcohol until they were 21 (oops, originally said 18, but it was for me, god bless Louisiana :) ). Its all about learning where your limits are, learning how to keep a good buzz, but not make an ass out of yourself or feel like **** the next day. Think of a night of drinking as a marathon race...storm out of the gates and you tire quickly (passout), go to slow you get a headache...keep the pace right and you can have fun all night long and never get in bad shape...

I went through that a little when I was in college (of the heavy drinking) and honestly, if you are remember things clearly, which it appears to me that you are, you aren't too bad off (what made me personally reflect was blacking out and absolutely having no recollection whatsoever about what I had done...only to walk down the halls of my dorm and have people stare at me). What I eventually found was that I reacted pretty violently to whiskey and that I tended to get myself in the most trouble with any hard liquor (my guess being is that it is stronger and I tended to get much drunker and it was easier for it to get out of hand)...so what people have said so far is very accurate...if you are having problems with it, stick with the light stuff like beer/wine.

I personally got tired of waking up in the morning and feeling like ass and then having a busy day the next day and have grown out of it, but still drink fairly occasionally (2-3 times a week?)...all staying within my limits and this is what I would encourage you to do, find your limits and stick within them and avoid drinking on an empty stomach...that will get you every time...

There was nothing I hated more than to see a filthy old drunkie, a-howling away at the filthy songs of his fathers and going blurp blurp in between as if it were a filthy old orchestra in his stinking rotten guts. I could never stand to see anyone like that, especially when they were old like this one was.

Edit**** Applying the Vulcan death grip to a girl while you're drunk is never a good idea. Actually that's never a good idea. Women have never been able to push my "buttons".

Whiskey seems to be the culprit for most people...I drank excessively throughout my teen years, starting at age 14 ( in Bars ) until my son was almost born...which prompted me to stop drinking and grow-up...I've had maybe the equivalent of one 40ozer since ( over 25 years )...I don't drink now for the same reason...my daughters...when they're grown I'll drink...until then, it's my job not to.
Some people say well one drink won't matter...I think it does..if that one drink is the difference between me catching my daughter or missing her by one second...in my opinion it's one second reaction time I don't care to lose.
If you got kids...don't drink...don't drink in front of them or around them...and never when you're responsible for their safety...if you do decide you want to drink, get a responsible babysitter and a hotel room ( babysitter for the kids not the hotel room :rolleyes: :D ) and come home the next day sober...But that's just my opinion.
If you don't have kids...do what makes you happy and what doesn't make everyone else miserable.


Eg ;)

Also :
check out some different 'friends':
Those that push your buttons for the 'fun' of it, are not IMHO worthy of being called friends.

Cool it with your brother too .........

My middle brother was an alcoholic / junkie [he died the day before his 38th B-Day]
I drank VERY heavily from 17 to 23. woke up one day, and decided enoughs enough .......

Still tie one on, but now it's a VERY ocassional thing.
My family are ALL drinkers, weddings are a real hooley [?]

You are only 22, you have a choice and a chance to change.
also do think about which brew does the most damage ------ for me beer was always the culprit, but then I was drinking a hell of a lot [upwards of 150 pints a week]
spirits never did it for me as I would just go straight to dead duck mode, beer got me up, and it allowed me to STAY up..............

At least you have recognized that you have a problem, work from there.

Over to you :)

Straight from the hip. You don't have a handle on the drinking. Anger and drinking make a volitile combination. Continue on as you are and you'll end up in jail.

You do not loose your man card if you get help.

cheers

edit: And as some of the previous posts indicate, get some real friends.

have u thought about joining AA?

Hi,

I know that I am not one to preach on the subject, but I suspect that you should be looking at anger management more than alcohol?

You see if you are angry, you can do a hell of a lot more damage sober than drunk?

Also, at 22 I do not think that you are old enough to be an alcoholic?.........but you might well be allergic?.........as has been suggested, look at what it is you are drinking...........I have certainly seen some strange reactions in people with different drinks of apparently the same strength....

And I certainly subscribe to the view that it is time to find friends rather than parasitic acquaintances.

:)

Well no offense Nihil, but the belief that one must be old(er) to be an alcoholic is rather naive and uninformed. Granted, young bucks like us may lack the experience to defer alcoholism from heavy drinking, and may confuse intoxicated behaviours as being a sign of alcoholism, but 22 is certainly not too young to be an alcoholic. I have also been worried about my drinking at times, and am only 4 years older than Dmorgan. Alcohol is addictive to toddlers as well. This is the whole purpose behind a minimum drinking age in most places.

That being said, Dmorgan, I think Nihil may be partially correct (many other people as well) in that you may not be alcoholic. It is possible that you have an anger management problem and are projecting the cause of it on to alcohol to avoid blaming yourself instead. Of course, I am not a shrink, so take it with a large grain of salt, but I believe it's worth considering at the very least.

Either way, you have a problem and need to look inside yourself (excuse the corny expression) to find the problem. You have already taking a courageous first step in admitting what you have. I believe Relyt had the best point in the thread though, in saying that seeking help for such a problem is not a sign of weakness. It deserves repeating.

You do not loose your man card if you get help.

I have seen therapists and psychiatrists for problems undisclosed myself. Nobody thought any less of me for it. More importantly, I do not think any less of myself for it. I am a better man because of it.

As a woman, and one whose ex-husband is a bona fide alcoholic, I have a different perspective. When I say bona fide alcoholic, I mean it...5 DUI's, 3 trips thru rehab, and still drinking. No contact with his family, nothing. His 9 yr old son hates him, and that's not my doing.

When you say you don't want to stop drinking...do you not want to stop drinking, or are you afraid you can't? You need to know whether you can or not.

22 is most definately not too young to be an alcoholic. In my ex's case, he was full-blown by the time he was 18. It has not gotten better, he's 36 now.

Anger is magnified by alcohol, as are all emotions, but particularly the negative ones. Anything that is bothering you is going to get worse. I learned a long time ago that "drowning my sorrows" was not the way to go, cause I just wound up wanting to drown myself instead.

That being said, I can't drink whiskey. I will fight with a wall if no one else will indulge me. Not a pretty sight, and I don't drink whiskey, ever, for any reason anymore.

In the opinion of a woman, not only do you not lose your man card for seeking help, you get an extra point on it for being man enough to realize there was a problem and doing something about it. You need to find out what the problem is. It could be alcohol, and as they say, admitting you have a problem is the first step. It could also be anger control. It could also be the fact that you have shitty stupid friends.

On the upside, there is no one on earth who makes me want to slap her cross-eyed more than my sister. However, there is no one I am closer to, and no one I go running to when I need support faster. As we've gotten older (31 and 28) we've had considerably fewer slapping each other cross-eyes moments, and a lot more friendship moments. Give it time. However, in some cases, the old adage you can pick your friends but not your family is true also, and yours may be one of those cases. What concerns me though is that you've picked friends just like the family you've been dealt, and neither of them seem to be really healthy for you. Friends don't piss each other off just for the fun of it.

Hey man ,I think just the fact that you admid that you are an alcoholic is a very big step because that is the first question that usually gets the "NO" reply.So I think consulting a the right people for rehabilitation could do a whole lot of good.

If you react bad to whiskey you can always drink one of my favorites, aged whiskies..... I'm quarter McCarthy/Scottish.

I'm a nice "drunk", but I have an extremely high tolerance for some odd reason. I'm what the doctors call a "compulsive drinker". Example: I can drink a 12pack of Killians in 4 hours! I don't get talkative, as a matter of fact, I like to sit back and observe people, it's weird (I’m like a mute). You prolly think I was high off some pure-indica-creeper. I can drink even more than that, if it's some cheapo **** like college snatch-lite (Natural Light). God, I'd killed all the other pledges while going through my hazing in college. I always did envy my friend who could get drunk off one beer........he never understood that.......actually we never understood each other on that issue.


I saw on Headline news some pills you can take for your issue, when you drink it makes you feel like ****.......it will put a world of hurt on you....some type of nuclear fission going off inside you, enough to stop the serious drunks from saucing........ I'm not a doctor, but if you're man enough to admit online that you're a potential whine-o, wife beater, welfare-crippling, American degenerate, slimy ****ing walrus-looking piece of ****. I'd say you're man enough to walk into a walk-in-clinic for a prescription of that.

It's a disease...sometimes genetic......if you had aids would you ignore it, and possibly hurt people around you?

Hi Imitation,

I don't know what they might be called in dmorgan's or your neck of the woods but those pills you're refering to are called by the name ' Anti-Abuse ' ...and apparently if you drink while taking them it can in the worst case senerio kill you...best case senerio make you violently ill...
they're usually prescribed as a last resort for hard case alcoholics who are ' serious ' about stopping for good.

Eg ;)

The drug is called Antabuse (trade name) the drug is Disulphiram (Disulfiram)

Quote:

---

Disulfiram produces a sensitivity to alcohol which results in a highly unpleasant reaction when the patient under treatment ingests even small amounts of alcohol. Disulfiram blocks the oxidation of alcohol at the acetaldehyde stage. During alcohol metabolism after disulfiram intake, the concentration of acetaldehyde occurring in the blood may be 5 to 10 times higher than that found during metabolism of the same amount of alcohol alone.

---

Source : http://www.mentalhealth.com/drug/p30-a02.html

The source is a bit pharmacology heavy but basically the drug affects how your livery processes alcohol and instead of producing the usual spread of chemicals the reaction is pushed into creating more acetaldehyde.

Acetaldehyde is a toxin, in the doses produced while taking the drug it makes you feel like ****.
You will puke and have the worst hangover of your life without getting drunk. An alcoholic in-law of mine is on this right now, she can't use alcohol based perfumes because the drug will react with them and her skin swells and turns into a nasty rash.

The upside is you won't want to drink on the drug.
The downside is if you decide you want to drink you can stop taking the pills.

It would only be useful if you wanted to stop drinking, I doubt you are quite at that point yet.

Are we talking about the same exact pill? Did our FDA approve it? The Canadians might sell you some untested deadly stuff..... ;) <joke> Some people will kill themselves drinking anyway.... if doc says you have a few months or years more the way you're going, I guess you take the pills.

Some just all of the sudden stop and have a "moment of clarity", I read that somewhere! Maybe you're on your eve of "moment of clarity".

It'll be the same stuff possibly under a few different trade names. I don't think your body can create enough acetaldehyde to be fatal (you'd spew the rest of the alcohol) but you'd probably not want to keep drinking and taking it long term.

No idea about FDA approval. Check your email filter some spammer will be selling it.

I don't know how effective it is in use because you could just stop taking it. You'd need the will to want to stop drinking to make yourself take the pills. They probably help to stop you slipping in the odd drink.

Bit like the old antidepressants MAOI (Monoamine oxidase inhibitors) they used to be quite effective but you couls have a high blood pressure induced heart attack if you ate cheese (tyramine content). Not such a good idea to give a depressed person the ability to kill themselves with brie.

MAOI's give you the ability to kill yourself with almost everything...look at the back of any OTC med, and it will tell you not to take it if you're taking MAOI's, and if you were to list the foods you can't eat while taking them...it would be shorter to list the foods you can eat!

As far as the Antabuse...I saw something on 20/20 (I think) about it, and the point was made that yes, you could stop taking the pill if you wanted a drink...however, most people who are serious about not drinking fall off the wagon "quickly"...they make a snap decision to drink, and do so, and regret it the next morning. I believe that they said the effects of this pill last 48 hours after your last dose? Meaning that even if you decided today that you wanted to drink and didn't take your pill, at best you could drink Saturday morning....and by that time the desire has most likely passed.

The simple fact is that you are far from being the first _young_ man that got angry and did something stupid while under the influence of alcohol. We have all done it.... Not a big deal really...

The question you really need to ask yourself is "Does the alcohol control me, or do I control the alcohol?". The fact that you asked the question implies uncertainty. From here on out you need to ask the question every time you start drinking.

I do....

While I was ignorantly diagnosing myself, I found out what a real "compulsive drinker" is on google. Man was I wrong! I merely thought it meant you unknowingly keep drinking one after another, much like a natural reaction, because you don't really feel too drunk(not drinking because the beers are talking to you). It's the same first three feel after the 7th for me. I'm going to say it's !mitation's Law of genetic tolerance. I'm not really a small guy, I'm a Meso-Ectomorph
Height: 6' 2"
Weight: 205 lbs
Shoulders: 52 ½"
Reach: 76 ¼"
Chest: 47"
Biceps: 17"
Forearms: 14"
Stats from my account @ BodyBuilding.com

Come join if you're into or thinking about health/fitness etc.... Morgan.
My dad has account over there; he's a retired Ironman contender at 50+ years old. He still competes in biathlons, but usually the 5-10k runs. He can so outrun me in the mile...hell G.W.Bush can run a six-minute mile....he's faster than 99.9% of the general population. He doesn't bench too bad either! But I have him beat there.....you know how long it takes to bench 270? I can easily do 305 and I don't bounce son! Anyway Morgan if you're looking to change your diet after you stop drinking, they have some great resources over there.


I'd like to end with saying how much abhorrence I feel towards things that get behind the wheel when/after drinking. You've heard of MADD(mothers against drunk driving) well I'm MADD too, I'm Mother**** against dumbass driving......and I do pray if I ever get called fo jury duty, it will be a DUI/DWI case. That goes for any of these crankhead speeders you see on the road.


If you can't stop drinking.....you can always listen to God and join the beloved Corps.
Remember, "God has a hard on for Marines, because we kill everything we see. He plays His games, we play ours. To show our appreciation for so much power, we keep heaven packed with fresh souls. God was here before the Marine Corps, so you can give your heart to Jesus, but your ass belongs to the corps." ----- Detox

Well, to address the original poster heroin is a cross addiction to alcohol and you'll never beat any women while high on that... merely just nod out. :)

Best of luck.

cheers,

catch

My moto is if I wake up some morning needing a drink thats the day when i quit drinking. I drink because i want to drink never because I need a drink. Also I am a good drunk.
As has been said by a lot of people the problems come when it is the drink that controls you and not the other way around.

Well my 1440 minutes has expired so i have to contact the adminidtrator to edit my previous post but no time...Just wanted to cheer you up a little bit..ENJOY!!!