[seashell6]

I'm just curious and have a few questions about anyone who is or was a binge drinker. By binge drinking, I dont mean when we are all in HS or college and would binge drink for the weekend. I'm talking about adults who drink somehwhat under control for months and then suddenly something will trigger you to binge for about a week or so, drink non stop, unable to go to work and finally end up in the hospital to withdrawl. Doing this over and over for years and years.
Suddenly you find yourself at 40, divorced, estranged from your youngest kids and your wife of 18 years, now with a new woman and become a part of her family where heavy drinking is accepted. Your first wife hated the drinking and tried to control your drinking so you believe that your binges were a direct cause of her controlling your intake. Now that you are with a woman who lets you drink each night freely and your not trying to hide it, and the pressure is off to watch your intake, will the binges stop? Will there be control over drinking and no longer affect day to day life?

[madisgram]

well i can't call you an alcoholic tho i am one. here's what i do know. binge drinking causes more havoc and damage on your organs especially the liver due to larger quanity intake over a shorter period of time. many binge drinkers find their binges closer and closer eventually indicating alcoholism. or some bingers are already alcoholics and some are not. it's difficult to acknowledge the problem sometimes cause it's not every day drinking. but binge drinking is another form of alcoholism if you've crossed the imaginary line. some binge drinkers are not alcoholic but they do suffer misfortune in their daily lives as a consequence of excessive binge drinking.

Your first wife hated the drinking and tried to control your drinking so you believe that your binges were a direct cause of her controlling your intake.

imo the direct cause of excessive drinking can only be caused by the person who wants to drink. other people don't have any control in reality of how much we drink or not drink. only we "own" the behavior. blaming is just trying to put the focus on the other person.

will the binges stop? Will there be control over drinking and no longer affect day to day life?

being around accepting drinkers will not help. controlling our drinking problem is non-existant. alcohol controls us. it tells us when to drink and how much we drink.

no longer affect day to day life?

they say if your life is unmanageable when we drink we have a problem. it sounds like this is what you're experiencing. here are some helpful sites. not all binge drinkers have become alcoholic yet but they do abuse alcohol which can result in alcoholism. i don't know where your situation stands. http://www.brighteyecounselling.co.u...-an-alcoholic/
http://psychcentral.com/lib/2006/fre...ut-alcoholism/
here are some questions you may want to ask yourself-why do i drink?
what emotions am i trying to avoid therefore drinking? What emotions am i seeking to gain drinking alcohol?
you may not have a problem with alcohol abuse or you may. only you can decide.
glad u posted. hope my info may help.

[Leed]

My son was a binge drinker for years - then he drank regularly. He's now 42 and in critical care in the hospital with his organs failing, primarily his liver. His prognosis is poor.

Alcohol kills. You may think "it won't happen to you" because you THOUGHT you controlled it for years, but it doesn't matter. The liver cannot handle that kind of abuse. It just can't.

My son has IV's going into ever orifice there is, trying to save him, but it looks like a lost cause.

You have no idea what it does to your family -- how it tears their heart out. If you dont' want to cause your family agony, PLEASE STOP. Hugs, Lee

[Edge11]

...Hi seashell6...

...I don't remember when I crossed the line but I was a binge drinker for many years...I use to binge drink when my gf was out of town and stop when she returned home but like madisgram said I started to get into a lot of trouble...usually wound up in jail or crashing my cars...Eventually I started to drink to numb my brain...I couldn't deal with my wreck of a life...I was a alcoholic before I ever took a drink...

I'm really sorry this is happening Lee

[Perna]

I don't think any habit just stops, especially one that one believes is caused by someone else. It's your habit, your problem, your decision to drink so you have to actually do something to stop it, it isn't its own behavior, out there, not a part of you.

My brother had a drinking situation similar to yours (but without the next wife -- he's been married 4 times) and hit bottom as an alcoholic and gave it up cold turkey, about 30-35 years ago (after the lacerations to his face healed from falling down a flight of cement steps with a glass in his hand (he still wears a beard to cover the scars on his chin), pulling himself up and onto his girlfriend's (he was still married to wife 3) white couch and bleeding all over it (he'd already maxed out her credit cards and been fired from his job for not showing up; his coworkers found him passed out/drunk at the hotel in the other city, where they were doing a presentation he did not show up for), kind of ending that relationship, she drank too but not quite like that. He lost his car, driving drunk between North Carolina and Washington, D.C., managed to sell it to one of the jailers, got on a bus and continued north. . . eventually he took a train on a drinking binge, coast-to-coast (D.C. to San Francisco) and called me (I lived in D.C.) from San Francisco to tell me he had $12.38 left, what should he do? Fortunately our father's sister lives in San Francisco and I gave him her number, called her faster to clue her in that he'd be calling and what was going on, and she and my father got him back to the East Coast and into treatment. The halfway house had to close, earlier than the end of his treatment but he borrowed money from me, got a great job, an apartment, and cold turkey'd it from then to now (late-1970's/very early 1980's). He found wife 4 and is living happily ever after. He will not even eat food that has liquor cooked/baked into it.

I would get some treatment, not drink at all, ever again, if I were you.

[splitimage]

I started out as a binge drinker in College and continued that pattern into my 20's. When I was in my mid 20's, I went back to school for my MBA and started drinking daily to help unwind after nightschool, and "manage" the stress of working and studying. I still binge drank on weekends, and then as Madisgram suggested, the binges started getting closer and closer together until I was binge drinking every night. By the time I first tried to get sober I was drunk 24/7. I've had a rocky few years since trying to get sober in 06 with a lot of relapses. I've hurt myself in blackouts, I've crashed a car while driving drunk, I lost a job due to drinking, I got into financial trouble, and had to declare bankruptcy. I had to give up my apartment and sell a bunch of my stuff.

I'm now sober just under 5 months and am just now starting to feel like my life is maybe turning around. I got accepted into a subsidized sober living residence for women, but the fact remains that I'm 43, living in a room, sharing a building with 29 other women, and living off my retirement savings. I'm going back to school in the fall to retrain, in the hopes that it will let me find a job.

I seriously screwed up my life by drinking. I'm just lucky I didn't kill myself or anyone else. Alcohol is insidious - if you have a problem with drinking it will eventually take everything from you.

splitimage