Difference between a partier and an alcoholic

Hey guys. I'm wondering what your thoughts are on the difference between someone who just parties a lot, and someone who is in fact an alcoholic. Assume the partier also usually consumes a significant amount of alcohol during the parties.

What's the youngest age at which one could be considered an alcoholic?

Well, everyone has to come to their own conclusion as to whether or not they are an alcoholic. That said, there's some pretty good standard indications.

Do you drink more than you want or intend to? Do you get into trouble? Has alcohol interfered in your life? Do you have memory lapses? Do you drink alone if there's no party to go to? Do you spend a lot of time thinking about your next binge? Do you arrange your life so that you can go to as many of these parties as possible? Is drinking the primary reason you go to these parties? Do you feel you have control over your drinking?

Some of these questions are straight out of AA pamphlets, some are just questions I'm asking. Or rather, they're questions I think you might want to ask yourself (who cares what I think?).

As for age. One of my closest friends and fellow AA regular started at thirteen and quit drinking at seventeen. I don't think there's such a thing as too young.

Be safe.

Cyran0

Cyrano is right. Only you can decided. Generally when people start wondering if they have a problem, they might just have a problem. It doesn't necessarily have to be the amount you drink, but when happens when you drink. Blackouts, vomiting (to drink more), finding out from friends the next day the things you might have said etc.

For alcoholics, its an allergy. We can't drink just one. Once we have that first one, the obsession kicks in and we can't stop. One is too many and a thousand isn't enough.

Its only for you to decide for yourself though. I have a friend who got sober when he was 15. He's got 10 years sober now. I got sober at 26. One of my other best friends got sober at 20. The girl I sponsor just got sober and is 21. Some get sober in their 30's and later. It all just depends on when someone hits a bottom. It doesn't have to be an exreme low of a bottom either. I was pretty high bottom but I managed to stop it because I knew I'd only go farther down.

Here's the classic set of questions asked that might help you see if you could have a problem. Link to Questions Answer them honestly and you might get some good insight into yourself.

~Rayna

Bluesguy, welcome to PC. I think the others have pretty much summed it up...what are your thoughts about your drinking?

BTW, I was an addict at 13, so, no, I don't think you can be too young to be an addict.

Bluesguy…

The good people of this forum just about covered all the bases. Yet most alcoholics will not believe what they have said applies to them. We use every tool at our disposal to convince ourselves that we are in control, not alcohol.

Here is an experiment you might want to try…

What is your favorite drink? The one you like above all others? Take that drink and make up a bunch of it. Maybe 20-25 drinks worth.

Now sit down one evening and drink two of them. That’s it! Just two! No more. Put the plug in the jug and don’t touch another drop of alcohol in any form for the rest of the evening.

Leave the jug setting in plain sight, just don’t touch it.

The next day do it all over again. Just two stiff shots of your favorite, then nothing for the rest of the evening.

Do this experiment each and every evening (just two drinks) until the jug is empty. If you can do that, you may be OK.

I would have found that experiment very difficult to do when I was still drinking. In fact, I would have gotten angry if someone suggested it to me. That sort of thing is NO FUN for an alcoholic like myself.

After a drink or two, the phenomenon of craving sets in, and we REALLY, REALLY want to drink more. I could tough it out maybe a day or two, but to go 2 weeks tormenting myself that way? I wouldn’t have made it. After day two, I would have drank the lot.

But that’s just me.

It’s not about how much we drank, or how often we drank, or how long we drank, or where we drank, or how old we are, it is about what happens to us when we do drink. It has been my experience that a real alcoholic like myself can’t or won’t do this experiment successfully.

Richard

Lols....I'd pass your test Richard--I'd get a REALLY big glass!

Yeah....I'd poor a 12 pack into a trash can tee hee.

I, personally, don't consider someone an alcoholic unless they think they are or they're causing problems, for themselves or others. However, just because someone else (say a spouse) says they are a problem to that someone else, doesn't necessarily mean they are; I'd want an "independent" or other person to agree. Getting a DUI and/or having a boss complain, etc. would make me think someone is going the party-too-hardy route.

My T would occasionally ask me if I was concerned with my drinking. That, I guess would be the biggest indication of the difference. Wouldn't matter which one was if one didn't feel they had a problem they were willing to address. People with multiple DUI's and jail time, etc. who go on about their "bad luck" rather than their "bad judgment", doesn't matter what you call them. Sad sorts of people who self-medicate with liquor or otherwise drink to excess, putting their health in danger. . . likewise.

Guys, I've been in denial for a long time now, but the answer is, and has been for a while, obvious to me.

I drink to cope, I drink to have fun, I drink to forget...

I've asked myself that question before. I've been partying a hell of alot lately, ever since I've turned 21. I drink ALOT when I do. It can be considered binge drinking, although it's not everyday.

So are you thinking you have a problem?

I'm glad you're seeing your situation clearly now. Denial is a *****. What do you think you'll do?

Cyran0

Alright guys, I have some things to spill...

Friday night:

Bottle of Captain Morgan, and Rockstar to chase it with... tried to walk to a club with my friends afterwards, tripped and fell on my face and nearly got a concussion, I can still feel it.

I guess that's the price I pay. You deal with the fact that the week was terrible, suck it up... or you drench it in alcohol, forget about it, and get all the cuts and bruises and people saying, "Yeah dude I remember you, you were more %#@&#! up last night than anyone I've ever seen in my life."

With or without alcohol, life is stressful and torturous... and it feels so good to get the temporary relief... you can't go a second under stress without thinking about the easy way out, grab a bottle that night.

It's impossible.

I started this thread as if I didn't know what the case was. The truth is, I was just gripping for one last chance for someone to tell me I was normal.

I'm not normal though, far from it.

At least you're seeing it now......

I just want to say to be really really really careful with the alcohol and energy drinks. There have been reported deaths from people mixing the downer with the extreme upper. Its the same chemical composition of mixing alcohol with cocaine. My friend died when he was 25 from drinking one night, waking up hungover, doing one line of coke to wake up. The combination was lethal and stopped his heart. The docs said you never know when the combo will be lethal, and it was leftover alcohol from the night before. They said if he had done it in the ER they wouldn't have been able to save him.

Alcohol and energy drinks can have the same effect. Its a huge stress on the heart to mix a downer with an upper like that. I used to be a cocktail server back in my drinking days, and I begged my boss to let me refuse to serve red bull and vodka. He wouldn't let me because it was a money maker. I was so afraid that it would kill someone.

Alcoholism is deadly. It will kill us if we let it. All of us that are here to talk about it are miracles that we're alive.

Yeah, I know what I did was really dangerous... it's the only time I've ever mixed an energy drink in there. It's terrible because I'm always looking for a new way to get really messed up. That was crossing the line though and I never want to do it again... back to the normal stuff I guess.

I just don't think I can do it, don't think I have it in me to quit.

For you guys, is/was alcoholism the only problem? Did you just drink to drink because you were addicted, or did you drink because it's an enjoyable and effective way to mask other problems?

A lot of terrible things have happened to me in the past two years of my life, and I'm the type who's really good at holding everything in, and I do it until I snap.

There are just things about me that I feel I can't tell anyone, I'd get scorned for feeling that way about her in the situation I was in. I'd just get told to get over this and that. Supposedly I'm a "man *****," though really just a confused guy.

Latest two quotes:

A week or so ago: "You always seemed like the guy who was gonna be somebody."

Notice the "seemed," past tense, that definitely hit me.

And then....

"I don't want to abandon you, at all. And I am here, I am with you, always. But, I'm standing up now, and I'm here to tell you that you have to make a decision, it is all yours....(My name), get your drinking under control, or lose me. "

That last one was in mid-October, she was in tears. And I care so much about her and I swore I'd never pick up a bottle again. And here I am today with all the cuts and bruises of the last time I drank.

I don't believe in alchoholism. I mean, I know that some people drink too much 'n all, but I don't believe in alchoholism. What does that mean? Well, the notion is that either you are an alchoholic or you aren't. And I don't buy into a categorical difference, I think that people drink more or less to cope with more or less problems.

The DSM doesn't believe in alchoholism, either. It does believe in 'tolerance' 'addiction' and 'withdrawal', however. These are OBJECTIVE phenomenon and you can as a matter of fact have tolerance, addiction, and / or withdrawal whether you think you are having it or not.

The standard line on 'alchoholism' is that you can indeed be an alchoholic that is in denial of your alchoholism. People often put this on themselves as when they say 'I was born an alchoholic and I was an alchololic before I learned to talk!'. Apparently, one doesn't even need to drink to be an alcoholic as one can be born with the disease even though one has never had a drink in ones life. And people can indeed be alchoholics even when the person themselves says they are not - as when someone leaves AA.

I don't like the baggage that comes with the term 'alchoholism'. So I go with the DSM.

If you think that drinking is causing a bit of a problem in your life and / or you would like to learn some alternative ways of coping with stuff going on in your life then reach out for help by all means.

I'd be wary of letting anyone give you the 'alchoholic' label though - remember it is an INCURABLE disease that can only be MANAGED - and you don't want your potential employers and health insurers to think you have that pre-existing condition now, do you?



What's the youngest age at which one could be considered an alcoholic?

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No one can understand alcoholism unless they have it. No one can understand being an alcoholic until they have experienced it for themselves or with a loved one. No one can understand what a life altering "situation" it is until they have lived it or watched someone they love struggle with it. Not friends, not family, not even health professionals.

Thats why those of us who suffer from it are best able to help each other. No one on the outside gets it. Until someone has experienced it for themselves or through a loved one, or really opens their mind to what they read on the subject and tries to put themselves into our shoes, its impossible to understand.

Bluesguy, There isn’t anything you are telling us that every one of us haven’t felt and lived in one fashion or another. We are really more alike than we are different. Alcohol FIXED it for all of us. Why in the hell would we have drank away our families, our friends our health, if booze didn’t give us a big payoff? We get it when you say, “I swore I'd never pick up a bottle again. And here I am today with all the cuts and bruises of the last time I drank.”

Find an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and show up. Untreated alcoholism never gets better on it’s own, it always gets worse. But there are many people just like you who are free of that damn obsession, join them. Into action bluesguy, that’s the key. Richard

Although I go by the DSM a lot, the DSM is just a book...do you know that the DSM does not really discuss sex addiction as an addiction either?

Don't get me wrong, the DSM is a beneficial text, a really beneficial text...but I also feel we need to be concerned about how to help define Blues question--and specifically help him figure it out on his own, not the APA terminology of addict.

Besides, a lot of DSM is NOS...so...

Dunno...no one likes labels, but sometimes we get the labels even if we dont want them or not. LABELS dont really matter, it is how we DEAL with ourselves and those others perceptions of our labels (which still dont really matter)...

Wow, I've never read that much into these labels. And ya know, I don't think I'm going to start now. Alcoholic, addict, whatever. I know what my problem is, I know what I did to myself and my family, and people can call it elephantiasis of the drinking gland for all I care. The only thing that matters is that I don't drink or use drugs.

I agree with the advice already given. Action is the next step, my friend. You'll need help. Good luck to you.

Cyran0

Thank you Cyran0. I needed to read what you wrote. Thank you.