I’ve been reading to so many stories here and reading books and watching videos etc etc etc. And so many stories I can relate too. Low self esteem as a child, normalized drinking by an alcoholic parent, coping with anxiety, coping with a loveless marriage, coping with stress…all of these things are things that I could say “yes, that is me too, that is how I became an alcohol abuser”. But then it is weird. It seems like in all these stories others can pin point the ONE thing they need to work on for recovery. For me I feel like I need to wipe the whole canvas clean because EVERYTHING is why I am addicted. It is overwhelming. Oh, and feeling overwhelmed is another reason why I drank. Yay!!
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yea i’m with you on that. i used to think to myself that if only “this that and the other” were happening in my life i wouldn’t feel like drinking every day. i had thought “well, when i decide to change this or that aspect of my life then i won’t be such a drunk.”(i should mention i never ever acted upon the changes i thought needed to be made, just kind of thought about them) it wasn’t until i made a serious attempt to stop on my own that i realized my brain is pretty fucked and i am kind of defenseless against alcohol until i resolve some of those issues. i agree with you saying EVERYTHING is why you’re addicted. the more i work on examining myself and my inability to handle life on life’s terms i see how there was never any single thing that if adjusted would make me better. the whole time it had been pretty much everything about me. and i’m working on changing that slowly but surely. 
Exactly. I feel like if I was interviewed by someone about my addictions I would end up talking for hours and it would probably be in a lot of circles. LOL
When I try to do “homework” sheets I find I don’t know where to start. I guess I have to start with ONE thing and then move the next. I just now have to pick the one.
I also have many factors of why I drank. Many of them the same as you, and I agree it can be overwhelming to think of the work required to make myself get better. But remember we usually aren’t hit with all our issues every day- so one day at a time we deal with what we can.
There is this, of course. And that actually was a comment made on a video I watched. And I agree. Of course I was starting to drink for many reasons when I was younger but I wasn’t addicted right away. I just didn’t realise that I was drinking to cover up other issues. Overtime I just drank more and more and more and THAT was what made me addicted. It is possible I could have remained a “normal” drinker but it just didn’t happen.
Years of childhood and adolescent depression that instead of being treated properly was pushed down by my family 
I can relate. I just felt ignored by my whole family and yet they relied on me so heavily. Its not a burden I would wish on children.
I feel like there’s so much that contributed to my alcoholism. My home life which was emotionally abusive, my depression, my anxiety because I was awkward, my insomnia caused by my anxiety. Also it was so accessible in my house with 3 older siblings. I couldn’t point to one thing and say "that was it, that’s the reason"
My friend said that I feel too much, that I let everything into my heart and don’t block anything. Maybe that was a factor too. It’s hard to say. Maybe I just didn’t want to feel anything anymore.
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Oh yes, 50% of my family are alcoholics, one parent was an alcoholic and I had no good childhood because of that. I was a very shy child and got bullied for that until I was 17.
I like this idea and there is certainly no surprise that using highly addictive substances is part of what makes us addicted. Once we stop using the physical addiction goes away and we are much less “addicts” in a technical sense.
However this idea seems to contradict a lot of the addiction literature that tells us we are still addicts even if we stop using. Even without the addictive substances we are still people with addictive behaviours who can go right back to old habits. @VSue seems to be asking how many factors made some of us that way. I think it’s a fine question to ask so long as the point is not to fix something else so that we can keep drinking. Definitely agreed that the best cure for a drinking problem is not to drink. On the other hand if we treat the issues >> we treat the desire to drink >> we drink less >> we get less addicted or get addicted more slowly.
In my personal experience when I faced other problems in my life my drinking did improve. After I dealt with my bad marriage I never again had a full on drunk weekend. I drank for a year after that and there were some bad nights but never a whole weekend.
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My question was mostly, am I the only one that can’t pin point ONE thing that lead me to abusing alcohol. Maybe in these interviews etc the person lists only 1 thing (anxiety, abuse, PTSD, etc) but maybe even they have a myriad of issues too. I just find it is hard to really work on the underlying reasons when I can’t really figure out what they/it are. I think I could write down about 100 things in my life that eventually led me to abuse alcohol. Perhaps only a few were the initial reasons why I sought out alcohol…but so many more resulted in the abuse.
Maybe the first thing I should do IS write out as many of them as possible and work on it from there.
If you want to come up with something you can actually work on perhaps you should keep your list to the top 3 or 5 or the most approachable top 3 or 5? I also think it might be better to avoid comparing yourself to other people.
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Great reasons 
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Stupid decisions. Grew up with sober Christian parents. Just pure stupidity on my part.
While we can pinpoint all sorts of things thay may have acted as triggers for us, that isn’t enough to answer what you are asking. If any of those things was fully the reason for our using, everyone who ever lived through or with those same things would also be an addict. But that ain’t so.
So it is somewhere in the strange realm of, “These triggers, happening to a person LIKE ME, and also making the habitual decisions that I DID…”
Not so simple any more.
No it isn’t simple…and I never thought it would be. I just hoped it might be simple-er.
I hear you.
Finding a cause isn’t simple, but thankfully the solution is. Not easy, but simple.
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Childhood abuse that lead to poor self-esteem, anxiety and depression. And i liked how alcohol made me feel “normal” and numbed me.
I don’t think it is ever just one thing really. It creeps up on you slowly. Nobody ever starts out drinking every day then all day. We look for specifics because it can help us to deal or rationalise but i truly believe that at some point along the way an alcoholics brain somehow re-wires so we become reliant on it as a choice to escape or block or have fun even though we know it’s not good and makes us hate ourselves. Probably the same with all addictions…
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I drink to absolve myself of responsibility and to pretend a different situation
I was just numbing myself out, for a multitude of reasons. That’s the past now… fck yea