I’m just curious what everybody thinks out there about if you are sober right? Your issues have never been with alcohol right? Never really had any issues with alcohol. Just drugs and you’re completely off of them and you’re not causing problems but you drink. Is that okay? I’m just wondering
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You’ll likely get varying opinions. My take is that alcohol is actually a pretty hard drug. It’s just a drug that is legal and has a huge market, so it’s been marketed as being separate from drugs. Drugs and alcohol–as if alcohol somehow doesn’t meet the criteria for being a drug.
In my opinion there aren’t any other drugs that will get someone to behave so counter to their sober morals. And it does this while potentially causing several hours of time that are forever forgotten. That’s pretty dangerous. It also kills a lot of people. Its responsible for about 6% of all deaths that occur in the United States.
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Welcome to the forum Robert! My issue was drugs and I never had an issue with alcohol. However… the only way for me to stay clean is if I remain abstinent from ALL mind altering substances. Anytime i put any substance into my body thats mind altering, it release that addiction all over again. Even tho i dont have an issue with alcohol, it could also increase the risk of me using drugs as I would be under the influence. Theres also the risk of switching addictions from drugs to alcohol. Just bcuz u dont have an issue with alcohol now, doesnt mean that it couldnt develop, as addiction is addiction. So my take is to just remain free from it all.
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When I quit other drugs my alcohol intake increased quite dramatically. I’m a substance abuser. Or an addict, whatever you want to call it. Anything to escape reality. Alcohol is a drug like any other, and one of the most poisonous and lethal ones at that.
Question is what do you do drugs for? When it’s to escape reality like I did you’re very probably addicted to the stuff. And whatever the substance it will very probably ruin your life just like I did mine. Wishing you all success and welcome to the forum Robert.
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Alcohol lowers your inhibitions and therefore most likely your resolve to stay clean from your DOC…
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Hi welcome to the community 
If it was me I would think as I’m asking this question I may not have recognised I have a problem with alcohol or that I’m swapping addictions.
I can only speak for myself.
Alot of addictions/people have many similarities.
Please be careful what you do 
Over the years looking back I switched an addiction for another thinking it wasn’t what I was addicted to.
I have come to learn from years of experience that I can probably become addicted to anything.
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Why would you want to drink alcohol in the first place?
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Hi, welcome.
I’m with @Mno here.
When I quit drugs, I also increased my alcohol intake.
Then I did end up doing both, prescription drugs, dieting pills and champange. Because hey, champange isn’t that bad, it’s not hard liquor. And the prescription, well it was a prescription right? Really needed the dieting pills as well, because how else would I loose weight.
At least I didn’t shoot up anymore so it was all okey, right?
I was on the right side of the law, and alcohol has never been an issue.
Until it was.
I guess you can see the logic here. Each on their own, you can try, but there’s always a risk that you’ll end up in a worse mess than you came from.
Personally I haven’t done drugs for years. Sometimes I still wake up in the morning wanting to. But I won’t, because it’s not worth it.
Alcohol on the other side is still legal, and very available even if I live in a country where the government Controls the only liquor stores, with limited Opening hours.
I’ve been hanging around here for about five years trying to beat that addiction. With numerous tries, I gain a few months of sobriety, a year, and then It’s back to day one again.
This time around I’m currently at three months sober. And yet I know that if I pick up drinking again I won’t quit.
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Some people have a relationship with alcohol that’s not a problem. There will be some people who can drink one or two drinks a week and never get tempted to have more. That’s just not me.
There’s no safe and healthy amount of booze you can drink according to NHS guidance in the UK. So even before dependence and problem drinking that’s a consideration.
However, my relationship with booze is problematic and no amount of kidding myself that I can drink in moderation is a good idea.
The addict part of my brain says a cocktail is ok, 5 cocktails are ok, half a bottle of gin is ok…once a week, maybe twice a week, 3 times……and so, my head would slowly fool me back into heavy drinking that I would be telling myself was fine, not a problem, even though it was.
So I’m in the camp that says you cannot trust yourself to make sound judgements about what is or isn’t problem drinking, so complete abstinence is the only way to really know there’s no problem.
I’m such a dickhead with booze, I have no desire to test the theory.
Whatever you decide, be very careful. That addiction zone in your brain will fight rational decision making and try to take you to a bad place whilst telling you everything is great.
Oh, and drink may well just loosen the desire to resist drugs too, messing up that. Then one addiction just starts rolling around with the other, one feeding the other.
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My opinion is that alcohol is a drug, so same same.
On top of that, alcohol is a poison so double jeopardy.
You’re free to do whatever you wish to do, though I’m unsure why one would wish to jump from one addiction to potentially another…
But that’s just my opinion and in no way do I expect others to follow my beliefs. Choose for yourself and choose wisely.
Best wishes.
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Here’s a quote from Narcotics Anonymous literature…“How it works”.
Thinking of alcohol as different from other drugs has caused a great many addicts to relapse. Before we came to NA, many of us viewed alcohol separately, but we cannot afford to be confused about this. Alcohol is a drug. We are people with the disease of addiction who must abstain from all drugs in order to recover.
That last line says it all. I can’t recover if I’m being selective on which drugs I’m willing to give up. They all must go whether I have a problem with them or not.
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I stopped doing coke a couple of years before alcohol, but… I didn’t consider myself sober by a long shot. Plus, if you get enough drinks in you, you’re very very likely to make terrible decisions such as calling your dealer.
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Sobriety means no mind altering substances includes booze
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This resonates so much with me. My original DOC was food. After my gastric bypass I had transfer addiction to alcohol. Addiction is addiction and once we discover that we have an addictive personality we have to be careful with anything that alters our minds.
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Let me start off by saying i can not decide what is right or wrong for anyone.All i can do is speak from my own personal experience.It has been my experience as an addict in relation to alcohol considering i clearly as an addict do not have a problem with alcohol,and truly thought that i never would,is that what started off as a sometime thing(aftework,holidays,weekends)turned into i couuldnt sleep or even wake up without a 40oz.Which inreturn led me back to using because the bottle didnt quite do it for me by itself anymore and now i just had another ism that needed to somehow be kicked and until i became rigorously honest with my self all that happened was drugs and alcohol were like peanut butter and jelly for me i couldnt have one without the other.Remember the nature of the disease(doesnt matter the label alcoholism addiction)is cunning baffling and powerful.Noone becomes addicted or a drunk over night.Noone ever thinks that will be me,because i damn sure didnt,but that is the insanity of my condition always putting lipstick on a pig telling me that if i kiss it enough times that the pig will become the woman of my dreams and yet i keep waking up next to a warthog wondering why and where my princess leah went.All i can say is hopefully you dont do what i did and scratch your arm off trying to relieve that insatable itch.
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I did more stupid shit drinking then i ever did while doing drugs lol. Usually if i was trying to abstain from one i would at some point get sucked back into the other. And for me while drinking, it shut my inhibitions off just enough to say fuck it and dive back into drugs. So all im gonna say is be careful.
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Alcohol is a drug.
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Not a good idea,I got clean 15 years ago and ended up with a alcohol problem through doing this,i advise against it.
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I can only speak for myself and, as an addict, absolutely not.
And, as has already been stated (and I believe to be true): alcohol is a drug.
Best of luck. Be kind to yourself.
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“Thinking of alcohol as different from other drugs has caused a great many addicts to relapse before we came to na many of us viewed alcohol separately but we cannot afford to be confused about this alcohol is a drug we are people with the disease of addiction who must obtain from all drugs in order to recover”.
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