I just achieved my first 48 hours sober. This is my second shot at abstinence. I started drinking again in august after spending 8 months sober. I thought I could moderate. Of course I thought so. I’m happier now. Why would I want to start drinking too much and alone again? It took me two months for my old drinking habits to start creeping up on me again. So I said fuck it. I can’t do it. I can’t be a normal drinker. It gets to my head. My thoughts. Anyways. As I’m 48 hours sober, I’m actually quite happy. I made a new friend tonight and I’ve been chatting with him all evening, with a smile on my face. But suddenly, I felt it. The deep down desire for my glass of wine. Why is it there ? I’m happy right now. Why is the thought of alcohol creeping in my thoughts again?
Why do you drink, in general? It is because we are sad people, or are there other reasons, other explanations?
Congrats on your 48 hours.
And welcome back.
I started drinking out of boredom. Then I got really good at it. Drank most of my life. I never really tried to stop. I mean I tried a couple of times. Lent. Mission trips when I couldn’t drink. But it just became a way of life for me. And being in the restaurant and bar business. I don’t know. I can’t and don’t blame anyone like my family or trauma. I think for me it was a way of life. There was always a lot of chaos and destruction but I always survived unscathed mostly.
Doing gratitude every morning to start my day has retrained my brain and is my strongest tool in sobriety. Daily Gratitude, The Air Of Recovery #7
I think we can find you a chair if you’re interested. It’s a great bunch and an excellent way to start or end your day. Or just stop by to see how great we all have it now that we’re are sober.
This one is taken I think.
Bravo on the restart and welcome to this virtual thirsty canoe club! (among others of course).
Why you ask? Why does it creep back in. Simple, dopamine desire. Sure alcohol is a depressant but it flogs our dopamine receptors and thats the pleasure neurotransmitter. So we broke our brains by doing it too many times.
Why did I drink? In the beginning it was because most of the people I was around were and it got me fucked up. Later on, it was just cyclic and my norm and in the end it was so I didn’t feel sick. Off to rehab I went and learned why, how and that there was a solution if I was willing to be honest with myself, every day and help others.
So glad you’re here. We never have to do day 1 again! Night
Welcome back 
and congrats on 48 hours 
Getting there was always very difficult for me.
I started drinking bc it seemed like that’s all there was to do growing up in my town. I quickly realized I had a much higher tolerance than most. I feel like that has alot to do with alcoholism. Once you reach a certain point, there’s no going back. You can only keep leveling up. Needing more and more as the body adapts to it’s limits being pushed, eventually believing it needs it to function. That’s how I felt at least. Like I didn’t know how to function normally without it. Definitely the learning curve of sobriety. Hard as it can be sometimes, I still know without a doubt, if I took one shot today, it’d be a bottle by next week, and I’d be an idiot to test that out again. Sobriety isn’t always sunshine and rainbows, but drinking always causes a storm.
I started drinking and doing drugs out of curiosity and because everyone around me was.
Then after drinking and doing drugs I realized it helped my mental health problems and to deal with life or so I thought.
Then as time went on I drank or did drugs to forget about the consequences, traumatic events or craziness created by the drugs and alcohol and my choices. As well to deal with mental health or so I thought.
As more time went on I drank and did drugs For all of the reasons above but also because it became normal I forgot about my life before I started using and drinking.
But now it doesn’t solve any of my problems and doesn’t do what it used to. I’m never going to be able to successfully drink and use.
Congratulations on your sobriety time. It definitely gets easier with time if we put our recovery first. One day at a time. And we can’t forget where that relapse Takes us Every single time. Recovery is the only way to a productive useful life.
Congratulations on your 48 hours! Lots of support here for you.
I am not well versed in alcohol although I had to drink every day for a long time. I liked what it tasted like, and besides being an addiction it was a hard core habit.
It was just what I was going to do every day.
At a certain point I said I was done and quit pretty much without incident. I liked me better not drinking than drinking.
My friends had a harder time w it than I did. They said, ‘you can’t come’, ‘you can’t have fun’, you don’t drink.
It is an addiction, a habit, and yes, lots of receptors just craving it in your brain.
With any addiction, you are going to have it trying to lure you back in. If you are committed to not drinking you have to build your tool box to tell the alcohol junkie to get away from you and not be lured back in by it.
I think it is great that you have a friend you are talking to about it… and the help of the forum. More help out there for you if you need it.
Do you want to be drunk? Do you want to be staggering around? Do you want to be hungover? Do you want to be always wanting more, more, more…
Most likely not.
Personally, I do not think any drinking is normal. It changes behavior.
Post when you feel it reaching out to you. Stay active here. Get involved in online or 3D meetings. Write down how you feel without drinking and how you will feel if you start again…
Keep saying NO.
We drink because alcohol is an addictive drug. It rewrites our brains and personalities, makes us dependant and makes us crave it, while the only thing we actually want is to feel like non drinkers do. There is no moderation. Once the line has been crossed there’s no way back, it’s like riding a bike. First sip is maybe fun and buzzy, then it goes right back into heavy drinking and darkness.
Congrats on your 48 hours sober, keep going strong!
“Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol.”
I was shown this and I must admit it seemed like a fair explaination.
I drunk and used because I am an addict and couldn’t handle my life and emotions sober . Then I realised I’m powerless over it, It was the first one that got me drunk because after the first I had no control over the rest
We drink cause we’re alcoholics. It’s a disease.
You described mental obsession related to thinking about drinking for no reason. Phenonmenon of craving is inability to moderate.
What an awesome topic and thoughtful responses.
I drank for fun
I drank to belong
I drank at boredom
I drank at happy, sad, etc feelings i was avoiding
I drank because it was a habit
I drank because it felt like the only solution
I drank because im an addict
Sobriety is an awesome gift and its about learning new coping skills and habits. Ive found joy and hope in this recovery journey
For me I just like the feeling. Being sober everything’s in sharp focus, the world feels angular and spikey. Having that first drink gives everything a soft blur, feels nice like a fluffy jumper. If only I could stop at the fluffy jumper stage, but I can’t, I want more of that feeling, and I keep going until that feeling turns into something horrible and eventually into oblivion and blacking out, passing out. Just cannot control that need for more.
I have been attempting sobriety for over a year. I’ve noticed that I’ve recently become an alcoholic fluctuating between severe alcoholic and casual drinker. I’ve noticed that it’s just an easy escape from the problems I’ve been putting off as well as a numbing agent from the monotonous of daily life going through the motions; drinking both to avoid personal struggles and as a means to essentially forget about the time between the present and my premeditated future goal. Although I do regularly drink, I make a goal to abstain for at least a week at a time, during which time I feel my eyes open to the reality of what it means to live life. I eventually fall back into the depths, but I know it will be ok in the end. As long as you’re working toward greatness, that’s all that matters:)
I mostly drank because I had the misguided belief that it would help me manage life’s volatility and my f*cked up emotional responses to that. My tee-total grandma used to say “being drunk every day also constitutes a regular life” (“elke dag dronken is ook een regelmatig leven”, for the Dutch-reading among us) and it took me a long time to learn that I wasn’t supposed to take that literally!
Also, I drank because I liked drinking, a lot. I loved (and probably still love, just not testing that) sitting in a pub, drinking and having a great time with friends and loved ones. Where most people would want to take it easy after a nice night out (hangover-induced or not), I would always be well up for another night out and one after that etc. Then I went through a bad break-up, moved countries and COVID-19 hit, all of which contributed to loneliness that I tried to mask by moving drinking indoors and blurring the lines between sober days and drunken nights.
The rest, as they always say, is history.
This was so beautifully said and accurate.
I feel like most of mine stemmed from undiagnosed and unmedicated ADHD; many of my ADHD traits really bothered me, and I drank or used cannabis as a means to escape myself. My life has been a blessing far beyond what I deserve, I have a wonderful, caring, and supportive wife, a beautiful, likely also ADHD little boy, a good job and wonderful family, so it wasn’t to escape any of that, it was to try and mask my own feelings of social inadequacy, and also to cope with some relatively minor traumas from my young adulthood. I have done a considerable amount of soul searching, and reconnecting with my faith has been very beneficial to help me realize what I have been doing wrong, and once I accepted these things, it has made it far easier to learn how to work on those issues. I’m far from where I want to be, but I’m considerably further down the correct path than I was at the beginning of the year. I have accepted that alcohol can not be a part of my life right now, and it may never be something I can do properly. I am realizing and accepting the same thing about cannabis as well. Anyway, this is just my journey, there are many other reasons folks drink in excess, but I feel most of it stems from the desire to escape something- but physical, emotional, or mental anguish seem to be the power trio in my experience.
Here’s the Cliff’s Notes version…
Self-hatred
Low self-opinion
Depression
Anxiety
Frustration
Social awkwardness
Boredom
Restlessness
Lonliness
Inability to deal with sh💩t
Welcome to Talking Sober, Isabelle. The question in your post is different from the title. The desire you write about is there because it is a learned response, is the way I define it for myself. And it’s very important to recognize this, that outside circumstances (I’m happy, or sad, or locked up) have got zero to do with the inner reality - we drink because we’re alcoholics and that’s what we do. It’s not the job or the kids or the spouse or the material gains and losses, it’s the spiritual, delusional, physical disease we have called alcoholism.
We get sober by treating our alcoholism, not by getting a new spouse or a better job or healthy kids.
It’s important, eventually, to recognize and treat the underlying causes and conditions that birthed and bred our alcoholism. More important, today and every single day, is what do we do to not drink today.