When you collapse in the middle of the street and passersby run and help you to your feet.
When you feign being ill and ask to leave work early so you can go home and drink alone.
When you’re constantly trying to think of clever hiding places for your bottles so the wifey-poo won’t find them. Didn’t work.
You use your PTO at work and schedule a day off just to have a “drinking day”.
You pre-party before you meet friends for happy hour.
I have these occasionally and they usually are upsetting–my last drinking dream was a super apocalyptic-gotta-save-the-world one though so it was way easier to give dream Jenny a pass.
My BF used to save me from rushing out the door to work on Saturday mornings, probably still drunk from Friday night. 
I’ll try to bookmark this thread.
I replied a couple of days… weeks ago (the last month was a bit difficult, and, every day being almost exactly the same as the other, I lost track of time, although I didn’t drink, nor had any cravings except for the one occasion, if those were really cravings or my autodestructive self telling me it would be ok to have one - sic! - drink).
Anyhow, today I read some new answers and got goosebumps as I felt reaaaaly scared. I had experienced a lot - I guess most - of the things you guys have, but reading the “lists” freaked me out. As if I was watching my life during active addiction from a sober person’s point of view and shivered at the thought what it was like.
you secretly drink from your other half’s beer when he goes to toilet, so you save a little bit of your own (because he doesn’t drink fast enough and you need him to finish faster, so you can get another round without looking like an alcoholic)
you’re anxious about how much is visible that you’re sipping your drink too slow just to adjust your speed to other ‘normal drinkers’ who suck
you’re anxious if there’s enough to drink for the whole night
you’re stressed when you finished your drink and the waitress is nowhere to be seen
you peed at public places thinking that no one can see you, but when you’re there then sober, you know there’s no way that no one could have seen you (so embarrassing)
you blacked out and the following day you wake up next to a random guy whose name you don’t know and you must google where you’re and how to get back home
when you fall asleep on the tube back home and train driver woke you up at the last stop to tell you that there’s no more tube service, so you must take a bus but you’re so drunk you can’t figure out the right bus stop and end up crying lost at somewhere to find a man who says he’s a taxi to take you home and charge a fortune which you can’t pay because you have no cash left and you can’t remember your card pin to pick money up either. So you end up giving him your phone number with promise to send the money the following day.
you’re spending nonsense amount of money to tipping all the staff at your favourite bar, including the toilet cleaners and inviting strangers for a drink so you don’t have to drink alone
you finished your shift at 1-2am and go to the next door casino to drink until it’s 6am and the bar closes so you must get home now
you’re kicked of the bar because you’re too drunk and you still try to access via different entrance
you say goodbye to all your friends after a night out, pretend to go home and sneak back to bar when you’re sure they can’t see you doing so
the only activities you’re willing to attend are the ones which include alcohol
when you’re looking for opened bars when the one you were at already closed
when you carry on drinking until everything is closed
when you drink at home every evening and have a total overview about how much of what kind of alcohol is left
when you freak out when there’s nothing more to drink
when you always black out
when you try to moderate but ended up not enjoying yourself because you must moderate
when you feel relieved knowing that soon you’re going to drink (after e.g. long day at work)
when you drive drunk thinking you were sober, but found out you weren’t the following morning
when you attend your work straight from party, still drunk
when you worry that your customers will smell the alcohol from previous night out from your breath, because you’re still bit tipsy
when you’re getting through sobering up at work
when you don’t remember most of the things for most of the times
There are so many…I can’t continue otherwise I’d spam it here. But I wanted to remind to myself…
Damn i can relate
It’s crazy looking at this now…
I am at such a different place that I can’t believe that this was me only over 3 years ago. To me it feels like if I was sober much longer, how much I grew since. I am so glad that this all is behind me. But it’s a great reminder of where I never want to be again 
I believe you feel the same.
100% the insanity
I think it is horrifying. Especially the shaking thing.
I’m glad you’re out of this now.
…you check your email first thing to see if you drunk posted.
…a package arrives and you have no memory ordering it.
These stories helped me. They helped me make sense of how utterly absurd my life had become. They helped remind me why I’m never going back there because I’d done so many of them myself. The real low point was the need to drink neat gin in the early hours just so the morning was bearable, and then because it WAS bearable thinking it would be ok to “have a few to wean myself off, detox shakes are dangerous”. And so the days went by.
The boxed wine thing was one of my triggers to seek help as I suddenly realised just how much wine was in that box I’d just drunk the night before.
This was absolutely me back in the day! The amount of schemng and planning, and manipulating involved just to drink was exhausting. I feel like I would have done anything to get my hands on alcohol. Your comments were like a mirror image of the things I used to do and I always thought I was SO clever. Thank you for helping me remember that I am not the only one to act that way back then. I never want to relive any of those cringe-filled moments.
You wake up in the driver seat of your vehicle in a gas station parking lot and you don’t remember how you got there. This is just one moment of my horrible past. I’m so blessed to be alive, not injure or kill anyone and be living the best life now sober!
You go to a different gas station everytime you buy shots so the workers don’t know you have a problem, sometimes even driving to the next town over, but still they know you at every station as “the fireball girl” and have your ten pack ready before you even say anything
You don’t go to restaurants that don’t serve alcohol or if you have to go to one you make sure you have shots in your pocket.
Your liver, spleen and kidneys are so enflamed that it hurts to even move, your eyes are yellow, and you haven’t kept anything down in weeks, but you still force yourself to drink no matter how many times it comes back up.
Drunk texting is just as bad, too. Once you click “send” it’s all over. You can’t undo it. Once I actually wrote a letter, took it to the post office and mailed it off while drunk. Same thing: you can’t take it back.
Hey @Meija
Thank you for your comment 
I feel you, I also see many similarities in other people’s stories when they’re sharing why they decided to dodge the booze.
There are people out there, who are uncertain whether they have or not a drinking problem and when they listen to these stories, they initialy may end up looking for differences, instead of similarities, to justify their drinking. E.g. ‘I’ve never pissed myself, so I’m ok’ or ‘I’ve never been in the prison, so I’m ok’. So I feel that more examples in this topic = better chance to give wider overview.
We have different journeys each of us, we’re individuals at the end of the day, hence we’ll have a different ways how we coped with alcohol back in the day. Some stories will look more horryfying than others, but it doesn’t mean that the person who lived them had less stress. And that’s where we’re connected:
We understand each other.
We don’t judge each other.
Because it doesn’t really matter what exactly happened to us when we drank, we just know that it’s been awful and none of us want to go back to it again… That’s what matters - the connection 
I’m glad if my examples could help to find the connection, because I know exactly how it feels when you’re going through somebody else’s ‘if lines’ and just can’t stop nodding your head, because of how much it relates to you 
You did the point! I am accomplished almost of these stuff. Fortunately I have not driving license, so it is something that prevents me for strange things.
On the other side, I were more focused in drinking alone…and its consequences.
Great tip!
New to TS and love the community and love, love this thread - a brilliant reminder of the insanity!
Oh god, I could go on (the above was just the normalised, everyday stuff!) but it feels so good to even get some of this out there! X