I swear that addiction has done something long-term to my body chemistry that just throwing away the vice and keeping it from my immediate grasp couldn’t have addressed. Just taking that at face value, it’s not a high enough barrier when addiction will motivate you to leave the house and replace your destroyed booze at one of many places you can cheaply get it. More importantly it doesn’t help when things in your life out of your control motivate you to try soothing yourself in any way possible.
This isn’t in the same realm of immediate danger as drinking or drug abuse, but even years after successfully quitting nicotine my body still almost instinctively craves a cig when stressed. Consciously, smoke is disgusting to me. The smell of it on someone’s clothes is deeply repellent, and I can’t hang out in rooms where years of smoke has permeated the drywall because it just smells and feels horrible. But my body still reacts to stress with a flash craving for a dart because addiction has permanently changed my chemistry.
I threw away dozens of half-consumed packs cigarettes, and it didn’t disrupt my access. Did you know a lot of addicts don’t keep big stockpiles of booze or cigs or coke in their room? They usually have what they felt like spending on it at the time and then make sure they stop to get another few days’ supply on their next errand run or whatever, or just outright make a trip for just that. There are a lot of assumptions built in to the idea that throwing your vice into the garbage is enough to stop addiction.
Just “dumping the booze down the drain” or “flushing the drugs down the toilet” or “no longer driving past the casino” isn’t enough to deal with addiction. It may prevent the immediate effects of addiction, sure, by separating you from the stimulus that you’re addicted to, but it does nothing to address the root cause. It doesn’t stop you from going back to the liquor store to buy more booze or going to the gas station down the street to buy lottery tickets.
I’m not going to speak to how AA does it’s thing as I’ve never attended one of their meetings nor read extensively on what they do. However, one should at the very least consult with a qualified mental health professional with expertise in dealing with addiction to try to address the root causes. Said professional may recommend AA or something else as part of the treatment for your addiction, but simply cutting the addictive stimuli out of your life cold turkey isn’t going to cut it. And that’s assuming it’s an addiction without physical withdrawal symptoms that also would require a physical health professional to deal with.
I’ve never met an ex-smoker who didn’t. I’ve mostly quit now myself(I pretty much only smoke when I’m down at PAX, or out drinking), but I still keep an emergency bag of shag tobacco around for times when I just can’t deal. (Well, that, and to make mull with for the occasional spliff, I’m not a fucking barbarian breaking down pack cigarettes.)
During a recent depressive turn I stopped for a pack with the intention of blasting one cig and tossing the rest, but that night a friend let me try their Juul device, which gave me more nicotine than I think I’ve ever had at once. I’m terrified of those things now. Devil fog.
In my case, I tend to have a very addictive personality, so I often have to have discipline and set all sorts of rules for myself to keep from getting carried away in certain situations.
I use an e-cig through the day, though usually without much or any nicotine in. It’s more a replacement for the short breaks I’d take to smoke and think while I was working. But yeah, Juuls are kinda scary as hell. Can’t really get them here, though - AU government doesn’t allow the selling of Nicotine juices, it’s enough of a pain just to get nicotine juice as it is.
Though, I can’t say I’ve ever been one for just tossing a pack, though that might have something to do with the fact that smokes have always been wicked expensive down here.
I’ve been super hypomanic since I quit drinking. I hope this is a temporary effect of withdrawal and not something inherent in me that alcohol was covering up.
10 days, 0 drinks, too many cigarettes. I think I was better off drunk. At least alcohol didn’t wake me up in the middle of the night. Hell, at least with alcohol I usually slept every night. I don’t think I can go to open mic tonight because if I smoke I’ll be sent to the ER for COPD, if I drink I reset my sobriety, and if I do neither I’ll have a panic attack.
UPDATE: Went to Open Mic, did get sent to ER, but it turned out I had pneumonia that was aggravated by the cigarette smoke. Guess I picked the wrong week to start smoking.
I gave up on AA. It wasn’t the theology that did it in, it was the way everyone thought they knew what the solution to my problems was before I had even told them. AA works for a certain archetype of alcoholism, and I’ve never been an archetype.
So I was struggling with what I felt was drinking a little too much. If beer was in the house, I would drink a beer or two (sometimes three) an evening. I knew this probably wasn’t great so my solution was to just stop buying beer to have in the house. I now mostly only drink when I go out, and then I’ve driven so I can really only have one.
I tend to either have a beer or some wine with dinner. At most, I’ll have a small cocktail as well. I seem to average ~5 drinks a week. I’m comfortable maintaining that level.
I’ll sometimes have some Sake with lunch if I’m having ramen, and a beer or two every Thursday with the rest of the company.
I think it depends on your relationship more than the amount, though. Like, you could drink at Rym’s level and be an alcoholic, or twice that and not be, depending on the urges I think?
True, everyone has their own levels of what makes someone an alcoholic, and it’s probably related to personal physical alcohol tolerance (i.e. ability to hold your liquor), frequency, reasons for drinking, etc.
Rym’s level doesn’t strike me as someone being an alcoholic given how it’s spread out over the course of a week. Now, if someone has those five drinks back to back every Friday night, then yeah, I see potential for problems there.
Well, one thing is that I never have an urge to drink alcohol. It’s simply something I enjoy. One drink doesn’t have any noticeable effect on me, so it’s purely for the taste. A beer with dinner doesn’t produce even a minimal buzz.
Short of a handful of big parties or work events, I never have 3 or more in a single day.
Right around the time I decided to abstain from eating meat on Fridays (I’m easing into it) I also and unrelatedly decided to never drink even a drop of alcohol when someone else isn’t also drinking with me. This made me feel less pathetic.
I almost never drink alcohol, so drinking has never been a problem for me. Instead, I eat too much, and I eat unhealthy foods when I’m stressed or feeling bad.
Also, sometimes I can get a little obsessed with buying something. Like I just KNOW my life will be somehow better if I buy that book, or that game, or that $800 Lego Millennium Falcon set.
Psst, probably not the best thread to talk about your controlled easy to deal with drinking habits compared to the folks who are suffering from Depression and such (alcoholism) cause pointing out how great your systems are probably doesn’t help…
This isn’t the alcoholism thread, this is the “I have issues” thread. I genuinely feel I develop an unhealthy relationship with alcohol very quickly if I allow myself to drink on the regular. Just because there are people with worse problems, doesn’t mean they aren’t real problems for that person.
Also, doesn’t junk food is a lot of similarities to drug abuse.
I know I crave and consume junk food despite known negative outcomes on my life. And not just it’s going to shorten my lifespan (which it is), but very immediate, I will feel terrible in an hour or less. Still eat it. Why? Fuck if i know, I’m an addict I guess. It drives me a little nuts.
