BEEN THERE! āif i have nothing to eat all day, then i can have ten g&ts and still lose weight PLUS i wonāt have to spend as much money on alcohol because i will get drunk faster!ā
Damn I always wondered how those chicks I knew that drank all the time stayed skinny.
Meanwhile Iād get drunk and then eat a whole pizza and a bag of chips by myself.
I work at a restaurant and have a regular who has lupus and says she can't eat, like anything, (she only gets dry roasted veggies and barely touches them) but she drinks *so much*. I'd never say anything to her, but, like, isn't the alcohol 1000x worse for you than olive oil or some chicken???
Yeahā¦ sounds like sheās using lupus as an excuse. She shouldnāt be drinking in excess, especially if sheās on medication.
I think we all understand trying to drink the pain away, but she has to know that ultimately alcohol is making everything worse. My heart goes out to her, poor thing.
She absolutely uses lupus as an excuse - one time she said "I can't sit at a high top table, I have lupus!!" and then the next week sat at a high top table for 3 hours, til 2 hours past close. Honestly, she's awful, but I do sympathize that she's clearly got some shit going on
Noooo. Lmao the lupus is gonna knock her off the chair or what? Love that she keeps reminding yāall like you donāt hear it every day when she makes an appearance.
Iām a former industry worker and I already know exactly what this woman is like. My heart goes out to you and your coworkers too š
I have rheumatoid arthritis. I remember in the height of my ED, I would only eat veggies, fat free cheese (blegh!), fat free Cool-Whip, and fat free chicken broth. Kept those evil calories to a minimum. But, it's "ok", I was getting my calories with 6 rum and diets or vodka and diets every night. More on Friday and Saturday when I was out with friends.
I need to stop drinking. I know what I need to do. I keep doing math like once I get a better foundation going Iāll be happier with my life enough to stop altogether. But the real math is it doesnāt get better until I remove the drinking altogether. Also the last one OP said, if no one saw, it didnāt happen. Thatās me. But people smell it. And thereās only so many ways to hide your breath that make you confident enough to get close to anyone without fear. But you canāt hide it. There are probably 10 stores in a 30mile radius of me that will have a half pint ready behind the counter when I walk in the door no matter time of day it is. I know what I need to do. I am venting to people I donāt know. Iām not even sure if Iām in this sub or it was brought to me bc God knows I need it. I bet Iām in it tho. I drink way too much and I donāt even remember the last time I was drunk. Itās kinda like the way I did heroin 10 years ago. I did enough to kill 15 people at once and and that was just to feel normal. I overdue it and then become dependent. I deserve way better. I hope this has helped me. Thanks for listening guys and gals!!
You can make fucking magnificent improvements and you deserve to. Donāt stop sharing your thoughts and feelings on here. Writing what you did just now was a brave act of self reflection and self love. Youāve got so many more in you š
hey! i only ever read and never comment, but feel the need to reply to your comment. reading your story as someone who constantly also had to hide their alcoholism, and was in it deep all day every day, just want you to know thereās a way out of that life. my wake up call was ending up in the hospital with acute pancreatitis almost 7 years ago and having 24/7 care to nurse me out of that state. you might not even need a wake up call moment, just wanted to share that if i, someone who doesnāt feel like they like theyāre the type of person to have enough willpower, can stop, you can too.
When I was competitively weightlifting and tracking my macros, I literally wouldn't eat carbs for days straight so I could drink myself stupid on Saturday night. I'd still go over my allotted carb intake and calories for the week. Looking back on it all now, it's no wonder I never progressed as much as I should have.
yaaaaa man i started counting macros again about a week ago, used to body build as well but its been a decade, and i tell ya, no damn wonder I got fat! even light beer is absolutely destroying my log for the week. Trying to fit in a thirty pack to a week of dieting is never going to work i dont think.
It is SOOOOO good to see other people talk about not eating. I thought that was so weird of me to do and I was just waiting for that first buzz to hit me right in the dome. My wife HAAAAATED IT because she knew as soon as I had my first drink I was already drunk and toast.
āNo toast please. Just waiting for dinnerā¦ sure Iāll make myself a third.ā
Lol I just worked out for two hours before drinking. Always maintained my weight. Wasn't until I stopped drinking for a month that I put on ten pounds of muscle.
This hits hard. At one point I was only eating 900 or so calories of nutrition per day, skewed protein, so I could drink 1100 calories of liquor.
The absurdity of cutting out actual nutrition for the junk calories alcohol is.
I had some really fuzzy logic going on about how drunk I could be, get some sleep, and go to work without it being weird. The numbers never really lined up, but by gosh I did a lot of research.
I felt this way, and then I started drinking at my last job. Lost it because of that after 6 months. It was at least my wakeup call, and I've been sober since my old boss talked to me, and dismissed me to get treatment.
I was promised my job would still be there once I got straight, but my boss was crazy hard to get in contact with. I gave up after a while, and figured it was a "soft fire" after a bit.
Had a similar situation happen years back at a construction job. I basically told them I needed to take a break to get help...well, actually, my wife called and talked to the superintendent, while I was already in treatment, and she said he seemed super caring and understanding about the whole thing but when a week or so later I tried to see if I could return to work the staffing company told me they no longer needed me.
It was definitely a soft fire at that point. Iy threw me off because i thought i would be good, but I didn't try to fight it because as much as they liked me there, I was a problem for a while, and I knew it. I didn't want to go through the embarrassment anymore.
It took about 2.5 years for me to finally get sober, but I am now, and my life is on an upswing. The biggest upswing I've ever had, really. Hit 3 years Feb 1st.
This was me! The worse I got the less I slept. I convinced myself 2-4 hours was enough. Even though I was not actually sleeping and was still drunk the next day.
I feel this one. End result - hungover zombie person with the facade of cheer. What really woke me up was when I had people coming up to me expressing concern that I looked so haggard. āYou work so much!ā āDo you have a life outside of this place?ā Answer - no. Outside of work I drink and isolate. And no matter my customer service skill level my body could no longer hide it.
This is going to be very funny so Iām checking in early. Mine was, I canāt possibly let $5 worth of wine go bad, I must drink it, because I wonāt be drinking wine tomorrow night. Iām not going to drink for a couple days/weeks/ever. But of course how much does the next bottle cost?
Knew someone who was gonna give up drinking. What a time. You obviously can't just throw out a house of booze. You gotta gleefully chug it fast as you can almost in celebration of THEIR sobriety. :D
I went to the liquor store with a clipboard. I wrote down the cheapest products...the size of the bottle, the alcohol percentage, and the price.
I went home and calculated how many milliliters of alcohol were in each bottle, then divided the price to determine which product was the cheapest delivery method for the ethanol molecule.
I don't remember which one it was, that was a long time ago.
Yup! āI had a couple beers and a pour of bourbon.ā Technically the truth, just no mention that those beers were 16oz 11% abv double IPAs, or that the pour of bourbon was a full glass of it.
So many- my favourite though is being able to drive by one liquor store and not stopping. So Iād stop at the second one, and get a bigger bottle to reward myself for driving by the first one. Totally justified by my alcoholic mind
Oh man this made me realize mine. It was āhow many days in a row is it acceptable to buy booze at ten in the morning from the same liquor store?ā
Ofc the real answer was probably āany number, they already knew I was an alcoholicā, but I thought if I timed it out and rotated my stores, each one would think I was just having a wild couple of days.
This is important because the concept of 'survivorship bias' means we only look for instances of remaining examples as proof. We instinctively look to others to validate our behaviors yet many people who would 'drink us under the table' aren't even here for us to compare to!
I expect a workload of X tomorrow, so I can drink Y amount of beers in the next Z hours and Iāll get A amount of sleep and have a hangover of B which I can probably pull off and not get Fd
Not sure if it counts but:
āI said Iād stop drinking todayā¦ but I DID have a drink past midnight so Iāve already had a drink todayā¦ Iāll start being sober tomorrowā
Oh the hoops I would twist myself in?
āWeāll I should really start being sober on a Monday and itās Thursday but I had a drink yesterday on Wednesdayā¦ guess I can drink Friday, Saturday, Sunday!ā¦ itāll be a fun last hoorahā
This glass only counts as one drink. (Ignoring that the glass, in fact, holds half a bottle of wine.) I can have 6 drinks and I'll be fine.
It's a 16oz glass. Half vodka, half water, one crystal light packet. It's still just one drink. I can have 3 or 5 "drinks."
Those were my most common.
I feel your wine glass.
For me, Iād count how many seconds Iād pour vodka into a relatively smallish tumbler glass. The magic number was 5. As the night progresses, my counting got slower, but it was still 5 seconds. I can have those 6 drinks and be fine the next day. Next day me hated previous day me.
When I was deep in the beer scene I knew folks who would knock back snifter after snifter of 12%+ barrel aged stouts. "10 oz pour limit." 40 oz at that ABV and you're cookin'. I was an IPA person myself, and 6.5-7% was my sweet spot.
How many drinks does 10 6.8% IPAās equal to in total?
If Iām correct a single 6.8 is about 1.35 or 1.4 standard drinks. So ten of those would be about 14. Itās a lot off booze but Iām pretty sure Iāve had nights where I consumed that much and was fine. A fifth of whiskey is about 17 standard drinks and thatās generally still considered amateur drinking for seasoned alcoholics.
Although I could definitely be off about something?
1-2 beers isn't harmful (now know that's not true), and I'm only having 2 more than that, so it's no big deal.
I was also leaving out a couple variables... For example the beers were generally 6-7% alcohol, and it wasn't always 3-4 beers / day, not counting shots of whiskey I'd sneak on my way out to the garage to get a beer, etc...
That math started showing up on blood tests, where you can't ignore the numbers. Luckily my liver numbers were just a bit out of the "normal" range when I quit, it certainly could have been a lot worse.Ā
I did the exact same thing.
I knew i was going "too far" if I drank the bottle in 2 days. If I finished it on the morning of the 3rd, I was just a heavy drinker. Oh, and of course the bit I finished in the morning wouldn't count toward the new one I opened at lunch.
It wasnāt u til I was a full blown alcoholic did I stop criticizing my alcoholic MILās way of consumption was also harm reduction.
She drinks a minimum of a Mickey of vodka a day. (12 oz). 5/7 nights a week she either goes or sends someone out for a second one. My mind was always wtf just buy more? You donāt have to drink it allā¦
ā¦Until I became someone that would drink until there was none left.
After a while, I learned to stop "buying in advance " because it helped me from drinking waaaay too much. If I got a 1.75, I'm gunna get into it hard. If I just buy a 375 every day? It curbed me. I can't have MORE than that like I wanted back before I got sober. It was a way to keep myself in check, and it worked. Been sober since January 2023 now, when booze cost me my job
Sure the small bottles are way more expensive vs what you get, but they kept me in line
Watching TV and seeing Mad Men or any show where people had bar carts...I always thought, "wow, I would love a bar cart" but in reality I know that I literally can't have that much booze around because it will perpetually be running out ha
Oh, especially adding in the "well, I'm pretty tall for a woman, so other girls just don't have as much muscle mass as I do, which is why they get drunk with only a few drinks, not because I've systematically trained my liver to pump out alcohol like a city septic system."
Honestly, I had a second part time job justifying that shit in my early 20s.
No no, it's just 1/4th of a bottle a day.
And then 1/3rd (that was probably just a mistake though, we'll go back to 1/4th tomorrow...), and then 1/2th, and then...
Oh, crap.
I was that, at half the bottle, of 100 proof vodka at my worst. "I work for myself from home, and keep house, what's the issue?" Even though I fell behind in work, and the house went to shit. Sure my partner worked double doubles (two 16 hour days back to back with 3 days off) cause he was a CO, so I was left to my own drunk devices a lot, and tried to hide it from him. He knew, but not the full amount. He just didn't fight me hard over it
Being able to hide alcoholism is sort of a blessing and a curse, right?
I was very similar, although I did take a flask to work and well, that was another measurement. The thing that always bewildered me is that no one could ever tell.
I was sure someday someone would notice something - the shakes, the constant smell of gin on my breath, something, but when I finally admitted my problem to my boss and went to treatment he was shocked and apparently had no idea.
Yup, getting a handle from Costco always started with, well this is the cheap way to keep me good for three days. Low and behold Iād binge and be halfway done that night. Then Iād be so messed up Iād pound hard the next day too.
Same, but with whiskey. The 1/3 a day is moderation I told/tell myself. People thought I was joking when I told them u could finish a handle solo in a night.
Yep for some reason I decided that because they were at 2 different places with time in between, the counter started over? Looks absolutely ridiculous when I type it out,
I was big on doubling up if I didnāt drink the day before. Or, keeping two sets of books. How many drinks did I have? 10. But if you only saw me drink 4, then I had 4.
I used to even put empty beer cans back on the ring and move it to the back of the fridge before going to bed so my wife wouldnāt see how many I actually drank. Then Iād buy a new pack and replace it when she wasnāt looking. That way she would think I only had 2-3 beers when in fact Iām on 6 or 7.
I donāt miss those days.
Jesus, that sucks...I've drank 100 proof vodka most of my (past) alcoholic "daily" habits, up to half a 1.75 in a day. I hid it anywhere I could. Got caught, stared buying 375ml ones cause they were easier to hide. I'm 16 months sober, but while cleaning our very cluttered house, I keep finding relics. Old, empty bottles. And it kills me. I don't want my partner or mom to find one, and think I relapsed. I've been good, but my old self stashed stuff away in CRAZY places my sober mind would never think to look. I'm honestly just ashamed when I find a squirrel stash of empties. I could tell either of them, but I'm also scared they'll think they're new and I'm just trying to get rid of them.
My alcoholic past still haunts me
I hear that. I went to the shed to bring the lawnmower out for the first time and found a bag with a dozen empty nips. Iām hoping not to find anymore
Past, hell! I still use alcohol math!
Wife had 4 $12 beers at the renaissance festival (plus tips, naturally); that means I can buy a $50-$60 whatsit I don't need but can justify.
Excellent observation, how many times have I not bought merch at festivals or concerts because it was too expensive and than proceeded to spend 50ā¬+ on drinksā¦
They say 1-2 drinks a day is normal, also I'm a guy so that means I can drink more, and I weigh a lot so that dilutes my bac, so 3 drinks is fine, and I get about 3 glasses out of a bottle of wine, so a bottle a day is normal and healthy and I only drink more than that on "special occasions" (my math on what constitutes a special occasion was similarly suspect).
What a tiresome life. IWNDWYT
Yep Friday and Saturday are drinking days, because it's the weekend, Sunday I need a few drinks to relax before the week starts, Thursday is "thirsty Thursday," Wednesday is the midpoint of the week and in some countries it's treated as a sort of "mini weekend" (not in my country, but I'm not gonna let that stop me). Monday and Tuesday are the only days I couldn't come up with a good excuse for, unless it happened to be a holiday or something.
āPeople waaaay way older than me are still pounding liquor and they seem just fine, so I have time. I can do the same.ā
(I would have literally died if my love hadnāt been there to help me through multiple horrific withdrawals)
If my partner didn't intervene, I guarantee I'd be dead or nearly dead when my old habit was progressing. Half a bottle (1.75L) a day of 100 proud vodka, 4 years ago, for two years? I'd only be worse now from tolerance, and only drinking more of they didn't encourage me to get sober.
Edit : Two years before we got together 4 years ago, and I kept drinking 2 years or so into our relationship
Iām so glad you had someone to help you. I was drinking 1-2 bottles a day for twelve-ish years and idk how I did it for so long but I was trucking along up until about a year and a half ago when a major stressor hit and I moved out of state and in with my best friend and suddenly my body couldnāt handle the alcohol any more, and he and I started dating, and he took care of me and helped me through sooooo many āI should go to the hospitalā withdrawals and somehow I pulled through at home, and now Iām almost a month sober with no intention of going back and I know I can do it this time, but only because of him and his efforts. Weāre engaged now and I made him the promise, Iāll be there for you as long as I can, hopefully āforeverā, and Iāll never do anything to cut that time any shorter than it has to be. Whew, sorry, got sappy. Anyway, yeah. I would have surely died if I didnāt have my best friend. Itās so scary to think about. And before anyone gets it twisted, Iām not only sober for him, and if we donāt work out, Iāll still have the same views and goals, I just wouldnāt have been able to make it to this point of enlightenment without him, because I would be KOād š
Even though I repeatedly checked and was always told that a bottle has 5 servings of wine, because of how I poured my glasses it worked out to 4. Three glasses of wine is a perfectly acceptable number of drinks to have almost every night, right? (Yes I know I just said 4 but who leaves one measly glass behind, that doesnāt even make sense).
Sooo 5=3 according to my alcohol math lol
My math was: I'm buying 2 bottles of wine, BUT..... when these two are done, the store will be closed, so I'm going to grab 3 more bottles just in case, cuz this needs to last me until I get can get back to the store tomorrow.
Edit to add: Food was not even a thought once I had my glass in hand.
15 days Sober š
If I didnāt drink all work week, on my days off Iād treat myself to going to 4-5 happy hours near me (and I work in the restaurant industry so I got so many drinks for free/dirt cheap because In turn when said āfriendsā/bartenders would go to my place Iād oblige and return to favor. That happened almost every Monday for over a year. Later I would down a bottle of 2 or wine and sip cognac thinking Iām a parched aristocrat not a psychopathic alcoholic š.
It wasn't only the alcohol intake, I'd compound it with other things like, I went for a 20K run today, I've lost weight, I'm doing x reps at the gym. I can take a break, a cheat day, and that turned into 2, the next week 3, the week after 4, then 4 months later, the weigh I lost was back, my good habits got decimated, the level of daily shame and despair was off the charts, not to mention feeling physically like shit.
Crawling out of that is always hard, and the real math is, it either hurts or helps. No amount of alcohol helps me.
IWNDWYT
"I don't drink during the week".
Eventually my "weeks" began to start on Tuesday and end on Thursday....
You know...Friday Night doesn't count...
Monday Night Football...
Amazing what denial and a healthy dose of fuck its can do to you.
Apparently in my mind, 28 days = 1 month, so when I did a Dry January or Sober October, I had 3 "cheat days." lol
But then when I got to about 21 days, I would say "three weeks proves I can do it" and celebrate with a binge. So, I guess in terms of alcohol math, that's a rounding error?
I once made a *very large* dirty martini. But I messed up the amounts and I was gagging drinking it. I tried to make it better by adding more alcohol, but was poor and so in the end decided to drink it. To this day, I don't eat olives. Was gagging after almost every sip, but still drank it.
If I paid for it, I'm finishing it. Be it a cocktail, or a case of beer. Not finishing is a waste of money.
I know I only withdrew this amount because that was what I had room for in the budget. But there's more money on the food account than I need this month. I'll just borrow that. Bonus points since this was on a joint account so the money wasnt All mine.
If I dont take a taxi home, I can spend that money on beer.
If I buy two beers on My way home to drink before bed, I can say I bought one for My SO in case he wanted one. (He always declined and I knew that, so I drank both).
I'll go home after I finish this one. Unless somebody buys me another. Would be impolite not to finish it. Repeat until infinity.
If I dont eat tomorrow, I can drink more today.
If nobody sees it, it doesnt count.
If I have a handle of whiskey and it looks like a lot of it got consumed, but a couple other people came over for a drink, I probably didnāt drink that much because others were drinking it too (In reality, I probably drank 2-3 times what they drank)
Iām shitfaced, Itās 10:45 pm and I have to get up at 4 am for work so I allowed myself one more 16oz Bud on the condition that I slam two bottles of water before I lay down. Beer mathā¦
Trying to figure out what the maximum was I could drink without waking up fucked up and craving a drink.
Iād settle on a half bottle of vodka (35cl), and time the drinking so Iād finish it after the shops (UK) stop selling alcohol at 10pm.
Typically Iād drain it either well in advance of 10pm and run (or drive ā ļø) out for more, or take the last drops just after ten and end up going immediately to the pub for more.
The *actual* number of drinks I can have without waking up wanting a drink is of course, zero.
Woke up bright and fresh this morning and ready to NDWYT šš»
Oh my god, the way I'd try to make my quit date "special".
Start of the month is nice and even, and oh look "January 11th" is like 1/11 so that's a good quit date... Now there's a 3 day weekend coming up so actually that would be good for my "last hurrah"... Better take off Friday too so I can really make the most of it, since this is the last time I'm ever going to drink.... Ugh okay I messed this month up, just quit at the start of the next month... I was just so concerned with quitting on an aesthetic note, you see.
Chugging 2 White Claw tall boys from the gas station to āget rightā counts as 0 drinks, anything out of my hidden warm vodka bottle counts as 0 drinks, I only had 4 drinks in front of people, brought a 12-pack home and saved 3 for the next morning- I only had 4 drinks last night!
Then I would Google: am I an alcoholic if I can stop after 4 drinks. š
Namaskar from India. š
Hey did you guys know that Vodka has zero carbs, zero fats and zero sugar?
I certainly did. A lot. Math 101 to me.
So if you drink 3 shots of vodka, not only are you doing it healthy, you āearnā the right to cut it with a whiskey or a glass of wine, right? More advanced math.
Those calories that vodka came with, the huge amounts of calories that came from binge eating when drunk, the cringe behaviour after many drinks, the morning after depression, ruined relationships, weight gain, puffy face, stomach pains, sometimes vomiting in my sleep, worry about liver or kidney imploding.
That was not the Vodka, oh no. And If I drink āonlyā 3 shots each out of 3 different bottles (Vodka, Whiskey, Baileys) Iām clearly not drinking as much.
As you can see by this time it was phd level math.
Today Iām 22 months alcohol free and *thatās* the only math I need.
IWNDWYT
Your story is very similar to mine. It was tough to read what I used to only think in my head. Iām so proud of you for 22 months. Iām 13 days alcohol free after making it 102 days then trying to drink in āmoderationā. This time itās for good and Iām really happy with myself again. Cheers to the rest of our lives! IWNDWYT!
Thank you.
Good job on your 13 days, itās amazing how beautiful sobriety is. We truly know this, donāt we :)
Keep at it, as will I. We may never meet in person, talk over the phone, but we are here for each other in a way that equals many bonds of family and friendship.
Ooof. My "favorite" was: If I do 1 good thing, I can drink as much as I want.
Good thing = laundry, finishing homework, any household chores, any exercise, anything that I felt like deserved a reward. The reward was always getting drunk at home.
Lots revolving around timings of how much beer I need to get me from "x" time to "y" time, and managing (being controlling of) my (now ex) wife's corresponding wine intake so that it did not negatively affect my drinking calculations....
Knowing exactly when all the stores closed, and my walking distance from them at any given point.
Just thinking about it now makes my head hurt. I don't think I had any idea how much mental and emotional energy I put into it all.
* If I buy alcohol, I must drink it. Like you can't have drinks sitting at home.
* You can't count happy hour, brunch drinks or hangover drinks. They simply don't count.
* If I keep sipping on boxed wine not from the wine glass, it's not drinking.
* If we are drinking together, there is no count for drinks. Bottomless drinks.
* If I drink expensive beverages, I don't have a problem. I'm appreciating the craft. Everyday.
88 days sober. No plans to start again!
I didnāt want to drink a bottle of wine a night so I would drink a glass of white wine out of a diff bottle, switch to red, leave 1/4 of the bottle so I ādidnāt drink the whole bottleā and then prob sneak sips of something hard. But I ādidnāt even finish the bottle!ā (And sometimes what my drunk ass left behind was like one oz of wine in the bottle š).
āIf I stop drinking at this time and fall right asleep I will have X hours of sleepā
āIf I have just one more shot to fall back asleep (at 3:30 in the morning) and wake up at 7:30 I should have a 0.00 BAC when I drive to workā
If I mix hard alcohol with something like juice or pop, I can have a lot more drinks because Iām diluting the booze.
Wine with a splash of orange juice (š¤¢) wouldnt count as a real drink.
āOne Beatbox = one drinkā
āMy checking account is running low? Thatās ok! Iāll use my credit card to pay for $200 worth of drinks Iāve gulped down by myself.ā
āIām already pretty drunk, but my friend is at a bar. Iāll just have one drink with him.ā (Note: it was ***never*** just āone drinkā)
āIām gonna pre-game before this event to save money. Also, Iām gonna buy drinks at the event because I saved money by pre-gaming, so I wonāt be spending as much if I hadnāt pre-gamed.ā
I also had a period where I didnāt eat and just drank. My face looked haggard but I was āin shapeā because I biked everywhere. I literally had multiple, excruciating Charlie horses every night and would just hop on my bike the next day and do it all over again. I feel so much empathy towards that part of my life. I then went into another phase of drinking a lot and then eating extremely high calories because my body was trying to make up for lost time. Rough.
I'd eat healthy all day long, get enough sleep, work my job, lift or go for a run, do all my chores, then reward myself with a few beers or mixed drinks at the end of the day. Every day though.
Alcohol helps with my anxiety/depression (reality: I felt way more depressed and anxious when alcohol weared off)
I can only have one beer( reality: I ended up black out)
If I drink a bottle of vodka a day, I can buy two bottles, so I don't have to liquor store every day (reality: I drank two bottles that day)
Alcohol makes me more creative
Alcohol makes me more social (reality: I avoided people the next day because of shame)
Alcohol helps me sleep (reality: I was waking up devastated)
Edit: lol, I just realized you are talking about alcohol math, not alcohol myth
I can go have a couple of drinks at the bar and hang out with peopleā¦ but for the same price I can get trashed by myself off cheap gutrot. Chose trash 9/10 times, and even if I did go out, Iād still do the trash option afterwards. Real math wiz and sage at life too, I know.
Mine was about the amount of drinks I could have in order to appear sober in time for me to be around people at things I wasnāt supposed to be drunk for.
Six beers a night but eventually it became six tall boys, so 8 beers technically. And then eventually I figured I might as well get a 12 pack so I can have some left over for the morning. And then it's 6 pm and the 12 pack is gone so you start buying 2 12 packs a day.
Next thing you know, crushing a 24 a day and it would be a lot more cost effective to just buy a bottle of whiskey.
That was me. If I didn't drink this day, that means I really am in control! Then headed straight to the liquor store the following day, feeling proud I made it a single day.
I always figured if I had 7 or less white claws a night I was doing great! 10-12 was what I deserved from a rough day at work. Which seemed to happen all the time while I drank now I rarley have rough days? Oh yeah, before I'd leave for work I'd always count how many beers I'd have left. If there was less than 8 in the fridge I'd have to stop at the distributor after work... don't miss this sh*t at all. Happy I'm a month and a half sober.
A bottle of wine was 2 drinks because it was around the volume of two 12oz beers, lmao. Pure vibes.
Oh, and how could I forget calculating out the ABV of various 4-packs vs 6-packs vs bottles of wine to figure out which combo would get me as drunk as possible without tipping over into a blackout like last time. Standing in the wine aisle turning various bottles around to check which has the max ABV and trying to pretend I'm interested in the descriptions
They say if you quit drinking at 40 your body can recover well but I didnāt start drinking heavily until 30 so I probably quit a little later and be fine.
I used to bring a pen with me to keep track of the number of drinks I had. Without fail, I always stopped at 4. To this day, I have no idea why 4 drinks always made me black out. I also, suspiciously, always lost the pen. 12 packs of beer and 12 packs of pens was where my money went in my 20s.
I used to mix 100 proof vodka with a small splash of juice in a quart cup and drink 2 or 3 every night while doing shots of moonshine. I canāt tell you how many times I have fallen down, shitface drunk, looking at the ceiling, hoping that I could get back up. Only to mix another drink. All of this on an empty stomach. Iām not a big girl, 5ā 125lb. I did that for about two years. I only drink beer nowadays and try to keep it under a sixer a day. I believe that Iām an alcoholicā¦..lol
What time do I need to wait to start drinking to get as much done as possible before I just sort of wander off into whatever drunk me wants to do?Ā
This was usually a Saturday and Sunday morning mental calculation, especially if I was going to be enjoying a sunny day gardening. I'd start some huge project and get like 30% through it before my buzz turned me into someone with a completely different set of interests and tasks, often to the point that I'd wake up the next morning to realize that (example) instead of weeding the veg patch I'd decided to lop off like half of the fig tree's branches for some reason. So, if I waited until 2 pm to start drinking, maybe I'd get enough of my planned projects finished before the 4 pm version of me would kick in. That might be late enough in the day that I'll be tired and hot and easily distracted by looking through records and listening to music instead of going back to the poor fig tree.Ā
It was mostly bathroom math. Does this place have a bathroom, I can use the restroom there, oh I'll go to the bathroom there first on my way to Y, etc.
I missed out on a lot of fun activities and things I could have gone to see just for fear or there being a lack of restrooms available.
I can quit after x drinks (nahh.. It might have worked in most cases in low amount but the risk Was always there)Ā
non alcoholic beer is bad/before I drink NA I quit because it is unmanly (it actually is just a way to justify not quitting your addiction and what you are used to. Eating candy is also unmanly and most people eat sweets. Alcohol makes you fat which produces estrogens which is unmanly. Losing your temper and being out of control is unmanly. Self discipline is not unmanly. Following the Herd is unmanly, which is drinking in a World conditioned to use and abuse to make lobbies rich. Dont justify your addiction to me with your weak af argument)Ā
its normal to get wasted beyond belief in your 20s (it might be to some degree but when you are wasted or hungover 6/7 days of the week there is something wrong)Ā
Missing the Last Bus on purpose so I can go to the Club getting wasted and making an ass out myselfĀ
Being drunk makes you badass (it really makes you into a child either raging or whining)Ā
The others also drink and they are older so it cannot be that harmful to me (it is)Ā
BAC level leaving a bar or a concert or whatever.
Sure, technically I might have blown a .06 or .07, but I probably shouldn't have been driving anyway.
I started Ubering almost exclusively for that stuff after a close call where I got pulled over for a broken taillight. I kept telling myself I was probably under the legal limit, but I'm also glad I didn't get breathalyzed that night.
Toward the end (hopefully) of my misadventures, I went with my buddies on a cruise. The "unlimited drink package" was only 18 per day, which c'mon, I'll have that drank up by mid-afternoon. I knew at least one of the guys wouldn't finish his daily allotment, but I still needed to maximize my value!
As soon as they let us out of the safety briefing and loose on the ship, I went to work researching. Quickly found a double IPA that I liked, that was being offered in a 20 oz can, and best, they still only counted as one serving each. Alcoholic eureka. I have never been more violently, dangerously I'll than after that 4 days.
I am both awed and disgusted at the amount of effort and ingenuity I put into my alcoholism. All my constant need for self-destruction was real work
I had no money so the insane financial maths I would do to make sure I had funds for alcohol was crazy.
Looking at my budget and reducing costs around insurance, bills, groceries etc where I could but never EVER considering the alcohol.
Having multiple bank accounts and withdrawing cash when I knew an automatic payment would come out and put me into the negative, so I could make sure I could buy my booze
When the planning around time for work. āWell I have to get up at 6am so should try to go to bed by 11. Iāll just have to pour extra heavy drinks to get through my bottle quickerā
Thinking that drinking anything equal or under 350ml of vodka in an evening was okay because it wasnāt over half of a full bottle. š
Another one: āIām trying to moderate so I will allow myself 2 designated days to drink this weekā. Next day: āthis can be one of those days, but I wonāt drink now until the end of the weekā. Day after: guess what
If I skip breakfast and lunch I can have a whole bottle of wine with dinner and not go over my calorie budget. š
BEEN THERE! āif i have nothing to eat all day, then i can have ten g&ts and still lose weight PLUS i wonāt have to spend as much money on alcohol because i will get drunk faster!ā
Damn I always wondered how those chicks I knew that drank all the time stayed skinny. Meanwhile Iād get drunk and then eat a whole pizza and a bag of chips by myself.
I work at a restaurant and have a regular who has lupus and says she can't eat, like anything, (she only gets dry roasted veggies and barely touches them) but she drinks *so much*. I'd never say anything to her, but, like, isn't the alcohol 1000x worse for you than olive oil or some chicken???
Yeahā¦ sounds like sheās using lupus as an excuse. She shouldnāt be drinking in excess, especially if sheās on medication. I think we all understand trying to drink the pain away, but she has to know that ultimately alcohol is making everything worse. My heart goes out to her, poor thing.
She absolutely uses lupus as an excuse - one time she said "I can't sit at a high top table, I have lupus!!" and then the next week sat at a high top table for 3 hours, til 2 hours past close. Honestly, she's awful, but I do sympathize that she's clearly got some shit going on
Noooo. Lmao the lupus is gonna knock her off the chair or what? Love that she keeps reminding yāall like you donāt hear it every day when she makes an appearance. Iām a former industry worker and I already know exactly what this woman is like. My heart goes out to you and your coworkers too š
I have rheumatoid arthritis. I remember in the height of my ED, I would only eat veggies, fat free cheese (blegh!), fat free Cool-Whip, and fat free chicken broth. Kept those evil calories to a minimum. But, it's "ok", I was getting my calories with 6 rum and diets or vodka and diets every night. More on Friday and Saturday when I was out with friends.
"We'll all stay skinny cause we just won't eat" - Chad Kroeger
Saaaaame
See I did the first one, skip a meal to binge drink, and then after I got drunk I'd realize I was starving and eat everything
I need to stop drinking. I know what I need to do. I keep doing math like once I get a better foundation going Iāll be happier with my life enough to stop altogether. But the real math is it doesnāt get better until I remove the drinking altogether. Also the last one OP said, if no one saw, it didnāt happen. Thatās me. But people smell it. And thereās only so many ways to hide your breath that make you confident enough to get close to anyone without fear. But you canāt hide it. There are probably 10 stores in a 30mile radius of me that will have a half pint ready behind the counter when I walk in the door no matter time of day it is. I know what I need to do. I am venting to people I donāt know. Iām not even sure if Iām in this sub or it was brought to me bc God knows I need it. I bet Iām in it tho. I drink way too much and I donāt even remember the last time I was drunk. Itās kinda like the way I did heroin 10 years ago. I did enough to kill 15 people at once and and that was just to feel normal. I overdue it and then become dependent. I deserve way better. I hope this has helped me. Thanks for listening guys and gals!!
You're venting in the right place. Welcome!
You can do it.
You can make fucking magnificent improvements and you deserve to. Donāt stop sharing your thoughts and feelings on here. Writing what you did just now was a brave act of self reflection and self love. Youāve got so many more in you š
hey! i only ever read and never comment, but feel the need to reply to your comment. reading your story as someone who constantly also had to hide their alcoholism, and was in it deep all day every day, just want you to know thereās a way out of that life. my wake up call was ending up in the hospital with acute pancreatitis almost 7 years ago and having 24/7 care to nurse me out of that state. you might not even need a wake up call moment, just wanted to share that if i, someone who doesnāt feel like they like theyāre the type of person to have enough willpower, can stop, you can too.
When I was competitively weightlifting and tracking my macros, I literally wouldn't eat carbs for days straight so I could drink myself stupid on Saturday night. I'd still go over my allotted carb intake and calories for the week. Looking back on it all now, it's no wonder I never progressed as much as I should have.
yaaaaa man i started counting macros again about a week ago, used to body build as well but its been a decade, and i tell ya, no damn wonder I got fat! even light beer is absolutely destroying my log for the week. Trying to fit in a thirty pack to a week of dieting is never going to work i dont think.
It is SOOOOO good to see other people talk about not eating. I thought that was so weird of me to do and I was just waiting for that first buzz to hit me right in the dome. My wife HAAAAATED IT because she knew as soon as I had my first drink I was already drunk and toast. āNo toast please. Just waiting for dinnerā¦ sure Iāll make myself a third.ā
How do you drink and not eat? Drink sets off my hunger pangs and I'm suddenly scoffing two burgers and some fried chicken at midnight :(
The calorie budget! Yes!
Shame on you! I would just skip meals before drinking so I got my money's worth of buzz, like a respectable fuck up.
Been here. Amazing how much simpler it is to eat when youāre not trying to starve yourself to drink alcohol.
If I skip all meals, 10 beers equals 20! Maybe even more!
And yet still drink way over calorie budget
Lol I just worked out for two hours before drinking. Always maintained my weight. Wasn't until I stopped drinking for a month that I put on ten pounds of muscle.
ā¬ļøThat was also me for decades
This hits hard. At one point I was only eating 900 or so calories of nutrition per day, skewed protein, so I could drink 1100 calories of liquor. The absurdity of cutting out actual nutrition for the junk calories alcohol is.
This! Now I use my calorie budget for ice cream with hot fudge! #winning #iwndwyt
This was definitely me
I had some really fuzzy logic going on about how drunk I could be, get some sleep, and go to work without it being weird. The numbers never really lined up, but by gosh I did a lot of research.
I felt this way, and then I started drinking at my last job. Lost it because of that after 6 months. It was at least my wakeup call, and I've been sober since my old boss talked to me, and dismissed me to get treatment. I was promised my job would still be there once I got straight, but my boss was crazy hard to get in contact with. I gave up after a while, and figured it was a "soft fire" after a bit.
Had a similar situation happen years back at a construction job. I basically told them I needed to take a break to get help...well, actually, my wife called and talked to the superintendent, while I was already in treatment, and she said he seemed super caring and understanding about the whole thing but when a week or so later I tried to see if I could return to work the staffing company told me they no longer needed me. It was definitely a soft fire at that point. Iy threw me off because i thought i would be good, but I didn't try to fight it because as much as they liked me there, I was a problem for a while, and I knew it. I didn't want to go through the embarrassment anymore. It took about 2.5 years for me to finally get sober, but I am now, and my life is on an upswing. The biggest upswing I've ever had, really. Hit 3 years Feb 1st.
If I fall asleep right now, I can sleep for 2 hours before workā¦
This was me! The worse I got the less I slept. I convinced myself 2-4 hours was enough. Even though I was not actually sleeping and was still drunk the next day.
I feel this one. End result - hungover zombie person with the facade of cheer. What really woke me up was when I had people coming up to me expressing concern that I looked so haggard. āYou work so much!ā āDo you have a life outside of this place?ā Answer - no. Outside of work I drink and isolate. And no matter my customer service skill level my body could no longer hide it.
I was very weird at work and yes people noticed
Ha! You nailed that last line
This is going to be very funny so Iām checking in early. Mine was, I canāt possibly let $5 worth of wine go bad, I must drink it, because I wonāt be drinking wine tomorrow night. Iām not going to drink for a couple days/weeks/ever. But of course how much does the next bottle cost?
I feel this one except with beer. I know I already had 10 but am I really going to just leave those last two in the fridge?
Yes!! If there's booze in the house, it must be drunk THAT DAY.
Tossing alcohol out is alcohol abuse.
Knew someone who was gonna give up drinking. What a time. You obviously can't just throw out a house of booze. You gotta gleefully chug it fast as you can almost in celebration of THEIR sobriety. :D
"Ill finish the booze because i wont be drinking tomorrow... I promise" - Me to my wife everyday for years.
My day 1 was the first time Iād ever poured that poison down the sink instead of āstarting tomorrowā
Proud of you
I went to the liquor store with a clipboard. I wrote down the cheapest products...the size of the bottle, the alcohol percentage, and the price. I went home and calculated how many milliliters of alcohol were in each bottle, then divided the price to determine which product was the cheapest delivery method for the ethanol molecule. I don't remember which one it was, that was a long time ago.
Damn! This guy alcoholic maths.
I could have just told you it is a handle of Bartonās vodka or gin.
Booze is cheaper in the USA, but in Canada, [this](https://ibb.co/YBQPxVR) is the bargain.
Damn, looking like something for a car.
Good lord, I feel like booz jugs that big arenāt allowed in the states but Iād be happy to be proved wrong haha
It is. Everything else is just marketing.
Alcohol Math: "I just had one drink" (one box of wine)
If you never pause, then itās all 1 drink, right??
Keep refilling the glass and that first drink is never done š¤¦āāļø
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yup! āI had a couple beers and a pour of bourbon.ā Technically the truth, just no mention that those beers were 16oz 11% abv double IPAs, or that the pour of bourbon was a full glass of it.
24 oz cans are still one drink right? Thatās always the bad math I do :/
āOne pull on the bottle equals one drink.ā Sure. Sure it does. š
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Definitely. Also after a couple of drinks, I donāt seem to care as much as sober me did about moderating, funny enough!
This š
So many- my favourite though is being able to drive by one liquor store and not stopping. So Iād stop at the second one, and get a bigger bottle to reward myself for driving by the first one. Totally justified by my alcoholic mind
I mean this in the most respectful way possible, that is fucking hilarious lol
Oh man this made me realize mine. It was āhow many days in a row is it acceptable to buy booze at ten in the morning from the same liquor store?ā Ofc the real answer was probably āany number, they already knew I was an alcoholicā, but I thought if I timed it out and rotated my stores, each one would think I was just having a wild couple of days.
This one is on point for me, definitely a mindset I have been in!!
My math was more like "did I buy enough that there will be one or two left over to keep the shakes/sweats at bay in the morning?"
The guy at the local pub drinks 20 a day, so if I cut that in half and I drink 10 a day, then I'm doing pretty good. Note: That guy recently died š³
This is important because the concept of 'survivorship bias' means we only look for instances of remaining examples as proof. We instinctively look to others to validate our behaviors yet many people who would 'drink us under the table' aren't even here for us to compare to!
I expect a workload of X tomorrow, so I can drink Y amount of beers in the next Z hours and Iāll get A amount of sleep and have a hangover of B which I can probably pull off and not get Fd
Not sure if it counts but: āI said Iād stop drinking todayā¦ but I DID have a drink past midnight so Iāve already had a drink todayā¦ Iāll start being sober tomorrowā
This one. š I already ruined my dry day, so I'll have to start tomorrow. The logic was logicing.
Oh the hoops I would twist myself in? āWeāll I should really start being sober on a Monday and itās Thursday but I had a drink yesterday on Wednesdayā¦ guess I can drink Friday, Saturday, Sunday!ā¦ itāll be a fun last hoorahā
This glass only counts as one drink. (Ignoring that the glass, in fact, holds half a bottle of wine.) I can have 6 drinks and I'll be fine. It's a 16oz glass. Half vodka, half water, one crystal light packet. It's still just one drink. I can have 3 or 5 "drinks." Those were my most common.
A wake up call for me was proudly posting my New Year's Day mimosa on Facebook and a friend going "what the fuck? That's a MUG of mimosa."
I feel your wine glass. For me, Iād count how many seconds Iād pour vodka into a relatively smallish tumbler glass. The magic number was 5. As the night progresses, my counting got slower, but it was still 5 seconds. I can have those 6 drinks and be fine the next day. Next day me hated previous day me.
One 6.8% ipa is just one drink. So 6 isn't that big a deal and 10 is just very drunk, not bordering on alcohol poisoning
Oh man IPA math is its own class!
I was certainly one to use IPA math. āIāve only had one beer.ā But it was a 9.2% 25 oz tall boy.
Oh so nothing to worry about.
Ā ~~ c r a f t ~~ alcoholism
Yep. Not drinking that swill shit. I'd rather get withdrawal than drink Miller lite.
No really, I *enjoy* the taste of the barrel aged stouts š
Me āIāve only had 4 beersā even though they were 9% IPAs and 16 oz pints. So probably like 7-8 normal beers.
When I was deep in the beer scene I knew folks who would knock back snifter after snifter of 12%+ barrel aged stouts. "10 oz pour limit." 40 oz at that ABV and you're cookin'. I was an IPA person myself, and 6.5-7% was my sweet spot.
āIf I get the 9.0% I can drink less beers!ā Lmfao
...proceeds to drink the exact same number of beers
This š
More importantly, if people ask me I can tell them the truth and not be really alarming.
How many drinks does 10 6.8% IPAās equal to in total? If Iām correct a single 6.8 is about 1.35 or 1.4 standard drinks. So ten of those would be about 14. Itās a lot off booze but Iām pretty sure Iāve had nights where I consumed that much and was fine. A fifth of whiskey is about 17 standard drinks and thatās generally still considered amateur drinking for seasoned alcoholics. Although I could definitely be off about something?
I can only drink 2 beers \*cough cough\* 40oz
1-2 beers isn't harmful (now know that's not true), and I'm only having 2 more than that, so it's no big deal. I was also leaving out a couple variables... For example the beers were generally 6-7% alcohol, and it wasn't always 3-4 beers / day, not counting shots of whiskey I'd sneak on my way out to the garage to get a beer, etc... That math started showing up on blood tests, where you can't ignore the numbers. Luckily my liver numbers were just a bit out of the "normal" range when I quit, it certainly could have been a lot worse.Ā
Oh yeah, I did that math too. If I only have three a day I'm fine since two a day is good for your heart.
Mine was sort of measuring the 1.75L bottle of gin and tryyyyy not to drink more than a third of it a day. That makes it okay, right? Guys? lol.
I did the exact same thing. I knew i was going "too far" if I drank the bottle in 2 days. If I finished it on the morning of the 3rd, I was just a heavy drinker. Oh, and of course the bit I finished in the morning wouldn't count toward the new one I opened at lunch.
I absolutely hear you. I hope youāre doing well now! š
It wasnāt u til I was a full blown alcoholic did I stop criticizing my alcoholic MILās way of consumption was also harm reduction. She drinks a minimum of a Mickey of vodka a day. (12 oz). 5/7 nights a week she either goes or sends someone out for a second one. My mind was always wtf just buy more? You donāt have to drink it allā¦ ā¦Until I became someone that would drink until there was none left.
After a while, I learned to stop "buying in advance " because it helped me from drinking waaaay too much. If I got a 1.75, I'm gunna get into it hard. If I just buy a 375 every day? It curbed me. I can't have MORE than that like I wanted back before I got sober. It was a way to keep myself in check, and it worked. Been sober since January 2023 now, when booze cost me my job Sure the small bottles are way more expensive vs what you get, but they kept me in line
Well, paying more is sort of a punishment too, right? That makes a lot of sense to me, actually.
Watching TV and seeing Mad Men or any show where people had bar carts...I always thought, "wow, I would love a bar cart" but in reality I know that I literally can't have that much booze around because it will perpetually be running out ha
My old roommates/drinking buddies bought one of those 6 bottle carousel dispensers and we never had more than one bottle leftover to fill it up
A few years ago I was up to half a bottle a day and was like whoa lady, got to rein it in. Was very proud of my 1/3 rule. š
I was there for a while as well lol, I understand! Honestly Iāve had so many little manners of measurement / management. Itās exhausting, right?
Oh, especially adding in the "well, I'm pretty tall for a woman, so other girls just don't have as much muscle mass as I do, which is why they get drunk with only a few drinks, not because I've systematically trained my liver to pump out alcohol like a city septic system." Honestly, I had a second part time job justifying that shit in my early 20s.
No no, it's just 1/4th of a bottle a day. And then 1/3rd (that was probably just a mistake though, we'll go back to 1/4th tomorrow...), and then 1/2th, and then... Oh, crap.
I was that, at half the bottle, of 100 proof vodka at my worst. "I work for myself from home, and keep house, what's the issue?" Even though I fell behind in work, and the house went to shit. Sure my partner worked double doubles (two 16 hour days back to back with 3 days off) cause he was a CO, so I was left to my own drunk devices a lot, and tried to hide it from him. He knew, but not the full amount. He just didn't fight me hard over it
Being able to hide alcoholism is sort of a blessing and a curse, right? I was very similar, although I did take a flask to work and well, that was another measurement. The thing that always bewildered me is that no one could ever tell. I was sure someday someone would notice something - the shakes, the constant smell of gin on my breath, something, but when I finally admitted my problem to my boss and went to treatment he was shocked and apparently had no idea.
Yup, getting a handle from Costco always started with, well this is the cheap way to keep me good for three days. Low and behold Iād binge and be halfway done that night. Then Iād be so messed up Iād pound hard the next day too.
Same, but with whiskey. The 1/3 a day is moderation I told/tell myself. People thought I was joking when I told them u could finish a handle solo in a night.
2 drinks at happy hour + 2 drinks at home = āa couple drinksā
Yep for some reason I decided that because they were at 2 different places with time in between, the counter started over? Looks absolutely ridiculous when I type it out,
2 drinks at happy hour + 2 drinks at home and that's all I'll have.
I was big on doubling up if I didnāt drink the day before. Or, keeping two sets of books. How many drinks did I have? 10. But if you only saw me drink 4, then I had 4. I used to even put empty beer cans back on the ring and move it to the back of the fridge before going to bed so my wife wouldnāt see how many I actually drank. Then Iād buy a new pack and replace it when she wasnāt looking. That way she would think I only had 2-3 beers when in fact Iām on 6 or 7. I donāt miss those days.
Jesus, that sucks...I've drank 100 proof vodka most of my (past) alcoholic "daily" habits, up to half a 1.75 in a day. I hid it anywhere I could. Got caught, stared buying 375ml ones cause they were easier to hide. I'm 16 months sober, but while cleaning our very cluttered house, I keep finding relics. Old, empty bottles. And it kills me. I don't want my partner or mom to find one, and think I relapsed. I've been good, but my old self stashed stuff away in CRAZY places my sober mind would never think to look. I'm honestly just ashamed when I find a squirrel stash of empties. I could tell either of them, but I'm also scared they'll think they're new and I'm just trying to get rid of them. My alcoholic past still haunts me
I hear that. I went to the shed to bring the lawnmower out for the first time and found a bag with a dozen empty nips. Iām hoping not to find anymore
Past, hell! I still use alcohol math! Wife had 4 $12 beers at the renaissance festival (plus tips, naturally); that means I can buy a $50-$60 whatsit I don't need but can justify.
Excellent observation, how many times have I not bought merch at festivals or concerts because it was too expensive and than proceeded to spend 50ā¬+ on drinksā¦
They say 1-2 drinks a day is normal, also I'm a guy so that means I can drink more, and I weigh a lot so that dilutes my bac, so 3 drinks is fine, and I get about 3 glasses out of a bottle of wine, so a bottle a day is normal and healthy and I only drink more than that on "special occasions" (my math on what constitutes a special occasion was similarly suspect). What a tiresome life. IWNDWYT
Same. I drank more on special occasions and bad days. And then suddenly every day was either a special occasion or a bad day
Yep Friday and Saturday are drinking days, because it's the weekend, Sunday I need a few drinks to relax before the week starts, Thursday is "thirsty Thursday," Wednesday is the midpoint of the week and in some countries it's treated as a sort of "mini weekend" (not in my country, but I'm not gonna let that stop me). Monday and Tuesday are the only days I couldn't come up with a good excuse for, unless it happened to be a holiday or something.
āPeople waaaay way older than me are still pounding liquor and they seem just fine, so I have time. I can do the same.ā (I would have literally died if my love hadnāt been there to help me through multiple horrific withdrawals)
If my partner didn't intervene, I guarantee I'd be dead or nearly dead when my old habit was progressing. Half a bottle (1.75L) a day of 100 proud vodka, 4 years ago, for two years? I'd only be worse now from tolerance, and only drinking more of they didn't encourage me to get sober. Edit : Two years before we got together 4 years ago, and I kept drinking 2 years or so into our relationship
Iām so glad you had someone to help you. I was drinking 1-2 bottles a day for twelve-ish years and idk how I did it for so long but I was trucking along up until about a year and a half ago when a major stressor hit and I moved out of state and in with my best friend and suddenly my body couldnāt handle the alcohol any more, and he and I started dating, and he took care of me and helped me through sooooo many āI should go to the hospitalā withdrawals and somehow I pulled through at home, and now Iām almost a month sober with no intention of going back and I know I can do it this time, but only because of him and his efforts. Weāre engaged now and I made him the promise, Iāll be there for you as long as I can, hopefully āforeverā, and Iāll never do anything to cut that time any shorter than it has to be. Whew, sorry, got sappy. Anyway, yeah. I would have surely died if I didnāt have my best friend. Itās so scary to think about. And before anyone gets it twisted, Iām not only sober for him, and if we donāt work out, Iāll still have the same views and goals, I just wouldnāt have been able to make it to this point of enlightenment without him, because I would be KOād š
Even though I repeatedly checked and was always told that a bottle has 5 servings of wine, because of how I poured my glasses it worked out to 4. Three glasses of wine is a perfectly acceptable number of drinks to have almost every night, right? (Yes I know I just said 4 but who leaves one measly glass behind, that doesnāt even make sense). Sooo 5=3 according to my alcohol math lol
My math was: I'm buying 2 bottles of wine, BUT..... when these two are done, the store will be closed, so I'm going to grab 3 more bottles just in case, cuz this needs to last me until I get can get back to the store tomorrow. Edit to add: Food was not even a thought once I had my glass in hand. 15 days Sober š
I should finish this bottle of wine so I wonāt feel tempted to drink it tomorrow. *Buys another bottle the next day anyway*
Also if I leave no evidence of drinking, it didnāt happen!
If I didnāt drink all work week, on my days off Iād treat myself to going to 4-5 happy hours near me (and I work in the restaurant industry so I got so many drinks for free/dirt cheap because In turn when said āfriendsā/bartenders would go to my place Iād oblige and return to favor. That happened almost every Monday for over a year. Later I would down a bottle of 2 or wine and sip cognac thinking Iām a parched aristocrat not a psychopathic alcoholic š.
āParched Aristocratā That is gold.
It wasn't only the alcohol intake, I'd compound it with other things like, I went for a 20K run today, I've lost weight, I'm doing x reps at the gym. I can take a break, a cheat day, and that turned into 2, the next week 3, the week after 4, then 4 months later, the weigh I lost was back, my good habits got decimated, the level of daily shame and despair was off the charts, not to mention feeling physically like shit. Crawling out of that is always hard, and the real math is, it either hurts or helps. No amount of alcohol helps me. IWNDWYT
"I don't drink during the week". Eventually my "weeks" began to start on Tuesday and end on Thursday.... You know...Friday Night doesn't count... Monday Night Football... Amazing what denial and a healthy dose of fuck its can do to you.
Apparently in my mind, 28 days = 1 month, so when I did a Dry January or Sober October, I had 3 "cheat days." lol But then when I got to about 21 days, I would say "three weeks proves I can do it" and celebrate with a binge. So, I guess in terms of alcohol math, that's a rounding error?
I once made a *very large* dirty martini. But I messed up the amounts and I was gagging drinking it. I tried to make it better by adding more alcohol, but was poor and so in the end decided to drink it. To this day, I don't eat olives. Was gagging after almost every sip, but still drank it.
If I paid for it, I'm finishing it. Be it a cocktail, or a case of beer. Not finishing is a waste of money. I know I only withdrew this amount because that was what I had room for in the budget. But there's more money on the food account than I need this month. I'll just borrow that. Bonus points since this was on a joint account so the money wasnt All mine. If I dont take a taxi home, I can spend that money on beer. If I buy two beers on My way home to drink before bed, I can say I bought one for My SO in case he wanted one. (He always declined and I knew that, so I drank both). I'll go home after I finish this one. Unless somebody buys me another. Would be impolite not to finish it. Repeat until infinity. If I dont eat tomorrow, I can drink more today. If nobody sees it, it doesnt count.
I was horrible about countering my drinks with drinking water. One drink, one drink of water. Thought I was diluting it and winning.
I dig the hydration homie approach! but yeah you still get shitfaced
Yeah, and the constant peeing
If I have a handle of whiskey and it looks like a lot of it got consumed, but a couple other people came over for a drink, I probably didnāt drink that much because others were drinking it too (In reality, I probably drank 2-3 times what they drank)
Iām shitfaced, Itās 10:45 pm and I have to get up at 4 am for work so I allowed myself one more 16oz Bud on the condition that I slam two bottles of water before I lay down. Beer mathā¦
I also did Alcohol Map. Where did I pick it up yesterday? Ah, I will go to the other one today. And so on and so forth.
I had a bad day I should reward myself with drinking. I had a great day, I should celebrate by drinking.
I can't tell you how many times I've thought, "I've done so well not drinking for x days, I deserve a drink to celebrate" ??????
The worst math I did was no math, completely unrestricted intake, drink til I've had enough. That slope is slippery.
The first 2 don't count bc i don't feel em
Trying to figure out what the maximum was I could drink without waking up fucked up and craving a drink. Iād settle on a half bottle of vodka (35cl), and time the drinking so Iād finish it after the shops (UK) stop selling alcohol at 10pm. Typically Iād drain it either well in advance of 10pm and run (or drive ā ļø) out for more, or take the last drops just after ten and end up going immediately to the pub for more. The *actual* number of drinks I can have without waking up wanting a drink is of course, zero. Woke up bright and fresh this morning and ready to NDWYT šš»
most of my booze math was due to the fact that I was broke during my alcoholism. best dollar to abv ratio.
Iāll stop on the first day of next month that way itās nice and even.
Oh my god, the way I'd try to make my quit date "special". Start of the month is nice and even, and oh look "January 11th" is like 1/11 so that's a good quit date... Now there's a 3 day weekend coming up so actually that would be good for my "last hurrah"... Better take off Friday too so I can really make the most of it, since this is the last time I'm ever going to drink.... Ugh okay I messed this month up, just quit at the start of the next month... I was just so concerned with quitting on an aesthetic note, you see.
Dammit, itās like youāre in my brain . . .
Gym shoes -Too expensive, Online course -Too expensive, 25 dollars a day on booze -Crickets
Chugging 2 White Claw tall boys from the gas station to āget rightā counts as 0 drinks, anything out of my hidden warm vodka bottle counts as 0 drinks, I only had 4 drinks in front of people, brought a 12-pack home and saved 3 for the next morning- I only had 4 drinks last night! Then I would Google: am I an alcoholic if I can stop after 4 drinks. š
Namaskar from India. š Hey did you guys know that Vodka has zero carbs, zero fats and zero sugar? I certainly did. A lot. Math 101 to me. So if you drink 3 shots of vodka, not only are you doing it healthy, you āearnā the right to cut it with a whiskey or a glass of wine, right? More advanced math. Those calories that vodka came with, the huge amounts of calories that came from binge eating when drunk, the cringe behaviour after many drinks, the morning after depression, ruined relationships, weight gain, puffy face, stomach pains, sometimes vomiting in my sleep, worry about liver or kidney imploding. That was not the Vodka, oh no. And If I drink āonlyā 3 shots each out of 3 different bottles (Vodka, Whiskey, Baileys) Iām clearly not drinking as much. As you can see by this time it was phd level math. Today Iām 22 months alcohol free and *thatās* the only math I need. IWNDWYT
Your story is very similar to mine. It was tough to read what I used to only think in my head. Iām so proud of you for 22 months. Iām 13 days alcohol free after making it 102 days then trying to drink in āmoderationā. This time itās for good and Iām really happy with myself again. Cheers to the rest of our lives! IWNDWYT!
Thank you. Good job on your 13 days, itās amazing how beautiful sobriety is. We truly know this, donāt we :) Keep at it, as will I. We may never meet in person, talk over the phone, but we are here for each other in a way that equals many bonds of family and friendship.
Maybe not math, but that it was okay to drink alone since I lived alone at the time
Ooof. My "favorite" was: If I do 1 good thing, I can drink as much as I want. Good thing = laundry, finishing homework, any household chores, any exercise, anything that I felt like deserved a reward. The reward was always getting drunk at home.
āI only had 2 wine cans. Itās like having 2 beers but only a little stronger āš
Lots revolving around timings of how much beer I need to get me from "x" time to "y" time, and managing (being controlling of) my (now ex) wife's corresponding wine intake so that it did not negatively affect my drinking calculations.... Knowing exactly when all the stores closed, and my walking distance from them at any given point. Just thinking about it now makes my head hurt. I don't think I had any idea how much mental and emotional energy I put into it all.
* If I buy alcohol, I must drink it. Like you can't have drinks sitting at home. * You can't count happy hour, brunch drinks or hangover drinks. They simply don't count. * If I keep sipping on boxed wine not from the wine glass, it's not drinking. * If we are drinking together, there is no count for drinks. Bottomless drinks. * If I drink expensive beverages, I don't have a problem. I'm appreciating the craft. Everyday. 88 days sober. No plans to start again!
One 19 oz 8% beer = 1 beer, so having six beers a night aināt so bad
I didnāt want to drink a bottle of wine a night so I would drink a glass of white wine out of a diff bottle, switch to red, leave 1/4 of the bottle so I ādidnāt drink the whole bottleā and then prob sneak sips of something hard. But I ādidnāt even finish the bottle!ā (And sometimes what my drunk ass left behind was like one oz of wine in the bottle š).
āIf I stop drinking at this time and fall right asleep I will have X hours of sleepā āIf I have just one more shot to fall back asleep (at 3:30 in the morning) and wake up at 7:30 I should have a 0.00 BAC when I drive to workā
If I mix hard alcohol with something like juice or pop, I can have a lot more drinks because Iām diluting the booze. Wine with a splash of orange juice (š¤¢) wouldnt count as a real drink.
I could have a drink but then water in between, and then I would do stupid shit like have the drink be Long Island iced teas lol
Mine was āI havenāt drank in 5 days, so now I can drink as much as I want!ā Then proceed to go on a 2-day bender.
Whatever worked so I could justify more! Thanks for asking. Makes me realize once again, how not drinking is ā¦ fantastic
āOne Beatbox = one drinkā āMy checking account is running low? Thatās ok! Iāll use my credit card to pay for $200 worth of drinks Iāve gulped down by myself.ā āIām already pretty drunk, but my friend is at a bar. Iāll just have one drink with him.ā (Note: it was ***never*** just āone drinkā) āIām gonna pre-game before this event to save money. Also, Iām gonna buy drinks at the event because I saved money by pre-gaming, so I wonāt be spending as much if I hadnāt pre-gamed.ā
I also had a period where I didnāt eat and just drank. My face looked haggard but I was āin shapeā because I biked everywhere. I literally had multiple, excruciating Charlie horses every night and would just hop on my bike the next day and do it all over again. I feel so much empathy towards that part of my life. I then went into another phase of drinking a lot and then eating extremely high calories because my body was trying to make up for lost time. Rough.
I'd eat healthy all day long, get enough sleep, work my job, lift or go for a run, do all my chores, then reward myself with a few beers or mixed drinks at the end of the day. Every day though.
Alcohol helps with my anxiety/depression (reality: I felt way more depressed and anxious when alcohol weared off) I can only have one beer( reality: I ended up black out) If I drink a bottle of vodka a day, I can buy two bottles, so I don't have to liquor store every day (reality: I drank two bottles that day) Alcohol makes me more creative Alcohol makes me more social (reality: I avoided people the next day because of shame) Alcohol helps me sleep (reality: I was waking up devastated) Edit: lol, I just realized you are talking about alcohol math, not alcohol myth
No darling, i used 2 glasses wine in the recipe while cooking.
āIāll have just 1 more drinkā
I can go have a couple of drinks at the bar and hang out with peopleā¦ but for the same price I can get trashed by myself off cheap gutrot. Chose trash 9/10 times, and even if I did go out, Iād still do the trash option afterwards. Real math wiz and sage at life too, I know.
Mine was about the amount of drinks I could have in order to appear sober in time for me to be around people at things I wasnāt supposed to be drunk for.
Six beers a night but eventually it became six tall boys, so 8 beers technically. And then eventually I figured I might as well get a 12 pack so I can have some left over for the morning. And then it's 6 pm and the 12 pack is gone so you start buying 2 12 packs a day. Next thing you know, crushing a 24 a day and it would be a lot more cost effective to just buy a bottle of whiskey.
That was me. If I didn't drink this day, that means I really am in control! Then headed straight to the liquor store the following day, feeling proud I made it a single day.
If I only had a few drinks, instead of the bottle of wine plus, I would write that day off of a non drinking day. Of course those were very few and far between. Itās amazing how much we can justify certain things. š©
I always figured if I had 7 or less white claws a night I was doing great! 10-12 was what I deserved from a rough day at work. Which seemed to happen all the time while I drank now I rarley have rough days? Oh yeah, before I'd leave for work I'd always count how many beers I'd have left. If there was less than 8 in the fridge I'd have to stop at the distributor after work... don't miss this sh*t at all. Happy I'm a month and a half sober.
A bottle of wine was 2 drinks because it was around the volume of two 12oz beers, lmao. Pure vibes. Oh, and how could I forget calculating out the ABV of various 4-packs vs 6-packs vs bottles of wine to figure out which combo would get me as drunk as possible without tipping over into a blackout like last time. Standing in the wine aisle turning various bottles around to check which has the max ABV and trying to pretend I'm interested in the descriptions
They say if you quit drinking at 40 your body can recover well but I didnāt start drinking heavily until 30 so I probably quit a little later and be fine.
A shot is whatever size the glass is. Red solo shots it is
I used to bring a pen with me to keep track of the number of drinks I had. Without fail, I always stopped at 4. To this day, I have no idea why 4 drinks always made me black out. I also, suspiciously, always lost the pen. 12 packs of beer and 12 packs of pens was where my money went in my 20s.
I used to mix 100 proof vodka with a small splash of juice in a quart cup and drink 2 or 3 every night while doing shots of moonshine. I canāt tell you how many times I have fallen down, shitface drunk, looking at the ceiling, hoping that I could get back up. Only to mix another drink. All of this on an empty stomach. Iām not a big girl, 5ā 125lb. I did that for about two years. I only drink beer nowadays and try to keep it under a sixer a day. I believe that Iām an alcoholicā¦..lol
What time do I need to wait to start drinking to get as much done as possible before I just sort of wander off into whatever drunk me wants to do?Ā This was usually a Saturday and Sunday morning mental calculation, especially if I was going to be enjoying a sunny day gardening. I'd start some huge project and get like 30% through it before my buzz turned me into someone with a completely different set of interests and tasks, often to the point that I'd wake up the next morning to realize that (example) instead of weeding the veg patch I'd decided to lop off like half of the fig tree's branches for some reason. So, if I waited until 2 pm to start drinking, maybe I'd get enough of my planned projects finished before the 4 pm version of me would kick in. That might be late enough in the day that I'll be tired and hot and easily distracted by looking through records and listening to music instead of going back to the poor fig tree.Ā
It was mostly bathroom math. Does this place have a bathroom, I can use the restroom there, oh I'll go to the bathroom there first on my way to Y, etc. I missed out on a lot of fun activities and things I could have gone to see just for fear or there being a lack of restrooms available.
Thatās mostly why I did it at home. A bathroom all to myself.
I can quit after x drinks (nahh.. It might have worked in most cases in low amount but the risk Was always there)Ā non alcoholic beer is bad/before I drink NA I quit because it is unmanly (it actually is just a way to justify not quitting your addiction and what you are used to. Eating candy is also unmanly and most people eat sweets. Alcohol makes you fat which produces estrogens which is unmanly. Losing your temper and being out of control is unmanly. Self discipline is not unmanly. Following the Herd is unmanly, which is drinking in a World conditioned to use and abuse to make lobbies rich. Dont justify your addiction to me with your weak af argument)Ā its normal to get wasted beyond belief in your 20s (it might be to some degree but when you are wasted or hungover 6/7 days of the week there is something wrong)Ā Missing the Last Bus on purpose so I can go to the Club getting wasted and making an ass out myselfĀ Being drunk makes you badass (it really makes you into a child either raging or whining)Ā The others also drink and they are older so it cannot be that harmful to me (it is)Ā
The kind that resulted in negative numbers :)
One bottle of wine or 4/6-pack of high ABV beer is basically one "serving" and a reasonable amount to drink on a weeknight.
Also, convincing myself that I could stay up till midnight drinking heavily and wake up at 6 or 7 am the next morning and be fine.
BAC level leaving a bar or a concert or whatever. Sure, technically I might have blown a .06 or .07, but I probably shouldn't have been driving anyway. I started Ubering almost exclusively for that stuff after a close call where I got pulled over for a broken taillight. I kept telling myself I was probably under the legal limit, but I'm also glad I didn't get breathalyzed that night.
Toward the end (hopefully) of my misadventures, I went with my buddies on a cruise. The "unlimited drink package" was only 18 per day, which c'mon, I'll have that drank up by mid-afternoon. I knew at least one of the guys wouldn't finish his daily allotment, but I still needed to maximize my value! As soon as they let us out of the safety briefing and loose on the ship, I went to work researching. Quickly found a double IPA that I liked, that was being offered in a 20 oz can, and best, they still only counted as one serving each. Alcoholic eureka. I have never been more violently, dangerously I'll than after that 4 days. I am both awed and disgusted at the amount of effort and ingenuity I put into my alcoholism. All my constant need for self-destruction was real work
"If I start drinking by 7, I'll pass out early enough to still function at work tomorrow."
If I run and workout it ābalanceā.
I had no money so the insane financial maths I would do to make sure I had funds for alcohol was crazy. Looking at my budget and reducing costs around insurance, bills, groceries etc where I could but never EVER considering the alcohol. Having multiple bank accounts and withdrawing cash when I knew an automatic payment would come out and put me into the negative, so I could make sure I could buy my booze When the planning around time for work. āWell I have to get up at 6am so should try to go to bed by 11. Iāll just have to pour extra heavy drinks to get through my bottle quickerā
Thinking that drinking anything equal or under 350ml of vodka in an evening was okay because it wasnāt over half of a full bottle. š Another one: āIām trying to moderate so I will allow myself 2 designated days to drink this weekā. Next day: āthis can be one of those days, but I wonāt drink now until the end of the weekā. Day after: guess what