Alcohol - WHYYYYYYYY?!

[JSR]

Hello. Let us discuss our drinking habits and their effects.


I'll start:
For the last few months I'm down to drinking about once a month. The time when drinking was an exclusively fun experience seems like ages ago. When drinking only yielded funny happenings and good stories. Now it seems so costly to me. Not only financially (factor in a taxi ride or two, and a night can easily cost the equivalent of 100 pounds), but also in all the time I lose to it. The whole night of drinking is lost: when I get back at night, I'm in no condition to enjoy a movie or a game, even though I'm still very much awake. The following day is also more or less lost. I sleep to around three of four in the afternoon, and the following three hours consists of me shambling around my apartment like a zombie while making several attempts at congesting food. Headaches are common. And the last few years, anxiety seem to be a usual event. I spend all day worrying about what I might or might not have done the day before, while other current worries are also heightened. This hinders me from enjoying games or movies or other usual activities to their full extent.

Today is a good example, which inspired me to start this thread. I've done virtually nothing of note the entire day, and I'm worried about small idiotic problems which I'll probably forget in a day or two. It seems like such a waste of time and energy. Yet I still feel the want to drink from time to time, hoping that something good and exciting will come out of it.

[EvilBoris]

I've never got the whole drinking thing, it alway strikes me as some weird social/cultural thing that people just can't comprehend having fun without.

[JSR]

Yeah I know. I would love to get together with friends and simply hang around on a saturday night. But without the alcohol they seem to think we're missing out on an important ingredient, like what we are doing is a poor substitute for the "real thing". And around 11 or 12, we NEED to go out to a bar or something, even though we usually wind up complaining about the high prices and early closing time (most bars close at 1:30 in Norway).

[gIzzE]

You're drinking too much to be honest.

I drink a lot, well, have been anyway. Love my red wine and was drinking a bottle pretty much every night. Now I get in at just after 5, open a bottle while doing dinner and have a glass, then another one with dinner and if I stop there that is already 2/3 of a bottle, if I have another glass in the evening that is a bottle gone.
Easily done.

However, realise that this is not healthy and could lead to addiction. To be fair though if I have no nice wine in the house I don't drink beer or spirits or anything, I don't crave alcohol at all, just love my wine.

But had a few weeks off drinking during the week, to be honest I can't afford it for one, ?10-20 a night on wine starts to get too expensive!

But I have noticed that I am less stressed about other things, was getting stressed about work, and already I am going back to being a lot more relaxed about things like i used to be.

We were out last night at my mates 40th, just dinner round theirs, and I got through two bottles of Rioja, and when I got in about midnight I was awake but not in a state to watch TV properly or play games or anything, so went to bed. And today I have felt a bit down, not depressed, just couldn't be bothered to do anything and was worrying about things I hadn't got done at work etc. I know it is just hangover blues from drinking too much, but still not nice and a waste of my day off.

Last week we went out and I had 4 glasses of wine and then went home and watched a film, so much nicer the next day to wake up not worrying about what I did the night before, I remembered everything.
If you forget things you have really over done it, I have only ever forgot what happened twice before, and that was nights on pints of Black Russians and Vodka, both times. It is not nice the next day and you feel awful worrying about what you may have done.



Have a couple of nights out without going over the top and it will completely change your view I reckon.

[Guts]

If it's any comfort, your OP pretty much describes my drinking habits to a T, Alex. I almost exclusively drink alcohol to get drunk.

Recently, I've had way too much to drink when going out and end up worrying the entire next day what stupid s*** I said and did the night before. Last two times I got thrown out of the bar because I was so wasted, luckily I didn't actually do anything stupid, but it's still pretty embarrassing when you're over 25... Problem is when I start to drink, I just can't stop in the middle of the night and say "okay, that's enough", when you get more and more drunk you lose control and just keep drinking more even though you shouldn't. I've decided to give up the "hard stuff" entirely, nothing good comes out of it, but it's kinda hard when people buy you shots in the bar and stick 'em to your hand...

[ETC]

Alcohol is okay as long as its to enjoy it and not for the sole purpose of getting ****faced, my problem is very similar to Alex in that occasionally despite my intentions to only have a couple I end up blazed and that's usually when the problems start, a lot of it is a sugar crash (hell of a lot of sugar in booze)

[Mayhem]

I usually have one can in the evening to kick back, relax, and sip on while playing games. But that's about it normally. Rarely do I have more than one per night, unless I've gone out specifically.

[Colin]

This is really just another "why don't women like me?" thread really though, isn't it? (judging by posts in other threads)

[speedlolita]

I never go out because I can't afford to.

Although I'm sure if it was that important to me I could cut back other things. Like food and video games.

Just never been into it really, so I can agree with EvilBoris's point.

If I do drink it's the odd beer once a month tops.

[ItsThere]

I drink a fair bit when I go out and women like me.

Probs because I am so handsome and rugged you see...

[J0e Musashi]

I drink pretty much every day of the week. I'm more likely not to drink at weekends, and I never have a lager in the house.

Don't worry about all of this "not being able to game or watch movies by the time you get in" rubbish. The key here is to stay out for the entire night, and go to work wearing the same clothes you had on the previous day.

As for hangovers. Well the key here is to learn to drink more.

[CMcK]

The secret to drinking is to only drink stuff you actually like the taste of. I don't mean stuff you can tolerate but stuff that is genuinely tasty. Also drinking good quality beer seems to prevent hangovers. I pretty much only drink craft brewed beers these days and generally feel fine the following day. Stick to decent stuff like Brewdog, Williams Bros, Black Isle Brewery and good German beer.

The drinking culture in the UK is horrendous. Drink to get pissed, measuring your manliness on how many pints you had and how long it took before you "broke the seal" etc.
If teenagers learned to appreciate good beers, wines and suchlike they might start to view it as an added benefit to social gatherings and treat it sensibly.

[kryss]

Good thing ego doesn't drag the forum down, or ItsThere would have broken the thing again.

16 months without a drink for me. My obsessive nature really goes against me at times. I go from purely social drinking to getting wasted on my own far too easily. Waking up on the sofa and running to puke at 3am is not something I take pride in anymore.

And so instead of drinking alone while watching rom-coms and crying about how lonely I am, I just buy stupid amounts of videogames.

[Guts]

The drinking culture in the UK is horrendous. Drink to get pissed, measuring your manliness on how many pints you had and how long it took before you "broke the seal" etc.

Well, it's not the case just in the UK, it's probably pretty much the same all over the western world. Or, at least in Finland.

[ItsThere]

Ha, indeed. Remember these wise words a friend told me.

"Those who get hammered don't get to nail".

Applies to a lot.