My 20s and early thirties are a blur. 2009-2015 is pretty much completely missing from my memory. My 6 year binge (with my overall drinking) might have some presents for me in my future.
I’ve been sober for 2 years but it does scare me that I already did the damage. Oh well I guess. At the time, it was my coping mechanism. I don’t have cravings anymore because now I can clearly see it as poison but the damage might already be done.
Congrats on 2 years! Im in a similar boat where I don’t remember my 20s either but I got sober around 30 and have been picking up the pieces ever since. Thanks for sharing your story.
If someone is really lucky they can develop alcohol intolerance like I did. It’s a medical condition. I used to enjoy the occasional beer, red wine, bourbon, sake, whatever. I really liked them. Not to excess, except occasionally when out with friends. But it crept up on me slowly— at first the next day became harder and harder, and soon it was later that night, then within hours of having a drink or two, then while I was drinking the first glass… I thought I was just getting old, but it just kept getting worse.
Those “non-alcoholic” beers taste great these days, but they still have <0.5% alcohol. The last time I had a single NA pale ale I had a headache, brain fog, and lethargy for over 24 hours. God help me if I were to have even a lower % IPA now… I haven’t tried it in years, but last time I had mild nausea and other hangover symptoms halfway through sipping it. Water, drinking extremely slowly, etc. doesn’t help. My body just can’t metabolize alcohol anymore.
Of course I don’t feel compelled to drink in the same way an alcoholic does, but I do empathize in my own small way with their plight when going out. I want to join in, but I stick to water instead, knowing that a drink would completely wreck me and I’d regret it for days.
This is entirely unrelated to cancer, but I just thought I’d share. Maybe someone is experiencing similar symptoms but doesn’t know it has a name.
Is this a known medical condition, alcohol intolerance?
I know enzymes in the body break down and remove it, and certain people genetically have more or less depending.
Cultures that have been drinking for thousands of years have more of the enzymes, those that just started have way less like the natives in america and I think australia but idk on that. Basically the entire old world has more of the alcohol metabolizing enzymes from eurasia to africa. Not sure of inuits and far northern tribes but if they milked animals in prehistory they probably fermented milk for kefir.
Also women metabolize alcohol less than men due to these enzymes.
So the same amount of alcohol can have wildly more or less pronounced inebriation even before taking tolerance into account.
That is interesting thanks. As an aside an herbal I was doing for a while, Devil’s Club, also known as Alaskan wild ginseng, opplopanax horridum, that I harvested for a bit, is a very powerful medicine in a great many ways.
Some of the earlier Russian scientists that were looking at it back when they had Alaska, wrote that they found that it seemed to inhibit the removal of alcohol from your body.
I have the opposite problem. I have the mutation that allows my body to crank out massive quantities of acetaldehyde dehydrogenase. So back in the day, I could drink like a fish and almost never suffer a hangover. While this might be convenient in the short term, it greatly increases the risk of alcoholism, since it disables the main feedback mechanism telling you that you’re harming yourself.
Luckily, my mother gave me a chat about our family history (lots of early deaths from alcoholism and alcohol-related suicide and misadventure) and I had recently had some disturbing close-call experiences of my own while drunk, so I quit in my mid-20s. I don’t abstain completely, but haven’t had more than a couple of pints in a day since. It’s been 40 years. For long periods, I had no alcohol at all. I get it that some people can’t cut back without abstaining completely, and can’t quit without support, but I was fortunate in being able to. If you’re trying to quit, do whatever works for you. Not everybody’s the same and there’s no shame in getting help.
Incidentally, cirrhosis is just as shitty a way to leave this world as cancer is, so the cancer news is a drag, but other factors already motivated my behavior change.
I previously quit for a decade almost completely, drinking like you a couple here and there, by restarting running distance, also using kratom to help get started until the endorphins take over.
Physical exertion and alcohol do not go well together, I wanted to go running not drink.
I restarted drinking homebrew by choice just last year. Working on maple wines and other herb infused drinks, with syrup I make, until I start malting barley and growing hops to make ipa. But I do not get falling down drunk and am happy regardless but I choose to get buzzed lately if at home, I may mostly transition to traditional herbals soon though.
I share your “gift”. No matter how much or how many days I drank, next morning the only symptom was tiredness. My partying never really got out hand, but I just kind of lost interest in it after my studies.
My both granddads died of alcohol-related causes before my birth, so the danger was very real. Without the fear of hangover it would have been so easy to just keep on going. Luckily I never felt any pull towards it.
I got my first real hangover when I was closer to 30 and it was a mindblowingly horrible experience. Nowadays I get drunk maybe once or twice a year and I do enjoy a craft beer or two on weekends, but that’s it.
That <0.5%, if I understand it correctly, is basically nothing. A cursory search showed that there are a lot of food and drinks that are at around that level. A ripe banana can have 0.4% by itself!
Sure. It’s possible it’s in a different form in food versus e.g. beer. I can eat all of those foods without a problem. I can’t drink any of those things I listed anymore.
Thanks. In that case I suspect many (not all) NA beers must exceed that threshold despite their labeling. That would match my experience, since a handful are OK and some consistently produce symptoms. It’s even within the same manufacturer, as certain varieties have an effect and others don’t. I love beer, but I’ve given up on all of them, because it’s just not worth the hassle and taking the chance.
It was different every day but the absolute minimum was a 6 pack. That was on a day I had things to do. If I had a day where I had obligations, I’d settle for a six pack with a 6%abv because I could regulate it by the hour because of my body weight.
On average I was drinking a handle a day. Easy.
On days I was trying to “regulate myself” I was still drinking 9%abv IPAs.
Was in it.
Edit: if you start hiding any of your drinking even in the slightest, it’s time for a life change. Also, all of the above was when I was in my early 30s. In my 20s, I was buying 30 packs of Busch daily
Last summer through fall I restarted drinking after nearly a decade of very light occassional drinking, about 12 or more ipa’s a day, two hearted ipa and a local one.
Roomate was cool but drank a liter of scotch a day, happy drunk though, both of us. Worst he did was exitedly tell or play things for you he had previously, especially of his glory days.
I know if I have to ask I have a problem. But I do hide some of my drinking from my wife because she is extra sensitive about it. Like having 2-3 IPAs in a week she thinks is too much for me. I think it unfortunately makes me drink MORE because if I’m gonna have 2-3 IPAs a couple nights a week I might as well make it 3 times a week. Etc. (It’s rarely ever 3 though).
I’m not a day drinker. I never drive. Etc. But I do feel a bit of a dependency. It’s been the same level for years though. I never black out or forget stuff. I never have more in the house than I plan to drink in a night.
Idk. I’m just typing this for my own rationalization at this point. I know no amount is healthy. But I also don’t really want to stop either. I exercise and eat ok otherwise. I’m a tiny bit overweight and that’s literally the beer. Would be a good reason to stop or reduce the amount of nights.
I have an ex-wife. She didn’t like me drinking either. We were married for 5 years, together for 7. She ultimately ended up cheating and we got divorced.
Anyway, I was sober for the last 2 years of our relationship.
She didn’t cheat because of my drinking. It was just a way out but I can tell you this… her as my wife, I should have just accommodated her wishes when it came to drinking from the get go.
Ultimately I’m sober now and have been but that didn’t have anything to do with the divorce. I still got 50/50 custody because by the time the divorce happened I had been sober for two years and I quit cold turkey. Hardest thing I’ve done.
If you’re drinking that little, there are non alcoholic 0.0 beers you could lean on and maybe ease the two of you.
You still get the refreshing taste and she gets her peace of mind.
I know. I was married too and you have your things and she has your things. You just have to decide if the minimal amount you’re already drinking is worth the altercations.
It isn’t.
I still get urges sometimes but it’s only when life really hands it to me. I still tell myself that all it’s gonna do is speed up the day and put me further behind n accounting for my responsibilities. Which is true. I binge today, I’m out for 2-3 days recouping just to get a right headspace and even then, with where I’m at, probably a month.
My thinking gets to fucking out of whack after a day of drinking that I just can’t do it anymore if I want any control in my life.
Stay in control. If you can’t not have those few beers, even if you feel entitled and it’s not a big deal… resentment can lead to the drinking.
Just think about it. You’re entitled to your own decisions. It doesn’t sound like you’re on the same the level I ever was but it’s a battle I wouldn’t t fight with a spouse.
It’s a battle I would’ve fought before they became my spouse.
God I wish. I was a pot head through a very very hard time of my life. Family death, after college shock. Weed was great for me when I needed it. But the good thing about weed is that it lets you walk away from it.
I had a really bad trip taking an ungodly amount of edibles one time. Literally thought I was taking CBD gummies. Basically, I went to get CBD gummies and the dude at counter was like. Oh, yeah, we got that in blackberry now, you want it? Of course. So he must have grabbed THC by mistake and I don’t know how much I had. But I was gone. Like for days.
I was organizing parts of my brain that were out of order. Hallucinating (maybe high and dreaming? Idk). I know people say that doesn’t happen on weed. But maybe my brain is just different.
Long story short. I have a panic attack when I get high now. I know it’s not weed but a mental side effect of whatever that experience did to me.
But weed let me walk away from it without any side effects or withdrawal. I’m glad for that. Weed is great and I wish it worked the same way it use to for me.
If you ever feel so inclined, and want to try again, try blending your weed with hemp (cbd-only).
The strains they have out there these days are designed to maximize thc, but it’s at the cost of balance. Thc and cbd sort of limit each other in a nice way, but modern weed is low on cbd so all you get is the harsh high and none of the calm or relaxation. Lots of people get anxiety from smoking modern weed that never did with classic mods or ditch weed.
If you use just a bit of weed with a bunch of hemp (like 10% weed tops) it’s a lot more like the old-school experience. Very mild and pleasant.
It may not be enough to prevent the panic attacks, idk :( it helped with the smoking anxiety for me, though.
There was a study in British Columbia around 2017 or so where they gave brain damaged rats some super potent form of THC in massive quantities and those rats reprogrammed and rewired their brain damaged brains while the control group did not.
Way too much can definitely cause hallucinations and aS you experienced, can cause some really horrible experiences. If you ever want to try again, start with an extremely low dosage - low enough where you don’t feel anything.
There are more options out there if you really want to break free from addiction before more damage is done. It’s worth it.
Sorry the answer wasn’t so concise. I was drunk everyday and learned to mask it. Some days I failed masking it or shorthanded how much I’d had to drink and it caught up with me.
Have had MANY incidents that would keep the layperson up at night for the rest of their lives. I’m just built different.
I’ve spent a collected 1 year in county jail. 6 months was the longest stretch. I’ve avoided prison but that 6 month stretch made me wish for prison.
I’ll say my boredom now (when I drank it helped speed up the day, I just wanted the day to be over) is constructive. I’m playing piano and guitar again. I’m writing.
Things still suck but I know they’ll suck whether sober or drunk so I just do sober. Saves me money
Edit: also saves me from being alone. I’m in the greatest relationship and I can’t jeopardize that. It means more to me than being numb
But the good news is that the longer you abstain from carcinogens like alcohol or smoking, the better your odds become. Each day sober is a day that decreases your risk of cancers from alcohol. Keep doing that (and avoid other risk factors) and your cancer risk essentially drops to the normal baseline governed by your genetics, environment, etc.
My 20s and early thirties are a blur. 2009-2015 is pretty much completely missing from my memory. My 6 year binge (with my overall drinking) might have some presents for me in my future.
I’ve been sober for 2 years but it does scare me that I already did the damage. Oh well I guess. At the time, it was my coping mechanism. I don’t have cravings anymore because now I can clearly see it as poison but the damage might already be done.
Congrats on 2 years! Im in a similar boat where I don’t remember my 20s either but I got sober around 30 and have been picking up the pieces ever since. Thanks for sharing your story.
Congrats on your sobriety!
If someone is really lucky they can develop alcohol intolerance like I did. It’s a medical condition. I used to enjoy the occasional beer, red wine, bourbon, sake, whatever. I really liked them. Not to excess, except occasionally when out with friends. But it crept up on me slowly— at first the next day became harder and harder, and soon it was later that night, then within hours of having a drink or two, then while I was drinking the first glass… I thought I was just getting old, but it just kept getting worse.
Those “non-alcoholic” beers taste great these days, but they still have <0.5% alcohol. The last time I had a single NA pale ale I had a headache, brain fog, and lethargy for over 24 hours. God help me if I were to have even a lower % IPA now… I haven’t tried it in years, but last time I had mild nausea and other hangover symptoms halfway through sipping it. Water, drinking extremely slowly, etc. doesn’t help. My body just can’t metabolize alcohol anymore.
Of course I don’t feel compelled to drink in the same way an alcoholic does, but I do empathize in my own small way with their plight when going out. I want to join in, but I stick to water instead, knowing that a drink would completely wreck me and I’d regret it for days.
This is entirely unrelated to cancer, but I just thought I’d share. Maybe someone is experiencing similar symptoms but doesn’t know it has a name.
Is this a known medical condition, alcohol intolerance?
I know enzymes in the body break down and remove it, and certain people genetically have more or less depending.
Cultures that have been drinking for thousands of years have more of the enzymes, those that just started have way less like the natives in america and I think australia but idk on that. Basically the entire old world has more of the alcohol metabolizing enzymes from eurasia to africa. Not sure of inuits and far northern tribes but if they milked animals in prehistory they probably fermented milk for kefir.
Also women metabolize alcohol less than men due to these enzymes.
So the same amount of alcohol can have wildly more or less pronounced inebriation even before taking tolerance into account.
Yes, it’s real. Here’s a good overview:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_intolerance
That is interesting thanks. As an aside an herbal I was doing for a while, Devil’s Club, also known as Alaskan wild ginseng, opplopanax horridum, that I harvested for a bit, is a very powerful medicine in a great many ways.
Some of the earlier Russian scientists that were looking at it back when they had Alaska, wrote that they found that it seemed to inhibit the removal of alcohol from your body.
I have the opposite problem. I have the mutation that allows my body to crank out massive quantities of acetaldehyde dehydrogenase. So back in the day, I could drink like a fish and almost never suffer a hangover. While this might be convenient in the short term, it greatly increases the risk of alcoholism, since it disables the main feedback mechanism telling you that you’re harming yourself.
Luckily, my mother gave me a chat about our family history (lots of early deaths from alcoholism and alcohol-related suicide and misadventure) and I had recently had some disturbing close-call experiences of my own while drunk, so I quit in my mid-20s. I don’t abstain completely, but haven’t had more than a couple of pints in a day since. It’s been 40 years. For long periods, I had no alcohol at all. I get it that some people can’t cut back without abstaining completely, and can’t quit without support, but I was fortunate in being able to. If you’re trying to quit, do whatever works for you. Not everybody’s the same and there’s no shame in getting help.
Incidentally, cirrhosis is just as shitty a way to leave this world as cancer is, so the cancer news is a drag, but other factors already motivated my behavior change.
I previously quit for a decade almost completely, drinking like you a couple here and there, by restarting running distance, also using kratom to help get started until the endorphins take over.
Physical exertion and alcohol do not go well together, I wanted to go running not drink.
I restarted drinking homebrew by choice just last year. Working on maple wines and other herb infused drinks, with syrup I make, until I start malting barley and growing hops to make ipa. But I do not get falling down drunk and am happy regardless but I choose to get buzzed lately if at home, I may mostly transition to traditional herbals soon though.
I share your “gift”. No matter how much or how many days I drank, next morning the only symptom was tiredness. My partying never really got out hand, but I just kind of lost interest in it after my studies.
My both granddads died of alcohol-related causes before my birth, so the danger was very real. Without the fear of hangover it would have been so easy to just keep on going. Luckily I never felt any pull towards it.
I got my first real hangover when I was closer to 30 and it was a mindblowingly horrible experience. Nowadays I get drunk maybe once or twice a year and I do enjoy a craft beer or two on weekends, but that’s it.
That <0.5%, if I understand it correctly, is basically nothing. A cursory search showed that there are a lot of food and drinks that are at around that level. A ripe banana can have 0.4% by itself!
Sure. It’s possible it’s in a different form in food versus e.g. beer. I can eat all of those foods without a problem. I can’t drink any of those things I listed anymore.
No, it’s exactly the same form, ethanol. It’s just a matter of how much there is. You probably have a threshold, and 0.5% is below it.
Thanks. In that case I suspect many (not all) NA beers must exceed that threshold despite their labeling. That would match my experience, since a handful are OK and some consistently produce symptoms. It’s even within the same manufacturer, as certain varieties have an effect and others don’t. I love beer, but I’ve given up on all of them, because it’s just not worth the hassle and taking the chance.
The beers may also have low levels of fusel alcohols, which would not be counted, in addition to the residual ethanol
As someone who drinks pretty much every day, how much were you drinking??
It was different every day but the absolute minimum was a 6 pack. That was on a day I had things to do. If I had a day where I had obligations, I’d settle for a six pack with a 6%abv because I could regulate it by the hour because of my body weight.
On average I was drinking a handle a day. Easy.
On days I was trying to “regulate myself” I was still drinking 9%abv IPAs.
Was in it.
Edit: if you start hiding any of your drinking even in the slightest, it’s time for a life change. Also, all of the above was when I was in my early 30s. In my 20s, I was buying 30 packs of Busch daily
Last summer through fall I restarted drinking after nearly a decade of very light occassional drinking, about 12 or more ipa’s a day, two hearted ipa and a local one.
Roomate was cool but drank a liter of scotch a day, happy drunk though, both of us. Worst he did was exitedly tell or play things for you he had previously, especially of his glory days.
I know if I have to ask I have a problem. But I do hide some of my drinking from my wife because she is extra sensitive about it. Like having 2-3 IPAs in a week she thinks is too much for me. I think it unfortunately makes me drink MORE because if I’m gonna have 2-3 IPAs a couple nights a week I might as well make it 3 times a week. Etc. (It’s rarely ever 3 though).
I’m not a day drinker. I never drive. Etc. But I do feel a bit of a dependency. It’s been the same level for years though. I never black out or forget stuff. I never have more in the house than I plan to drink in a night.
Idk. I’m just typing this for my own rationalization at this point. I know no amount is healthy. But I also don’t really want to stop either. I exercise and eat ok otherwise. I’m a tiny bit overweight and that’s literally the beer. Would be a good reason to stop or reduce the amount of nights.
I have an ex-wife. She didn’t like me drinking either. We were married for 5 years, together for 7. She ultimately ended up cheating and we got divorced.
Anyway, I was sober for the last 2 years of our relationship.
She didn’t cheat because of my drinking. It was just a way out but I can tell you this… her as my wife, I should have just accommodated her wishes when it came to drinking from the get go.
Ultimately I’m sober now and have been but that didn’t have anything to do with the divorce. I still got 50/50 custody because by the time the divorce happened I had been sober for two years and I quit cold turkey. Hardest thing I’ve done.
If you’re drinking that little, there are non alcoholic 0.0 beers you could lean on and maybe ease the two of you.
You still get the refreshing taste and she gets her peace of mind.
I know. I was married too and you have your things and she has your things. You just have to decide if the minimal amount you’re already drinking is worth the altercations.
It isn’t.
I still get urges sometimes but it’s only when life really hands it to me. I still tell myself that all it’s gonna do is speed up the day and put me further behind n accounting for my responsibilities. Which is true. I binge today, I’m out for 2-3 days recouping just to get a right headspace and even then, with where I’m at, probably a month.
My thinking gets to fucking out of whack after a day of drinking that I just can’t do it anymore if I want any control in my life.
Stay in control. If you can’t not have those few beers, even if you feel entitled and it’s not a big deal… resentment can lead to the drinking.
Just think about it. You’re entitled to your own decisions. It doesn’t sound like you’re on the same the level I ever was but it’s a battle I wouldn’t t fight with a spouse.
It’s a battle I would’ve fought before they became my spouse.
Thanks for the response. You should be a counselor or something. Good advice without being judgemental. Appreciate it.
Appreciate that. Counseling is my goal. Never happen, I’m a felon but dreams keep me straight
Edit: spelling
I know it’s not the same, but cannabis is so much better for you especially if you vape or eat it. Much cheaper too! Good luck!
God I wish. I was a pot head through a very very hard time of my life. Family death, after college shock. Weed was great for me when I needed it. But the good thing about weed is that it lets you walk away from it.
I had a really bad trip taking an ungodly amount of edibles one time. Literally thought I was taking CBD gummies. Basically, I went to get CBD gummies and the dude at counter was like. Oh, yeah, we got that in blackberry now, you want it? Of course. So he must have grabbed THC by mistake and I don’t know how much I had. But I was gone. Like for days.
I was organizing parts of my brain that were out of order. Hallucinating (maybe high and dreaming? Idk). I know people say that doesn’t happen on weed. But maybe my brain is just different.
Long story short. I have a panic attack when I get high now. I know it’s not weed but a mental side effect of whatever that experience did to me.
But weed let me walk away from it without any side effects or withdrawal. I’m glad for that. Weed is great and I wish it worked the same way it use to for me.
If you ever feel so inclined, and want to try again, try blending your weed with hemp (cbd-only).
The strains they have out there these days are designed to maximize thc, but it’s at the cost of balance. Thc and cbd sort of limit each other in a nice way, but modern weed is low on cbd so all you get is the harsh high and none of the calm or relaxation. Lots of people get anxiety from smoking modern weed that never did with classic mods or ditch weed.
If you use just a bit of weed with a bunch of hemp (like 10% weed tops) it’s a lot more like the old-school experience. Very mild and pleasant.
It may not be enough to prevent the panic attacks, idk :( it helped with the smoking anxiety for me, though.
There was a study in British Columbia around 2017 or so where they gave brain damaged rats some super potent form of THC in massive quantities and those rats reprogrammed and rewired their brain damaged brains while the control group did not.
Way too much can definitely cause hallucinations and aS you experienced, can cause some really horrible experiences. If you ever want to try again, start with an extremely low dosage - low enough where you don’t feel anything.
There are more options out there if you really want to break free from addiction before more damage is done. It’s worth it.
Thank you for the insight and well done from staying sober!
Sorry the answer wasn’t so concise. I was drunk everyday and learned to mask it. Some days I failed masking it or shorthanded how much I’d had to drink and it caught up with me.
Have had MANY incidents that would keep the layperson up at night for the rest of their lives. I’m just built different.
I’ve spent a collected 1 year in county jail. 6 months was the longest stretch. I’ve avoided prison but that 6 month stretch made me wish for prison.
I’ll say my boredom now (when I drank it helped speed up the day, I just wanted the day to be over) is constructive. I’m playing piano and guitar again. I’m writing.
Things still suck but I know they’ll suck whether sober or drunk so I just do sober. Saves me money
Edit: also saves me from being alone. I’m in the greatest relationship and I can’t jeopardize that. It means more to me than being numb
Congrats on being sober 2 years! It’s not easy.
But the good news is that the longer you abstain from carcinogens like alcohol or smoking, the better your odds become. Each day sober is a day that decreases your risk of cancers from alcohol. Keep doing that (and avoid other risk factors) and your cancer risk essentially drops to the normal baseline governed by your genetics, environment, etc.