I have TBM family members that are very concerned with the non TBM family members who drink. They claim alcoholism when I think they just lack perspective. A couple of drinks a week is not alcoholism. I would like to be able to give better insight when confronted with these kinds of "accusations."

I know that you have battled with this personally, and if it's not too personal, some better perspective from someone who lived it would be helpful.

Thank you. And if it is too personal, feel free to tell me to shove it.

For a TBM to call you an alcoholic, it's likely they are exaggerating.

If it's really just "a couple of drinks a week" (ie, two beers), your probably not an alcoholic. If a couple drinks a week change your state of mind for the purpose of coping with life... then yeah, you might be an alcoholic.

You might quote Monson when talking to your neighbors: "if you're offended when offense isn't intended, you're a fool. If you're offended when offense is intended, you're an even bigger fool."

Alcoholism is serious and for Mormons to diminish the seriousness of it by making like practically anyone who takes a drink is an alcoholic is just wrong. You might try googling something like "signs someone is an alcoholic" and see if AA can give you specific, expert backed things to look for.

...you have a problem with alcohol if your drinking is causing significant disruptions to your work, school, or family life (you are unable to report for work, care for your kids, etc. on a given day.) Other signs include associated health issues, passing out from drinking, blackouts (memory lapses while drinking,) and being hungover more than very occasionally.

Your M.D. will question you more closely if you report having more than two drinks a day. I can't imagine that a couple of drinks a week would concern most people, unless health issues such as liver problems or conflicting medication dictated otherwise.

I have known people who clearly were alcoholics (been through AA and all) and never missed a day of work in their lives.

out

My Dad.

On his death certificate (secondary to the primary, precipitating cause of death, which was bladder cancer): "End stage alcoholism." But he never missed a day of work. Not ever.

:-(



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/22/2010 04:42PM by tevai.

One guy gets told he's an alcoholic. The guy replys back "I have

a drinking problem? Fuck you, Peck, you're a Mormon. Compared to

you we ALL have a drinking problem!"

I agree with Summer. I grew up with an alcoholic father and have seen it up close and personal. If you don't drink to make yourself "feel normal", you're probably not an alcoholic. However, that doesn't mean that you should drink to get drunk, either. The big hint at alcoholism has to do with how the alcohol affects you. Lots of people drink to get a buzz. It's the ones who drink so they feel normal and "okay" that are even more concerning.

One of my best friends is an alcoholic. I was there the day he took his very first drink and he had a very weird reaction. After that, the drinking started changing his personality to the point at which he wasn't very pleasant to be around. When he stopped drinking a couple of years later, he went back to his old self. My dad often drank as a means of coping with a lot of personal demons. He was/is a very functional alcoholic. Always managed to go to work and keep up with his responsibilities, but could be a perfect abusive asshole at the drop of a hat. And he would either not remember his behavior or he wouldn't acknowledge it.

Their own point of view is so warped that they can't possibly assess the situation without it being tainted by their prejudices.

In of the opening scenes in "Burn After Reading," the Malcovich character says to a collegue, "I have a drinking problem? "F*** you Peck, you're a mormon. Next to you we all have a drinking problem."

Anon for this Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> http://www.about-alcoholism-facts.com/Signs_of_Alc
> oholism.html


It says "If you answer yes to 4 or more of these questions, you may be dealing with a definite drug or alcohol problem."

Okay, these ones are ordinary enough and could apply to many people without a problem:

>4. Has using caused you to make new friends and lose old friendships, created an unsatisfying feeling of loneliness or isolation?
>11. Is there any recurring time during the day when you find yourself thinking of drinking or using drugs?
>13. Do you ever suffer from insomnia?
>15. Do you drink or use drugs when you are alone?
>18. Do you try to overcome shyness or become more confident by drinking or using drugs?

On 4, I created new friends when I left the morg, and some of those I met when at a bar on trivia night, etc, and yes, recognizing that my old friends would not want to associate with an exmo was a sense of isolation. On 11, a glass of wine at dinner is recurring for many folks. On 13, insomnia is likely as you age, but not necessarily due to using. On 15, a glass of wine at dinner when you live alone constitutes drinking alone. On 18, as I dated and had drinks on the date, it definitely helped with conversation and easing the ice-breaker situation.

I can answer affirmatively to four (only four) of these. Does that truly mean I have a problem? Hmmm. I don't think so.

Alcoholism was more prevalent in the women. They were completely ok all day long. They got dinner on the table, cleaned it up and then hit the bottle until they passed out. They were sloppy drunks until sleep overtook them though. Best to just keep out of their way. (Better to make an intervention and convince them that they were hurting all of us and needed help, but no one ever did. One of these women is long since dead, the other put herself "on the wagon" and seems pretty darn good.

To know them during the day, you would not know there was a problem except for the rare ocasion when they would drink before dinner and then it was quite obvious just how bad it was.

"Anon for this's" link to the Johns Hopkins 20 Question test is excellent; I was about to Google it up myself...

I first saw that questionaire when I was 21 and had only been drinking for two years or so... I answered about 16 of 20 with a yes ("three" affirmatives are probably diagnostic of alcohoism).

Then I was in Milwaukee early in my recovery, and a guy mentioned the question, "Do you drink in the morning?" and he said he never got up in the morning... Me either...

I periodically answer ex-Mormons on the subject of drinking, and as I see it, there's probably no reason for them to avoid social drinking because of a fear of becoming an alcoholic (and yes, two or three drinks a week is social drinking, as long as you're being honest with yourself).

Drinking is a personal decision. however, and anyone who chooses to abstain doesn't have any explaining to so (so long as there's no moralizing). If there's a family history of alcoholism, then that's a legitimate reason not to (although the disease is such that with few exceptions--possibly among absolutely abstinent sorts like Mormons or many Southern Baptists--anyone who can become an alcoholic will).

I'm also of the strong opinion that Native Americans should not drink (and I love those people when they're sober and can generally handle them when they 're drinking since I'm familiar with their culture). I've seen studies of alcoholism rates among the Utes in Eastern Utah and the Lakota Sioux in South Dakota, and it runs upwards of fifty percent... BTW, that's evidence against the BOM, since Jewish people themselves have a lower than average incidence of alcoholism (although I've known a number of Jewish alcoholics).

My definition of alcoholism involves the negative impact of chronic, compulsive drinking on one's lifestyle; it's not how much you drank so much as what it does to you when you drink... Me, I used to wake up in spots... Strange people's beds or couches, coming to on a hillside one time while deer hunting, or passed out in my car on the side of the road...

So I suggest people drink responsibly and call a cab or have a designated driver if they need to get somewhere after they've been drinking.

Most Mormons, IMHO, don't have a clue about alcoholism (even though their compassion is probably legitimate); there's a lot of "cultural codependency" (which deprives an alcoholic of the strong consequences needed to motivate recovery).

Incidentally, I haven't "battled drinking" in a long, long time (unless you count those damn obnoxious drunks I deal with late nights on weekends). Now the "sober symptoms of alcoholism" are a whole 'nother matter...

There are lots of approaches to stopping drinking and recovering if it becomes a problem; my experience was in AA (and lots of adjunct therapy as well), and whatever works will get no criticism from me with limits. The Scientology crowd strikes me as bonkers, and those who decry 12-Step approaches as an element of their recovery have their heads up their wahzoos, again, IMHO... Finally, I see some places still offer "aversion therapy" fer gawdsakes...

I might be wrong, but I feel on that one about like I feel about the BYU electroshock programs being used to change sexual orientation...

Good luck, take it easy, and it's probably best to develop some boundaries involving those who are intolerant of your drinking unless it's affecting your behavior markedly...

It's very clear to me that only one family member would be considered an alcoholic with the descriptions mentioned. And even he has gotten help. Everyone else is simply a "social drinker."
I liked the line from "Burn after reading." but it is just frustrating trying to talk about real problems with people who are too judgmental and ignorant to understand what a real problem actually is.

raptorjesus Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have TBM family members that are very concerned
> with the non TBM family members who drink. They
> claim alcoholism when I think they just lack
> perspective. A couple of drinks a week is not
> alcoholism. I would like to be able to give better
> insight when confronted with these kinds of
> "accusations."
>
> I know that you have battled with this personally,
> and if it's not too personal, some better
> perspective from someone who lived it would be
> helpful.
>
> Thank you. And if it is too personal, feel free
> to tell me to shove it.

Hell. Several drinks a day, every day probably isn't alcoholism!

Try THIS:

"Alcoholism, just because someone drink a little wine for their stomach? What's WITH you people? Don't you every READ the scriptures, any more?"

Direct them to http://esv.scripturetext.com/1_timothy/5.htm

And get them to read this passage:

"Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, nor take part in the sins of others; keep yourself pure. 23(No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments.)"

Also, point out that accusing someone of being an alcoholic is like accusing someone of having TB merely because they have a cough.

Seriously, ordinary mortals often have little comprehension of the sheer volume most alcoholics consume... I regularly used to put away between a pint and a fifth of hard liquor almost daily for a number of years, but then my low-bottom friends regard me as a bit of a lightweight...

Being sober is a very "unnatural state for" an alcoholic (one authority, Terence Gorski, puts the timetable for full recovery of one's personhood at around nine years, minimum). As the disease progresses, the individual generally has to become intoxicated in order to function comfortably.

This is why an ongoing support system and the development of abstinence skills is so important...

Alcoholism is an ADDICTION to alcohol. I've seen very bad cases of it where people have to run and get a drink after work and if they don't they get irritable and get the shakes. They have to have a drink instead of wanting one. They have to have a drink instead of thinking it would be nice to have one. Some people like alcohol, other people have to have it. Alcoholics are the latter.

Rubicon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Alcoholism is an ADDICTION to alcohol. I've seen
> very bad cases of it where people have to run and
> get a drink after work and if they don't they get
> irritable and get the shakes. They have to have a
> drink instead of wanting one. They have to have a
> drink instead of thinking it would be nice to have
> one. Some people like alcohol, other people have
> to have it. Alcoholics are the latter.

Right. I want a lot of things such as chocolate cake or pizza, but if it isn't available, I still function. I don't have a tantrum, get the shakes, stay home from work, or spend the mortgage payment on it.If alcohol is causing you to do any of those things, you may have a problem



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/21/2010 11:48PM by bona dea.

The problem comes the fact that over 60% of AA newcomers are forced to the AA faith (AA's number november 2002 Grapevine). These people are forced and coerced to participate and convert to the AA faith by court order, employer demands, social services determining child cistody issues, and at the command of organ transplant teams threatening the withholding of organ transplants (as according to Dr, Clifton Kurtiss when the Cleveland Clinin refused to give him an organ transplant without converting to the AA faith)

Nobody said a negative remark that made me change my attitude towars how evil the AA faith is. Although that is what TBMS say to exmos when they leave they faith.

The simple fact that the AA faith goes to great length to be depceptive about the fact that it is a fundamentalist religion (such as stating that the religionous aspects of the program should be taught in "teaspoons not buckets" (just like milk before meat) In addition, people are REQUIRED in 12 step programs to make SPECIFIC prayers to the AA god (see step 7).

It is truly a shame that people are dying and killing others due to the unearned admiration that is claimed by the AA faith.

And no Bill W was not a stockbroker. He was a stock touter, and his actions woould warrant arrest by the SEC today.

But it's the booze that does the coercing...

Keep building those strawmen, there, oh Keeper-of-the-Paranoia... That tactic of building them and then setting fire to them and using the light created to proclaim victory for the forces of enlightentment is right out of the BYU playbook, probably developed by Hugh Nibley himself...

And your unfamiliarity with AA is obvious to anyone with any degree of sophistication...

>Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery...

S-U-G-G-E-S-T-E-D... Look that one up in the dictionary...

Are their toxic groups/meetings and toxic individuals? Hell yes... But part of growing up (which is the essential element of recovery which most therapists don't have the balls to tell patients they need to do) is recognizing one has to learn to live in this world and get one's needs met in spite of its imperfections... I've posted here many times some "run like hell" advice if one encounters stuff like that...

Which you, with your misguided idealistic immaturity (and outright cherry-picking of material I don't have time or the inkling to debunk) fail to grasp...

And I wouldn't be bothering, except somewhere right now some doctor is writing a prescription for an achoholic for one of the sedative-hypnotics (at least they've graduated from barbiturates to the benzodiazepines; a moment of silence, please, for Marilyn Monroe and Dorothy Kilgallen). I wish it were only naltrexone or Antabue they were offering...

And that part about Bill and the SEC is particularly rich; you need to research what's going on with the current "Culture of Corruption" on Wall Street (better watch MSNBC, though; you won't find that stuff on Faux). Plus I see you quoted Bill W. at one time and then dissed him on other occasions...

Consistency isn't exactly your trademark, is it?

I asked about alcoholism--not about whether or not AA is good or not.

But I've seen this "let's take a shit all over AA whenever the topic is even hinted at" on other threads.

What the hell is up with that?

Just a couple of guesses...

1) Many are alcoholics who've been unable to achieve sobriety (for whatever reason). Besides the quantities of alcohol consumed, ordinary "civilians" don't have much of a grasp of how sick and deluded alcoholics are (look at how the country embraced its last president for a time). This may be because they are so "normal appearing" when sober (and generally bright and often charming to boot). Those mental and perceptual distortions find outlet in blaming others. Bill W. wrote about an early study that pointed to alcoholics' fundamental grandiosity and immaturity, noting how early AA's resented the hell out of this information. He also noted many had come to accept it in the sober light of time. So AA is blamed if recovery isn't forthcoming...

2) I've known a large number of alcoholics who've relapsed after periods of sobriety (I often get them in my cab), and projection is often the mental defense they adopt to mitigate the shame of their actions (with their acting-out episodes becoming progressively worse). If they take repsonsibility for what's happening, then they would be forced to adopt some program of abstinence and recovery. And even professional clinicians aren't immune to this one...

3) As one author I read noted, "AA is folk medicine," and there are many who want to quantify it (which, given that modern pyschology is barely past the toddler stage--JMHO--is a bit absurd), and they resent the way it sometimes defies analysis. Having experienced it, I understand the power of faith (even if it is only illusory, so what? The disease is fatal, and most alcoholics--other than Glenn Beck--aren't out to take over the world), and I grant others the freedom to accept or reject it and only ask that their dogma be left on the doorstep. And in truth, AA was the first ongoing program that provided recovery for alcoholism on any scale whatsover...

4) Many in the clinical field are products of alcoholic or other sorts of dysfunctional upbringings, and frankly, those sorts are often more impaired without alcohol than some of the beer drinking Native Americans I haul around... They often refuse to see it as a disease even though it's primary, progressive, and 100% fatal if untreated...

5) There are those politically ambitious sorts who seem to feel the need to advance their own cause by stepping on others... Some try to make money on recovery, even, and they scare the hell out of me... They seem to find a need to put others' lights out in order to make theirs shine... And yes, that's a quality in myself I try really hard to be on guard against...

Youtube Legion twelve:

My situation: sober alcoholic with 4 generations (at least) of alcoholics behind me.

You are against AA, but AA has helped countless people, including my father. I have not used it so far, but I have used its ideas to help me to sobriety - so far (since 2002).

The fact that US courts often prescribe attendance at AA is a "local" problem in the US. I am sure it affects the AA culture over there (I'm in Europe), but it doesn't call into question the actual method.

You keep calling it a faith, but the so-called "higher power" part is left up to each person to formulate and understand as they wish. No God is imposed.

Finally, whatever the "ad hominem" view of Bill W. (not an angel, as SLCabbie points out), it doesn't matter to me.

If he only did one good thing in his life, it was helping to develop and promote AA.

>And no Bill W was not a stockbroker. He was a stock touter, and his actions woould (sic) warrant arrest by the SEC today.

But not then. So your point is so moot it would win mootiest comment in a mooty comment contest.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/22/2010 04:38PM by matt.

That comment made my day!

Alcoholics need drink like the rest of us need food. They drink alone and are secretive about their drinking, constantly topping up to keep the appearance and feeling of being normal.

When alcohol is not available, such as during hospitalisation, the patient will usually need a replacement in the form of tranquilisers.

Alcoholics need to drink almost as soon as they get up, otherwise the DTs come on.

It is a terrible disease that robs a person of normal emotional responses and renders them incapable of enjoying a balanced, stress free and stable life. Illnesses such as duodenal ulcers and liver problems are rife within this condition and an alcoholic usually needs to hit rock bottom before they can accept that they really have a problem.

The person closest to an alcoholic is the last one who could help them recover, as they become the excuse for the drinking. For some reason a spouse will become the fall guy/gal as a means of justification for being allowed to continue drinking as the alcoholic is totally out of control.

Just my 2 penceworth folks.

Briggy

As far as middle to late-stage alcoholism is concerned... The earlier stages are more problematic to define, and there appear to me to be different "varieties" of the malady (suggesting the "expression" of more than one genetic factors is probably operative; alternately some additional psychological factors may come into play as well). There are "periodic" alcoholics who go weeks or months before embarking on a bender, and actually from what I've seen of Native Americans and their drinking (admittedly unscientific since I don't hang with them when they're imbibing, except to get them to their destinations when the bars close), they don't seem to develop the incredible tolerances that separate alcoholics from ordinary imbibers... But the devastation is absolutely apparent...

Anyway, check your e-mail on an entirely different subject; I want to make sure your addy is still operative...

My perception is this:

If you like to drink and dont want to stop you do not have a problem with drinking

If you like to drink, want to stop, and are unable to then you have a problem

If some one else wants you to stop their problem is not that you drink.
Rather that you will not do what they want.

If some one else wants you to stop and you refuse to do so, the problem is not that you drink, nor that you will not do what they want, but that you cannot resolve your differences.

Loook to the real issues!