My take: social drinking in itself is not addictive behavior, otherwise non-addicted people wouldn't socially drink. However, fantasizing, dreaming about, planning, reminiscing on, and generally thinking about drinking this way can be the addictive voice talking. Whenever the desire to drink disguises itself as something else (beer with the buds, shot to wind down, etc), that is when I recognize the voice of addiction in myself.

Social drinking starts with 'social' but ends with 'drinking'.

Very, very well stated, Firebird. I still social drink, but only when I have to, so as not to be the party pooper or stick-in-mud. I don't necessarily look forward to these occasions and I certainly don't create them.

Now I would be lying if I said that on rare occasions when I think that I'm going to a friend's house and I know he drinks, I bring my Naltrexone, and I'm all ready for it... then they don't drink, I do feel a twinge of disappointment. Echoes of the old addiction? I don't think so. As an analogy: I'm not a sex addict, but when I think that things are "gonna happen", and they don't, I'm disappointed.

When I started TSM, it was with the ultimate goal of quitting. I wanted something that worked... anything that worked. But TSM has cured me of alcoholism. I became a moderate drinker. Then that changed to light drinker (NIAAA definition). Eventually as I drink less and less, I may quit all together. We'll see.

BTW, I just noticed today is the 1 year anniversary of my Cure announcement. I think I'll celebrate by going to bed early.

Bob

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There really is nothing social about the experience of consuming alcohol. It's anti-social.[/quote]

Oh puh-leez!

I'll attribute this to your personal experience.

My personal experience is that if I am with a group of my friends who socially drink and I don't, I become disconnected with them because I am not on their "level" or state of consciousness or whatever you want to call it. If I take my Naltrexone and socially drink with them, I now have a good time. When I was an alcoholic, I had what I used to call a "good time", but usually it was a cause for embarrassment for me and everyone else I was with. Post-cure, it's very easy to spot the alcoholics in the group versus the social drinkers.

I suppose that I'll have to disagree with you on alcohol being anti-social. Most people call it a "social lubricant" because it breaks down communication walls that exist between people, albeit sometimes it makes communication too easy and things are said that should have remained unsaid.

I find that social drinking on Naltrexone with normal people quite enjoyable, knowing I won't make a fool of myself and I won't plunge into a never-ending nightmare of daily addicted drinking. However, I still have a choice and often (if you look at my numbers over the last 2 months) I choose not to drink at all, especially if there are a number of other non-drinkers at the social gathering.

Bob

Maybe it's just here in Australia, but alcohol is a huge problem and a major cause of anti-social behaviour.

If you've ever walked down George Street in Sydney on a weekend night after 11pm you'll see people puking and urinating in public, getting into fights, stumbling in front of cars and generally acting like idiots. None of that stuff seems particularly "social" to me. The same scene is played out in cities across the world every night of the week.

I guess we're all entitled to our opinions on the subject, though. I know for me there was never a social aspect to my consumption of alcohol, I just wanted to get shitfaced. My drinking was decidedly anti-social. Observation tells me that most drinkers are more or less the same in this respect, some just haven't progressed as far I had... not publicly anyway.

My view on all of this is very similar to Allen Carr's pitcher plant analogy.

One difference now is that I can really tell that I am not myself when I am drinking. Even after one beer I can feel that my thoughts and feelings are 'not my own', and I just kind-of sit back and watch it from another perspective. That is the little sober voice that never leaves me now, thanks to TSM.

When I interact with people who are also drinking, it is easy to see that they are 'not themselves' also. It is funny to observe how 'my drunk' interacts with 'your drunk', and they have a good conversation, but it generally has that barroom quality of meaningless babble because the participants are figments of our drunken imaginations.

In that way it seems a little anti-social, because its not really real. In the end I usually get frustrated and finish off the evening alone with a glass of wine. It begins with social and ends with drinking.

Now DOMD, to your other point: here in Seattle public drunkenness has become such a huge issue, especially in Belltown, that the city council is considering enacting a "Meathead Law" which will allow cops to issue tickets on the spot for said fighting, puking, pissing, screaming, yelling and the like. People here are getting shot, stabbed, beat-up and generally roughed up thanks to this "social lubricant".

I think we are talking about at least two different types of people; people who get sh*t-faced and people that are "normal" drinkers. At my age, I know very few of the former type. I know a lot of the latter type - people who have an occasional drink at a party, wedding, business dinner and then rarely, if ever, drink by themselves. These are the folks that I associate with now. Of course there are teetotalers, too. My wife is one and always has been.

This is not a black and white issue. In fact, I think it is dangerous to consider it a black and white issue or we could turn into anti-alcohol zealots; either you're abstinent or you're a drunkard. That view of the world is extreme and destructive.

There are a myriad of behavioral shades between abstainers and alcoholics. In fact, even among alcoholics, we have/had different styles. There were daily drinkers, full time drinkers, and binge drinkers to name a few. I was a daily drinker. I think Q was a binge drinker. (Both of us are cured now).

So, let's be realistic and recognize that their is a universe of drinking styles and that many are healthy, and many are not. We want to stick to the healthy ones and continue our TSM or choose to become abstinent either temporarily or permanently.

Bob

I guess my point in my original thread is that we shouldn't focus, especially in the beginning, on how to drink "normally". When something is killing you and/or ruining your life, your focus should be on how to "get it gone".

I think starting off with a goal of being able to drink socially is simply a sign of how much we *love* this thing that we hate. Whether it puts us at ease in a social situation, helps us relax after work, or just feels good, we like it and it's hard to think of life without it.

N101CS

Addiction defined...EXACTLY how I was in the beginning. I said this in previous posts, the "cure" was nothing I could wrap my alcoholic addicted mind around until it actually happened. But I am glad it does "work" the way it does and alters my thinking on subconcious level I guess is the easiest way to explain it. I still get my moments of romanticising good ole alcohol but TSM/Nal keeps these incedences few far and inbetween and I NEVER get out of control. I would like to be abstinent eventually and I am almost there for the most part. However if this is as good as it gets Im Aok fine with this.