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Problem Drinking? (Gen X and others)


Whore*of*Mensa

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Whore*of*Mensa

So, although I don't like stereotyping according to age, one stereotype I really fit is the heavy-drinking, Generation-X person. This is apparently an issue for Baby Boomers and some Millennials too...I think it is partially to do with being in a culture where drinking is an expected part of social interaction, and where those with any kind of social/sexual anxieties can use alcohol to mask them.

 

Has anyone else done this, and been left with some form of addiction that seems to get worse with age?

 

I've found that as I get less able to handle the after-effects of drink I'm suddenly drinking way more than I ever did before! To the point that it is starting to affect my life in negative ways, and I'm wondering whether I might just have to stop completely given I simply cannot do it in moderation?

 

Just wondered if anyone else has similar experiences, anyone managed to give up, if so did you follow any kind of programme like OYNB (one year no booze) which I keep seeing on my facebook!

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im a gen-x'er and i had a serious drinking (amongst other things) problem when i was younger. i did stop and i went cold turkey. it was the worst three months of my life. but it was worth it.

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I'm 57 and before I was in my mid-30's, I did not really have much to drink except maybe A beer on the weekend and maybe a glass of wine at a special dinner. In fact, I had done a bit of international travel and never stopped in the Duty Free shops. However, by my mid-30's I discovered I like a drink in the late afternoon.  Stress from work and just liking a bit of a buzz before dinner to unwind (that would be on days I was not out putting 20 miles on the bike in the evening). Plus I looked at my father, who died at 75 when I was 35, and I decided to be a little different. My father loved Scotch. When he and my mother toured Scotland in the 80's, he went to many of the small distilleries and sampled their product and brought back a few bottles (tax paid of course) of some of the rarer single malt ones. It wasn't until he turned 60 that he decided he would have a daily drink in the afternoon at 5 PM. When he died, he left behind some nice bottles he never got to use. I figured, why should I wait until I was 60 🤪

 

Now, I have found that I can only have a single drink and usually that is only two or three times a week. I just do not process alcohol like I did when I was younger and if I have a bit too much, I just feel ill. So I will have a small gin and tonic (Tanqueray) or perhaps a bit of rum (Black Seal) with Coke. But more than that, it is my body says "NO".

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Lord Jade Cross

I break all the stereotypes :D

Never been one to drink and have hated people insisting I do so with a passion.

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Whore*of*Mensa
3 hours ago, ByeYall! said:

im a gen-x'er and i had a serious drinking (amongst other things) problem when i was younger. i did stop and i went cold turkey. it was the worst three months of my life. but it was worth it.

Well done for managing that! I know how hard that would be. 

 

I've done dry January before, but then gone back to drinking even more than before, and now I can't even stop at one bottle of wine let alone one glass! I think I'm going to have to do the cold turkey thing..

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I am a Boomer, and I love wine. I have it with almost every dinner. But I do not ever seem to drink enough to get drunk. I did in my 20s, though.

 

My father's parents (from the "Greatest Generation") drank all day, every day (their house smelled like a big cocktail). They both lived to be nearly 100. Yet my grandfather's father (from the generation preceding "The Lost Generation") died of cirrhosis of the liver during Prohibition.

 

Some of us tend to drink less as we age. I imagine that I may start passing on the wine with dinner when I get older.

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WinterWanderer

I see this a lot in the people around me. My friends who drank socially in college are all still moderate or heavy drinkers. I also drank a lot in college (would have been considered a heavy drinker by senior year), because my friends did. Now I live farther away and have less friends, and only drink occasionally... when I get invited out places, or when family comes to visit, or when my coworker and I go on a road trip (she's a social drinker). Other than that, I barely keep any alcohol in my apartment, and anything I buy lasts for months. I definitely think I'd have more of a problem with drinking if I still had as much of a social life as I used to.

 

Best of luck with quitting or cutting down.

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I, too, am Gen-X, but never picked up on drinking and never saw the appeal.

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Whore*of*Mensa
1 hour ago, cbc said:

I never developed a full-blown alcohol problem, but I did used to drink to quash negative feelings about certain aspects of the sex I was having at the time, which I eventually learnt was not the sex I should be having. Which isn't great. I think anytime one needs to do something that helps them detach from reality in order to cope with that very reality, there's at least potentially an issue that's not being properly addressed. It's a red flag.

That just reminded me, when I was younger I did used to wonder how people could have sex without being drunk! It's a bit chicken and egg with me, I started drinking very very young. So I'm never sure if it's a detach from reality thing or just plain habit, and chemical addiction getting stronger over the years. It's probably both.  Either way it's not ideal! 

 

1 hour ago, cbc said:

Anyway. I hope you're able to figure out what it is you need to do. 

Thank you 😊

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Whore*of*Mensa
1 hour ago, Fioryn said:

Best of luck with quitting or cutting down.

Thank you 😊

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Whore*of*Mensa
2 hours ago, Kelly said:

am a Boomer, and I love wine. I have it with almost every dinner. But I do not ever seem to drink enough to get drunk. I did in my 20s, though.

I wish I could do that. A glass with dinner just carries on all evening for me..

 

2 hours ago, Kelly said:

My father's parents (from the "Greatest Generation") drank all day, every day (their house smelled like a big cocktail). They both lived to be nearly 100. Yet my grandfather's father (from the generation preceding "The Lost Generation") died of cirrhosis of the liver during Prohibition.

That's a reminder it's not a recent thing I guess! Apparently my great grandfather was an alcoholic, my grandfather was teetotal all his life as a result, and my Dad can just have one glass with dinner! Maybe it depends on whether you have a tendency towards addiction..

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brbdogsonfire
7 hours ago, Whore*of*Mensa said:

So, although I don't like stereotyping according to age, one stereotype I really fit is the heavy-drinking, Generation-X person. This is apparently an issue for Baby Boomers and some Millennials too...I think it is partially to do with being in a culture where drinking is an expected part of social interaction, and where those with any kind of social/sexual anxieties can use alcohol to mask them.

 

Has anyone else done this, and been left with some form of addiction that seems to get worse with age?

 

I've found that as I get less able to handle the after-effects of drink I'm suddenly drinking way more than I ever did before! To the point that it is starting to affect my life in negative ways, and I'm wondering whether I might just have to stop completely given I simply cannot do it in moderation?

 

Just wondered if anyone else has similar experiences, anyone managed to give up, if so did you follow any kind of programme like OYNB (one year no booze) which I keep seeing on my facebook!

When you are attempting to quit drinking falling off the horse occasionally is normal. It can be a hard thing for people to do sadly, but if you take it one day at a time and try not to beat yourself up if you slip up you can do it.

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According to various websites I'm either a Millennial... or a Xennial (preference for the latter!). 

 

Anyhow, as soon as I was of legal age I would drink at any given opportunity. I wouldn't rely on it to get me through the day / night most of the time, but 'as was the fashion' and because of peer-pressure I wouldn't be present at a social event (ones at college, university, and early jobs) if I didn't have a drink in hand and was comfortably tipsy. 

 

The novelty soon wore off, especially once when I was 'three sheets to the wind' and I caught a glimpse of myself in a washroom mirror - in a surprising moment, the beer-goggles vanished and I saw myself in a way that I didn't want others to experience. 

 

They never saw me like that again. Both for the good reason of me ceasing all drinking of alcohol... and the slightly less good reason of me never getting invited out to any social activity because I was deemed a boring stick-in-the-mud. But their loss! And I haven't had a drink for a shade over twenty years. 

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Being alone constantly there is no check valve. I feel like I can do essentially anything. There is nothing to stop me from what I want to do.  It is the darkside to my asexuallity.  If there is a six pack I can finish it. If its is pints it will be gone. I come from a long line of chemical dependency. When you find that chemical that balances the scales you want more and more and more because it feels good when the scales are balanced. 

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On 11/10/2019 at 3:15 PM, Whore*of*Mensa said:

So, although I don't like stereotyping according to age, one stereotype I really fit is the heavy-drinking, Generation-X person. This is apparently an issue for Baby Boomers and some Millennials too...I think it is partially to do with being in a culture where drinking is an expected part of social interaction, and where those with any kind of social/sexual anxieties can use alcohol to mask them.

 

The social anxiety issue you mention what fueled my drinking. Not so for fitting in, I failed miserably when I was younger at that I was an outcast actually. But mostly I would drink so I can speak and interact with others because I was shy. The very first drinks I tried them out of curiosity of course. 

This has become closer to addiction in the last year and a half. I'm not a heavy drinker and what kept me from drinking the whole bottle is me worrying about the calories. haha Some friend that he is fighting a gambling addiction suggested to go to a aa meeting. But I don't want to quit drinking. Life has make me quit so much more important stuff than that. 

I believe that drinking is a pretty standard, well accepted social behavior just like drinking coffee or eating junk food.

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Whore*of*Mensa
7 hours ago, TheAbhorrent said:

The social anxiety issue you mention what fueled my drinking. Not so for fitting in, I failed miserably when I was younger at that I was an outcast actually. But mostly I would drink so I can speak and interact with others because I was shy. The very first drinks I tried them out of curiosity of course. 

This has become closer to addiction in the last year and a half. I'm not a heavy drinker and what kept me from drinking the whole bottle is me worrying about the calories. haha Some friend that he is fighting a gambling addiction suggested to go to a aa meeting. But I don't want to quit drinking. Life has make me quit so much more important stuff than that. 

I believe that drinking is a pretty standard, well accepted social behavior just like drinking coffee or eating junk food.

That sounds pretty much like me. If I stop drinking, I have to avoid most social situations /events because I can't imagine doing them without alcohol. The problem is the physical addiction - if it was just social drinking it would probably be OK. I agree drinking is standard social behaviour, there's just a massive drinking culture here in the UK which is hard to avoid. I have an American friend who says it's much more frowned upon over there! But addiction is a massive problem, and once at that stage it seems as if you have to cut it out completely - something I've really tried to avoid. 

 

I'm on a pact now not to drink for a month. I've done 3 days so far :) 

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19 hours ago, Whore*of*Mensa said:

That sounds pretty much like me. If I stop drinking, I have to avoid most social situations /events because I can't imagine doing them without alcohol. The problem is the physical addiction - if it was just social drinking it would probably be OK. I agree drinking is standard social behaviour, there's just a massive drinking culture here in the UK which is hard to avoid. I have an American friend who says it's much more frowned upon over there! But addiction is a massive problem, and once at that stage it seems as if you have to cut it out completely - something I've really tried to avoid. 

 

I'm on a pact now not to drink for a month. I've done 3 days so far :) 

First of all best of luck to your effort. I believe in you! You can pull this through.

 

We have the same culture in my country, heavy drinking at every occasion. So, yeah, it is difficult to be the exclusion.  I do know few people who didn't like alcohol or avoiding it for health reasons. When we were going out they will order a glass a wine just to have something on the table and they will barely drink.

My problem is more in the mind, that physical. Today I went and bought a bottle of liqueur just to get that out of my head.

And if I may, just to lighten things up, comment the addiction to shopping/fashion victims and their ugly sneakers I see all over the place. Is this "healthy" behavior?  

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I managed to walk away from a 6-8 year long alcohol addiction, and I haven't touched alcohol for 4 years now.

 

The fact that I cannot (or do not want to?) recall if it was 6, 7 or 8 years speaks volumes of its magnitude. I suppose "problem drinking" is quite an understatement in my case.

 

I never developed a healthy approach to alcohol in the first place; I mostly (only?) drank to fit in, starting in high school...

 

... It didn't work, of course, but if I got *really* drunk at least I wouldn't care that I didn't fit in... Now there's a recipe for success in life... 🙄

 

While quitting alcohol likely saved my life, It also makes socializing difficult, since alcohol is so ubiquitous in social situations...

 

... when you don't drink, dance or date, then what do you do? ...

 

Dab? Then I can't hang out with Stormzy...

Drive? They made a game about me trying that... It's called Carmageddon...

Derail my own post? OK, I'll try that...

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Whore*of*Mensa
14 minutes ago, TableForOne said:

I managed to walk away from a 6-8 year long alcohol addiction, and I haven't touched alcohol for 4 years now.

 

The fact that I cannot (or do not want to?) recall if it was 6, 7 or 8 years speaks volumes of its magnitude. I suppose "problem drinking" is quite an understatement in my case.

That's an incredible achievement

 

15 minutes ago, TableForOne said:

. It didn't work, of course, but if I got *really* drunk at least I wouldn't care that I didn't fit in... Now there's a recipe for success in life... 🙄

 

While quitting alcohol likely saved my life, It also makes socializing difficult, since alcohol is so ubiquitous in social situations..

Totally get that! I can very much relate. 

 

15 minutes ago, TableForOne said:

.. when you don't drink, dance or date, then what do you do? ...

 

Dab? Then I can't hang out with Stormzy...

Drive? They made a game about me trying that... It's called Carmageddon...

Derail my own post? OK, I'll try that...

😂 

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  • 4 months later...
Professor Tarknassus
On 11/10/2019 at 1:15 PM, Whore*of*Mensa said:

Has anyone else done this, and been left with some form of addiction that seems to get worse with age?

I'm an alcoholic.  I would drink myself to sleep pretty much most nights.  I tried to control it with attempts to limit my intake, but it would always creep up.

 

Eventually I stopped.  That was five years ago this Feb just gone.  

 

I initially used two things:  The first was the stopdrinking subreddit (I set up a badge that counts the days) and gave myself a mantra: "I can't drink, so I won't drink and that means I don't drink."  I would say it any time I needed to - which at the start was several times a day.

 

Now I hate the smell of alcohol, but I'm comfortable with alcohol being around (say for example at a BBQ or some other party/function) because my first instinct is for a lemonade or coke instead.

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Whore*of*Mensa

@Professor Tarknassus I’ve started on a 90 day no alcohol challenge, as I eventually had to admit I was becoming less and less functioning alcoholic and more of a failure...Day 6 now. After that I’ll try for more. 

 

5 years is amazing it sounds as if you’ll never go back. 

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  • 4 weeks later...
The Barefoot Backpacker

Well, this is an interesting topic.

I'm solid Gen-X and from the UK, where as others have pointed out, there is a strong drinking culture. Certainly I've been around alcohol from an early age (my parents used to brew their own beer, even), so it's always been a part of my life. And yes, aside from dabbles in my youth with cider, and a feeling that i probably ought to appreciate whiskey more, it is, almost exclusively, beer.

I've travelled around the world sampling local beers, and even wrote a long post on my website about the history and marvel that is beer in the USA (3 breweries account for 87% of the market. Over 6000 others account for the remaining 13%. This is the good stuff). And my love of beer is manyfold - apart from liking the taste of it, I also find it helps me motivate myself, focus down, concentrate, and write, rather than get distracted by shiny Internetty things. But i think this is more to do with the location I drink it in (pubs without wifi, so I'm forced to do something with my time) than the beer itself - and beer is better as it lasts longer than hot drinks and overall cheaper too.

There is a stereotype with Gen-X, but the one I'm thinking of is slightly different. We're a generation, uniquely I think amongst generation identities, whereby the most notable event in our younger days, when we were at that age where we could still legitimately say we could pursue our dreams, was an optimistic rather than negative one. Boomers had Vietnam, Millennials had 9/11 and economic busts, we had The Fall Of The Berlin Wall. Given that for many of us, our childhood was full of tales of 'we're all going to die in a nuclear war', this was quite a revelation. Subsequent history has shown our optimism was short-lived, and because we'd had that hope, it's made us feel even more in despair than if we'd started with pessimism. Now, we're a bunch of 40 and 50 year olds who basically have no hope that anything will get fixed in our lifetimes and all we can do is go 'Millennials, this is your world now, just let us drown our sorrows in beer as we have nothing left to live for'. Couple that with the feeling that we're kinda forgotten about, and it feels like we're just shouting into the void.

Personally? At the end of last year i was probably drinking an average of 3 pints of beer a day. That's British pints; 568ml, 20oz or thereabouts. Generally of beer over 5% too (whereas most UK beer in pubs tends to be between 3.5% and 5%). It was incredibly unhealthy but I didn't really see an alternative; I'm not saying i didn't have anything else to live for, I hasten to add, but it did feel that beer was the high point of my day and that I had nothing better to do with my life.

Oddly, a combination of cost and the virus (and subsequent 'lockdown') has seen me cut my intake to maybe 3 pints a week, rather than a day; by not being able to go out to the pub I'm not tempted to use it as a place to go to 'escape'; I've tried to focus my mind at home (because I've had to, I guess) by other means, and looming life deadlines have also made me try to snap into gear. I'm now finding after drinking even only one bottle, my body doesn't really want another one - I'm not used to it any more. This is probably a good thing.

I mean, I still feel the world is a bit fecked, and there's not a lot I can do about it, but I'm trying to learn that alcohol isn't the answer!

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Diana DeLuna
On 5/6/2020 at 7:23 AM, The Barefoot Backpacker said:

There is a stereotype with Gen-X, but the one I'm thinking of is slightly different. We're a generation, uniquely I think amongst generation identities, whereby the most notable event in our younger days, when we were at that age where we could still legitimately say we could pursue our dreams, was an optimistic rather than negative one. Boomers had Vietnam, Millennials had 9/11 and economic busts, we had The Fall Of The Berlin Wall. Given that for many of us, our childhood was full of tales of 'we're all going to die in a nuclear war', this was quite a revelation. Subsequent history has shown our optimism was short-lived, and because we'd had that hope, it's made us feel even more in despair than if we'd started with pessimism. Now, we're a bunch of 40 and 50 year olds who basically have no hope that anything will get fixed in our lifetimes and all we can do is go 'Millennials, this is your world now, just let us drown our sorrows in beer as we have nothing left to live for'. Couple that with the feeling that we're kinda forgotten about, and it feels like we are just shouting into the void.

🥺

I graduated in 1992 into a minor recession and with a fully-formed, new-adult monster case of anxiety. There was very little work to be found. My friend with a new engineering degree went to work changing oil for the rich Boomers' huge SUVs at Jiffy Lube. Anxiety was eating me alive, but my mother pushed cajoled and shouted, and eventually got me a job in an upscale grocery store, serving the rich Boomers artisan bread while they snapped their fingers at me and called me "sir." (I'm cis female)

 

So even though the free world was much more stable as a whole, I wouldn't quite say all of Gen X entered adulthood with optimism. 

 

With my nuclear level of anxiety, it just wasn't worth the horror of the uncertainty of leaving retail for something more aligned with my field. So while apparently everyone else partied the 90s away, I was suffering and miserable.

 

All 4 of my siblings (3 gen-x and 1 millennial) have serious alcohol issues. I refused substances of any kind...until my 30s when I suffered the one of the most severe, longest-lasting panic attacks of my life and finally gave in to my doctors. I broke down and told them to just. Make. It. Stop.

 

Not surprisingly, I'm just as susceptible to addiction as my siblings are. The gateway was antidepressants and benzos, which I still take responsibly but will never be able to give up. Since antidepressants cause a numbing of emotions that steal away your highs along with your lows, I eventually turned to a common plant substance which is still illegal here. Now I barely go 2 days without craving the extra relaxation and sensual enhancement that said plant provides. I still function and go to work, but my short-term memory is crap and I won't be surprised if I get early onset Alzheimers.

 

 

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

I’m squeaky clean now but it’s always been a problem. I’m lucky in so much that I can quit a massive habit in a second, it would only last about 6 months tho and I’d be back on it. I made up the last time I stopped that I’d stay clean which was about  4 years now and I’m fine.

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