Hi Sup Forums, I woke up in a hospital the other day. Think this is a wake-up call but not sure

Hi Sup Forums, I woke up in a hospital the other day. Think this is a wake-up call but not sure.

I can classify myself as a binge drinker more than an alcoholic. I get too confident with how much alcohol I can handle and overdo it. I was with a close friend I hadn't seen in a while and having a great time just us two drinking. He let me know he was at a good level and needed no more alcohol. My cockiness set in and was adamant on purchasing a bottle of vodka, which I did. I proceeded to chug straight from the bottle like it was nothing (he later told me I took down about 3/4 before the incident). My next memory is waking up in a gown with an IV in a hospital, scared and confused. I had passed out on my friends toilet and smashed my head into a wall, bleeding a pool of blood all over his bathroom floor - resulting in an eyebrow laceration with stitches and a puffy eyelid. They then called an ambulance and that was that. I am embarrassed and ashamed with myself. I've gotten a handful of drunk injuries and blacked out plenty of times before but this is the lowest point I've gotten to. I know the anxiety and shame along with physical injury will go away eventually. But I come to Sup Forums to ask all of my fellow alcoholics, do I have a problem? Do I need to drop drinking all together, at least for a good while? Thanks for anyone who read my rant and can provide an opinion. :)

I should add that along with the physical injury the diagnosis was alcohol poisoning with a BAC of .4% which are lethal levels. Drinking every couple days or so and doing it to points of blackout are something I have experience with but nothing full-on like a day-to-night alcoholic. One odd apprehension I have to cold-turkey quitting is how can I ever have fun again?

wear a helmet next time

Funnily enough, my buddy said that when he picked me up from the hospital

>One odd apprehension I have to cold-turkey quitting is how can I ever have fun again
the fact that you have this thought, means you are an alcoholic. its not defined my frequency or quantity, but the reasons for doing it. you equate alcohol to positive feelings, something non alcoholics don't do. in your mind, the drink is WHY you are having fun, and without it you believe you cant have fun.

stop drinking? sure, if you can. if it helps. contact SOS if you aren't into that AA religious shit. SOS wont tell you to stop drinking, but they will tell you to get therapy.

i guess it gave you a lesson. You prob wont go that far next time lmao

Yes. Stop drinking. Smoke weed instead. No bs here. I turned yellow. No AA, no come to Jesus. Just top shelf cannabis. Saved my life. Sleepy Time Tea from Celestial Seasonings is good too.

Your problem is that when you drink you can't get yourself feeling as good as you'd like so you go overboard and drink too much. what you should be doing is mixing drugs and alcohol. I suggest starting with weed (both getting high before you drink and getting high after you're already drunk) in addition to sedatives like valium and misc. like opiates and lsd.

What a shitty friend, let's you slam a whole bottle lmao. Just watching you kill yourself.

OP you really suck if you need alcohol to have "fun".

>Smoke weed
Been down that road. Gives me bad panic attacks. Appreciate the advice. All I can say is though most people are affected positively by weed, there is an unspoken of population of people who, like me, don't mesh well with cannabis.
>you equate alcohol to positive feelings
What is it's not made-up and it actually gives me - in moderate doses - true happiness or serotonin boost blah blah whatever? Or is that just an excuse?

I have anxiety and depression and don't get out of the house much. I drink alone most of the time but on the rare occasion I get to drink socially I almost always make a fcking fool of myself.

Congratulations, buttswipe, you just confused ambition with capability.

You just learned a fucking basic, basic lesson. Here's some truth

>you are not an alcoholic, just a binge drinker
>how old are you? I'd guess 20-24?
>once you drink, you get over-confident i.e. you were stupid to begin with, alcohol makes you more stupid; in your case, the BAC is irrelevant, better look at the NBV (neurons by volume)

What you drank was not a lot. What you did, was act like a stupid child.

You should not be in that state after 3/4 of a bottle of vodka on top of an average session. The reason you are in that state is because you don't have any tolerance for alcohol and are trying to drink like a man with bigger balls than you in fact have.

Here's some random facts that might help you to judge how your drinking is:

>at 14 I was in the village pub every night getting 4-6 pints of under 5% beer per night
>at 15-16 I was drinking a half-bottle of whiskey, 1-2 beers and smoking some weed. I inevitably ended up beaten up, injured, spewing up or blacking out.
>at 17 I was drinking a litre of vodka before going out, then using speed to manage it
>by 21 I was mainly taking class A's with 2-3 pints and then through the long evenings and days, simply drinking lager or scrumpy in tiny shared amounts, with the occasional shot
>by 24 I was drinking just beer only, 4-5 stellas would absolutely wreck me
>a friend of mine who was 28 at the time was drinking 20-30 pints of lager per night. 4-5 an hour. the doctors told him not to stop cold turkey for usual reasons
>at 28 myself I was drinking shots mainly, only tequila or vodka, maybe 2-3 pints of beer a night, maybe 20-30 shots (35cl)
>by 32 I started drinking vodka with energy drink, maybe 2-4 beers a night and a half- to full (70cl) bottle of vodka
>now (40) I drink a half to full bottle a day, maybe 2-5 days out of the week. maybe half a beer with it

you can see how the tolerance to both beer and spirits builds up over the years.

Binge drinker? You're in denial

re: equating alcohol to positive feelings.

yes, alcohol is a downer. yes, it can also give you positive feelings.

the only reason you will get positive feelings is due to accelerating BAV.

whether you drink 1 pint an hour or 5, if you start on 1, you need 2 the next hour to beat out the downer effects as the alcohol is processed to poison.

so you will feel good off alcohol until you can no longer physically handle the intake level.

this is why at weddings when you have a glass of champagne at 2pm, another glass at 3, hit the bar at 4 and have a beer or two, have food at 5 and a few glasses of wine, then hit the bar at 6-7pm and have beer and spirits, you'll feel fucking awesome and hardly be drinking by 10pm. 11pm hits and suddenly you crash but everybody is going home anyway.

tl;dr start really slow. make your first pint last an hour. then have a second in 45 mins, then a third in 30 mins, then move to spirits (i think more than 3 pints will expand your stomach too much anyway). start on singles, move to doubles, have a couple weird shots as the night moves on, then either go home at 11-12, get some food and drink some water, or move on to class As by 11-12pm and let them take up the slack.

How hungover were you upon awakening?

>do I have a problem? Do I need to drop drinking all together,

you're not really asking us and you already know the answer.

Don't pick up the first drink and you can't possibly get drunk

This guy gets it. You do have a problem, but you are not an alcoholic. You just make poor decisions. You would make poor decisions under stress, in business, you would make them when your reason was compromised, in front of a woman you had feelings for.

You don't have to stop drinking. You have to stop making poor decisions in normal life, so your decision making process works well for you when you are compromised.

I would ignore this pseudo religious AA-level shit. You can drink, you can enjoy yourself. You can come back from full-blown alcoholism to social drinking. But it all requires willpower.

Not picking up a drink at all is a pretty grey life. Drinking till blackout and injury is a pretty bloody & stupid life. Train yourself to make better decisions in the first place, then pick up the drink confident you are no longer an idiot and you earned it.

I didn't tell the full story. Prior to that bottle I shared a bottle of Kraken rum and some black label shots (maybe 5/6) with a friend.

Nice war story though, fam.

You don't need to quit. Just be an adult about your drinking. Really count how many drinks you've had. Set limits on yourself. x per hour.

You done goofed ending up in a hospital though. That's a sign you have a problem. Good for you for realizing it and posting to ask for advice. Don't beat yourself up too much. Just try to think, next time you're out with friends, it's not about drinking the most to get the most fucked up. It's about having a good time with the lads. You also don't want to be the dickhead everyone has to watch and get nervous about him smashing the toilet to pieces with his head next time.

Stay strong man.

I was still fucking drunk-ish for a couple hours after leaving the hospital. Once night hit though, the shame, embarrassment and anxiety hit HARD.

its not meant to be a "war story".

its meant to illustrate the quantities I drank, or friends where relevant drank (the same as me unless stated otherwise), and how they impacted over time.

I said you should *not* be in that state after a normal session followed by 3/4 bottle, if you can handle alcohol. you obviously can't.

the fact you name your drinks shows exactly the issue. its fucking immaterial if you drank a bottle of Kraken rum, or Mount Gay. If you had Black Label shots, or Pink Goose. thats a normal fucking session. downing 3/4 of a bottle straight afterwards is something you do if you can handle it, and don't, if you can't. you obviously fucking can't as you went straight to the fucking ER!!

the very fact you name your drinks shows that for you, its a pissing contest. which you are losing, stupidly.

which is it? you are embarrassed, ashamed, and anxious, but don't want to stop drinking?

>if thats the case, work out your tolerance and drink accordingly

or you would take somebody's info on how much they drank, per age, and how it affected them, and try to denigrate it and act the big man?

>in which case, get a season pass for the fucking hospital!

totally up to you "fam"

seconded- you can learn to drink in moderation- but it might be helpful to go cold turkey before you do that.

I have an extra copy of 'This naked mind control alcohol' if you're not afraid to post an address with a fake name, I'll ship it to you.

You're looking too much into it I'm not some fag who cares about how much or what one drinks for some big-dick-contest. I was just trying to tell you that my tolerance is quite high and I drink pretty often and to excess. I think just this time I greatly underestimated my ability and did in such quick succession without much food or water that it put me into such a deadly state.
>which is it? you are embarrassed, ashamed, and anxious, but don't want to stop drinking?
pretty much. I enjoy it but it takes a toll on my mental and physical health enough for me to be worried about it.

i'm not looking too much into it.

drinking is dangerous.

i have fluctuated between functioning-, non-functioning- and not-at-all-an alcoholic over the last 25+ years. my friends drink harder than me in general and all hold down pretty hardcore jobs; welding, working on oil rigs, army etc.

tbh I think thats a big part of it. if you get up and do physical labour the next day, its better than lying around playing vidya.

but your tolerance is obviously NOT high right now, you are in denial about that.

i count my drinks. for example, here was tuesday last.

>i got a call at 10am informing me I'd lost a big contract I held for almost 20 years, making me £6,000 net every december. without it, no money for my mortgage or christmas.
>immediately I wanted to drink. firstly I went to the shop and bought a bottle of vodka, 3 energy drinks and 1 beer. I counted my cigarettes, there were lets say 13.

so i worked out I would drink to cope, but during that period I would work out my plan to make this £6,000.

like: cigarette and 2 fingers of vodka at 11
then 30 mins good work.
then 10 mins Sup Forums and 3 fingers, plus a shot of beer.
accelerating the drink, cigs at regular intervals.
at 4pm, I had got about 4 hours work done in 6 hours, had my plan, got dropped at the local pool with a sports bottle full of vodka/edrink.

had a swim, then a sauna, went home, in that weird state where you are drunk but nobody knows, especially as i'd swam and showered.

put my kids to bed, worked over my plan, bed at 8, woke up at 7am the next day with 11h sleep under my belt.

then I didn't give myself alcohol for 2 days until I had £1.5k, 1/4 of my target, under my belt. i was drinking again, £1.5k to the good, by 4pm the following day.

i asked your age, you didn't give it. i suspect you are about 23-25, maybe younger.

drink is enjoyable. but you HAVE to measure it out with labour/physical exercise, helping others, and enough sleep, or it WILL take a toll on phys/ment health.

>scrumpy
WTF is that?

tldr. Feel sorry for OP's pic. He died way too soon. :^(

like a hard cider. maybe 15-25% volume.

when I lived in yorkshire, there was a great cheese & scrumpy shop. so you would buy like a big plastic flagon of the latest scrumpy he'd got in, plus some jarlsberg or whatever you fancied.

then on a coke/e-fuelled night, after the club, 4-5 of us would just share a huge flagon (lets guess 5-10 pints, no idea) of scrumpy.

i'm scottish so in the old days we'd get draftpaks - these were a plastic pack that held 4 pints, you'd get it filled with draft lager off the tap before you went to the football.

so a flagon of scrumpy fit right in with me. always good, tasty stuff. there are farmers, including the guy who runs glastonbury, who have people travelling worldwide to sample their scrumpy. its like weak moonshine, or good strong wine to some people.

point is, we actually drunk very little. it was just a high-volume source, to keep your accelerating blood alcohol level going. you were virtually sipping it, but it was half the abv of sipping tequila or shots.

>He died way too soon. :^(
alcohol kills