Nights out for Recovering Alcoholics !

MarinoMark

As a recovering alcoholic, I go AA, I get great benifet from the meetings and will continue to go. I dont go to pubs so I miss out on live gigs (which I love)
But would feel comfortable going to gigs if I had a few like minded souls with me. I am a lively intellegent witty person who does not want to miss the fun in life just because I dont drink. I live Northside Dublin. Any Idea's..Drinkers who love gigs too are more than welcome too,I would just like a little support from a few non drinkers too.I would welcome suggestions..Lets throw some idea"s into this post, I am sure between the lot of us, we will come up with something...Thanks...Mark

ronbyrne2005

dont think AA works wells,was reading an article that showed theres a very high relapse rate for it,google it and you'll find lots of detaills,its up to your self to stay off it if it doesnt agree with you. do you get cravings and the like? a friend was diagnosed as an alcoholic but never has cravings or never thinks about drinking but when he drinks too much he cant bear hangovers as he becomes really anxious and has a cure and sometimes cant stop drinking because he keeps having cures.

Miss Fluff

ronbyrne2005 wrote:

dont think AA works wells,..........its up to your self to stay off it if it doesnt agree with you. do you get cravings and the like?

Are you being serious? Mark has just said he's a recovering alcoholic.

Mark, stick with the meetings if you are finding them helpful mate. I'm sure it must be tough. Have you been advised to avoid pubs or would you not be able to avoid the temptation? Have you some good mates who wouldn't mind going to a gig and abstaining for the night?

Culchie

Hey Mark,

I play poker two nights a week, and it's great.

I like a few pints, but never touch a drop when playing cards, and you'll meet a great crowd in a non-drink environment.

Bam Bam

and become a compulsive gambler.:D

MonkeyTennis

Its a really good idea. Im trying to cut down drinking but find the peer pressure dreadful. Some of my friends dont even ask and put a pint in front of me. Id like to go to a place/event where drinking is not the main focus of the night

HelterSkelter

I wouldn't recommend poker. People who are alcoholics can suffer from an addictive personality and could easily get addicted to gambling.

Bam Bam

I don't drink myself, but don't mind going to pubs.

Just tell your mates you're not drinking when you get there, if they ask what are you having say a coke or something.

If you don't want to drink and they buy you a pint don't drink it. give it back to your mate and buy yourself a coke.

If they're your mates they won't force the drink down your throat. They will ask you why aren't you drinking? and you'll get a few go on's but thats all.

It's all about personal discipline.

godtabh

HelterSkelter wrote:

I wouldn't recommend poker. People who are alcoholics can suffer from an addictive personality and could easily get addicted to gambling.

People who have any sort of addiction if they give it up usually get hooked on something else.

There was an article in the Indo (I think) which was saying the people who give up smoking and drinking usually do something else thats just addicitive. IE smokers get hooked on caffine to get their fix etc

MonkeyTennis

Im not giving up drink altogether, just cutting down. For the last year Ive been under 20 units a week. (even christmas ). So my friends arent being rude or forceful, they see Im having a pint and buy me one, its only natural. Its so tempting to have that extra pint. I dont like the temptation.

CrowdedHouse

MarinoMark wrote:

As a recovering alcoholic, I go AA, I get great benifet from the meetings and will continue to go. I dont go to pubs so I miss out on live gigs

Stick with it Mark,in time you'll feel confident enough(ie not worry) to go to gigs etc.

Easy does it

ST*

HelterSkelter wrote:

I wouldn't recommend poker. People who are alcoholics can suffer from an addictive personality and could easily get addicted to gambling.

This is true. fill up your spare time with other things such as playing football, golf, gym, read etc
These are all better options for you at the moment.

Siogfinsceal

i wouldnt describe myself as an alchoholic I like drinking, sometimes I drink way to much but if I ever want to stop after one or two drinks I can. Hate going out to a club and not drinking though I think its because everyone else is drunk and gets on my nerves (usually it wouldnt bother me cos id be drunk too!)

ChillyS

How about heading to a pool hall for a evening with mates and having a few games, or the cinema.

It's very hard to find something to do when you don't want to drink, seems that's all the irish do in the evenings.

Other than that start playing a sport, or join clubs.

Sorry couldn't do much better.

oo p.s How about paintballing and go karting on weekends with friends? I'm sure you've more money now you dont drink!

sturgo

Socially I spent most of my teenage years in pubs and nightclubs. And in my 20's I worked in the bar industury. I'm 27 now, so for five years or so I spent an average of 70 hours a week in pubs and bars. My entire social and professional life revolved around alcohol. Not a healthy envoirnment for anyone to be in.

Last year I gave up alcohol and haven't touched a drop since. But it wasn't just a case of putting the drink down. I had to replace the time I spent drinking with something interesting and above all FUN. I basically took up pastimes I thought I might be interested in. So, at the moment I'm leaning French, taking dance classes, sailing, physical training, and trying to teach myself a few other things on the side. To be honest I suck at most of these things, but I'm keeping myself occupued and having a laugh at the same time.

Believe it or not I actually have way more fun today than I did when I was drinking. And that's saying something, considering I drank in pubs and bars all over the world. I rarely go to pubs now. Simply because I find them boreing. Once you take alcohol out of the equation they loose their appeal.

I suggest you start doing something a couple of times a week. Interacting with people is the key! Don't isolate! It's true Ireland is obsessed with drinking and pubs, but if you put a good bit of effort in you'll find something you're into.

Good Luck and enjoy your new life!

Crucifix

ronbyrne2005 wrote:

...dont think AA works wells...

As opposed to what?

ronbyrne2005 wrote:

...its up to your self to stay off it...

Isn't it always.

monkeyfudge

Crucifix wrote:

As opposed to what?

The AA is very religious. Have you ever read the 12 steps? It's all about giving yourself over to god and not really taking responsibility for you own actions.

It always seemed to me to be the church prostalising to people at their lowest ebb.

sturgo

monkeyfudge wrote:

The AA is very religious. Have you ever read the 12 steps? It's all about giving yourself over to god and not really taking responsibility for you own actions.

It always seemed to me to be the church prostalising to people at their lowest ebb.

The exact opposite is true. Besides this thread isn't about AA.

monkeyfudge

sturgo wrote:

The exact opposite is true. Besides this thread isn't about AA.

This isn't religious?

THE TWELVE STEPS

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptlym admitted it.

11. Sought though prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

sturgo

I'm not interested in discussing AA or the 12 steps, but If you want to learn more about AA may I suggest reading The Big Book.

ronbyrne2005

sturgo wrote:

I'm not interested in discussing AA or the 12 steps, but If you want to learn more about AA may I suggest reading The Big Book.

Even the most ardent true believers who will be honest about it recognize that A.A. and N.A. have at least 90% failure rates. And the real numbers are more like 95% or 98% or 100% failure rates. It depends on who is doing the counting, how they are counting, and what they are counting or measuring.

A 5% success rate is nothing more than the rate of spontaneous remission in alcoholics and drug addicts. That is, out of any given group of alcoholics or drug addicts, approximately 5% per year will just wise up, and quit killing themselves.6 They just get sick and tired of being sick and tired, and of watching their friends die. (And something between 1% and 3% of their friends do die annually, so that is a big incentive.) They often quit with little or no official treatment or help. Some actually detox themselves on their own couches, or in their own beds, or locked in their own closets. Often, they don't go to a lot of meetings. They just quit, all on their own, or with the help of a couple of good friends who keep them locked up for a few days while they go through withdrawal. A.A. and N.A. true believers insist that addicts can't successfully quit that way, but they do, every day.

Every disease has a spontaneous remission rate. The rate for the common cold is basically 100 percent -- almost nobody ever dies just from a cold. On the other hand, diseases like cancer and Ebola have very low spontaneous remission rates -- left untreated, they are very deadly and few people recover from them. Alcoholism is in the middle. The Harvard Medical School( http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-effectiveness.html#Harvard_Mental) reported that in the long run, the rate of spontaneous remission in alcoholics is slightly over 50 percent. That means that the annual rate of spontaneous remission is around 5 percent.

Thus, an alcoholism treatment program that seems to have a 5% success rate probably really has a zero percent success rate -- it is just taking credit for the spontaneous remission that is happening anyway. It is taking credit for the people who were going to quit anyway. And a program that has less than a five percent success rate, like four or three, may really have a negative success rate -- it is actually keeping some people from succeeding in getting clean and sober. Any success rate that is less than the usual rate of spontaneous remission indicates a program that is a real disaster and is hurting patients.
When one of those people who is going to quit drinking anyway, or who did already just quit, walks into an A.A. meeting, A.A. is happy to take all of the credit for that success story, while disavowing any responsibility for all of those other people who walk in, are disgusted by what they see, and walk right back out, and relapse. That is grossly dishonest.

A.A. is also more than happy to convince the person who just quit that it is all due to A.A. and the Twelve Steps. And many of them will believe it. At meetings, you will sometimes hear testimonials like "I tried everything, the V.A. program, the Christian Brotherhood, and finally, A.A. is what worked."

The speaker is forgetting one of the famous corollaries to Murphy's Law:

"The thing you seek always seems to be in the last place that you look."

Many people who are in recovery require one or more relapses to convince themselves that they really can't drink or dope any more, not even just a little bit, now and then. They will think that they can just nibble, or "just have one", and that it will be okay. They will go through a lot of programs while they experiment and fail. It's a learning process. In the end, when some of them finally quit, really totally quit and stay quit, rather than die, they often give the credit to whichever program they just happen to be in when they finally quit. (All of them tend to overlook the fact that they stopped examining other programs after they successfully quit drinking. They just stuck with the program that they were in.)

Thus the Christian sects have a bunch of totally convinced true believers who say that Jesus saved them, and the Veteran's Administration has some veterans who believe that the V.A. program is the best, and Alcoholics Anonymous has a bunch of people who insist that A.A. and the Twelve Steps are the only answer.
check out more at http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-effectiveness.html

SexeeAussie

monkeyfudge wrote:

The AA is very religious. Have you ever read the 12 steps? It's all about giving yourself over to god and not really taking responsibility for you own actions.

It always seemed to me to be the church prostalising to people at their lowest ebb.

You have the wrong end of the stick there.....

"God" in the 12 steps refers to anything that you personally see as being your "higher power" be it your God, your spirit, your consciousness.......It is a word that means different things to different people.

I commend the OP for his post. You are brave, you are courageous and I totally admire you. And I certainly have my reasons for that as well

Good luck