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Comment by texasbigdata | Hacker News Reader

Alcoholic here.

In my AA we say that alcoholism is a chronic disease. The same as (some forms) of diabetes, you don’t just get rid if it. Its something you can manage but not cure. It lies dormant inside of you the rest of your life.

My mentor (highly successful and 30 years sober) said it nicely: he has an angry tiger inside of him thats trapped inside a cage. One that will surely eat him if it gets out. His job is to keep the tiger in the cage.

Thats what it feels like. Every day. The cravings go down, the thoughts, etc. Self control improves. But the danger lies dormant for us.

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As someone who suffered from deep depression, but never alcoholism - the way alcoholism is described by alcoholics always rings true with how I experience (and hear described by others) depression. I am no longer suffering from depression actively; the symptoms of it are essentially gone. But there's life events, certain situations, certain moments of deeper vulnerability, that feel like I might slip back into it.

Surprisingly enough, although there seem to be parallels with how people experience 'life after' both things, I find it curious that alcoholics I talk to often use the "caged animal" metaphor, whereas depressives tend to describe it more as walking "a tight rope" or "at the edge of an abyss" metaphor.

I too have suffered from some serious bouts of depression and self-doubt.

And while I find the steps here laid out really admirable, I struggle to see how to translate the steps to my afflictions.

Closest I can come is to see the impact of failing to trust. Failing to trust myself and trust others. And failing to let myself be vulnerable.

Thanks for mentioning it, sometimes I feel isolated in my experience of walking at the edge of a cliff. It seems like a good portion of my mental energy goes into the daily practice of keeping depression away. But my therapist has kindly explained why it’s chronic and something to manage for life.

What do they consider the threshold for alcoholism?

I.e. how bad was your drinking before you realized you had a problem?

Have some experience with NA but assuming functionally the same, and there isnt a set threshold. If you are unable to stop taking a substance in any circumstance that is negatively impacting you then you are considered and an addict. Whether thats just every Friday night or every day. Its the inability to stop that makes you an addict rather than the frequency. Tbh i didnt get on with it at all, waaay to goddy for me but I appreciate the work they do for people.

I remember a rule of thumb being "if you cannot remember the last day on which you did not have any alcohol, you're an alcoholic". Probably not what AA goes by, but I like the simplicity of it.

if i drink a glass of beer everyday with dinner i am an alcoholic?

Probably not but two maybe. Source: https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/health-professionals-communities/c...

Can you stop tomorrow? If so, then no. If you make excuses why you can’t or shouldn’t, or when you try you have physical or psychological problems, then yes.

This is weird - my mother very rarely drinks but she’ll be hard pressed telling you exactly when was the last time time . This doesn’t make her an alcoholic.

Or should you start the rule with ‘you’ve been drinking everyday for a while’?

If can't remember the last time she DID NOT take alcohol, it does make her an alcoholic. Or just an old person with severe memory issues, who shouldn't even live alone at that point.

The clinical American definition is 14 servings per week for men and 7 for women.

Personally, I was what you call a dipsomaniac. Colloquially that is called a binge drinker. I drank 4 to 9 days at a time from morning to night (and night time) without a break. Luckily I only drank like this 7 times in 4 years but I almost died in my last binge.

We see alcoholics of all kind in AA: frequent and a lot, infrequent and a lot, and frequent and little. The frequent and little are the hardest to crack because they have the hardest time with step 1. Now step one is actually comprised of two components: realizing you have a problem (easy for me) and also admitting you were not in control of your own life anymore (hard for me). Its only through doing the 12 step work really arduously, going to meetings and having a great sponsor that I was able to change enough to where drinking no longer ran my life.

You know that that "angry tiger inside you" feeling can go away completely right? That angry tiger is not biological part of who you are, it's a dissociated memory of how you felt when you were a child, which continues to live on in you in the present because you haven't fully processed your childhood feelings. All else being equal, keeping the tiger caged up is better than letting it loose, but you can also heal it so that it goes away completely, which will benefit your life in many ways, most of which are not even related to alcohol. Healing usually requires softening the cage that the tiger lives in bit by bit as you become increasingly able to metabolize him, or cutting the tiger up into pieces and dealing with a piece of him at a time.

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