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Comment by mettamage | Hacker News Reader

> Alcohol is no joke.

I never got this, other than seeing it's hard for others. So in that sense I agree. I've seen the effects on others and how hard it is to quit. That's no joke indeed.

I just don't get why I find it quite easy to stop drinking for a year (or longer). While I haven't been able to stop for life, doing those yearly challenges is relatively easy, for me.

If I'd be a normal person then that's whatever. But I say this I say this as a person whose whole family consists of alcoholics. Genetically, I have to have an addictive personality. Yet, I find myself I can easily not be addicted by substances.

What I find harder:

* YouTube (I recently have been able to stave off a social media addiction but YouTube specifically is tougher)

* Coffee

Maybe I should make a blog post. Throw in my 2 cents. While anecdata is anecdata, if it helps one person it'd be a good thing.

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I’m a recovering alcoholic. I’m almost positive that the effects of alcohol are wildly different between the two of us. When I drink my brain spits out more reward chemicals than I know what to do with. It makes me feel extremely energetic and creative. It inflates my sense of self-worth and gives me confidence. It’s genuinely more enjoyable than sex.

And that’s how it dug its claws in, because almost all of those go away after binge drinking for a while. Then you’re just left with the addiction. And getting sober means having to learn to want whatever is left of your life.

Definitely. Alcohol just makes me confused and sick, with no upsides to it.

I'be been told that I must be drinking incorrectly, and given advice how to drink correctly, but no, no positive experience with it for me.

The funny thing is, I actually like the taste of it (it tastes kind of minty to me, while most people claim it tastes bitter) but the effects are pure poison.

Funny, I could place myself directly in middle of you two. When I drink, I feel pretty great at the beginning and it gets progressively more tiring and confusing with more drinks (but you still crave it, it being effectively a drug). Then the next day is just wasted time because of the hangover.

So while I liked to drink more with friends in the past, now I do so less often. And when I do, I tend to overthink how much I should drink not to feel bad later. So usually I just don't drink much, with more time between days when I drink (currently I'd say it's weeks inbetween).

Same, it is the least feel-good drug of any I have tried. But I do love a good German beer with a steak or burger, amazing. Or a cold beer at a baseball game.

But I feel horrible after.

Same here.

Except that even the smell of alcohol makes me want to puke.

My experience is closer to yours, and I've had to learn to enjoy without alcohol, which has been a positive transformation. I still drink, but now I know when to stop. Some of my friends still drink too much and would probably benefit from GLP drugs even when they are not obese.

Thanks for commenting on it.

> I’m a recovering alcoholic. I’m almost positive that the effects of alcohol are wildly different between the two of us. When I drink my brain spits out more reward chemicals than I know what to do with. It makes me feel extremely energetic and creative. It inflates my sense of self-worth and gives me confidence. It’s genuinely more enjoyable than sex.

Yea, me too. Holy shit. I have this too on certain things but not on alcohol.

> And getting sober means having to learn to want whatever is left of your life.

That's a good/harsh lesson for any addiction I think. Thanks for formulating that so clearly.

A datapoint for you to consider. I recently started taking Naltrexone, which is an opioid antagonist used to treat alcohol abuse. It reduces your body's endorphin response, making alcohol less pleasant.

I wouldn't call myself alcoholic, but before Naltrexone I would have evenings where I would go out for drinks with friends and have trouble sticking to limits I set myself (I would set myself a limit of three drinks and end up having four or five).

Taking Naltrexone, I have no problem at all. It's trivially easy to regulate my drinking habits, it requires no effort whatsoever.

The experience has very much made me open to the idea that some people are biologically predisposed to alcoholism (even if, like you, it's not always inherited). Very easy to imagine that people with a heightened endorphin response might have more problems with alcoholism.

Interestingly I had an almost identical experience with smoking and Wellbutrin (different mechanism of action). I was smoking one cigarette a day and using willpower to keep myself from smoking more. Immediately after starting Wellbutrin: immediately lost all interest in smoking, haven't had one since.

People develop drinking problems for two reasons, they have a genetic predisposition to getting more reward from drinking and/or they have untreated trauma that they are medicating. In my family, my grandfathers war trauma was transferred to his kids, who then transferred it to their kids or dealt with the trauma and didn't.

For the genetic side, people often slide into it by culture/habit. For example, it starts with a drink with friends, then a few times a week with friends, then on your own and with friends, after a few years it turns into every night on your own, then a few each night, then you hide how much you are drinking from loved ones, until you (hopefully) realize that you might have a problem. Bill Barr talked about this last year in his standup, for a good example and an example of how you can get ahead of it if you are self-aware. Many people keep going and end up with the physical addiction.

The trauma side is why I think some people have a real hard time shaking the addiction, and tend to go back. The drinking can also cause you more trauma, making it harder.

It’s a fact that drugs affect people very differently. There’s a big difference between “I must drink” and “I want to drink more”. My affliction is the latter and a far, far lesser burden than the former. Though one that can still fuck you up.

There are people like you [and me] that have almost 0 addictive tendencies when it comes to food/drugs. Or we may become addicted for a short amount of time and just stop.

I've tried all sorts of rec drugs/food activities etc.. Some are amazing but eventually I get bored and stop.

Smoking was probably the hardest, but I just decided to stop one day and never did it again.

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