Quitting the Bottle

Life Health & Fitness
1

Any advice on quitting the bottle, or at least, moderating the amount one imbibes. I’m what you’d call a ‘weekend warrior’ - booze myself silly from Friday to Sunday, spending a lotta cash and behaving poorly in the process, often coming home with UDI - unidentified drinking injuries.

Tried Antabuze - the stuff that makes you ill if you drink with it, for two months, but I figure I’ve gotta figure out the psychology behind the bahavior - it it habitual or genetic? Does it stem from childhood problems? etc etc

Any advice would be appreciated…

Laters

2

Spread your drinking out over the week. This will discourage binge drinking.

Drink at home/in a park/friends’ houses/ to save money.

Stick to beer.

Hang out with Mormons.

3

You’re obviously not enjoying it, and you recognise you have a problem, so that’s a positive first step. The simple answer is stop doing it and find something more productive and enjoyable to do with that time. But if you’re, say, depressed or emotionally unbalanced, then perhaps you should seek some professional help. There is an AA organisation in Taipei (assuming your situation is that serious). Good luck, whatever you do.

4

I’m with Closet Queen. Recongnizing that you may have a problem and seeking help is good. Find something else to do on Friday-Sunday - perhaps finding a girlfriend if you don’t already have one and stay at home with her, don’t go to a pub. :wink: If you are depressed try exercising and professional help… I also have heard there is an AA organization in Taipei. You may want to check in “This Month in Taiwan” magazine. Good luck.

5

If it’s merely habitual, just break the habit. That is, next Friday, force yourself to stay away from pubs - strap yourself down if you have to. It’s all a matter of self-discipline. Then, the next weekend, do the same, and keep doing it until you’ve gotten into the habit of not drinking on the weekends. It seems more like a routine than a pleasure for you, isn’t it? I’ve been there before - for a whole week I wouldn’t even think of alcohol, but as soon as my designated “drinking day” rolled around, I’d just have to go out and drink - not out of alcoholism but purely out of ingrained habit.

On the other hand, if your drinking has deeper roots than just the habitual, then get medical help. No amount of willpower is going to help if you’ve got genetic alcoholism.

6

Stop the behavior if you feel it has become detrimental, but please do not go the AA route unless you are not offended by proselytizing.

7

reads like you are a binge drinker. mon-fri you are controlled. like pavlov’s dog you are salivating for it when the bell rings at the end of work friday.

keep something else on hand. tea can be drank by the bucketful without hangovers. have something else to do. its friday night in taiwan…what is there to do? good question. hang with folks who DON’T drink.

i am pretty much opposite you. in taiwan i scarcely got trashed. now that i am back home with me mates, drink seems to be all we do. lifestyle, habit…make yours what you want it to be.

8

I never touched a drop of anything before Taiwan and now I am getting more and more frequent in my purchases of alcoholic beverages, infact I just downed some disgusting stuff just a minute ago, yuck, Asahi Red will keep me away from beer for a while. Geez, just like soap.

Anyway, I find company has a lot to do with it.

9

[quote] am pretty much opposite you. in Taiwan i scarcely got trashed. now that I am back home with me mates, drink seems to be all we do. lifestyle, habit…make yours what you want it to be.

[/quote]

I am the same, here in taiwan I never drink, actually right now I am having a grey goose and cranberry, first drink in weeks… But when I was in the states I was a weekend warrior for at least 10 years, and probably can count on one hand how many fridays, sat. or sundays I didnt get totally blitzed and when I go back to the states it will be the same family/friends so I am sure I will start back…

I agree, hang out with people that dont drink and you wont, when I first got over here, I was drinking as usual but with folks that didnt drink so I got bored very quickly of drinking so now I just dont except the occassional like tonight…

And to be honest, I really dont miss the drinking too much now that I stopped, no more waking up in jail saying what the fuck did I do this time, blowing 100’s if not 1000’s of dollars, got rid of the beer belly and got my six pack back, and best of all no more of those nasty hangovers that the only cure is too start over…
All in all I would say a better life, but a much more boring life to top it off though, but some times boring I guess is not that bad…

Cannot stop the craving for the GREEN though, but that is a different topic.

Good luck!!

10

Obviously Taiwan is the problem because it’s driven the last two posters to drink. :slight_smile:

11

The problem is when your social life on the weekends revolves around getting trashed with fellow ex-pats. What are you going to do? Give up your one night of fun on the town a week? Boredom is one of the major drawbacks of life in Taiwan. Since nearly 90% of the expats in Taiwan seem to drink (except for the Mormons), it can be hard to find people to hang out with who don’t drink. Developing Taiwanese friends is another thing, but let’s be honest here, most of them I meet seem more interested in shopping and video games than anything really…interesting.

12

I have an idea. Instead of drinking, why not…

almas john
Posts: 586

JeffG
Posts: 1097

Bassman
Posts: 2250

mod lang
Posts: 1586

Closet Queen
Posts: 1476

…just post on Forumosa all day, every day?

13

I have an idea. I am considering taking a break from drinking for a month (Have barely gone a week without drinking in 15 years). If anyone else is game, we can set a date and participants can post when they backslide. We will see who is still “Master of his or her domain” in Forumosa after a month. I was thinking of starting pretty soon since I have already racked up a week, but i could always and go get wasted and start later if anyone else is into the idea.

Any takers?

14

Good on you Chainsmoker. Sounds like a good test of willpower: an epic battle of man against bottle. Can you do an extra month for me? Cheers.

15

All I can say is good luck to you! I recently went dry for a month (something I do once a year) and have to admit that, this time around, it was a period of utter hell. Is it the air in Taiwan, or what? The first week was OK but the second one was purgatory. From there things went a bit better, but the best day was the one on which I could end the self-imposed torture. I would say, and I try to keep with the notion, that moderation is the key.
I would therefor not volunteer to join any month-long abstention at this time, I’ve paid my dues for the year.
Good luck, anyway!

16

I do that kind of thing all the time. You burn out on alcohol and don’t want to go near the stuff for a month or two. Then, say, something like Chinese New Year holiday comes around and you’ve got nothing better to do than go on a giant bender, going out drinking once every four or five nights. I think I’ve reached my annual burnout stage this week…the other night I was sitting in a pub halfway through my usual rounds of drinking and I started to feel sick, and just had to quit then and there. When I’m on my bender stage I’ll pick up a beer and not be able to stop…I find myself incapable of drinking in moderation. It’s all or nothing for me. I usually only drink once a week, but when I do I down at least a 12 pack or more - a classic binge drinker.

17

How about hypnotherapy or regressional therapy?

I’ve tried pretty much everything suggested above, to no avail.

Then again, what’s the chance of finding a therapist in Taichung… :unamused:

Btw, I tried acupuncture for about a month last year. Again, with no success.

Laters

18

Good on all of you who are having a sincere go at some behavior modification vis-a-vis the drinking. I’m sure it’s not easy, so I wish you all the best. It’s the right thing to do if you feel the booze has become a problem.

Someone cautioned against AA - because of the deep Christian roots/philosophy of the organisation. AA wouldn’t be my first choice either, because of this. But according to their website they are completly non-affiliated. Does anyone know the real deal here? Is there an uambiguosly non-religeous AA-type support group in Taipei? Almost seems like there are enough people on this forum, fed up with the hangovers, etc., to start one.

As corny as it might sound, I found that falling in love, and getting into a deep, commited relationship, that invloved cohabitation, completely chaged my social behavior, and my drinking habits. When I was living with my girl-friend we almost never went to pubs, she not being much of a drinker. When we hung with my friends, or hers it wasn’t at bars. The key thing is that we didn’t meet at a bar, or club, so from the get-go partying wasn’t a foundation of our relationship.

I’d still have a quiet bottle of wine, or a few beers come a Friday night, but none of that party to the break of dawn, and stumble home plastered crap. I found that I didn’t miss that lifestyle at all.

After we split up, I didn’t go out very often at all, but would occasionally tie one on while chilling peacefully at home. Perhaps getting drunk at home isn’t such a great thing either, but it always felt pretty harmless. After a quiet night at home, alone or with a couple of mates, I never had the memory lapses, injuries, or missing couple of thousand NT, that were normal during the wild days.

Good luck with the effort Greg, and open your heart to a stable and loving partner - that might make a huge difference.

And, please, I’m not suggesting here: "Oh, I’m a self-loathing, self-destructive person deeply in the grips of alcoholism. Solution = find a poor soul to drag into my quagmire. " Know yourself, and if your problem is in hand, and it’s really a problem of drinking a bit too much to fill in the time, an engaging partner might be just the ticket. If you are in the deep end, intamacy, particularly with another drinker ain’t the answer. Think: Leaving Las Vegas.

As for your question about the roots of alcoholism, I’m afraid it’s hard wired into your genes. A family history of drinking problems is usually a very accurate indicator about whether or not you need to be aware of your own degree of dependency on the sauce.

P.S. I remember reading somewhere, in a magazine like Men’s Health, that in many parts of the world there is an unusually high rate of alcoholism among expats. I guess it’s easy for us to imagine the underlying reasons why this might be so. In Taiwan, a huge dimension of the social life revloves around getting drunk, doesn’t it.

A quick search on yahoo came up with this article about expats in Egypt, but the basic issues are universal:

http://www.metimes.com/2K/issue2000-24/commu/lonely_expats_driven.htm

And this might be a source for answers to some of your basic questions:
http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/faq/faq.htm

19

The fact that there is no “Last Call” in Taiwan as there was back home doesn’t help things either. Back home, last call was 1:45AM, and your drinks had to be finished or dumped out by 2AM. Unless you went for a midnight meal, you were usually home sleeping by 2:30AM, and unless you are seriously hung over, you can still, for the most part, function normally the next day. In Taiwan, a night on the town usually means not getting to sleep until 4, 5, 6, or even 7AM.

However you manage to handle this, best of luck to you!

20

[quote]As corny as it might sound, I found that falling in love, and getting into a deep, commited relationship, that invloved cohabitation, completely changed my social behavior, and my drinking habits. When I was living with my girl-friend we almost never went to pubs, she not being much of a drinker. When we hung with my friends, or hers it wasn’t at bars. The key thing is that we didn’t meet at a bar, or club, so from the get-go partying wasn’t a foundation of our relationship.

I’d still have a quiet bottle of wine, or a few beers come a Friday night, but none of that party to the break of dawn, and stumble home plastered crap. I found that I didn’t miss that lifestyle at all.

After we split up, I didn’t go out very often at all, but would occasionally tie one on while chilling peacefully at home. Perhaps getting drunk at home isn’t such a great thing either, but it always felt pretty harmless. After a quiet night at home, alone or with a couple of mates, I never had the memory lapses, injuries, or missing couple of thousand NT, that were normal during the wild days. [/quote]

Mwalimu,
To cut a long story short, you broke up with your girl after cutting back on the booze!
A cautionary tale, indeed.
:astonished: