Alcoholism, a good thing or a bad thing?
Fortunately, with my inability to handle alcohol, I could quite easily spend my entire life pissed for approximately £5 a week. And right now, I'm seriously tempted. As an experiment, I am now going to drink a full bottle of wine in one go. I'm legally unable to deal with the arseholes around me in the manner they deserve, so I'm driven to this instead. With a bit of luck I might die.
Knowing that this post is slightly tongue-in-cheek, I'll answer it in a semi-serious way anyway.Jenny wrote:Fortunately, with my inability to handle alcohol, I could quite easily spend my entire life pissed for approximately £5 a week. And right now, I'm seriously tempted. As an experiment, I am now going to drink a full bottle of wine in one go. I'm legally unable to deal with the arseholes around me in the manner they deserve, so I'm driven to this instead. With a bit of luck I might die.
I find drinking very easy. There was a time last year and earlier this year where, in addition to get pissed with the boys and girls at the weekend, I would get pissed on voddie every other night in my house.
It drained the life out of me, and has left me with a slight problem - at 3 in the afternoon, I think about getting some voddie for the night. I don't, and haven't done for a little while but I occasionally do slip.
Every other day, I had the major vodka sweats and my mind was blurry - I couldn't really do my work properly. Plus, it fucked my metabolism up a bit - I have never been a skinny lad, always had a rugby player's build (hooker position type), but I have lost my ability temporarily to control my weight. Everyone tells me I have put a lot of weight on lately, but through the patented JB-Starvation-Plan, I have lost around 3/4 of that gain!
Despite being lucky enough to have such good friends, I started the habit because I got a bit lonely living by myself. And without anyone else there to temper you, it becomes easy to go down the voddie-night route.
Anyway, having seen your pic, make sure you have a bottle of wine somewhere near Gateshead and I might just work some Marky magic on you.
You've seen her picture too?Major James Setup wrote:Or if you're in Cardiff on the razzle in the near future, Jenny. Check out my FP profile (link below).
She'll go for the more mature man, fella. You're just setting yourself up for a fall.
Just looked at your profile - good choice with Freddie Mercury.Major James Setup wrote:Hey, I'm just after a shag with a bit of posh bird! No commitment at the moment!
There is more than me, the one Queen fan in Britain! Yay!
Tsk Queen is amazing; I'm particularly in love with "The Miracle" track on the Greatest Hits 2 DVD, its instrumental you know.johnnyboy wrote:Just looked at your profile - good choice with Freddie Mercury.Major James Setup wrote:Hey, I'm just after a shag with a bit of posh bird! No commitment at the moment!
There is more than me, the one Queen fan in Britain! Yay!
Queen = Best
Morning Jenny, hows your head?Fortunately, with my inability to handle alcohol, I could quite easily spend my entire life pissed for approximately £5 a week. And right now, I'm seriously tempted. As an experiment, I am now going to drink a full bottle of wine in one go. I'm legally unable to deal with the arseholes around me in the manner they deserve, so I'm driven to this instead. With a bit of luck I might die.
OK, serious discussion to be had here...
There is a very definate distinction between drinking too much and being an alcoholic, and it does rather annoy me when people try to imply that anyone who regularly exceeds the recommend weekly intake is an alcoholic.
I would argue that someone who drinks too much has a problem in the same way that someone who eats too much fried food or too many sweets has a problem; it's unhealthy. It doesn't however mean that they have a serious dependency on them, people just consume a lot of fried food, a lot of sweets - and in some cases - a lot of alcohol, because they enjoy it. If for any reason they couldn't keep consuming fried foon, sweets - or alcohol, then they wouldn't baulk at the thought of it.
I consider myself to be in this camp. I regularly go out for a night at the pub and consume 4 or 5 pints having had 3 glasses of wine over dinner. If I'm spending the night in, it's not unusual for me to consume a whole bottle of wine during the course of the evening. Does that make me an alcoholic? No, I don't believe so, because I am regularly presented with situations where I am either unable to consume as much or can't consume alcohol at all, and I do not baulk at the thought of this nor do I feel particularly withdrawn or uncomfortable when not drinking. If money is tight, I will not buy alcohol at the expense of food.
An alcoholic on the other hand suffers from a physical dependency on alcohol. They have a NEED to drink in order to feel normal. They cannot contemplate not drinking, will value the purchase of alcohol above many other essentials and will need tremendous determination to stop. However much alcohol I consume, I know that I am not an alcoholic.
There is a very big difference between wanting to drink and needing to drink.
Since my last post, I have been on what, by my standards, qualifies as a "bender". Bearin mind that normally my only contact with alcohol is (i) using red wine in recipes, where the alcohol evaporates anyway, and (ii) having a glass of wine if offered just to be polite (though I do find it hard to avoid showing that I find my dad's christmas mulled wine recipe probably the most revolting-tasting thing I have ever consumed).
So anyway, I went to my parents' house. They have all sorts of alcohol. Their idea of a good evening is to drink lots of it and talk for hours about house prices. (They're even worse when my sister is around - then they drink lots of alcohol and discuss house prices in German. You can see why I've always taken a dim view of the effects of ethanol.) Fortunately, my parents are on holiday at the moment, so I could try all sorts of exotic substances without having to discuss house prices. (They won't mind. Actually, if I don't tell them, then they probably won't notice, since they have so much of the stuff, and if I do tell them then they'll probably sing the Hallelujah chorus and have a party to celebrate their eldest daughter finally becoming "one of them". Though I will avoid the party at all costs as it is likely to involve the discussion of house prices for eight hours.)
So anyway... I have consumed a fatastic amount of alcohol. On Tuesday night I passed out on the living room floor and slept for 13 hours straight, but otherwise my sleep patterns have been surprisingly normal. I have consumed two bottles each of red and white wine, and numerous measures of all manner of other stuff. Fruit wines, OK, schnapps potent and tastes quite nice really. WTF is Calvados? Revolting anyway - in fact anything above 25% alcohol seems more bleach than beverage. Whiskey I didn't even try, I know it's horrible though I daresay it brings windows up a treat. All manner of fruit liquers from former Warsaw Pact countries, quite agreeable.
A few weeks ago, a contestant on University Challenge gave the number of units in a single session that constitutes binge drinking for a woman as 39. I haven't achieved that yet, but with a bit of practice I probably could. (Unless of course four days counts as a single session, but I doubt it.)
Alcohol then - the only sensible response to bad continuity announcements. Well, not the only sensible response, there's smashing crockery too. Fortunately my parents had a lot of that spare too, so I cycled back home with some this morning. Plus a bottle of wine, of course. I have a whole new world of self-destruction lying ahead of me.
So anyway, I went to my parents' house. They have all sorts of alcohol. Their idea of a good evening is to drink lots of it and talk for hours about house prices. (They're even worse when my sister is around - then they drink lots of alcohol and discuss house prices in German. You can see why I've always taken a dim view of the effects of ethanol.) Fortunately, my parents are on holiday at the moment, so I could try all sorts of exotic substances without having to discuss house prices. (They won't mind. Actually, if I don't tell them, then they probably won't notice, since they have so much of the stuff, and if I do tell them then they'll probably sing the Hallelujah chorus and have a party to celebrate their eldest daughter finally becoming "one of them". Though I will avoid the party at all costs as it is likely to involve the discussion of house prices for eight hours.)
So anyway... I have consumed a fatastic amount of alcohol. On Tuesday night I passed out on the living room floor and slept for 13 hours straight, but otherwise my sleep patterns have been surprisingly normal. I have consumed two bottles each of red and white wine, and numerous measures of all manner of other stuff. Fruit wines, OK, schnapps potent and tastes quite nice really. WTF is Calvados? Revolting anyway - in fact anything above 25% alcohol seems more bleach than beverage. Whiskey I didn't even try, I know it's horrible though I daresay it brings windows up a treat. All manner of fruit liquers from former Warsaw Pact countries, quite agreeable.
A few weeks ago, a contestant on University Challenge gave the number of units in a single session that constitutes binge drinking for a woman as 39. I haven't achieved that yet, but with a bit of practice I probably could. (Unless of course four days counts as a single session, but I doubt it.)
Alcohol then - the only sensible response to bad continuity announcements. Well, not the only sensible response, there's smashing crockery too. Fortunately my parents had a lot of that spare too, so I cycled back home with some this morning. Plus a bottle of wine, of course. I have a whole new world of self-destruction lying ahead of me.