Once an Alcoholic, Always Free

2025/10/06

Disclaimer

This is just my experience with alcoholism. Good advice is hard to give and harder to follow. I suggest you find what works for you and live your life how you see fit after doing your own research.

Read more about alcohol and alcoholism

My drinking problem

The early warning signs were there for me to see very clearly already in 2018 and they did not go unnoticed. I knew what was in store for me, it was only a matter of time. During normal weekdays I would be thinking about alcohol constantly. It was the only thing that mattered to me. I would be counting down the days, hours and minutes until I could have my next drink come friday. At the time my actual drinking wasn’t that heavy (atleast by the standards of the drinking culture where I’m from). Just normal early adolescent irresponsibility, right? Most people go through a phase like that or know someone in their circle who does/has.

In 2019 I moved out from my parents’ place and into my own apartment. That’s when the dam broke. Things escalated quickly and at my worst I was blackout drunk almost every night. I would sit in voice calls drinking and bullshitting until the wee hours of the morning until everyone else had left and I’d pass out on my keyboard and sleep there still embarrassingly connected to the voice chat.

A mountain of empty beer cans decorated my desk and their cardboard packaging carpeted my floor. I would keep bottles of whiskey in the drawer of my nightstand next to my bed, just in case I might need it in an emergency.

When I wasn’t completely plastered I would be nipping throughout the day. Cracking open a beer, ah, what music to my ears that was! I would prioritise drinking over everything and everyone. Once I was helping my grandma with cleaning and conveniently came up with an excuse that I had to go get something while in reality I went back home to have a quick shot of vodka. I was a functional alcoholic.

Those who knew didn’t care and many did not even suspect. On some level even I was in denial. I would jump on every gathering and event as a socially acceptable excuse to drink booze. Like I needed one: I’d show up so hammered that a couple of times at a meetup I would have a drink and then immediately go behind a corner, shove my fingers up my throat to throw up what I had just drank before it would have time to make its way to my small intestine, where most of the alcohol would get absorbed into the bloodstream, just so I wouldn’t get blackout drunk early and could keep pouring that sweet nectar into my mouth. Oh yes, I had done my homework.

This couldn’t go on for much longer.

A story about The Alcoholic & His Little Worm

“Oh you can’t be a real alcoholic,” said Bob. “My uncle drank twice as much just to get up in the morning!” Yeah, yeah shut your piehole Bob.

Pain and pleasure is the common yardstick by which most people measure their lives and most people would agree that if something causes distress and pain then it is a problem and something should be done about it.

What they don’t realise is that an alcoholic suffers the most when he is sober because he craves alcohol but can’t have it. And the more serious his problem, the bigger an alcoholic he is, the more agonizing his torment is the less he drinks.

To people on the outside his pain and suffering do not exist, can not exist, because how can he be an alcoholic if he doesn’t drink? So the alcholic has no choice but to keep struggling alone and when he relapses and has a drink it is considered quite normal. After all he doesn’t drink much. Ah, but the cravings he has! The inner demons he is fighting constantly! The worm in his brain that is always lying in wait, suggesting a course of action, a solution, a way to relax, a pastime, a deserved break, a just celebration, an excuse to drown yourself in as much drink as you can under any socially acceptable pretext.

For hours and hours he debates with himself, with the worm in his brain, trying to rationalise, trying to appease the worm, trying to rebuke it, trying to trick it, begging it to go away and leave him for good. And then he has a little drink and the worm is satisfied and stays quiet, for the moment, because all the while it knows who’s really in control.

To people on the outside this tug of war is hidden. So the alcoholic has no choice but to carry his burden alone and that only makes the company of the worm seem more appealing as his only solace.

And if the alcoholic, by some miracle, manages to rid himself of the worm, root it out, stomp on it, free himself from its manipulation he can’t even share his triumph with anyone else. He can’t celebrate overcoming his struggle with alcoholism because to the people on the outside he never had a problem and celebrating a solution to a problem that never existed could surely never be anything but an utter joke.

Yes, I am bitter. Yes, I am proud and justly so. Fuck you Bob.

How I overcame the problem

By myself. Alone. Without help.

1. The Paradox

Every problem has a root. Big problems have roots that go deep, and by the time they break through to the surface and become visible they have already grown so serious that you are powerless to do anything about them.

How do you begin to tackle a problem like that? By admitting that you can’t; that you are powerless; that the problem is too big for you; that you are utterly helpless to change anything. This paradoxical admission is required because you are in denial and deeply ashamed of the scope of your problem and until you face reality you will truly be powerless to do anything about it. The Worm wants you to remain prideful and expend all your willpower in a pointless struggle against it which you have no chance of winning so that it can keep feeding its addiction. Do not listen to it.

This line of thought is not at all intuitive. Nobody taught it to me, so why and how would I suddenly come to a conclusion like this? One might say it was almost miraculous. In any case I had taken the first frightening step.

2. Orientation

Next thing I did was get a pen and memopad and write down these things

  1. What is my current situation objectively
  2. Why am I in this situation
    • Which decisions and concrete actions led to this
    • What am I trying to achieve with drinking
    • What are my emotional motivations
  3. Where will I be in five years if I keep drinking
  4. Where could I be in five years if I stopped drinking
  5. What does sobriety mean in a day-to-day pragmatic sense

Sounds easy on paper but don’t be fooled. Item 2 was especially difficult and required a lot of soul searching but it was also the most important in terms of understanding myself so that instead of having to battle against an unseen enemy I could focus more on my visible behaviours.

Item 5 might seem pointless. You just don’t drink, that simple. But you have to internalise the whole process, learn to visualise it constantly. Drinking means opening a beer: I am opening a beer. Not drinking means not opening a beer: I am picturing a beer and I will not open it because I don’t want to drink it and I will do this repeatedly because that is the kind of man I want to be: a man who doesn’t open beers because he doesn’t drink beers. You think you know what to do but you don’t. You have to remind youself constantly of the most basic things because you are weak. Humility is key.

After going through the effort to write this painful memo I kept it for a couple of months. Then I discarded it. It was useless to me. I viewed it simply as a tool, as a means to an end. And I was determined never to let things get so out of hand that I would have to resort to that tool again. I let it go.

3. Dichotomy of Control

“About things that are within our power and those that are not.”

– Epictetus’ Discourses, Book 1 Chapter 1

I don’t know how I came across Epictetus but this book fell into my hands at the most opportune time possible. I had spent two years struggling with quitting sugar from ages 15 to 17 and so I had some previous experience when it came to monitoring my thoughts and adjusting my behaviour, but Epictetus, like most of Hellenistic moral philosophy, which is a lot more practical and therapeutic than the speculations that came before or after it, contains many acute insights on the psychology of habit formation, beliefs, freedom of choice and practical tips on how to exercise your freedom of choice, evaluate your thought processes (or impressions), witholding assent to impulses, first chopping them down into smaller pieces to find out which beliefs form their foundation and acting appropiately in accord with “your rational nature”. Afaik modern cognitive therapies like Cognitive-Behavioural-Therapy lean heavily on writings from the ancient world like The Discourses of Epictetus. Definitely a good starting point in philosophy for anyone.

Based on a lecture I was watching about Epictetus I drew a diagram that looked something like this and put it up on my wall

There it stayed for the next couple of years. Pretty self-explanatory but I’ll point out that the arrows don’t go in a unidirectional circle because everything affects everything else and there is constant interference or reinforcement between various aspects of your being/doing.

I would keep this chart in my mind constantly. It was the sole thing that mattered to me. Many a time I would put on my jacket and shoes, getting ready to go out to buy more booze, only to stop myself before opening the door and then getting into an endless debate with myself; pacing back and forth for hours trying to convince myself of why I should drink and then refuting myself, only to come up with another excuse. At times I would grab the door handle almost ready to go but pulling back at the last minute.

Sometimes I stayed sober. Sometimes I went out and got booze. Sometimes I didn’t and instead took off my jacket and shoes, only to a couple hours later impulsively bolt out of the door and proceed to get drunk anyway.

No matter what I did I would review my actions and thought processes either at the end of the day or the following morning and either congratulate or chastise myself appropiately.

Everytime I drank I would repeatedly remind myself that this action leads to reinforcing this habit which reinforces that I should act like this in order to satisfy or cope with some emotional desire which reinforces that my current attitude toward this is okay. But also that if I had to struggle before getting drunk (debating with myself) then I had reinforced the opposing kind of behaviour. If my thoughts are “I do not want to drink” but I still do, eventually those thoughts might become habitual and habitual thoughts might lead to actions and those actions might begin to make me comfortable with emotional discomfort and all these things together will eventually lead to habitual sobriety with healthy attitudes toward alcohol and different emotional coping mechanisms and fears/desires.

Having control over one’s emotions might seem impossible but if you break down every little thing like this it becomes manageable. It does not matter what you did yesterday or what you plan to do tomorrow. What matters is that you do not drink today. At this very moment. Even when you are drinking there are pauses inbetween. In those moments that you’re not drinking usually you wouldn’t think anything of it. But you can subvert expectations and take control by consciously thinking about the fact that you are indeed not drinking at this very moment, even if in the back of your mind you know that the habit is still so strong that you will take another sip soon. Every deliberate choice is a small victory and you get to choose who the winner is: wars are waged on multiple fronts. Between shots or sips from my beer I would be glancing over at that chart on my wall and thinking about these things.

Habits, actions, emotions, thoughts: in the middle of all this is choice. An alcoholic is someone who has a problem with alcohol consumption. If you never drink alcohol you can never be an alcoholic. Pretty obvious. But at some point in their lives every alcoholic had their first drink, their first innocent sip. Nobody can predict the future but without that little sip they would never have gone down the road to become alcoholics. But that little sip was voluntary and so was every subsequent one. Even if you are truly powerless to do anything about your problem or it is too late to make a full recovery, you are ultimately responsible for being in the state you are in; your sorry self is the result of every single action and thought you’ve had or done in your entire life and they’ve all been voluntary. If you are not in control you have chosen to not be in control.

Harsh. I pity Man. You are always free to choose.

4. Boundaries

The exact timeframe in which things happened during this period are a bit fuzzy but after some months I was starting to get over the worst of it, my life was more manageable. I wasn’t getting blackout drunk but I still drank pretty heavily and often more than I intended. Let me have a sip and something in my brain would activate and the cravings were unbelievable.

I saw full sobriety as me admitting that I can’t handle alcohol at all which I took offense to and I was determined to test myself and see if I really can moderate my consumption. To achieve this I had to come up with all kinds of little tricks to fool myself into drinking moderately. 1.) Having the first drink just before the shops close so once I am inebriated and my judgement is impaired I can’t impulsively go and buy more. 2.) Not buying too little since that will only agitate me without bringing any satisfaction and in my desperation I will go to a pub because the shops are closed. 3.) Not buying too much that I will either a) drink too much or b) there will be some left over the next day.

Keeping any alcohol stashed in my home was a no go. If I had a bottle of whiskey somewhere I’d be obsessed with it and eyeing it up compulsively. Before I’d know it the bottlecap would come unscrewed almost by itself. To combat this I tried sticking post-it notes on the cap and if I found myself grabbing the bottle I would first have to tear the note away and throw it in the trash. Granted that only takes a few seconds, but in those few seconds I’d have just enough time to look at the crumpled piece of paper in my hand and think, This is not just a piece of paper I’m throwing away: this is my self-control and my dignity. Usually that worked for a short while before I’d relapse and then I’d try the post-it note method again only to fail repeatedly.

One time–over a year later–a neighbour was sitting outside celebrating midsummer and offered me a shot of vodka. I thought, What the hell I’ll take a nip and go home. As soon as the bottle touched my lips the bottom stayed up till the handle was empty. So much for that. The night turned out very differently than I had intended but long story short: the next morning I woke up in a cold sweat trembling all over, my heartrate was through the roof, I felt tightness in my chest and I had a hard time breathing; for a moment I thought I was going to die. For the next 12 hours I could hardly keep even a glass of water down and I would regurgitate everything solid I ate for the next day or two.

I did manage to sustain a moderate level of alcohol consumption without going too overboard too often but the constant vigilance, watching my every thought and questioning my every move, was extremely draining psychologically so in the end I decided it was not worth the effort.

And despite my best efforts sometimes I would have wake up calls like the vodka incident above that would humble me every now and then and remind me that no, I am still an alcoholic. For a while I really believed in the AA propaganda that “Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic”. And perhaps it was true of me and necessary to think like that at that point in my life in order to reach a point where I could exchange one truth for another. I thought I really would remain an alcoholic forever even if I stopped drinking or succesfully moderated my drinking. But today I don’t believe that is true. I am no longer an alcoholic. I am an ex-alcoholic.

5. Reconciliation

Reconciliation? With whom? Myself.

I hope I have not made all this sound too easy–in fact conquering the booze-worm in my brain has been the most difficult thing I’ve done in my entire life. But the hardest part by far had to do with one of the main motivations for why I drank in the first place. I’m a reserved and introverted guy but I quite enjoy making other people feel good and being an outgoing guy in social situations to make the atmosphere ripe for others to take the center stage–playing the support role if you will. But I can only do that when I am drunk. A single drink is enough to unlock all the locks in my head holding me back. Only when drunk could I feel like I was actually myself. Thus I felt the need to constantly drink in order to constantly be myself.

When I stopped drinking I had to come to terms with myself, my sober self, the self I wished I didn’t have to be. The image that I had formed of myself while drinking was a false one and all my social relations were formed around this other self, and since I had to give up being that person I had also to give up my previous life entirely and accept my limitations and that I might never get to a point in my life where I can be the person I want to be while sober.

But I would rather be awkward me: fearful and quiet and struggling on a “lower level” rather than live a lie and “boost myself to a higher level” with the help of booze.

My relationship with alcohol today

After going completely sober in 2022 for two years I decided to try getting drunk once again in 2024 but it didn’t do anything for me anymore. The whole time I was thinking of other more important matters and fun things I could be doing. I’ve definitely grown out of that sort of binge drinking with the sole goal of intoxication.

I am not of the opinion that alcohol is an evil that must be rooted out absolutely. It has its uses as much as it has its abuses, and while I am certainly familiar with the latter there’s still a world I am not privy to in the former.

After another year of sobriety, in 2025 I’ve decided to approach alcohol from a different angle. Before I mostly drank either a) cheap beer, b) cheap whiskey or c) vodka. With my changed attitude toward drinking I’ve ventured into uncharted territory and had a few bottles of red wine. I’ve been taking my time and enjoying the whole experience surrounding it: making a meal, sipping slowly, sitting down after to read something light. It’s been great, having a glass or two to relax maybe once per season. Laid back and not having any desire to get drunk.

Also it has been enjoyable to confront and sometimes turn on their head the common expectations and myths surrounding red wine from first hand experience. For what it’s worth I’ve gained a new perspective on certain tropes or references to wine across the ages, but the novelty is wearing off quickly and I’ll probably let this experiment fizzle out.

The only downside has been that I’ve had no one to share the bottle of wine with. Like I said: I have no desire to get drunk. I would be content to just have a glass or two and be done for the next few months, but since I now have an open bottle in my fridge what am I gonna do? Pour it down the drain? I’d rather not and so I end up reluctantly sipping wine over the weekend only to end up ultimately pouring whatever remains down the drain anyway. Oh, well.

Nine times out of ten I will decline a drink. But if I happen to be in the mood I reserve the freedom to say yes on the tenth. L’chaim!

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