About alcoholic traditions
My mother is the daughter of an alcoholic, her father died at 40 from a heart attack. All I know about my grandfather is that he drank and raised aquarium fish. Mom never told me anything - neither about her childhood, nor about her first husband. I think she has a lot of unspoken pain in her soul. I don’t ask questions: in our family it’s not customary to get into each other’s souls. We suffer in silence, like partisans, with expressions of love, by the way, it’s about the same story.
I have never seen my mother drunk, which I can’t say about my father. Mom drank like everyone else - on holidays. Grandmothers also drank, preferring strong drinks. I remember these family holidays: kind, cheerful adults, gifts, delicious food, good mood and bottles. Of course, no one could have thought that I would grow up and become an alcoholic. I saw that all the adults were drinking, and I knew that when I grew up, I would too, because drinking on a holiday is as natural as eating a goose or a cake.
I tried beer early, at the age of six (my parents gave me a sip), and at the age of thirteen or fourteen, champagne was gradually poured into me at the festive table. In high school I learned what vodka is.
I almost don’t remember my wedding: when my parents left, I started drinking vodka with my friends - and that’s it, then failure
My boyfriend introduced me to vodka - we started dating in the 10th grade. I didn't really like him, but everyone thought he was cool. After a couple of months, we drank a bottle of vodka together every day. After school, we bought a bottle, drank it at the guy’s house and had sex. Then I went to my home and sat down to do my homework. My parents never suspected me of anything. I quickly developed a tolerance to alcohol - it was only bad the first couple of times. This is a wake-up call: if you feel normal after a lot of alcohol, it means your body has adjusted.
How an alcoholic talks
After school I entered the Faculty of Journalism. In my second year, I got married and transferred to correspondence courses: I was too lazy to go to college. She got married simply to get away from her parents. No, I remember being deeply in love, but I also remember my own thoughts before the wedding. I smoke in the yard and think: maybe, why am I doing this? But there is nowhere to go - the banquet is scheduled. Okay, I think I’ll go, and if anything happens, I’ll get a divorce! I almost don’t remember that wedding: when my parents left, I started drinking vodka with my friends - and that’s it, then failure. Memory lapses, by the way, are also a bad sign.
At that time, the future husband lived in the editorial office of the newspaper where he worked. My parents rented an apartment for us and we started living together.
I always considered myself ugly and unworthy of love and respect. Perhaps for this reason all my men were either drinkers or drug addicts, or both. One day my husband brought heroin and we got hooked. Gradually they sold everything that could be sold. There was often no food at home, but there was almost always heroin, cheap vodka or port.
One day my mother and I went to buy clothes for me. July, it's hot, I'm wearing a T-shirt. Mom noticed traces of injections on her arm and asked: “Are you injecting yourself?” “The mosquitoes bit me,” I answer. And mom believes.
Typical logic of an alcoholic: he never takes responsibility for what happens to him
I remember one day from that period in detail. A couple of my classmates came to visit us. In the midst of drinking, we go to a cafe, there we run out of money, and a classmate leaves a gold ring as collateral. We go outside to catch a taxi. Here a police car slows down in front of us. We are drunk, my husband has an open bottle of champagne in his hands. They want to take the guys to the police department, and I, being so brave, declare that I have friends in the traffic police. I walk around the car to write down the number, it’s winter, it’s slippery - I fall, look at my leg and realize that it’s somehow strangely twisted. A second later - hellish pain. The cops immediately turned around and left, and I ended up in the hospital. For nine months with two fractures of the tibia.
One fracture turned out to be complex. I had two surgeries and an Ilizarov apparatus was installed. At the same time, I continued to drink, even while lying in the hospital - my husband brought port wine. Once I got drunk while in a cast, fell and broke my lower lip with a tooth. But there was no cause-and-effect relationship in my head between what happened to me and alcohol. I thought that it happened by accident, that I was simply unlucky, because anyone can fall, and in general “the cops are to blame for everything.” Typical logic of an alcoholic: he never takes responsibility for what happens to him.
About memory lapses
We divorced our first husband a couple of years after our wedding. I fell in love with his friend. Then into someone else and someone else...
When I was twenty-two, my father’s acquaintance invited me to write scripts for a youth series. It was pleasant work in all respects: I wrote for at most a week a month, and spent the rest of the time walking and drinking. That same year, my grandmother died, leaving me her apartment, in which I set up a real hangout.
In a relatively sober state, fear and anxiety were the main feelings of those years. It's scary when you don't remember what happened to you yesterday. Just once - and consciousness wakes up. You can find your body anywhere - in a friend's apartment, in a hotel room, on the bare ground outside the city or on a bench in the park. At the same time, you have only a vague idea of how you got here, and you have no idea at all what you have done and what the consequences will be. You're just scared and dark. Why is it dark? Is it still morning or already evening? What day is today? Have your parents seen you? You start checking your phone, but there is no phone - apparently, you lost it again. You are trying to put together a puzzle. Does not work.
About trying to quit drinking
I was hostile when someone hinted to me about my problems with alcohol. At the same time, I considered myself so terrible that when people laughed on the street, I looked around, sure that they were laughing at me, and if they said a compliment, I snapped back - they were probably mocking me or wanted to borrow money.
There was a time when I thought about committing suicide, but after making a couple of demonstrative attempts, I realized that I didn’t have enough gunpowder to actually commit suicide. I considered the world a disgusting place, and myself the most unfortunate person on earth, it was unclear why I ended up here. Alcohol helped me survive, with it I at least occasionally felt some semblance of peace and joy, but it also brought more and more problems. All this resembled a pit into which stones were flying at great speed. It was bound to overflow at some point.
The last straw was the story of the stolen money. Summer of 2005, I'm working on a reality show. There is a lot of work, the launch is coming soon, we work twelve hours a day, seven days a week. And here's our luck - for once we were released early, at 20.00. My friend and I grab some cognac and fly to relieve stress in grandma’s long-suffering apartment. Afterwards (I don’t remember this), my friend put me in a taxi and told me the address of my parents. I had about $1,200 with me - it wasn’t my money, it was “working money”, it was the taxi driver who stole it from me. And, judging by the state of my clothes, he simply threw me out of the car. Thank you for not raping or killing me.
I remember how, having distinguished myself once again, I told my mother: maybe I should get coded? She answered: “What are you making up? You just need to pull yourself together. You’re not an alcoholic!” Mom didn’t want to acknowledge reality simply because she didn’t know what to do with it.
Out of desperation, I still went to get coded. I wanted to take a break from the troubles that kept befalling me every now and then. I wasn’t planning on quitting drinking forever, but rather taking a sober vacation.
I didn't get sober, I just didn't drink alcohol.
In honor of the coding, my parents gave me a trip to St. Petersburg. The three of us went and stayed with my relatives. Their parents, naturally, drank with them - what would they do without it on vacation. I couldn't bear to see them drunk. I somehow couldn’t stand it and said in a rage: “Why can’t you not drink at all?” Petersburg saved me. I ran away into the rain, got lost among the canals, and then I definitely decided that I would come back to live here.
I lasted a year and a half during the encoding (it was a standard hypnosis encoding), and my affairs seemed to go smoothly: I met my future husband, there were much fewer problems at work, I began to look decent and earn money, I stopped losing phones and money, I got my license, my parents bought me a car. But almost every day I drank non-alcoholic beer, and my husband drank alcoholic beer with me for company. I didn't get sober, I just didn't drink alcohol.
Non-alcoholic beer is a ticking time bomb. Someday it will be replaced by alcohol, and then dynamite will work. One evening, when the store didn’t have my zero, I decided to try drinking a regular one. It was scary (if accepted, the coder promised a stroke and heart attack), but I’m brave.
Coding is not a bad thing under one condition: if, after putting yourself on pause, you begin to change your life, actively develop towards sobriety, and solve the problems that led you to alcoholism. It's important to move in a different direction.
Having decoded, I, as they say, got my hands on alcohol. It was a huge - even by my standards - drinking binge. Alcohol returned to my life as if it had never left. And six months later I find out that I am pregnant.
About the pain peak
I didn’t think about having a child (to be honest, I’m still not sure that motherhood is for me), but my mother constantly said: “I was born when your grandmother was 27, I also gave birth to you at 27, it’s time for you to give birth to a girl.” .
I thought that maybe my mother was right: I’m married, and besides, all people give birth. At the same time, I didn’t ask myself: “Why do you need a child? Do you want to look after him, be responsible for him?” Then I didn’t ask myself questions, I didn’t know how to talk to myself, to hear myself.
I searched the Internet for stories of women who also drank and gave birth to healthy children.
When I found out I was pregnant, I was not at all happy, but I promised myself that I would quit drinking and smoking. Gradually. I managed to slow down by giving up my favorite strong drinks, but I couldn’t stop drinking completely. Every day I promised myself that I would quit tomorrow, and searched on the Internet for stories of women who also drank and gave birth to healthy children.
In the seventh month of pregnancy, a placental abruption occurred, I had an emergency cesarean section, the baby died, and I went on a drinking binge, consumed by a sense of guilt for drinking and refusing to go to the hospital for preservation. Blaming myself was commonplace. You did it, you apologized, and you can move on with your life without changing anything.
At that time I already had very bad hangovers, I was seriously afraid of delirium tremens. Now it’s difficult to describe this state... You can’t do anything. My head is pounding. It grabs your heart. It’s either hot or cold, you can’t lie still, your body is twitching, you’re unable to eat or drink, you throw yourself in vitamins - nothing helps. You can’t fall asleep without light and TV, and you can’t do much with them - sleep is intermittent and sticky. And a huge anxiety, one that is bigger than you: now something is going to happen.
I remember sitting in a car with a friend, and I said: my husband forbids me to drink, I’ll probably have to quit, otherwise he’ll leave. The friend nods sympathetically - it’s hard, they say, for you, I understand. It was August 2008: my first attempt at getting married on my own.
About living with sobriety
Alcohol is a very difficult form of recreation. Now I’m amazed how my body survived all this. I was treated, tried to quit and relapsed again, almost lost faith in myself.
I finally stopped drinking on March 22, 2010. It’s not that I decided that it was on the 22nd, on the bright day of the spring equinox, that I would stop drinking, hurray. It was just one of the many attempts that led to me not drinking for almost seven years. Not a bit. My husband doesn’t drink, my parents don’t drink - without this support, I think nothing would have worked out.
At first I thought something like this: when he saw that I had stopped drinking, God would come down to me and say: “Yulyasha, how smart you are, well, we finally waited, now everything will be fine! I will now reward you as expected - you will be the happiest with me.”
To my surprise, everything was wrong. Gifts did not fall from the sky. I was sober - and that was it. Here it is, my whole life - the light is like in an operating room, you can’t hide. Mostly I felt lonely and terribly unhappy. But amid this global misfortune, for the first time I tried to do other things, for example, talk about my feelings or train my willpower. This is the most important thing - if you can’t walk in the other direction, you need to at least lie down in that direction and make at least some kind of body movement.
The first year sober is hard. You feel such shame for your past that you want one thing: to dissolve, to go underground. I took my husband’s last name, changed my phone number and email address, left social networks and distanced myself from friends as much as possible. All I had was me, who drank fourteen years of my life. Who didn't know herself. For the first time I was left alone with myself, I learned to talk to myself. It was unusual to live completely without anesthesia, to be constantly present in your life, without hiding or running away. I don't think I've ever cried so much in my life.
A couple of years before I stopped drinking completely, I became a vegetarian. I think the recovery process started right when for the first time I thought about what (or rather, who) I was eating, that in the world, besides me, there are other creatures who live and suffer, that someone else might have worse than me. Asceticism appeared in my life, which developed me and made me stronger.
Sometimes I remember myself and don’t believe that it was me, and not a character from the movie “Trainspotting”. Thank God, I was able to forgive myself and finally begin to treat myself well - with love and care. It was not easy and took a lot of time, but I managed (with the help of a psychotherapist). The next step is to develop, albeit slowly and little by little, but to move forward every day.
In the summer of 2010, my husband and I quit smoking. I started meditating. Every free minute I read affirmations and convinced myself that I could handle everything.
Three years ago I started . At first it was like a diary for me, a platform for reflection: I wrote because I felt an inner need. At first no one read the blog, but, one way or another, it was a statement about myself - I exist, yes, I drank, but I was able to quit, I live.
Beautiful, wealthy women come to me, they have husbands and children, and everything seems to be fine. Only every day they secretly drink a bottle of red wine
Then I realized that sitting and reflecting is the same as doing nothing. Because there are thousands like me. They are also helpless, they do not understand how to stop the war within themselves. Therefore, now I provide consultations for people with similar problems. Everyone has different degrees of dependence: beautiful, wealthy women come to me, they have husbands and children, and everything seems to be fine. Only every day they secretly drink a bottle of red wine. It’s not customary to talk about this, but almost every second person in our country drinks at one time or another. That is, he drinks regularly. And few people admit this to themselves.
I didn’t want to be ashamed of myself and my past - it bothered me, I felt unfree. Therefore, I plucked up courage and began to talk about the topic of alcohol addiction, so that alcoholism would no longer be treated as something shameful or top-secret.
I’m being honest: I’m not a psychologist or a narcologist. I am a former alcoholic. And, unfortunately or fortunately, I know too much about how to stop drinking and how not to do it. I try to help those who have realized that they want to live soberly and are ready to do something for this. In this matter, the more information, the better. That's why I'm here and sharing my experience - how I drank and how I live now.
Thanks to the photographer Ivan Troyanovsky, stylist and cafe "Ukrop" for assistance in the shooting.
Chronic alcoholism is an incurable disease, but some people manage to achieve stable remission and stop drinking alcohol. Others gradually descend down the social ladder until they finally degenerate. Most addicts make attempts to quit drinking alcohol, which are not always successful. For those who are used to going on a long binge, the stories of alcoholics can give them the impetus to quit drinking as soon as possible.
The story of Nastya’s mother, tragic
Nastya was born in a village not far from a large regional center, studied at school, then entered a pedagogical institute and left home for several years. She then returned to her home village as a teacher. But during this time, serious changes occurred in the family.
Her mother, Vera Nikolaevna, worked all her life as a milkmaid at a local agricultural enterprise. Drinking alcohol in a group was the norm for men and women, and the latter sometimes competed with the stronger sex in terms of dose volume. It was not limited to holidays and weekends; alcohol was required at dinner in the evening.
Nastya saw her mother’s problem, but persuasion and threats did not help. The woman did not consider herself an alcoholic and did not want to hear about treatment or coding. Binges became frequent, and showing up at work drunk became the norm.
Local village alcoholics began to appear in the house. But by that time Nastya had already gotten married and lived separately on the next street. She stopped trying to help her mother cope with the disease. Only after another binge did she complain about feeling unwell and have abdominal pain and ask to be taken to the hospital. The examination showed that the woman had cirrhosis of the liver in an advanced stage. After her condition improved, she was discharged home with a recommendation not to drink alcohol.
But Vera Nikolaevna could not stop. The medications and diet prescribed by the doctor were forgotten after a week. The binges continued, after which each time it became worse. Other people began to notice this. The skin and eyes acquired a yellowish tint, for some reason the stomach grew, and the palms became red. Mental disturbances appeared; after a binge, the woman could talk to an invisible interlocutor and became aggressive.
It all ended one morning when she didn’t wake up after a drinking binge. The daughter, sensing something was wrong, went to visit her and called an ambulance, which pronounced her dead. The autopsy revealed cirrhosis of the liver, ascites, which caused the huge belly, as well as signs of multiple organ failure. This is how alcohol can lead to death, only six months have passed since diagnosis.
Only a small proportion of alcohol-related deaths are associated with fatal poisoning. The main contribution of alcohol to high mortality in Russia is characterized by the following data: 19% of deaths from cardiovascular diseases (including heart attacks and strokes), 61% of deaths from external causes, including 67% of murders, 50% of suicides, 68% of deaths from liver cirrhosis and 60% from pancreatitis.
Igor's story, criminal
For Igor, his addiction to alcohol became the reason for his imprisonment. He started drinking alcohol as a teenager, but despite this he studied well at school. He entered the school, but could not graduate; he was expelled for his addiction to alcohol and truancy. Igor was always capable, learned quickly, so he found a job at a construction site, and then began to travel to Moscow to work.
Returning home was always accompanied by week-long drinking bouts; there were friends who were happy to have free alcohol. This happened regularly for several years. Traveling to earn money also began to be accompanied by active abuse of alcohol, but to obtain euphoria, cheap alcohol, beer or cocktails were bought.
Igor received his first sentence for a drunken brawl, in which he seriously injured his friend. He served 3 years and was released early for good behavior. But after returning home, the old way of life also returned. Trips to earn money were followed by weeks of heavy drinking.
Igor’s mother was not distinguished by exemplary behavior and also often abused alcohol. The son’s reaction to this was sharply negative; Igor often argued with her, sometimes using force. He was irritated by strangers in the house and feasts with lots of booze. He himself tried to drink alcohol outside the home.
One day, returning late at night, Igor found his mother in a state of intoxication. He himself had also been on a drinking binge for several days. The woman’s behavior seemed unacceptable to him, and he began to aggressively argue with her. In a fit of rage, an ax came to hand, which Igor used.
The neighbors called the police, Igor asked them about this in the morning. He did not try to hide and fully realized his guilt. Now Igor is serving his sentence, alcohol is no longer available. Reading helps fill the void, but previously, alcohol replaced my favorite pastime. Igor regrets his action and hopes that after his release he will not return to this habit.
According to experts, about 70% of murders in Russia are related to alcohol. Data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs gives a slightly lower figure - about 50%, but this is most likely underestimated, since many suspects mistakenly believe that alcohol intoxication is an aggravating circumstance.
http://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/knigi/alkogol/alkogol.pdf
Paul's story, an encouraging one
Pavel's family is the most ordinary. He is an only child, he was not deprived of the attention of his parents, he grew up, dreamed, went to school, then moved to a big city, where he tried vodka for the first time at the age of 16. While studying at the institute, drinking occurred only on weekends. After it ended and a stable job appeared, I realized that I didn’t have to wait until Friday evening, but had a little drink before bed on any weekday.
Gradually, alcohol began to appear in the house every other day, then every evening. Sometimes Pavel was hungover in the morning at work, but this did not harm labor relations. The only people who interfered were his relatives, who claimed that he had problems with alcohol. Pavel waved it off and believed that he could stop at any moment.
Gradually, he began to be accepted as one of their own in the surrounding drinking establishments, his interests disappeared, and all thoughts came down to one thing - to drink. If acquaintances told us that they had gone on vacation, Pavel would automatically recalculate how much alcohol he could buy with that money.
The day of epiphany came six months ago, when on the third day of the binge, in a state of severe withdrawal, the realization came that there was no way forward. An inexplicable feeling of fear for one’s life appeared, which led to acceptance of the problem. Pavel realized that he couldn’t cope on his own and turned to his parents, with whom his relationship was already damaged.
My parents helped, gave me money for coding, and Pavel himself found a narcologist based on reviews from those who had already given up alcohol. The encoding was successful, the euphoria in the first days helped fight the craving for alcohol. But then the desire to drink constantly pestered me, sometimes intensifying. It was very difficult to fight him, depression set in. A conversation with a psychologist and antidepressants saved me.
Now Pavel is gradually returning to normal life. He restores relationships with relatives who turned away from him because of his addiction, and tries to show his best side at work. In his sober life, he realized that alcohol turned him into the scum of society, and his appearance was disgusting. Now the situation is changing for the better. Pavel is sure that there is no longer a place for alcohol in his life.
Conclusion
Alcohol addiction and regular binge drinking reduce the quality of life. They increase the likelihood of serious illnesses that the addicted person is not able to cope with, because... To do this, you need to stop abusing alcohol.
At an early stage, you can stop; the disease will remain, but will go into remission. In severe cases, gradual degradation of personality awaits, and death can be a consequence not only of illness, but also of crime.
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A woman's life story: bear your cross or break up if my husband is an alcoholic and a commentary from a psychologist. It’s a small world – that’s what I thought when I met Pasha for the third time. It seems that he is pushing us away, saying: this is your destiny!
The first time I saw Pavel was in a company where my friend Irka brought me. Lots of booze, fun company. Pasha was the star of the evening. And more than once he glanced in my direction. I thought: if it weren’t for the recent breakup with Igor, I would definitely have fallen for him. But - alas! So that evening everything remained at the level of “look, but no more.”
A month later, my aunt celebrated her 50th birthday and threw a feast. And imagine my surprise when I saw Pavel among the guests! It turned out that Pasha is the son of his aunt’s old friend. Pasha caught my eye all evening and smiled. I thought: “He’s still good!” Pasha courted women and made toasts. He dashingly downed glass after glass and did not get drunk.
At that time, our communication did not go beyond the anniversary. But fate confronted Pasha and me for the third time. After a week of work, Irka and I decided to rush to the club - and I met Pavel again. Jokes, laughter, cocktails flowing. And somehow it turned out that he went to see me off. We kissed passionately in a taxi... And we met the morning in my bed.
Pasha turned out to be not only a good lover. He was a holiday man. I met a bunch of his friends. We visited all the nightclubs, all the restaurants in the city, went to tourist centers, relaxed like savages, setting up tent camps. And what surprised me was that Pasha could drink and not get drunk. Alcohol didn't make him stupid or aggressive.
Six months later we submitted an application to the registry office. When my aunt found out about this, she pursed her lips and said: “Anya, Pasha, of course, is a good guy. But he drinks a lot! What kind of family is there with an alcoholic? I was indignant: “He’s not a drunk! He’s not lying around on the street, he’s working!” “Do you think that only those who lie under the fence are alcoholics?” We had a big fight then.
Pavel and I got married. Family life was joyful and cloudless. In fact, the holiday continued - cheerful feasts, enchanting sex, no quarrels or conflicts. Until six months later Pasha came in very drunk and said: “I was fired.” I said: “Calm down, honey, you will find a new job. Better than before!”
...The job search has been extended. I came home tired, and was greeted by my cheerful unemployed husband. Cheerful - because he is constantly under the influence. Over time, this began to irritate me. I began to express my complaints to Pasha: you sit at home, drink, and I work as a farm laborer, supporting both of us. There was not enough money.
Pasha's cheerfulness disappeared in the morning, he woke up gloomy and with a sore head. Depressed and angry, he started yelling at me. I yelled back. Sex left the relationship - because Pasha wanted it only when he was under the influence. But I didn’t smile at enduring a drunken body and smelling the fume stench. Pasha would also get extremely drunk and sometimes pass out while sitting at the table or even on the floor.
My husband is an alcoholic – should I bear my cross or separate?
After six months of such a “fun” life, I realized that my aunt was right. I began to study the behavioral characteristics of alcoholics. And here’s what it turned out: there are several stages of alcohol addiction, several options.
When we met, Pasha was a social alcoholic: he controlled himself, didn’t get too drunk, and went to work. On weekdays I relaxed only in the evenings and lightly - with a couple of beers. I thought beer in small quantities is not scary. No! This is scary, this is alcoholism!
And when Pasha lost his job, he released the brakes and quickly began to drink too much. Hence the aggression and the habit of hangovers.
I posed the question bluntly: either my alcoholic husband Pasha gets coded and gets a job, or we get a divorce. At first he denied it, yelling that he was not a drunk. Then he began to say that he could control himself and would only drink on holidays. But I was adamant: I had already found out that there are no exceptions in this matter. If you stop drinking, then stop drinking altogether. And these indulgences “on holidays” ultimately result in new binges.
My alcoholic husband somehow agreed to the coding, Pavel was brought out of the state of abstinence - a hospital, IVs, and then they sewed a “torpedo” into him. I was happy - we were starting a new, sober life!
It turned out that I don’t know my husband. Sober, he was rude and angry. He used to shower me with compliments, kiss me, and constantly hug me. Now the attention and affection have disappeared along with the alcohol. Sex remained rare and also boring.
I tried to cheer Pasha up for a year, I thought that the depression was about to go away. And she left - when my alcoholic husband “decoded” and returned home drunk. Another month-long binge, another job loss. I realized that this is the bottom.
To divorce or not?
I went to repentance to my aunt. I asked for advice: what should I do? Should I get a divorce or wait for everything to change? Aunt’s advice was clear: get a divorce while there are no children. There are no such things as former alcoholics, and the situation can get worse. We haven't gotten to the point of beatings yet. But most domestic murders occur while intoxicated. I was horrified by the prospects: dragging my drunken husband, giving birth to children from him, being beaten - or killed...
I divorced Pavel. A year later I met Alexey, my current husband. He is not a complete teetotaler; he may have a drink or two on holiday. But he doesn’t drink every week, much less every day. He’s not a toastmaster, he doesn’t cast irrepressible charm on everyone. He is not a holiday man. He is a man of life. My happy calm life.
By the way, my alcoholic ex-husband Pasha finally became an alcoholic. He doesn’t work, sits on his parents’ necks, and regularly goes on binges. Several times a year he spends time in a drug treatment clinic. And I am glad that I managed to remove this cross from myself in time.
YURI: Hello everyone! I'm Yuri, a former alcoholic from St. Petersburg. If someone is unable to break out of alcoholism and needs support, we can also communicate through a microphone. Don't be shy, I'll be glad if I can support you.
If someone tells you that there are no former alcoholics, do not believe it, this is a widespread myth. I decided to write the story of my alcoholism from the very beginning. And it started in childhood...
ALINA: I want to tell you about my love affair with alcohol. Thanks to him, my third marriage is collapsing!!!)) My first husband and I drank together, we drank only beer, we didn’t look at the temperature. Five seven liters on weekends and 3-4 liters on weekdays. We lived for 10 years and somehow we managed to stop at the end of the marriage, or rather, I almost succeeded. I quit and my husband still drank two liters every day, but in a smaller dose. And then my friend arrives from Moscow and ... I went into a break. Result: fight with husband, hysteria and divorce...
TITO: Breaking alcohol addiction. My experience.
Last use - from 09.23 to 25.09.2016.
According to a strict scheme. In the morning, everything that burns. Before passing out. On Monday 26.09 I felt like a deflated balloon, penetrated in one place. I began to come to my senses only on Thursday 29.09.
All these days have been knocked out of life and play. Systematic use makes it impossible to achieve goals. Unfortunately, any technique leads to a rigid scheme...
INGA: Good morning! I don’t even know where to start... apparently I have come to the point that I realize and understand that I need help and support. It always seemed to me that I could handle everything on my own, but apparently this is not the case. I'm 33, my daughter is 1.6. I didn’t drink during my entire pregnancy, and very rarely wine. As a child, my father drank heavily. My addiction started at 26, but there were no binges. Everything began to get worse after giving birth. Of course, I can refer to post-mortem depression, but I’m afraid that by doing so I’m only trying to justify...
ROMAN: Hello! My name is Roman, I’m 47 years old, I live in Moscow and I consider myself an alcoholic. To be honest, this social status does not suit me at all!!
My story is banal, but not yet resolved, and therefore I come to you for help...
I'll start my confusion with the positive. I have a family, two children (girls 21 years old and 6 years old, I love them very much) and a wonderful wife, by the way, who drinks extremely rarely. Things are generally going well! You have your own comfortable housing and your own business...
VLADIMIR: Hello. I’m 24 years old, my story is this... It all started when I was 13 years old, after classes my classmates and I liked to drink a bottle of beer, but there wasn’t much craving, we only drank in the spring when it was warm, in winter no one thought about beer .At the age of 14, I tried vodka for the first time and polished it with beer, after that I thought that I would never drink again. For a long time I didn’t think about alcohol at all, I developed completely different hobbies, music, sports, meeting girls, disco, I was crazy...
The article mentions famous people who talk about their lives before and after drinking alcohol, as well as how they came to absolute sobriety.
They come to the consensus that without alcohol, their reality has become brighter and much more interesting - this is the main reason for the complete loss of interest in alcohol.
“All drunkards stop drinking, but some manage to do this while they are still alive.” Sad joke. Alcohol addiction is very serious, and indeed not everyone who acquires it manages to stop. Once you become an alcoholic, then it is no longer possible to stop being one, you can only move into the category of quitting alcoholics if you try really hard.
One of my friends once said that a person stops drinking when he reaches the end. But this concept is different for everyone. For some, this is if he has been demoted from general to colonel, but for others, lying under the fence is not yet an end. He himself, from time to time, and in between, actively promoted sobriety. Eventually, his wife kicked him out of the house. I don’t know whether he reached his end, or whether he’s alive at all. Sometimes the signal is very clear and unambiguous. Alexander Rosenbaum, for example, considered himself a strong drinker, believed that he could drink a lot without harm to his health, and even claimed that there was no such disease as. He quit drinking after he got drunk, and only the timely arrival of an ambulance saved the singer’s life.
However, a threat to life does not always stop alcohol consumption. Grigory Leps drunkenness led to the hardest. One day, during another attack, doctors literally pulled him out of the other world. This made a strong impression on the artist, and for a long time he abstained from drinking, but then began to allow himself to drink alcohol again.
Sometimes, it is not fear for one’s life at all, but shame, the awareness of how far one has fallen, that helps a person stop drinking. In young age Raymond Pauls was a pianist in an orchestra who often performed in restaurants and at dances, where alcohol was a necessity. Life gradually turned into one continuous binge. It got to the point that friends took Pauls to a special clinic. The sight of degenerate alcoholics gathered together, and the understanding that he himself had become one, led the musician into a state of shock. According to him, he stopped drinking: “immediately, in a second and completely - not at all and never.”
Here's a famous actor Alexey Nilov(Captain Larin in “Cops”), went to the hospital more than once in order to stop drinking. But he lasted no more than 2-3 days, and again “took it to his chest,” finding drinking buddies among the patients of the same hospital, and sometimes among doctors. Alexey believes that it is impossible to code him, but if he really wants to, he himself can give up alcohol for a while. As an example, he gives a story when he, but was not encoded, without telling anyone about it. And yet, I didn’t drink for a year after that, and everyone thought that coding helped.
There is still no consensus in society about what it is: some consider drunkards to be irresponsible egoists who need to be punished, others as sick people who need to be treated.
According to Larisa Guzeeva: “Alcoholism is a terrible disease, like the flu or jaundice; alcoholics should be treated, not scolded.” Larisa herself began drinking to spite her drug addict husband, trying to somehow influence him. It ended with treatment, and not only for alcoholism, but also for chronic diseases caused by drunkenness. Now all this is in the past. Drinking, as it were, places a person in another reality, very limited and distorted, but which makes it possible to solve all the problems that arise with another dose of alcohol.
As a result, the whole meaning of life comes down to the opportunity to take this very dose, and only then does interest in other aspects of life appear. And the further you go, the more difficult it is to get out of this.
According to the testimonies of various people who managed to get rid of cravings for alcohol, there is no universal solution for everyone. Someone can really stop drinking on their own by finding a serious reason for this. Such, for example, as your health or the well-being of loved ones. Some people cannot do this, and such a person needs help, support and treatment.
However, what all former drinkers agree on is that without alcohol, their reality has become much brighter, more interesting and multifaceted. And according to them, this is the main reason for the complete loss of interest in alcohol in present life.
You can find out about those actors who were unable to overcome alcohol addiction and left for another world from.
Stop drinking. Good sobriety to you!
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