define alcoholic...

Another definition would be substitution.

You substitute your need for productive work and intimacy with alcohol.

You also substitute your need to keep your own company with distractions. Alcohol being one.

That's what I'm working on right now.

Smoking cigarettes goes down spontaneously for me whenever I take 30 mins everyday to do nothing but to keep my own company; without pursuing anything.

Including any train of thought.

 

maybe if I started playing WoW or something I'd be able to cut down on the lush.

 

I agree.

 

I actually disagree slightly with Prax's "escape" theory. I've never found the line between exuberance and escape to be that clean cut.

 

you know, my dad gets upset if people aren't drinking with him.. like my mom.. or me, even, the other night, i said "oh there's no vodka" and he went all the way down the basement, opened boxes and brought me 3 bottles of Absolut. he buys me cigs, too.. it's like he feels more comforted in his own addictions if people share them with him.. even his wife and daughter..

 

I tend to feel exhuberant as a result of facing things.

Don't get me wrong: tough to do.

 

when i'm depressed i wanna escape by drinking, taking drugs and sleeping.. i only feel exuberant when i'm in a good mood and happy with life (and then drinking/drugs/sleep become a healthy thing to do on the side to enhance my happiness or something not an escape - OR i simply don't crave it)

 

I feel like that, but drinking when times are good really isn't that different than drinking when the times are bad.

 

Really?

Anyway. My experience is opposite.

I can actually drink and not enjoy it. Other times I have a blast!

 

when times are bad i just wanna drink myself til coma sometimes.. but unfortunately i always end up puking.

 

I can drink and not enjoy it. for me alcohol alternates between catching a buzz or just trying to slow down my head, which I view as basically the same thing. if you ask me, context is generally unimportant if you drink a lot.
what I disagree with is the idea that someone who drinks very often, but with exuberance, isn't an alcoholic.

 

I'll agree that when I develop drinking patterns, I'm not exhuberant.

One seems to be symptomatic of the other.

When I'm exhuberant about life in general, drinking is ad hoc.

 

maybe I've had a drinking problem long enough to have lost perspective, but it isn't like I've lost that sense of exuberance. any drug gets more bland the more often you take it.

 

Even when you're not drinking?

 

hard to say, sometimes I drink more than other times, and my state of mind is always very up and down regardless of alcohol intake. it depends on a lot of things. I've been drinking a lot less recently, but I think that's because I've been taking acid every other day for about a week or so.

 

The pursuit of nothing, isn't that what Buddhism teaches us, letting go? It's our nature of clinging that manifests itself as addiction. Alcohol makes it easier to gain the delusion of letting go in the short term, but it usually comes back to bite us in the ass later.

I reckon I'd cut down on drinking if I were dropping acid every other day, lol. When I used to do that, I couldn't go for more than a week or so, or things would start getting really weird. Be careful.

 

me haha

 

alcohol is bunk now meth holy shit
it never gets old

 

I'll tell you what defines an alcoholic. YOU DO. Take whatever principle you want and apply it to someone and voila! she's an alcoholic.