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The Zen of Drinking Alone

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Re: The Zen of Drinking Alone

#201

Post by JohnBooty »

jjulius wrote: post #35
Aloha wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one shuns reading alone, listening to music alone, or watching a movie alone. Drinking alone is more dangerous than drinking with friends.

>No one shuns ... listening to music alone, or watching a movie alone. Hi! I'm an avid music and film lover who has been shunned for going to live music, or movie theaters, by myself. :)

Yeah I typically go to live music shows alone these days! The bands I see typically play in standing-room, general admission venues.

My wife doesn't like music nearly as much as I do, and she's particularly short, so standing in a crowd of people who are much taller than her isn't a lot of fun for her.

Ideally I would like to see the show with friends, but... it's still really fun. It's 9493% better than sitting at home, that's how I look at it.

Re: The Zen of Drinking Alone

#202

Post by JohnBooty »

nemo44x wrote: post #97
jjulius wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No one shuns ... listening to music alone, or watching a movie alone. Hi! I'm an avid music and film lover who has been shunned for going to live music, or movie theaters, by myself. :)

It’s weird too, right? Why do people even go to these things together considering you can’t socialize during them. And I don’t necessarily want to talk about them after as I haven’t had time to really form my thoughts. I had a job where I was on the road often and although I loved being back home I did quite enjoy doing things alone.

    > you can’t socialize during them
Yeah! I feel like it doesn't matter much if I'm there with friends, or not, during the performance.

    > And I don’t necessarily want to talk about them after
See, now this is the part I miss. Mostly, talking about it years later.

Re: The Zen of Drinking Alone

#203

Post by bourgoin »

My 2022 New Year's Resolution is to try out complete sobriety (caffeine excluded; this effectively means alcohol and cannabis). I've never considered myself to have a 'problem' with substances like some people I have known, but I sure have spent plenty of time in my life intoxicated alone. The resolution isn't an ambitious thing because I've been going this way for a while anyway.

Over the years I've slowly come to a realization: These substances have various effects, but at the heart what they really do is make me less aware. Sometimes I guess it's a good thing. Alcohol makes me less aware of the part of me that is self-conscious in social situations, and of how others perceive me. Cannabis makes you feel more aware of experiences, but it proves to be an illusion. I guess they're really not that bad on the balance, but as I grow older and I have spent more and more time thinking about cultivating awareness - of the present moment; of my body and mind and senses; of things in life that are truly important, and which maybe even make me anxious to contemplate - I find that I simply don't enjoy intoxication as much anymore because there's something I enjoy more about awareness.

More and more I hear this nagging voice when intoxicated. It says: "I'm bored; I'm nervous; I'm scared; I'm sad; I'm worried; I'm self-conscious; I'm restless; Someday I will die. What I'm doing right now is trying to be less aware of these things. But maybe they aren't just to be ignored or avoided. Maybe they're an adaptive part of the human mind. Maybe there really is something worth being anxious about."

Re: The Zen of Drinking Alone

#204

Post by JohnBooty »

taneq wrote: post #113
TigeriusKirk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"drinking with others tends to spark joy and even euphoria, while drinking alone elicits neither—if anything, solo drinkers get more depressed as they drink." I wonder how much of this is "set and setting", something that is well known with other drugs. Maybe people tend toward depression when they drink alone because that's what they expect to happen?

Maybe people with depression tend towards drinking alone?

I have zero problems agreeing that drinking alone because one is sad is potentially a very, very, bad habit that in a worst-case scenario can lead to full-blown alcoholism.

Yeah, I have to wonder if people are seriously mixing up correlation and causation.

I think the danger (or lack thereof) of solo drinking is highly dependent on a person's reasons for drinking.

I like to get mildly drunk, alone, perhaps... an average of once per month? I've been doing this for about 20 years with no increase in frequency. The key is, I only do this when I'm happy. It's like a little celebration.

For whatever reason, I do not desire alcohol when I'm feeling down. The thought of alcohol's effects seems repugnant to me at those times.

Re: The Zen of Drinking Alone

#205

Post by tasha0663 »

d-yakovlev wrote: post #165
deepvibrations wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't, then i don't think alcohol is the solution here tbh.

Sure, it's not a solution in and of itself. It's useful to destabilize you from well-rehearsed thought patterns, though - and if you manage to hit the Ballmer Peak of soggy introspection, maybe you can manage to make some progress.

There are definitely times when something that seemed like inconsequential bullshit a few rounds deep was revealed to be just that upon reflection while sober. Unfortunately it's a fine line to walk.

Re: The Zen of Drinking Alone

#206

Post by TristanBall »

donw wrote: post #49
Aloha wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have very strict rules I follow for alcohol consumption, if for no other reason than I'm the son of a man who was a functioning alcoholic for most of his life. I've read the big book, and consider it a source of wisdom, even if I perhaps don't follow all of the tenants contained within. The serenity prayer, which is AA adjacent if not (now) directly part of the AA wisdom is my personal lodestar, it's great wisdom o…

What tools do you, or other HNers for that matter, have to share about breaking alcohol addiction? Especially covering the hard parts: what are the major hurdles to overcome?

It's still a fringe treatment, but Baclofen turned off my alcohol cravings like a light switch.

It did nothing for the underlying causes of my wanting to be inebriated of course, but the "I can't think about anything else until I've had a drink" just disappeared.

Re: The Zen of Drinking Alone

#207

Post by wyclif »

nexuist wrote: post #151
tempestn wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've hypothesized that a unique problem with unhealthy eating habits compared to other addictions is that you have to eat. I would think at least with something like alcohol or nicotine, what you need to do as an addict is fairly simple (which of course is different from easy). But you can't just cut out food entirely, so it's a much more complex issue trying to eat in a healthy manner. Especially since even being to…

Well, one of the problems with alcohol and nicotine is that you also can't just cut them out entirely. Withdrawal symptoms are brutal and not compatible with modern 40 hour week jobs. Cutting out food, especially sugary ones, probably would bring about some subset of the same withdrawal symptoms...so the problems are more closely related than they appear, IMO (disclaimer that I have never been addicted to either so I…

Sure, if you stop you're going to struggle against withdrawal symptoms. As far as nicotine goes, the good news is that if you can stop for a week, the temptation dramatically decreases. If you can stop for two weeks, the residual nicotine has completely left the body and you shouldn't be feeling withdrawal symptoms. If you can be disciplined for just two weeks, you can kick the habit.

Re: The Zen of Drinking Alone

#208

Post by HEmanZ »

_8j50 wrote: post #172

The rich "glamp" like the poor get homeless and those for whom company is a choice think doing things alone is ok, even a treat. Nothing wrong with it in my opinion, so long as one chooses to be alone or do things alone. I would just like to emplore such people to seek an alternative perspective that their experience might be drastically different if they did not choose the situation to start with. Chosing to drink a…

Any suggestions or resources on how to make friends or drinking buddies quickly when you have none in a location?

Personally, I've had to move cities about every 6 months for the last 3 years while working from home. It's hard enough to make friends as an adult, let alone while constantly moving.

Re: The Zen of Drinking Alone

#209

Post by nefitty »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #185
nefitty wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was sort of forced out of that identity by COVID lockdown and domestic imperatives. I used to be proud of how many cans I could pound in a session before I got kicked out of a bar. Now, if I or anyone else do that, it's a huge pain in the ass. I still don't trust people that have never been drunks, though. There's something about the forceful rejection of social norms involved in becoming an alcoholic that I find r…

> There's something about the forceful rejection of social norms involved in becoming an alcoholic that I find resonates with me. It's akin to the punk ethos. Funny. I've run into many more social norms that promote drinking while socializing, especially at universities and in tech.

That makes sense! I never went to college and have never really been in "tech". Of my several dozen close friends, only one went to college and he definitely became markedly different than us as his studies went on.

Re: The Zen of Drinking Alone

#210

Post by oconnor663 »

coldtea wrote: post #118
delusional wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This magazine or blog or whatever seems to either be an elaborate joke or bait or something: >Are you guys for real? >Yes. While there is some satire involved, we believe to the very core of our >souls every word we write. >Who are you? >We are a group of functional alcoholics based primarily in Denver, CO. Included in our ranks are published novelists, filmmakers, English gentlemen, barflies, punk rock musicians, co…

> This magazine or blog or whatever seems to either be an elaborate joke or bait or something Or you know, part of the once respected in some circles tradition of self-destruction with style, before everybody started jogging and going vegan to live to 100 years old as a "productive" boring member of society...

Before we came up with jogging there was church :)
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