My name is Rajiv. I am 41 and live in New Delhi, India. I have a beautiful wife and a 10 year old son.

I started regular drinking (i.e. weekends) after I turned 30. Early years there was no drinking. During college I must have had alcohol on one or two occasions and later on when I started working, drinking was never a problem.

Slowly, I turned in to what I would not like to call myself-"An Alcoholic" but what bothers me all the time is that come Friday..I want to drink! I cannot stop the craving.

Last festive season was worse! I drank continuously for 8 days (mostly Red Wine-because beyond a point you dont wanna drink).

I dont know whether I need help, but it really bother me that I drink regularly i.e. 8-10 times in a month!

Hi my names Clare I'm a 28 year old mum of three from the UK. I started drinking heavily after my dad died when I was 18. I used to work 6am-3pm every day and the rest of the time I drank I honestly don't know how I used to get to work in those days but the scariest part is I rode a scooter there and back everyday which looking back I am disgusted at myself for doing.

I started to realise I had a problem but then met my ex partner who also had a drink problem so we made each other worse we would get through about 3bottles of wine and 2bottles of spirits on a quieter day and god knows how much when we went out. we somehow both held down jobs and we kind of just avoided the rest of the world even though we both lived with our patents.

We lived like this for about 4yrs until I found I was pregnant with my daughter. I managed to stop drinking through my pregnancy and we moved in together I had her in February 2005 and a week after giving birth i found out he had been cheating on me but instead of leavig him I started drinking again. But something was different I wanted better for my daughter and during that time I realised my ex was a heavy drug user I was always to drunk and naive to notice before. So we ended up breaking up and he has had no contact with my daughter since then.

After leaving him I managed to stop drinking and spent lots of time with my friend who didn't drink at all he is now my fiance and we have two sons together. The only way I could break the habbit was to get away from everywhere that reminded me of alcohol. I did have some very dark times getting over it and I still find family parties and weddings to be a trigger but so far I have managed to resist. I've been 4yrs sober now and still crave a drink whenever I'm down or in a social situation.

I don't know if I'm an alcoholic or not but I do know that I can never touch a drink again because I know it will never stop at just one and my children deserve better than that!

Thankyou you have done amazingly too! The scary thing I found is I was never sick and never passed out I could just drink and drink while making an idiot of myself in the process

I'm Monica. I've struggled with alcoholism since I was 14. I did AA for a year or so and I was sober for two years.
I grew complacent and figured if I had been sober for two years I could drink like a normal person and so I started drinking again in 2005. Heavily. Daily.
I've been sober for 588 days now.
Like most alcoholics I drank more than I ate. Like I've mentioned in threads etc, I was skinny-fat...you know that gross alcoholic skinny fat with a beer belly. Saggy, pale, and always hungover. I even sweated wine.
I've done this on my own so far. I didn't have a good experience with AA and so far I've been ok.
It hasn't been easy but I'm grateful for all my sober days, cuz my worst sober day is way better than my "best" drunk day.

My name is Rajiv. I am 41 and live in New Delhi, India. I have a beautiful wife and a 10 year old son.

I started regular drinking (i.e. weekends) after I turned 30. Early years there was no drinking. During college I must have had alcohol on one or two occasions and later on when I started working, drinking was never a problem.

Slowly, I turned in to what I would not like to call myself-"An Alcoholic" but what bothers me all the time is that come Friday..I want to drink! I cannot stop the craving.

Last festive season was worse! I drank continuously for 8 days (mostly Red Wine-because beyond a point you dont wanna drink).

I dont know whether I need help, but it really bother me that I drink regularly i.e. 8-10 times in a month!

Welcome to the group!

Alcohol addiction varies in its intensity, symptoms, and damage to your physical and mental health with every person who struggles with it. All of us have different triggers.

There are two forms of alcoholism. The first is a compulsive and irresistable urge to drink. This is called alcohol dependence. Alcohol dependence is a physical addiction to alcohol. Without it, your body will go into withdrawl. Unlike dependence, alcohol abuse refers to people whose drinking leads to social, physical, and emotional issues within their lives, but who are not physically addicted to alcohol.

This article should help you sort it out a bit better: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001940/

Thank you for sharing your thoughts here!

Thanks for the blog link! I went through the contents! Thank God I don't fall in to the category of "Dependent" alcoholic!

But, I must work on it to reduce my social drinking!

Thanks for sharing!!

Hi, I'm Michelle, I'm 23, been using since I was 12. I have 34 days clean I started on pain pills when I was 12, switched to alcohol at 14, xanax at 15 and was slamming heroin meth and cocaine at 16. When I first got clean a year ago I gained about 80 lbs. I relapsed trying to lose the weight, and then gained it back. I need some support to gain weight the right way and keep it off!!!

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