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You are binge drinking so I guess that makes you a binge drinker. If you can't stick to your limit of 3 or 4 drinks then try taking only enough cash for 3 drinks and the taxi home (store the taxi money separately from the drinking money), don't take a credit or debit card with you.
And of course if you're worried that you have a problem then yeah, go talk to your doctor or go to an AA meeting.
Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
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Binge drinking is actually worse for health than the steady-drinking kind of alcoholism. Although it may not be true alcoholism to only get drunk once a week (in my opinion), it's definitely harmful to health.
I'd say to have two cocktails, and then only alcohol-free drinks. All bars have some good ones, since they like to encourage designated drivers.
Or avoid the bars entirely since you're not addicted yet, and drink the healthy way - one drink per day in a social setting such as a meal.
Check out rational.org. Check out Celebrate Recovery. Pray. Read up on it on the Internet. AA is not a cure-all FFS! Arrrgh.
OK, rant over. /
OP, it sounds like you're not on a good road. 8-12 drinks sounds like a LOT! Even in my glory days of going to bars, I'd probably have 3 hard drinks tops and then switch to beer or wine. (not that that's better). But dang unless you're a 250-lb. man, that's a LOT of alcohol.
You said "After THREE YEARS of not drinking..."
So what happened before the past three years?
Just stop. If you can't...big problem.
Anyone who needs their consciousness altered has a problem. It's that simple.
ALOT can happen:
It can escalate to more than once a week
You'll get drunk on less and less until you can't even have a couple and be drunk
You can fall and crack your head open (or some version of drama)
You can get alcohol poisoning
You can alienate everyone
You can have everyone completely lose trust in you for, like, FOREVER
You can feel like an idiot or paranoid or a failure
You can smell like crap and then switch to vodka thinking you're fooling everyone
You can have performance problems at work
You can get STDs or HIV/AIDS from being drunk and indiscriminate
You can get fired
You can get evicted
You can be homeless
You can need rehab but have no money for it
You can go to rehab and fail. Several times.
YOU CAN LOSE YOUR LICENSE EVEN IF YOU"RE NOT DRIVING DRUNK in certain places at certain times/ages
You can lose your internet!
Shall I keep going?
Wake up tomorrow and drink nothing for another day. Then another day. Then another day......
You are an alcoholic according to what I was taught in college - even if you get drunk once a week, if you are consistent in that behavior, then you are an alcoholic. Get help fast.
People like to throw the term "alcoholic" around without defining what it even means. Outside of getting to the point where you're suffering delirium tremens/severe withdrawal symptoms upon cessation of drinking, there's a lot of grey area about what it means to be an alcoholic. This thread is full of alarmism. Prolonged behavior such as yours might cause long-term problems. Or it might not. Don't rely on the responses you've gotten thus far, as they are essentially useless. Go to an AA meeting and read them your OP and you should be laughed out of the meeting, as that level of consumption is nothing compared to what most people there have "done".
I personally think it would be helpful if some doctor or epidemiologist out there would undertake the public service of quantifying risk levels for cirrhosis and the like according to drinking patterns. As someone who drinks far more than you (the OP), I personally would be quite interested in the findings, myself.
hang around an ER during Spring Break...you'll see the full effects of your stupidity.
Guess what--not everyone who consumes alcohol regularly or somewhat regularly is a college kid who's never gotten truly inebriated before! Anecdotal evidence has its place, but in this case, your response is irrelevant
That is most definitely binge drinking. I wouldn't call it a problem until you do it even when you know you shouldn't.
More reasonable response than most, but still, so very subjective. When should one know that one shouldn't binge drink? Functional alcoholism is a real thing--where people essentially live an ostensibly normal life while hiding their alcoholism. That is, in the case(s) of what is typically referred to as "functional alcoholism", none of the normal external triggers (so conveniently compiled by runswithscissors above) would be telling the person to quit drinking. But external triggers are essentially based on luck. Internal health is the only thing that matters to me, and perhaps to the OP. There is no higher power to surrender myself to (that goes for you too, AA apologists), and no life situation is inherently a signal to me that I should reform. I think there's some grimy elegance in living like Charles Bukowski, a drunk, near-penniless poet residing in Skid Row. (elmarto, maybe you'd have more empathy for the panhandler set if you read some Bukowski, especially given that I think you live in LA). If I could get drunk every day with no risk to current health levels, I personally would without a second thought. Medical knowledge tells me I shouldn't, so I don't. But I get drunk a lot, still. I'd love to see data about health risk factors vs various levels of consumption--as far as I know, they don't exist to any satisfactory level of specificity. But maybe they do--maybe I just need a subscription to a medical journal or something. That sort of quantitative information is what matters, not people mindlessly throwing the word "alcoholic" around and liberally applying it to anyone who consumes more alcohol than they themselves do.
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