Aight, Jamie. I guess you're back at Scotland? Last thing I knew about you was maybe Australia, I think.
I've been in Scotland, did a roadtrip with GaZZwa and another buddy, from england, all the way up to Edinburgh, going past several places.
What I could tell is that other than Edinburgh and Glasgow, the place is pretty small and gloom (well we went for the new year, winter n shit).
Do you live in one of those typical scottish small towns, or are you in Glagow/Edinburgh?

Thing is, I wonder what kind of environment you live in. Do you have a good relation with your parents, in the sense of whether they are supportive about your issue?
Your lack of social life is not good. Most of us know what a lack of social life is like. It's not good for our mental health, you need people that can back you up, whether they are friends or family. Never underplay the importance of family though. (I know British people are quite non-attached from their parents, not like over here were we really like to have a good bond with our parents. Like, my dad is like a good friend for me, and he helps me with my own doubts.)
I think that you should just start getting more involved with activities. Anything that could be of interest, or maybe not of interest but know that does you good, like going to the gym. I dunno, here are some ideas: any sport, carpentry workshops, painting/sculpting workshops, trekking groups, mountain bike groups, diving groups, etc
The idea is to keep yourself busy with new stuff, filling you with enthusiasm, sense of purpose, thirst for challenges, and allows you to interact with people.
The best way to forget alcohol is by switching your interest into something else. And self-control. And will to find something else out there.

Also try and revisit old friends, see what they are up to. I've been away for 9 months and when I came back home, I realized I've lost many of my friends. But I was determined to change things, so I got back in contact with some friends, and got in contact with a guy I knew but weren't entirely friends and we decided to get together to jam. So I started getting to know his band of friends, going out with them every weekend, until slowly they welcomed me in the crew. That was thanks to music.

You need to meet people, and get busy with other things. That's my suggestion.




ALSO
Are you still making those youtube videos? I really enjoyed your shit, even though I found it always hard to understand your accent, but I have bad hearing anyway. Hope you're still coming up with new videos, because you're definitively brilliant.

I've got a pretty close homie who's also dealing with alcohol abuse right now and he's waffling over whether or not he should get sober. I don't know much about addiction other than there's very few instances of 'middle ground' and to avoid slipping you often need to go all the way with sobriety which ain't easy so good luck bud, take care of yourself.

if you get lows and feel like taking alcohol again, i suggest you just buy 5-htp from your regular vitamin store and take 100mg a day for some weeks. it's just a precursor amino acid to seretonin so if you get lowish on it (seretonin), your body balances it out by making more from 5-htp. it might help you while you're phasing things out, you won't develope an addiction to it naturally and i doubt you'd need it longer than weeks. i hope you take this seriously if things get rough.

Good on you Jamie and good luck. I have to say, It really pisses me of when people act like breaking an adiction is a really easy thing, or that they cant' understand how it can be hard. What they don't realise is that humans are built with addictions in mind (survival mechanism to make a person want to do somthing and so will try there best to get at it eg food of a particular plant) and that they themselves are probably adicted to somthing, TV, the internet, caffine, etc, fucking idiots.

Any way, one peice of advice I was told by some one, If you find yourself feeling REALLY I'll then as counter-intuative as it sounds, have a SMALL sip of alchahol, you may not need it but your brain think's it does and will start shutting down so if you give it a tiny bit it should calm down, but I stress only when It's REALLY bad and only a small amount.

Good luck jamie

Best of luck to you jamie.  I wish I could offer you some sage advice on how to battle your addiction and lead a happy and successful life but I'm just a big ol' thumb sucking dummy so the best I can do is offer you some words of encouragement.  You can do it bud!  While you're out there quitting drinking, I'll be over here quitting cigarettes as a sign of solidarity.  I've been thinking about quitting lately but haven't seriously attempted it, but if you're gonna quit I'm gonna quit.  I hope that's at least somewhat encouraging!

You miss understand me, He was telling me a story about this guy who went to a doctor becuase he was feeling REALLY sick, he told the doctor he was a heavy drinker and that he just stopped cold turkey and the doctor told him to buy a drink, his body was litterly killing it self becuase it thought it needed alcohol to survive and so was basicly shutting down, best thing to do in that sitution was to get a drink, not a lot but somthing to stop his body from killing it's self.
True story.

You miss understand me, He was telling me a story about this guy who went to a doctor becuase he was feeling REALLY sick, he told the doctor he was a heavy drinker and that he just stopped cold turkey and the doctor told him to buy a drink, his body was litterly killing it self becuase it thought it needed alcohol to survive and so was basicly shutting down, best thing to do in that sitution was to get a drink, not a lot but somthing to stop his body from killing it's self.
True story.

I work in an emergency room and we see alcohol withdraw patients all the time who either get outpatient care or admission to local rehab facilities and absolutely under no circumstances has any actual healthcare professional recommends this, especially as alcohol withdraw treatment methods are pretty well established and medications readily available to treat symptoms.

I work in an emergency room and we see alcohol withdraw patients all the time who either get outpatient care or admission to local rehab facilities and absolutely under no circumstances has any actual healthcare professional recommends this, especially as alcohol withdraw treatment methods are pretty well established and medications readily available to treat symptoms.

Fair enough, bad advice retracted.

"So the heroin withdrawls are making you sick? Here, shoot up this ten sack, you'll feel much better."

Why do you have to be such a lemon? I'm offering bad advice that I was told by some one else, I was corrected ( by atari), fair enough but that's no reason to be a dick when I'm simply trying to offer advice (good or bad) if I'm wrong, then say so and why (like atari). Second of all, don't take what I said out of conext, the "equivlent" would be giving the person enough to alliavate simptons but no where near enough to get a high, but whatever, stupid idea either way as pointed out by atari.

I'm not going to get into an argument over a stupid thing and de-rail the topic just so we can argue about a point that was already made.

About that eye thing, I guess it explains why I can drink quite (the few times I have done) a bit and not feel much beyond slight tipsyness (if anything), that said I pretty much don't bother with alcohol as I find the taste of alcohol to be pretty horrible, I don't get drunk easily (costs to much) and I don't like feeling drunk the few times I have been.

http://www.cracked.com/article_19194_6-intimate-details-you-can-tell-just-by-looking-at-someone_p2.html
Despite the site they have links to back it up.

IT doesn't give you complete immunity, just makes you more tolerant, somthing I didn't bother adding because, yah know I thought it went without saying but apparantly not.

Anyone can get drunk though. You and Warpped are acting like you've tried and failed because THE BLUE EYES KICKED IN.

I'm acting Like I tried and didn't fail becuase MAYBE PERHAPS the fact that I have light coloured eyes which has been linked to high alcohol tollerance means that it takes a bit more to get me really drunk. If you read (which I'm sure you can) what I wrote you will notice I used the word "GUESS" which is used to indicate that PERHAPS this could explain my somewhat higher alcohl tollerance but I'm not entirly sure.

I'm getting irritated that people are mis-reading what I'm saying or are taking it out of context.

Anyway this conversation probably isn't appropriate for a topic about Jamie's well being.

It's okay, talk about whatever you want. In terms of shitty advice like 'yeah jamie but can't you just try to drink less?', well, I've been round this shit enough that I'm pretty much immune to that kind of thing. Some people don't really understand and just want to have something to say, and that's okay. I guess I'll just ignore that kind of thing though. I said talk about whatever relating to this topic of you know, substance abuse and recovery and all related things, so feel free to gab.

As for me, 9 days. Kept on my feet most of the day, had two job interviews. Hopefully I'll be getting some work soon. The biggest thing is that, in terms of people, there isn't really anything in life besides my immediate family. There is just a big space where I should have friends, and I'm not complaining exactly but it is probably what is making this so difficult right now. I just wander around, trying to find ways into things. It doesn't help I went through a break-up a few months ago which is only now, as I awake sober, hitting me. She was kind of my last real connection beyond my parents and brothers. So when I'm not cocooning up at home, I'm left to my thoughts waaay too long.

It'll change. I believe that, so I'm not going to let this be any kind of reason to slip up or anything. I'm not a bad person and even bad people have friends. I'm not shy, either. It's hard to find people I connect with, though. So, in a way, though, this is kind of good. I have pretty much no reason to do this other than to improve my quality of life. Nobody else is around, nobody really gives a shit what I do on a day to day basis (except, again, my mum but I've been lucky with that), so all that is left is what I want to do. It's gonna take a lot of thinking about!