Hugely agree on what you say about forever. I touch on this in my own gargantuan reply to this post — specifically how quitting something you’re addicted to can feel like an “all-or-nothing” endeavour that leads to relapses being huge, catastrophic events, rather than a near inevitable part of the recovery process.
Your mileage may vary, but when a friend was stopping drinking, they said it was useful when their friends made an effort to make non-alcoholic cocktails at social events. Some of them were so tasty that even those of us who were still drinking alcohol would have some. There were also some friends who don’t have problems with alcohol but just prefer not to drink it who enjoyed them.
My friend said that it was especially useful in that period after she had stopped drinking, and was trying to transition to a new normal. She compared it to dieting — how you will eat at a deficit to reach your goal weight, and once there, you need to transition to eating a maintenance level of calories and avoid regaining weight by slipping back into old habits.
She said it was helpful in making stopping drink feel less “all or nothing”. There were points where she felt she had to sacrifice a lot of her social life, and to some extent, that was true, because some of our friends were pretty heavy partiers, but she didn’t want to give up on all social drinking. She realised that non alcoholic cocktails helped to preserve the “social” part of social drinking.
Unrelated to that above idea, it’s worthwhile to consider what he gains from the social drinking. For example, I have autism, and the only way that I can tolerate the noise level of a nightclub or a pub is through a combination of earplugs and some level of intoxication. For me, as it is for many people, alcohol acts as a social crutch, but it functions differently than it does for most people.
What kind of events has he been going to for LGBT community? A lot of social culture around that is pretty party heavy, especially for men. However, there are activities and groups made by people who actively want to find community outside of that party culture. In my city, there are activities like queer book groups, or “queer family tea”, an LGBTQ choir etc, queer board games nights, queer skateboarding etc… I’m fortunate to live in a large enough city where there’s lots of stuff like this, so there might be fewer options where you are.
I moved to this city during COVID and I was pretty socially isolated for a long while. I tried going to various events in an ad hoc manner, but all the connections I made felt superficial and it just burned me out more. What really helped with this was going to events that were more regular. For example, through going to board games stuff, I found a regular Dungeons and Dragons game. I haven’t been to the choir yet, but that’s a weekly activity and is exactly the vibe I need. The book group was also useful. If I had to summarise the vibe, it’s things that are activities first, and social second. That was what was helpful in beginning to build an actual routine.
On a more general note, try not to push too hard. You can’t make him switch mindset here — he needs to get there himself. I’d advise taking a pragmatic approach over Christmas, because if he were able to sustain a “I’ll just quit for a little bit” over this period, that’d be a big achievement. He might be struggling from the pressure of “all or nothing” mindset, so even though it seems unlikely that it’s possible for him to drink in moderation over this period, perhaps that conversation would be a good one.
Try talking to him about the recent event with the neighbours. How does he feel about it? Does he understand that how he behaved was problematic? Try to be a little honest about your anxiety about spending Christmas with him, and explain that you want your partner’s family to be able to get to know the version of him that you know, because you know that how he behaves when overly drunk isn’t authentically the person you love. Maybe ask him if there’s any times he can think of where he was able to drink socially in moderation, and try to figure out with him if there’s ways you can support that over Christmas. Of course, this only works if he understands that the way he behaves when drunk is inappropriate. Ideally, you should do some amount of planning for failure with him. I.e. if you guys agree that he’s going to try not to drink over Christmas with your partner’s family, what happens if he does cave and drink? Even if the goal is no drinking at all, it’s still worth discussing strategies for supporting moderation. If there’s anything I know about recovering from addiction, it’s that fuckups and relapses aren’t actually failures, but actually an inevitable part of the recovery process. Understanding this is essential for preventing (or minimising) the self destructive guilt spiral that can result from a relapse.
The best case scenario of this conversation is that it may get him a tad closer to understanding that drinking in moderation is not a thing that’s possible for him (if that is indeed true). Unfortunately, based on past experience with friends, often this learning happens in a difficult way, such as agreeing a protocol for friends supporting someone to drink in moderation, and then everything going to shit. That feels like a failure, but it can be useful, especially if people are supportive in the aftermath, such as doing a debrief like “okay, so what went wrong? What could we/you have done better?”.
A benefit of having a conversation about expectations and goals over this Christmas period means that you (or your partner) can potentially run it by your partner’s family. This might mean coordinating to ensure that there’s plenty of interesting, non alcoholic beverages available. It could also mean flagging to them that this is a thing he’s working on, that you’ve discussed with him, but that it’s possible that it might go poorly. The goal here would be to make it marginally less awkward if he does end up drinking too much and he embarrasses himself in a manner that requires you to handle his behaviour. Whether it’s wise to mention it to your partner’s family in advance depends on how supportive and understanding they are likely to be. Sometimes people can be too supportive in a way that makes things feel weird. Like, ensuring that there are plenty of non alcoholic drinks is great, but people can sometimes make it weird for the person who isn’t drinking and draw awkward attention to it. They may also try to actively police your brother’s behaviour in a way that’s inappropriate and unproductive, so once you’ve had a proper discussion with your brother, convene with your partner to discuss what to tell their family (if anything)
Sometimes when I’m partying with friends, I enjoy intoxicants other than alcohol, and if most other people are just drinking alcohol, I will often let a friend know what I’m taking so that they can give me a gentle nudge if I’m being a bit much (because the last thing I want is to make people uncomfortable). If he’s not open to making this Christmas period with your partner’s family a period where he doesn’t drink, I wonder if he’d be amenable to you being his “prosthetic executive function” so to speak — someone he trusts to be able to go “okay, that’s enough now” before he gets too drunk. A risk with this approach is that even if he agrees to it while sober, he may become more difficult when he’s had some alcohol.
Overall, I think the important thing is to be clear that you’re on his side. I understand why you want him to switch to the mindset of “I need to quit forever”, but if he’s been struggling with drinking for this long, it’s likely that he feels it’s impossible to do that, and pushing for that may demoralise him further. I can tell from your post that you love your brother a lot, and that you want to support him in whatever way he needs. I’m really glad he has that, and it would be unfortunate if he ended up feeling like he had to hide his struggles if he feels like you are just part of a nebulous blob of people trying to push him to do something that feels impossible (and that he may be in denial about and believe that he doesn’t even need to stop drinking). Shame is often a big part of addiction, and if you’re able to be there with him in a way that facilitates him being open about his struggles, that can make a world of difference.
I don’t have experience with problematic use of substances, but I have previously struggled with self harm, so I can relate to the “all-or-nothing” feeling of how we frame “falling off the wagon”. It used to be that when I’d relapse and self harm after many months of not doing it, this would start a period where I would regularly self harm, because “fuck it, I’ve ruined my streak, I might as well”. It took a long while to break myself out of that mindset. What helped was acknowledging that relapses were probably going to happen, and that what was important was how I responded afterwards. I literally can’t remember the last time I self harmed (years ago, I think), but it’s unfortunately the case that I will probably do it again in future. A lot of the Alcoholics Anonymous framing of addiction can be pretty problematic, but there is some merit to the “once an addict, always an addict” notion (it isn’t necessarily incompatible with the notion of someone learning how to drink in moderation in the long term, it just means that it’ll always be something you need to watch yourself with). Something that I’m proud of is that the last few times I self harmed, they were isolated instances where I pretty promptly got “back on the wagon” despite the setback. It took a while to reshape my thinking in this way though
This got far longer than I had expected, but I hope that something here is useful for you. Feel free to reply to add additional thoughts or questions, and I’ll try to reply, even if it takes me a few days. However, please don’t feel any pressure to reply. There’s a lot here to think about, and when someone puts so much care into replying to your post, I know that can lead to a lot of pressure to reply to convey gratefulness. Know that I won’t be offended if you don’t acknowledge this comment.
That’s not true.
“The capital and largest city of both England and the UK is London; Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast are the national capitals of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.”
Seconding your thoughts on nonstick and cast iron. I haven’t used other kinds of pans, but I like cast iron enough that I’d consider having at least one of them to be essential.
Getting a good sear is pretty helpful towards avoiding something sticking.
I guess this map doesn’t count Edinburgh, Cardiff or Belfast as capital cities
When I first met some poly people at university, it blew my mind. At first, I couldn’t imagine myself in that kind of relationship, because I struggle with insecurity and expected that I would find that worsened by being polyamorous.
I came to realise that because polyamorous relationships tend to require a greater level of communication and emotional intelligence, that this was actually probably an easier dynamic for someone like me. Key to this was the understanding that if I’m feeling emotionally neglected by a partner, then that’s between them and me, and doesn’t need to involve comparisons to my partner’s other partner(s).
I ended up identifying as a relationship anarchist in the end. It feels more comfortable than either monogamy or straightforward polyamory. In practice, the only difference it makes is in how I think about myself, but that matters to me
I have recently been watching it, and I’m surprised I hadn’t heard of it sooner. I really enjoy the absurdist, sometimes juvenile humour that never feels mean spirited. When it is edgy, it doesn’t feel like it’s being edgy for edginess’ sake.
It’s similar to women’s only chess championships. Think of it sort of like an affirmative action type of thing, where the misogyny that’s prevalent in a particular pursuit causes women to be disproportionately underrepresented.
That makes this decision even more galling to me.
We’d have a lot more time for looking after our own wellbeing if we weren’t unnecessarily labouring so much. As time goes on, we are forced to work more and more, despite ever increasing productivity. Under capitalism, record profits are never enough
Also happy to help mod, if you still want more.
I am also lazy and will remain on my instance, but I figure that many hands make light work, and I can coordinate with any programming.dev mods if any issues
I don’t have much experience with modding, but I’m keen to learn. This means that I would be more inclined to take a light hand approach and/or check with fellow mods if uncertain
My timezone is UTC
I’m not a big dinosaur person, but I also think triceratops are cool
In terms of who manufactures chips for RAM, Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron have a combined market share of 94%. I don’t know how big of a slice of the pie that Micron is, but it seems we’re down to two (and those two are also investing in AI — for as long as people are buying, anyway)
Props to them. I’m always heartened to see how much more politically engaged the younger generation is compared to mine.
Eh, I do think it’s a worthwhile article, because it highlights that retailers should be using plain boxes for shipping high value items, and also advises that people open high value items on video, just in case.
“if the consumer is not lying, then Best Buy advertised a GeForce RTX 5080, but instead gave worthless rocks while taking the consumer’s money.”
Or alternatively, whoever was responsible for shipping did that, but that’s not the customer’s problem. The customer only has a contract with Best Buy, so if the GPU did get pinched in transit, then that’s between Best Buy and the shipping company.
Charge backs are a super useful lever to pull when all else has failed. They’re usually so rapidly resolved that I sometimes find myself wishing I could use them as a first resort and not have to deal with the merchant. Alas, that’s not how it works, but it is nice to have a fallback.
I like posh because it’s distinct from rich. Not all rich people are posh, and sometimes posh people are relatively poor. It’s useful to have two different words
Muppet is a good one. It’s great for using in front of kids too (as long as you don’t prepend it with anything too harsh. “Bloody Muppet” is safe to say in front of tweens and upwards, in my view
Amusingly, wheeliebin isn’t even slang, it’s just what we call them. Like if we’ve had extreme winds, you might see news anchors talking in their pish, RP British accent about how people have had their wheelie bins flying away
Edit: chuffed is a good one. It feels good to say. It’s more than just saying “I’m pleased with myself”, because there’s an earnestness to it.
Speaking as an arachnophobe who is about to filter this community’s posts from my feed, I strongly agree. Like you say, NSFW tags would make things muddier in terms of how different filtering mechanics interact. It wasn’t pleasant to see a big ole spider in my feed like this, but it’s trivially easy for me to opt out. It is much harder for people who like spiders to find spaces where they can enthusiastically opt in to hanging out with other spider nerds.
I’m someone who is just about to block this community because I’m not great with spiders, but I absolutely think you shouldn’t do NSFW tags. This was unpleasant for me to see, but I have the ability to trivially opt out of seeing this stuff. People who like spiders are weirdly marginalised, so it’s important for y’all to have a space to just nerd out.
A’ight, I’mma head out. I’m sad that I can’t hang out with you delightful nerds, because I am also someone who enjoys learning deeply about stuff, and I find spiders to be objectively beautiful and awesome. Unfortunately, my subjective response is quite different.
I love these games. Reminds me of the olden days when I had loads of offline games on my iPod touch