For those who use(d) alcohol to cope

I’m curious if anyone else has ever had this. This is my specific theme in regards to my OCD that has been prevalent in my life since 2022. Quick back story: went to a party college for 4.5 years and had a blast, got as drunk as I wanted on weekends and never once felt bad about it. Then, hangovers got worse and I started partying too much. After graduation, I told myself that it’d be a really cool goal to get to the point where I could go out and just have 4 beers. Enough to enjoy myself, not enough to make me hungover. Well, this simple healthy goal turned into a massive obsession. Now, if I go over my limit of 4-5 beers/drinks, two things happen: 1. I give up and binge drink bc I might as well if I’m already over my limit. 2. The next day even if I’m super hungover, unless I can’t bc of work scheduling, I will perform a check where I drink 4 beers and see if I can still get drunk off of those. If I can get drunk, then I feel normal. If I am not as drunk, then this cycle continues. I worry about becoming an alcoholic all the time bc at this point in my life I am very active in my social scene, and alcohol is very much present. While I certainly do not have any family history of alcoholism nor the personality or drive to become one, I still fear that I might one day despite knowing I won’t. I also worry about raising my drinking tolerance by continuing to feed this obsession/compulsion loop. It’s slightly affected my personality and confidence. I’m aware it’s irrational and the solution is to simply cut back as anyone would and go out less frequently, or drink less frequently when I’m out. And yet, my other obsession with alcohol is experiencing the painful withdrawals that alcoholics experience when they stop drinking!! Despite never having experienced those withdrawals when I’ve not drank on a given night. So, it’s a weird one. Thinking the ERP is just going to be not performing those checks. If I’ve reached my limit and am not as drunk, okay. Alcohol absorption is affected by a lot. No need to check my tolerance nor go overboard since I’m not as drunk. We’ll see. I’m on Zoloft too which has helped a ton with other symptoms but this theme is making it less effective and I need to get control of it now.

How have you all seen caffeine or your level of stimulation impact your ocd? For myself I’ve noticed in general that caffeine reduces my ocd symptoms, but if I take in more than 70 mg at a time I feel anxious and jittery. I’ve also noticed that combining caffeine or stimulation, and a calming exercise at the same time reduces my ocd symptoms a lot while minimizing the anxiety. 2 of these activities for me are what I call 1) sword & Metal and 2) walking while doing mindfulness or breathing simultaneously. Sword and metal is a thing I started doing that stacks lots of skills on top of each other. I wield a sword while blasting heavy metal and stand up really tall and focus on breath and meditation. Sometimes it almost feels like different parts of my brain are going at different speeds when I experience OCD symptoms. Then I remembered that with ADHD different parts of the brain are actually going at different speeds. The frontal cortex is going slower namely. With the experiences I shared above and remembering the brain speed thing, I looked into if it’s a thing for OCD and apparently there’s research around it too, with different parts of the brain of course. Apparently, transcranial stimulation used to be used to address OCD. Anyhow, so my hypothesis based on all this is that if you can speed up the decision making centers of your brain while also calming your nervous system you can rebalance this inconsistent speed issue. Of course ERP is amazing, and I’m not bringing this up as a thought of comparison or replacement. It’s just a guess too. What do yall think?

To me this has probably been my own biggest question I've asked myself in the last couple of years. But I recently went to a social event in my college town for a college football game and had fun while also interacting with a girl and my friend. All of that doesn't matter for this topic. But basically part of me wants to consider drinking because I've been fearful of it for years and always viewed it as a negative. The thing is with my therapist of almost 2 years I've gotten to a way better and confident point in my life and I really want to pursue a relationship with a girl. And I mean something that can go long term so rather serious I understand if the first girl I date wouldn't end up being the one but I want to atleast experience now with my boosted confidence. Back to the question though. I feel like going down the dark side 😂. Which sounds kinda goofy but I'm really considering drinking to ease my nerves. The girl I talked to had a few drinks and she got pretty flirty which in my eyes would help me get to that point with someone I want to pursue. She ended up ghosting me which is perfectly fine but obviously I'd like to try to form a relationship or get another number like I did. I have had addictive stuff with myself and family and I'm genuinely fearful of what might happen if I drink along with what my ocd might make me do or not. Which I understand is my ocd talking but I need honest opinions here. I feel like I'm turning against my old self that I knew up untill 21 years before this day.