I know this is an old post, but I am replying anyway.  This happened to me, I went from going years without a single drink, I went to some clubs in my early 20s, and had parties, and didn't even drink half the time at them.  Alcohol was nothing to me then.  I went to a party about a year or so out, and had a few smirnoffs that were watered down a little (carbonation) and within a month I was buying tequila in bulk drinking tequila sunrises every night, to a year later I was drinking half gallons of vodka alone in a weekend.  Seemed like I needed more alcohol to get drunk but that I stayed drunker. Near the end, I was drinking beer mixed with water or juice, because I couldn't get liquor anymore (I am glad I live in a dry county).  It has been several years since then, I went a year sober on disulfirum (antabusse) and a few months after I drank.  I am back on the medicine, it is a godsend.  I am lucky that I did no damage to my liver or kidneys or heart, I have them all checked regular. I have not had a scope done to check out my pouch but everything is working okay.  I tried attending NA meetings (I don't drive, Im in a small town, we have no bus systems, and AA is 10 miles away).  I didn't feel like I fit in, because it is one thing to get away from drugs, its another when you live in a low rent apartment building and half the people are walking around with beers in their hands (Our doors are on the inside of the building).  I see alcohol everyday.  So for me the medicine is necessary.  I can not change the place I live or the people I see but I can change how I deal with it.  I am in weekly therapy meetings as well.  

I believe that the surgery does something to our brains.  I don't think it's an addiction transfer.  My brain viewed alcohol as something I had to have to live, like breathing.  I couldn't think of anything else but alcohol, everything about my day was getting more alcohol, and making sure I had enough to last.  I would count them, I had beer and little bottles hidden all over the house.  This is something I never dealt with before.  I quit smoking with the drop of a hat before surgery, no problem.  I don't think twice that I have not had soda in over 7 years. But alcohol, another story.  I think this must be what a heroin addict goes through.  

Google disulfirum and other alcoholic medicines, talk to your doctor, and get all your insides checked out.  You can do it, it's hard.  But you have to tell yourself YOU CAN NOT DRINK EVER AGAIN.  My therapist told me once, ONE IS TOO MANY AND A THOUSAND NEVER ENOUGH I believe it, I heard it in NA as well. 

I have been in therapy for nearly the entire time i have been post op, 3 years in april/14. i was instructed to go by my surgeon because of anorexia. i was in the 130s and more depressed than i had ever been before as a pre-existing depressed person. when i went to therapy, i was given more tools for self-acceptance and healthy mindfulness. i believe this is the biggest tool that goes ignored post-op. THERAPY. 

how can any of us know what our bodies will do? i thought i would be thin, which i was, but not like a thin woman who was small her whole life. i was 270 pounds, then 130. my body looked like the elderly with skin folds, saggy boobs and stretch marks. it still, to this day, bothers me that no images of loose skin are celebrated, much less openly revealed. google loose skin and it's all about surgery AGAIN... so this idea of a thin happy lean life was a lie. for SURE it was a lie. in this weight loss community we don't have support or loose skin celebration.

i have a popular youtube channel and i try to get people to return to their mind and heart. meditation and spiritual growth, coupled with a shrinking body is hard at best- without it? jesus, i would have been another dead statistic. everyone just sees the weight loss. the outside. the clothes. even, and this may be the saddest part, my bbw friends only came back to being in my life after i took a active and very loud stance against the surgery.

does it save lives? heck yes. can it also kill a person? yup. gastric bypass changed all my meds, wellbutrin literally did not work the week after. i still have very serious depression, but i maintain an active and healthy view that weight loss isn't the primary reason. but i will say this: if [women especially] are used to a certain lifestyle with overweight friends and family members and lose a lot of weight, somebody is going to be an asshole, jealous - if not all. then there is an increase in risk of suicide and drinking/drugs because we're trying to numb the pain, which we can't do with food. then there is the regain, which happens... and thank God. for me, i finally, after eating everything all the time, got back to 150s. I am glad i am no longer obese, but let me tell you, the weight came off so fast, i was terrified of myself. my identity, sense of control over my life, how people viewed me [more as a piece of meat than as an intellectual woman] was so much- i nearly starved to death trying to crawl out of my skin.

i am a bold and fierce woman, i was pre-op and i am now. but it has been every week of meeting with my therapist to control my body issues and my depression. i pray for all of us. but mostly? i pray for a world where fat shaming DIES quickly so women of size can enjoy the skin they are in without debating if they are "worth it" or not.

we are all worth happiness. at every size.

I saw my surgeon at the beginning of September and he is doing the sleeve on me as well ...mostly so my meds absorb properly