Published on 12, July, 2020
I drink too much. I have done for quite some time. I'm certain I'm not an alcoholic. I don't have an overwhelming desire to drink. I don't need to start the day with a drink, and I don't generally drink during the day. I don't drink every day, either. I function well, and manage to keep very fit. I eat well. But in the evenings (mainly over the weekend period), when I sit to watch a film, I'll have a drink. Then another. And so on it goes, until I go to bed drunk. As I did last night. And then I wake up in the morning - as I did this morning - and realise I've done damage in some way. Not just to my health, but to other people. I'll look at my previous day's internet history and realise there are comments I've made - on here, on social media - that are rude at best, downright offensive at worst. I keep upsetting people. I don't know why I do it. In vino veritas goes the old saying. Yet it isn't the truth I'm using. The drink turns me into this nasty, spiteful person I don't especially like - and I'm sure others don't, either. Having said that... this person is seductive. There's a big part of Mr Hyde that will always appeal to me.
I think it's all to do with years and years of keeping it all inside - never being confident enough to speak up, because generally when I did, I was shouted down and ridiculed. And suddenly, I found a way to loosen all of that up. I didn't start to drink in any way that you would call 'problematic' until I was in my 40s, and what kicked it off then was feeling trapped in an unhappy marriage and a job I hated. Drink became an escape as well as a form of relaxation. It also numbed the anxiety that is pretty much a default condition for me, and always has been. It was all very selfish. It shut me off from others and made me indifferent to the effect that my drinking was having on them. It has cost me a lot since then. I've lost a wife, a home, the trust of friends and relatives. It's isolated me more and more.
I've been to AA. I've been to therapy groups. I've tried meditation, spirituality, etc. I know the ins and outs of it. I've heard all the horror stories, and told a few myself. I'm away from everything now, really, that previously would have been a trigger to get drunk. But I still do it. Frankly, I can't ever imagine giving it up entirely. Because I enjoy it. I enjoy the feeling of all my cares and woes slipping away. I enjoy getting light-headed. It's pure selfishness. I admit it. It'll probably get me in the end, in one way or another. I know that. The only times I've ever attempted to end my life are when I've been drunk. It facilitates so many things, and most of them aren't good.
I'm not posting this for advice, really. I know what I ought to do. But maybe others have similar experiences with some form of drug. And maybe discussing these issues openly can help in some way.
I always enjoy a modest glass of wine in the evening and do not actually like to drink more than that. I hate being hungover. Now all the pundits are saying that alcohol in even moderate consumption can give you cancer. Great!!
I misused alcohol in my mispent youth, certainly, to the point of having blackouts. At uni, I got angry at the vacuity of all the posy conversations around me and threw a glass away from me onto the floor in a thoroughly crowded room. One of the best scandalous things I did from the point of view of my parent's curtain twitching neighbours was to binge at a local school leabingt party and locking myself out of the house. When I called at the neighbours opposite I was panicking because I knew I had done.myself real harm and they wondered too if they had been taking drugs. Unfortunately I had come across this stupid hippy therapy book about primal screams and that this was the way to become more real and to get away from the false reality and tyranny of social convention..........
I had an old friend who drank herself to death so on one level must have got used to the boundary breaking that drinkers tend to do.