March 5, 2023
7:14am
I woke up this morning having slept 7.5 hours, the most sleep I’ve had in a very long time. There was beautiful music playing in my head. It wasn’t even metal. It was upbeat power pop with a female vocal, like something Avril Lavigne would sing but it wasn’t any song I’d ever heard. It was uplifting. I embraced it for several moments, and then let go of it.
This morning my thoughts dwell on the lies I told myself about my abuse of alcohol, and how I’m living the truth now. The truth is I didn’t drink every night, only about 4 times a week on average. I didn’t get what I called “drunk” more than about twice a month. (My definition was incredibly liberal though.) Yet my relationship with alcohol was still abusive, and here’s why.
I was a highly functioning alcohol abuser. I ritualized my alcohol use, and made sure my life accommodated it. My evenings were reserved for “winding down” and relieving the stress of the day by drinking. That’s good (the stress relief part), but I didn’t always *need* to wind down, and never should have used alcohol for it…still I carefully reserved every evening from 5:30 until bedtime and specifically planned not to drive anywhere or do anything that would require sober thought, so that I could binge drink if I wanted to. I didn’t binge drink very often, but it was enough that I had to be careful about it. Even on the nights when I didn’t wind up binge drinking, I wouldn’t do much of anything except watch TV, just in case I had a sudden urge to drink or “take it up a notch” after a couple of beers. When I think of all the evening hours I wasted on drinking or being prepared to drink…it probably adds up to years.
Someone reading this post might very well think, “It doesn’t sound like he had much of a problem. I know people who would start every day with a shot of liquor, or get blackout drunk every night, or drink 15 beers every single day. He’s just whining about nothing.” The truth is there is no hard-number threshold for “alcohol abuse” versus “responsible alcohol use”. If it feels like a problem to you, it is. If you believe you’re abusing alcohol, you are. If you think you should stop drinking, you should stop. It’s that simple.
A lot of people, especially those in recovery, don’t like using the word recovery. I don’t mind it. It is, after all, about regaining my life, less than it is about vilifying a chemical. I’m excited about all the hours, days, months and years I’m about to gain.
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