Long story here, so bear with me.
I first stopped drinking in 2000. I managed to stay sober for about three weeks, felt great, and then went back to it. The actual timeline is hazy to me, but I'm pretty sure I continued for another few months - a six pack or two a night here, a bottle or two of wine there. One night I bought a bottle of wine and went home. I drank the entire bottle in about 15 minutes and something snapped. I decided that was it and stopped cold turkey. It was difficult at first (I remember the first month as being terrible), but I stayed sober for almost three years. During that time I rebuilt by life; went back to college, got a decent job, volunteered in the community, and made lots of supportive friends.
What went wrong? I entered a relationship. At first we would go out and I would drink diet coke while my friends had a beer or two. Those beers looked mighty good, and I hadn't touched one in years. Besides, one friend told me it was OK and he wanted someone to have a drink with him. So I started drinking again. It wasn't excessive at first, but it gradually ramped up and there was another problem - I was starting an relationship with a emotional, verbal, and physical abuser. We were together for almost twelve years, and I drank to compensate for the abuse. It wasn't unusual for me to go out for lunch and down three pints. When we were together on the weekends, I could down another three or four pints on an evening. A bottle of wine was no problem. The person could say the most vile things to me, and if I was drunk I could shrug it off. My partner would go away for the weekend or on business travel, and I would binge during the entire time trying to cover up the emotional damage I was experiencing. I eventually built up enough tolerance that I could down a twelve pack and coherently walk to the store to buy more. A fifth of vodka? No problem. Two bottles of wine...? Bring them on! Probably the most embarrassing experience for me was when we were having a difficult trip visiting my partner's parents (he abused them, too). I stashed a fifth of whiskey and ran off to get a shot whenever things got "difficult".
So the good news is that that relationship is over. I walked out a year ago and restarted my life again. Unfortunately, I thought that I could continue to drink while also working on my physical and emotional health. On my own, it wasn't unusual for me to down a six pack on almost every week night. I'd even to out to the pub and have three cocktails before going to the store to buy more to take home. For months, this ramped up and up. I'd stop at two or more bars on a weekend night, and then head home to down more. I'd wake up the next morning with no idea how or when I'd gotten into bed, or what I'd done after I got home that night. I'd often find that I'd gone shopping and bought stuff online. I was spending far too much money on booze and drunken shopping sprees so I decided to moderate. Work was suffering and I'd be unable to focus or concentrate.
My solution was that I could only drink on weekends. That made sense, right? What I soon learned was that by limiting myself to weekends, I was going on bigger binges than ever before. I had to make up for not drinking during the week, so I'd go at it extra hard on the weekend. I also noticed that I would frequently feel like crap on Tuesday. (remember, I had spent Sunday hung over and Monday recovering). My head was foggy, I couldn't concentrate, and I felt unease. The only solution to this seemed to be a mid-week pub crawl.
It wasn't until recently that I learned that my mid-week symptoms were due to alcohol withdrawal and I was "curing" them by maintaining my pattern of drink once during the week and again twice on the weekend binges.
So what brought me here? Last weekend I went on my usual Friday binge. Went out to a local brew pub and had three pints. Not bad, but then I had to go to a concert. Originally I had only planned to have the three pints, but those gin and tonics looked mighty good, so I downed three doubles during the show. Then I drove home, stopped at the store, and bought a pint of vodka because I just had to have it to finish off the bottle of Bloody Mary mix in my refrigerator - I couldn't let that go to waste! The next morning I woke up (no idea when or how I went to bed) and made myself a triple Bloody Mary with the rest, and spent the rest of the morning feeling like crap.
I decided that the only thing that was going to help was a trip to my favorite brew-pub, where I'd be moderate and have three pints of my favorite 4% brew. Unfortunately, when I got there, the bartended informed me that they were almost out of the special "Christmas" brew and it would be gone that night. Would I like to have that? Sure, I said, forgetting that it was close to 7%. I downed three of those and we were off! Another night spend stopping at another pub for some more beers before heading home to oblivion.
Sunday morning I woke up and decided that this was it. I obviously couldn't "moderate" because it only made things worse on the weekend, and once I had downed three beers of a moderate strength I lost all control and nothing would stop me until I fell asleep. Placing a false limit of three beers on myself wasn't working because anything of any strength would be the tipping point and I'd lose control.
So here I am. I did it before and I can do it again. This time I'm not going to let someone else talk me into that first drink.
Submitted December 10, 2014 at 07:22AM by NicholasTC http://ift.tt/1weafAG stopdrinking
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