This is a super long post, I wrote it in response to the prompt at the end of "This Naked Mind". I'm hoping this helps anyone who is still lurking and thinking about giving up alcohol for good. If you read the whole thing, great job!
I started drinking when I was 16. My group of close friends would get together on weekends and have all-night Halo LAN parties. Alcohol was never initially part of this fun, we stuck to Vault soda and Monster energy drinks. Eventually, one of the guys came to the party with a flask of Jameson and shared it with us. I remember loving the warm feeling of the liquid as it hit my system, and it made the gaming feel like so much fun. This was the start of a 10 year life affair with a demon.
Over the next few years of high school and then into college I would find any way possible to get alcohol. Many of my friends were several years older than me and they were well on their way down the rabbit hole, so they would gladly share their drinks or buy me some for later. The LAN parties were long gone by the time I was off to college, now we were doing online gaming – usually Xbox Live. I would drink while playing, and it seemed like so much fun at the time. I would go to college parties and get drunk, would become belligerent and sometimes blackout only to wake up the next morning eternally grateful for my ability to safely autopilot myself home and not lose anything important like my keys, wallet, or phone (and in hindsight now, my life or freedom). I was 19, maybe 20.
The drinking escalated through college, there are plenty of shameful stories to pull from. But towards the end of my college days I realized I had a problem after I went through a breakup with a really good woman. It made me evaluate what I was doing with my life and I decided to stop drinking and “get my shit together”. I made it 3 months sober. I was exercising daily, eating healthy, and even picking up hobbies I had forgotten about. I felt like a brand new person, it was exhilarating and I thought I had things finally going the way I wanted them to go – I thought I had kicked the alcohol problem and I wanted to get back out there and meet people and share this new exciting adventure with them. I quickly met an amazing woman and we hit things off right away. I was wary about drinking with her, but I promised myself I would be careful and moderate my drinking this time around.
We all know how that turns out eventually…
The relationship was great for a year and a half, my drinking steadily continued but I never let it get out of control. Then we went long distance due to her going off to grad school across the state and me moving back with my parents after college – this distance eventually did us in and we mutually broke up. I took all of this change hard. Ending up in my parents’ house after all the years of autonomy, being single, still college-poor with loans hovering over my head, and not being able to find a good job; these things all factored into me letting myself go. I started drinking a lot more and I got very good at hiding it from my family. I stopped exercising and lost interest in nearly all of my hobbies as the depression and anxiety creeped in. I was 23 at this point.
This familiar story only got worse over the next few years leading up to now. I made a few attempts to cut back or stop drinking entirely, but I’d eventually end up back in the trap and would push the limits even harder. There were so many moments that I could have ended up in jail, in the hospital, and even a few could have landed me dead. But none of those moments were enough to shock me into stopping. I hated where I was in life, I had expected so much more out of life and so I continued drinking in order to fast forward to a point where things might be better and I would be happy then.
I started journaling again about a year ago. I have journaled before, but I eventually ended up destroying all of the entries because I did not want to be reminded of who I was. This time around I was journaling specifically for that reason. I knew I needed a change in my life. I was working a job I hated and was bored doing, I was utterly depressed and living paycheck to paycheck, and I needed a change. I would write sporadically, entries having gaps of days, weeks, or even months in between. But I opened my journal recently and read back to the earliest entry and realized that despite the fact that most of the early entries primarily complained about how “depressed I was and how much I needed a change”, I have really made a lot of progress in the past year. This inspired me and made me realize that there is hope.
In the past year I have moved into a single-bedroom apartment on my own, I have my own car completely paid off, I have an awesome 3 year old cat that I rescued (but I like to say she rescued me since she has been a great reason to fend off suicidal thoughts…), I officially started my own freelance business as a digital creative consultant outside of my day job, and at my day job I got a huge promotion that effectively doubled my salary and brought me above poverty level. I realized I had made so much progress and I finally felt like a “real-person”, but I still felt depressed deep down and usually had no energy to do anything once I got off work except to drink through the evening and either catch up on TV shows or play video games.
I was surprised that I was able to do all of these great things in a year only to end up in a slump again. I tried getting on antidepressants again (the first time was during the dark days when I was 23, but I eventually got off of them at 24) but then decided after a few months that I wanted to try finding happiness on my own – I knew depression was not the real problem, it was a symptom. I knew drinking was the problem. The drinking continued on for a while longer. I soon stumbled across this subreddit and I started reading the posts from people who had either recently stopped drinking or had been sober for a long time. It sounded like a welcoming, unassuming community that did not come with the annoying dogma that AA has. I was not yet ready to quit drinking, even though I wanted to – I still hadn’t reached whatever undetermined point in the future that I was waiting for – so I lurked for a few weeks. About week ago I noticed somebody post a reference to a book called This Naked Mind, saying it helped them immensely and they recommended it to anyone seriously thinking about finally quitting alcohol. I started the book on Friday but continued to drink through the weekend since I still wasn’t ready to quit. Monday came around along with a particularly grueling hangover and I read a few more chapters while dealing with the misery of the hangover at work. I got to a point in the book that finally clicked with my consciousness and unconsciousness, a point that I had been on the edge of for years – alcohol is literally poison, and I am killing myself by drinking it, there are no benefits AT ALL, only faster and more miserable death than normal. This was the kicker, and I decided Monday morning that I was done. There was nothing special about the date, but there is something special about myself: I’m alive, and I’m going to keep it that way as long as I can. I have wasted essentially 10 years of my life on poisoning myself thinking it would eventually make me better; this is insane thinking. I am 26 now.
When I got home from work on Monday, I walked into my apartment, immediately opened the last bottle of beer (an IPA ironically named “The Truth”) and poured it down the sink with no hesitation, no ceremony, I was just getting rid of something toxic that I found in my refrigerator. My cat came to greet me in the kitchen with a meow and a purr, happy to see me again. I felt free. I then got ready for a run and took the trash (the empties from the past weekend’s bender) out with me as I left my apartment. It was amazing to just DO IT. I am done with alcohol.
I went for a run Monday, again Tuesday, and will again today and every day. I am cooking healthy meals for dinner again instead of ordering out. I even made a list of things I want to do around my apartment and of hobbies I am going to start back up again now that I have my whole future ahead of me. It’s amazing how much I have put off for that imagined future where I thought I would be happy. What I know now is that I have to find that happiness for myself, and it was already there to begin with.
Submitted March 29, 2017 at 11:36PM by rspdan http://ift.tt/2o8wPix stopdrinking
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