My relationship with alcohol has been a complicated one.
My first encounters with alcohol were very polarizing. The first one I can really remember involved sneaking vodka and sweet, sticky coolers in to my basement on New Years Eve, probably around 2009. Everyone should experience the fun, giggling rebellion that is getting drunk on New Years with a few friends in high school. Experiencing liquor in that setting with people I trusted and getting drunk on equal parts booze and expectation felt like a rite of passage. I still remember it with great clarity- and if it hadn't been followed with a tremendously uncomfortable and forced game of strip poker I'd consider it a truly privileged memory.
There was also an instance where I flew to Toronto with a friend in 2010 and she had her boyfriend buy me beers to make up for their having sex on the bunk above me all night, essentially. I drank all 6 to myself and watched the Simpsons in his living room. I was 16 and I felt like 6 beers should have gotten me absolutely trashed over the course of 3 hours but it didn't. At that point I was just disappointed that it didn't "work", but today I am more upset that some 20-something year old man saw nothing wrong leaving me alone with the beer. I have always felt a self-conscious awareness about getting too drunk- even in Mexico I couldn't "let go" and just drink without considering the levels of my intoxication but that night stands out as a moment when I absolutely could have drank until I blacked out. The only thing that stopped me from drinking the way my peers did in University is that I am too conscious and embarrassed of every slip of dignity to black out and hurt myself, but drinking alone lends a setting in which this would never be a concern.
I resigned myself to that night drinking alone because I thought it was just something adults do. You either drink alone or you drink at parties, and I didn't see myself being invited to a lot of parties- there was no celibate option in my eyes. If I couldn't join the adult world in their sexual escapades I would have to do something or else I would only get further and further separated from my peers. I knew nothing about sex and at the time I couldn't imagine anyone dating me, but I saw a future as an experienced drinker.
One of my best friends in high school drank often and when it started becoming a daily practice I began to feel a lot of anxiety about drinking with her. My father knew everything about my social life, including my drinking habits which up until that pint had been reserved for birthday parties and the odd rebellious flask in the park. He gently reminded me to be safe and he never made me feel afraid to open up to him about my feelings toward the topic. Something he told me when I was very young still sticks with me. He told me that I should never drink to feel better, but instead to feel even better. Considering this, I struggled with my friend's casual alcoholism.
We would hang out in her basement and she would drink and cry about her mother with a crack addiction, her homeless father, and every other small tragedy in her life. She felt betrayed when I stopped drinking with her. She felt judged and she would drink with an angry bite that still creeps up in my dreams from time to time. She started getting aggressive, verbally abusive, and scary when she drank. I remember realizing that alcoholism wasn't something that you actively pursue- it follows through in your habits and by the time I understood how it breathed it's life in to my friend the same way it is a part of my mother, it was too late. After I parted ways with her I didn't drink until my 18th birthday just over a year later, and even then I was cautious. It sounds silly to say out loud, but there was a part of me that was afraid of "catching" the alcoholism because it is in my blood and I'd seen how easily and how silently it creeps in through craft beers and cheap vodka.
In University I made a firm choice to run head-first in to adulthood and to fit in with these peers. I had this powerful image of myself sleeping casually with strangers to learn about love and sex the way everyone else appeared to be doing it and I knew that liquor was always the precursor to this. Liquor was built in to every orifice of culture and social life in the dorms- we drank heavily 4 days a week and every friendship, every story, and every escapade was always built on a foundation of drinking and drinking appropriately, as well. My year of binge drinking resulted in a beer belly I still haven't really gotten rid of but I am less unhappy with how it looks than what it represents- it is not just disgusting because it is a flab of fat, but because of the desperate and disgusting drinking habits that built it.
When I see myself drunk in pictures or video I see my mother in what I always considered her most beautiful state- drinking wine on Christmas evening or beers in the backyard. I wish there didn't have to be context to these images. I wish that I didn't know the precursory weed and shots of vodka that dictate her behavior because in those instances where my mother is happy and drunk on beer and sunlight and caroling I swear she has never yelled at my sister and I or lost her job because of her basement stash. Liquor was the one really intimate connection I felt to my mother and on one hand I gripped it with white knuckles because it was all I had, but at the same time it was uninvited and resulted in a lot of anxiety.
I hesitate to label anything as a "trigger" for me, but the term"functional alcoholic" comes close. I'm not sure I believe in functional alcoholics, but I am well aware that this belief is built on the angry shame that wells up in me when info graphics and training manuals for my work with the homeless classify me as something dangerously close to a functioning alcoholic. I want that dirty word as far away from me as possible even though I know how intimately it is associated with me and my family. I know that my urge to defend myself when my drinking habits are exposed are often followed by uncomfortable glances at walls and feet from others. When someone comments that I have a nice collection of beer and whiskeys in my house my instinct is to close the cupboards and anxiously insist they are my room-mates. When I order a beer with dinner and someone jokes, "rough day?" I want to make it clear to them that I drink for the taste and enjoyment and it would be great if I didn't feel instantly ashamed about the choice now. I hesitate to call these things triggers, but I can admit that my reactions to them are immediate and I struggle controlling them and it is difficult to keep myself from feeling shame afterwards.
And yet, I cannot deny that I love liquor. Until recently I typically bought liquor with every paycheck. I love the vast variety of tastes and textures it offers, I love the craft beer culture, I love the warmth of whiskey and the crisp aftertaste of gin. I love how it makes me feel and I have always been careful to heed my father's advice- I have never let liquor be a solution to anxiety.
I assumed that my relationship with alcohol would always be punctuated with self-conscious shame and paranoia even if it is a positive one. I have never blacked out or harmed myself in any major way drinking. I haven't made mistakes or gotten fired or done anything hugely irresponsible under the influence. I have never regretted drinking and I have never drank to feel better. I have always made the effort to drink in times of celebration or to further improve an already pleasant evening. I love everything about liquor except for the way it frames my perception of myself.
It wasn't until I was forced to re-examine my drinking career for financial reasons that I began to understand myself and why I drink.
It's been a bit of a difficult year for me thus far. It wasn't just that I essentially lost my job and it wasn't just another health crisis on Kyle's part. An integral part of my identity was annihilated when I was removed from Reach, and the months of overwhelming doom that came before it weren't easy on the ego either. I became very attached with the clients I had in Outreach over the years and my relationship with them along with my reputation and work in Outreach quickly became a fixed part of who I felt I was. When doubt and then heartbreak entered this equation and I was pulled away from what had been my dream career like a womb, I finally found myself turning to liquor to bring myself back. I wanted to feel the highs of laughter that used to be so easy but it became increasingly more difficult to replicate this.
So much of my identity, purpose, and passion is hinged on my job and volunteer work and so I became predictably unhinged for a while. I went on a trip to Scotland immediately after I quit Quest which was liberating and spectacular in so many ways, but most surprisingly so in a very sharp shift in my affairs with liquor.
Since that trip last month, my liquor consumption has gone down by probably around 70%. I could have predicted this as I am living off minimum wage now, but I never would have thought that I'd stop craving it or thinking about it. It was in Scotland that I began to understand that my relationship with liquor is not just built on a long history of using and enjoying it and the anxieties which follow it in my blood, but for many years now it has also existed as a remedy to insecurities.
I've always been insecure about my intelligence. For many years I drank so that I could be distracted from my feelings of inadequacy and the imaginary judgement of my peers. If I am drunk and laughing nobody is expecting me to match them in intelligence. If I can just be kind, drunk, and laughing, the expectations drop to zero and I got comfortable with this for a long time without really realizing it. I wasn't drinking socially with others- I was drinking because I loved it and it made me feel more confident around my peers and in meeting new people. This isn't an uncommon thing. I know alcohol is widely known as an elixr for social confidence. I just never realized the extent to which I was using it as a tool for this and less for enjoyment, which I'd always assumed it was for.
My tolerance has gone down, certainly. I have spent a lot less on liquor as well. But the best thing that has come with this is that I am no longer anxious when I feel like I want a drink. I don't feel that fear prickling on the back of my neck that I am only X number of steps away from the slippery slope. I never find myself drunk in a room of people who are excusing me for my drunkenness as I continually down beer after beer for every occasion. Liquor does not actually make every movie better. It does make role playing more fun, but only so long as I'm able to follow what's going on. A beer after a long day at work tastes so much better now that I'm not anticipating anything more. One friendship in particular has felt a lot better for me since these changes- it's not that I'm under some illusion that I was every really judged or that I wasn't respected or appreciated, but I feel more like the person I want to be now and when we do drink together I don't find myself in that awful place where I feel like an idiot but I keep drinking any way in hopes of that feeling being numbed.
It feels good to buy liquor now and I buy it without that strange shame I used to feel when the guy behind the till recognizes me as a weekly regular. Maybe it's just a small thing, maybe it's the biggest psychological change I've ever made in myself, all I know is that it feels like relief.
My first encounters with alcohol were very polarizing. The first one I can really remember involved sneaking vodka and sweet, sticky coolers in to my basement on New Years Eve, probably around 2009. Everyone should experience the fun, giggling rebellion that is getting drunk on New Years with a few friends in high school. Experiencing liquor in that setting with people I trusted and getting drunk on equal parts booze and expectation felt like a rite of passage. I still remember it with great clarity- and if it hadn't been followed with a tremendously uncomfortable and forced game of strip poker I'd consider it a truly privileged memory.
There was also an instance where I flew to Toronto with a friend in 2010 and she had her boyfriend buy me beers to make up for their having sex on the bunk above me all night, essentially. I drank all 6 to myself and watched the Simpsons in his living room. I was 16 and I felt like 6 beers should have gotten me absolutely trashed over the course of 3 hours but it didn't. At that point I was just disappointed that it didn't "work", but today I am more upset that some 20-something year old man saw nothing wrong leaving me alone with the beer. I have always felt a self-conscious awareness about getting too drunk- even in Mexico I couldn't "let go" and just drink without considering the levels of my intoxication but that night stands out as a moment when I absolutely could have drank until I blacked out. The only thing that stopped me from drinking the way my peers did in University is that I am too conscious and embarrassed of every slip of dignity to black out and hurt myself, but drinking alone lends a setting in which this would never be a concern.
I resigned myself to that night drinking alone because I thought it was just something adults do. You either drink alone or you drink at parties, and I didn't see myself being invited to a lot of parties- there was no celibate option in my eyes. If I couldn't join the adult world in their sexual escapades I would have to do something or else I would only get further and further separated from my peers. I knew nothing about sex and at the time I couldn't imagine anyone dating me, but I saw a future as an experienced drinker.
One of my best friends in high school drank often and when it started becoming a daily practice I began to feel a lot of anxiety about drinking with her. My father knew everything about my social life, including my drinking habits which up until that pint had been reserved for birthday parties and the odd rebellious flask in the park. He gently reminded me to be safe and he never made me feel afraid to open up to him about my feelings toward the topic. Something he told me when I was very young still sticks with me. He told me that I should never drink to feel better, but instead to feel even better. Considering this, I struggled with my friend's casual alcoholism.
We would hang out in her basement and she would drink and cry about her mother with a crack addiction, her homeless father, and every other small tragedy in her life. She felt betrayed when I stopped drinking with her. She felt judged and she would drink with an angry bite that still creeps up in my dreams from time to time. She started getting aggressive, verbally abusive, and scary when she drank. I remember realizing that alcoholism wasn't something that you actively pursue- it follows through in your habits and by the time I understood how it breathed it's life in to my friend the same way it is a part of my mother, it was too late. After I parted ways with her I didn't drink until my 18th birthday just over a year later, and even then I was cautious. It sounds silly to say out loud, but there was a part of me that was afraid of "catching" the alcoholism because it is in my blood and I'd seen how easily and how silently it creeps in through craft beers and cheap vodka.
In University I made a firm choice to run head-first in to adulthood and to fit in with these peers. I had this powerful image of myself sleeping casually with strangers to learn about love and sex the way everyone else appeared to be doing it and I knew that liquor was always the precursor to this. Liquor was built in to every orifice of culture and social life in the dorms- we drank heavily 4 days a week and every friendship, every story, and every escapade was always built on a foundation of drinking and drinking appropriately, as well. My year of binge drinking resulted in a beer belly I still haven't really gotten rid of but I am less unhappy with how it looks than what it represents- it is not just disgusting because it is a flab of fat, but because of the desperate and disgusting drinking habits that built it.
When I see myself drunk in pictures or video I see my mother in what I always considered her most beautiful state- drinking wine on Christmas evening or beers in the backyard. I wish there didn't have to be context to these images. I wish that I didn't know the precursory weed and shots of vodka that dictate her behavior because in those instances where my mother is happy and drunk on beer and sunlight and caroling I swear she has never yelled at my sister and I or lost her job because of her basement stash. Liquor was the one really intimate connection I felt to my mother and on one hand I gripped it with white knuckles because it was all I had, but at the same time it was uninvited and resulted in a lot of anxiety.
And yet, I cannot deny that I love liquor. Until recently I typically bought liquor with every paycheck. I love the vast variety of tastes and textures it offers, I love the craft beer culture, I love the warmth of whiskey and the crisp aftertaste of gin. I love how it makes me feel and I have always been careful to heed my father's advice- I have never let liquor be a solution to anxiety.
I assumed that my relationship with alcohol would always be punctuated with self-conscious shame and paranoia even if it is a positive one. I have never blacked out or harmed myself in any major way drinking. I haven't made mistakes or gotten fired or done anything hugely irresponsible under the influence. I have never regretted drinking and I have never drank to feel better. I have always made the effort to drink in times of celebration or to further improve an already pleasant evening. I love everything about liquor except for the way it frames my perception of myself.
It wasn't until I was forced to re-examine my drinking career for financial reasons that I began to understand myself and why I drink.
It's been a bit of a difficult year for me thus far. It wasn't just that I essentially lost my job and it wasn't just another health crisis on Kyle's part. An integral part of my identity was annihilated when I was removed from Reach, and the months of overwhelming doom that came before it weren't easy on the ego either. I became very attached with the clients I had in Outreach over the years and my relationship with them along with my reputation and work in Outreach quickly became a fixed part of who I felt I was. When doubt and then heartbreak entered this equation and I was pulled away from what had been my dream career like a womb, I finally found myself turning to liquor to bring myself back. I wanted to feel the highs of laughter that used to be so easy but it became increasingly more difficult to replicate this.
So much of my identity, purpose, and passion is hinged on my job and volunteer work and so I became predictably unhinged for a while. I went on a trip to Scotland immediately after I quit Quest which was liberating and spectacular in so many ways, but most surprisingly so in a very sharp shift in my affairs with liquor.
Since that trip last month, my liquor consumption has gone down by probably around 70%. I could have predicted this as I am living off minimum wage now, but I never would have thought that I'd stop craving it or thinking about it. It was in Scotland that I began to understand that my relationship with liquor is not just built on a long history of using and enjoying it and the anxieties which follow it in my blood, but for many years now it has also existed as a remedy to insecurities.
I've always been insecure about my intelligence. For many years I drank so that I could be distracted from my feelings of inadequacy and the imaginary judgement of my peers. If I am drunk and laughing nobody is expecting me to match them in intelligence. If I can just be kind, drunk, and laughing, the expectations drop to zero and I got comfortable with this for a long time without really realizing it. I wasn't drinking socially with others- I was drinking because I loved it and it made me feel more confident around my peers and in meeting new people. This isn't an uncommon thing. I know alcohol is widely known as an elixr for social confidence. I just never realized the extent to which I was using it as a tool for this and less for enjoyment, which I'd always assumed it was for.
My tolerance has gone down, certainly. I have spent a lot less on liquor as well. But the best thing that has come with this is that I am no longer anxious when I feel like I want a drink. I don't feel that fear prickling on the back of my neck that I am only X number of steps away from the slippery slope. I never find myself drunk in a room of people who are excusing me for my drunkenness as I continually down beer after beer for every occasion. Liquor does not actually make every movie better. It does make role playing more fun, but only so long as I'm able to follow what's going on. A beer after a long day at work tastes so much better now that I'm not anticipating anything more. One friendship in particular has felt a lot better for me since these changes- it's not that I'm under some illusion that I was every really judged or that I wasn't respected or appreciated, but I feel more like the person I want to be now and when we do drink together I don't find myself in that awful place where I feel like an idiot but I keep drinking any way in hopes of that feeling being numbed.
It feels good to buy liquor now and I buy it without that strange shame I used to feel when the guy behind the till recognizes me as a weekly regular. Maybe it's just a small thing, maybe it's the biggest psychological change I've ever made in myself, all I know is that it feels like relief.
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