It’s been a few months now since my difficulty with alcohol began. It was a random Thursday and I was feeling emotionally burnt out and wrecked from the week I’d just had.
Nothing out of the ordinary had happened, it just felt as though the mental pile was building and I wanted a moment of relief. I sought out dissociation and to turn my busy brain off for a few hours. I was coming home from Dublin, I went to the shop, picked up a bottle of wine and went home. I sat on the bed that evening, TV on in the background, and drank the full bottle within about 45 minutes.
At that moment, nothing felt so amazing. I’ve always had coping mechanisms to try to run away from my feelings, but alcohol felt instantly different. Where I’d start to feel a euphoria or dissociation from reducing my intake of food, it would take time for me to reach that state. With alcohol, I felt it very instantly, but I could still go about my business the next day, feeling confident it wasn’t bleeding into the other areas of my life. When I was very active with my eating disorder, I felt extremely tired all the time with constant brain fog. It makes sense; I was malnourished and running on empty.
Alcohol also felt like a positive thing in the beginning because the only time I didn’t feel guilt or have running thoughts in my mind about food was when I was drinking alcohol. I was able to eat away and not feel an ounce bad for it. This felt like utter freedom – being able to eat, successfully turn my brain off entirely, get away from my emotions. As I said at the start of this column, it started on a random Thursday in early November and it wasn’t long until it became a five-day ritual and then, eventually, a bottle of wine at least every single day per week.
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While the statistics of it sounded bad, it still took me a while to realise it was a problem.
The recommended intake for women is something like 14 units per week and I was drinking 60-70 per week at a minimum. I kept telling myself, at least that’s not a three-figure digit, at least I’m usually only having one bottle per night. I would look at my life and think it hasn’t impacted my career or job because I’m still getting new opportunities and good feedback, it hasn’t interfered with my studies because I’m still getting good results, and I don’t feel unwell the day after – I’m not battling daily hangovers, experiencing tiredness.
I’m completely fine.
The reality, though, was that the alcohol was interfering with my life in other ways. My career might have been intact and I may have been getting good results in college, but I was isolating myself from my friends. My fuse was short and I could blow at any moment, and my avoidant side was becoming increasingly alive in my relationship. It was one thing when it felt like I could only potentially harm myself; it was another when I could see my actions were harming someone else I deeply care about. Still, this wasn’t enough for me to stop drinking. Instead, it reinforced my belief that I am a burden and should just isolate myself from that person instead.
Beyond people I hold near and dear, I’ve also done some very embarrassing things while under the influence. These things can seem like a funny story at the time, but, in reality, when you have the whole picture together, it’s just sad. I went back and forth constantly with whether I had a problem with drinking. One moment, I would be saying to myself that it’s a big issue, but the next I’d be going back to that mindset of, “it’s grand, I’m just a young girl, plenty of people have a night where they will consume a bottle of wine in the evening after a long day, it’s nothing major”.
The issue, though, was I quickly started making every single occasion a reason to drink.
If I achieved something, I’d get a bottle.
If I was sad about something, I’d get a bottle.
If I felt a bit sick and sluggish, I’d get a bottle.
I’d wake up every morning saying to myself I’m not doing that again tonight, but by the time 2pm rolled around, I’d find my body starting to go through withdrawals and I’d be back on the drink that night. I’d miss my evening college classes to go and drink alone at home, I’d do assignments and prepare for exams while drinking heavily, I’d go to therapy sessions to talk about my issues with drink and get a bottle straight after the session on the way home. My therapist even recommended that I go to an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting.
He said the experience might be insightful for me. I brought my partner with me. I had some weird split thinking regarding this meeting. On the way there, I found myself saying to my partner, “ah, will we just leave it”, “not sure it’s really going to help”, or “I might drink a lot, but I’m not as bad as these people, I’m not an alcoholic”.
Still, there was a part of me that wanted to go to the meeting to prove to myself and my partner that I’m not an alcoholic and that I don’t have a problem. I was quite stereotypical and judgmental in my thinking. I thought I was about to walk into a room full of “junkies”; people who couldn’t hold down jobs, lost their way and had no control over their lives – essentially the most stereotypical image that comes to mind when someone thinks of the word alcoholic.
Unfortunately, my little plan didn’t pan out, because the entire room failed to match this description. The room was packed with completely ordinary people. They had jobs, commitments, families, responsibilities. You would walk past any of them on the street and you wouldn’t for one second think, “that person has a drinking problem”. Moreover, they were so friendly, noticing I was new to the group and coming over to say hello, or directly speaking to me from their own experience at the end of the session. I remember one man speaking up at the end of the session about the 12 steps and how long it took him to get to step 1. The first step is admitting you have a problem and he was speaking directly to me.
I remember how awkward I felt when the introductions happened at the start of the session. The options of what to say were that you were an alcoholic or a visitor. I choked a bit saying the word alcoholic, but saying I was a visitor would’ve been a lie at the same time. I went for coffee with them afterwards, and I spoke to another man who had introduced himself to me at the beginning. I explained that I still have my job, it’s not really interfering with my life, and his response was that it won’t be high functioning forever. Like I said before, it may not have been interfering with these big parts of my life, but every night once I had built up a tolerance and no longer felt the same dissociation, instead I would feel a different type of sadness to what I was trying to escape.
I felt anxiety all day long and nerves throughout my body until I got my bottle in the evening, only to feel a completely different kind of anxiety and one that brought me right back to my inner child, magnifying all of my deepest insecurities, fears and trauma. I would feel hazy and tired during the day, and my usual act of trying to be in great form to improve other people’s moods was becoming even more exhausting. At this time, the doctor had also confirmed that alcohol was directly impacting my menstrual health. Knowing all of this, you would think I would say, “oh I better just ease off the drink so”.
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. I knew that nothing good would come of this habit as I call it, but it was becoming increasingly clear the dependency was there, even though the reasons I started drinking weren’t there any more.
After the AA meeting, I went home and had a bottle like nothing happened.
Despite a couple of hours hearing stories and warnings of what would happen if I don’t get to grips with it, despite the embarrassing things I’ve done and said under the influence, despite how it was impacting my emotional and physical health plus my relationships, despite the fact I often couldn’t remember things I said in conversations with people I care about, I still drank.
I still drank, even though I was becoming the exact opposite of who I am at my core and going against my own values. Even as I write this column, my issue with drink is still very much alive. It is something I’m trying to work on now as life has calmed down. I don’t want to be this person, I don’t like what it does to me, I hate that my life has been a series of harmful emotional coping systems. I’m disappointed that I’ve still not yet learnt how to navigate emotional discomfort; that my innate reaction is how do I numb it, get rid of it. I’m trying so hard to rewire my mind, to stop thinking about emotions as an inconvenience. It all makes me feel like such a hypocrite when what I preach is constantly to be open and vulnerable regarding mental health.
I still don’t necessarily identify as an alcoholic. Whether that’s down to self belief or pride, I don’t know.
What I do know is that I have been abusing alcohol for some time now. I’m in my late 20s, and I don’t want to become fully sober and never drink again. I still want to enjoy drinking and have a fun life. I believe I can get that balance back. My experience should be yet another example that alcoholism or alcohol dependency doesn’t have a specific look. People of any make-up can struggle with alcohol. A difficulty with alcohol does not depend on age, the style of a person, how successful they are in life, how many friends they have, etc.
On top of that, an issue with alcohol is less about the quantity and more about why the person is drinking to begin with. I too used to associate alcohol and drug problems with an old man sitting under a bridge all day, every day with his brown paper bag, but it’s just not the case. In my experience, most of the people I’ve met with a problem have been high-functioning just like me. My issue with drink has been my biggest secret. The only people who have known about it have been those who are around me a considerable amount or have caught me out.
I felt ridiculous admitting my problem at my first therapy session, as though the therapist would turn around and say you’re a young 28-year-old girl, why are you here because you like to drink? All young people drink a lot of alcohol.
I felt the same energy in the lead-up to the AA meeting, despite the fact there were others my age there. I felt ridiculous telling my friends about it too, even though they are such understanding people. It seemed the response would always be “just stop”, as though it was such a simple task.
In recent times, I have told friends about my struggle and, while I’m still drinking, being open with them and being less secretive has helped enormously. It just goes to show, like anything, we need to move away from the stereotypes so that people struggling can be more open and get the support they need. I’m still learning how to sit with discomfort instead of immediately trying to escape it. I still hope I can learn that emotions are not emergencies that need to be silenced.
For now, all I can really do is keep trying, and keep being honest about where I’m at.
Contacts
- Alcoholics Anonymous - alcoholicsanonymous.ie – (01) 842 0700 - gso@alcoholicsanonymous.ie
- HSE Drugs and Alcohol Helpline - Freephone 1800 459 459 (Monday to Friday) - helpline@hse.ie
