It's hard to say exactly where things hit the skids for my old friend, Merlot, and I. We were buds, she was doing everything she promised me and I was grateful.
I have a photograph of me on the FIRST night I ever raised a drink to my lips. I was a drama geek in highschool, a real Moira Rose. A pretentious teen who thought she was destined for the Oscars, and envisioned pulling up to a highschool reunion in a limo, feigning impatience and embarrassment by the papparazzi presence. Ask Tim, I can still be a *tad* over the top, but I like to think it's part of my charm.
That photo shows me at a cast and crew party, glassy eyed and absolutely BEAMING, with my arm around the neck of a guy who's name I can't remember. In my hand is a bottle of Mike's Hard Lemonade. I don't remember where I got the drinks from, but I remember how easy they went down. Full of sugar and so similiar to the innocuous lemonade eight-year olds sell from behind cardboard stands. I don't regret that night, or that introduction to booze. Really, a good bulk of my drinking wasn't notable in any way for years. It's not exactly scandalous for a highschooler to have her first drink and that one night didn't instantly toss me into a pit of dark, sticky addiction. No, ending up out of control, terrified, sick and brimming with shame took a very long, hardly even noticeable slide.
I'd say my drinking in mid to late 20's was what most would consider "normal" and being a baby making machine for a bulk of that decade curbed the boozing, for sure. However, My 30's took me down a slow and steady slide into over-drinking to self-medicate the over-thinking. I wanted to numb out my day, my thoughts, my unresolved baggage, my compulsion to clean and maintain control over everything and everyone in my household, to dial my anxiety down from a seven to a four. I love my career but it's not all rainbows and unicorn farts. Part of my work as a Sign Language Interpreter means stepping into the trauma of others. We could be interpreting counselling sessions, where a person is laying out all their anguish or sitting in the oncologist's office, our hands and faces carrying terrible news to a family. There have been days where I have shlepped home at 6pm, carrying all of my own junk and my worries for the people I serve. With my brain ramped up and spinning out, I needed SOMETHING to just take the edge off. To stop me from feeling like I wanted to crawl out of my own skin whenever one more person asked something of me. Merlot delivered and let me tell you, people, it worked. It did. Even before the first sip, just looking at the glass in my hand, I felt instant comfort and warmth. A security blanket for daily adult life. Eventually, my body did what every body does when you expose it to alcohol daily, it developed a tolerance and I needed a second glass to reap that same warm comfort and then a third and then, well, screw it, the whole damn bottle. I loved my wine habit, my little reward at the end of the day. .
There's something almost endearing about a stumbling, shreiking, drunk off her ass 22 year old. We all look at her and think "Oh, sweetie, bless your little soul. Get to bed and be thankful you're at the age where you still bounce back from debauchery". There is nothing endearing or sympathetic about a middle aged mother of three in the same condition. We think "Oh, Jesus Murphy. Hope her poor kids don't see this, she's going to feel like a bag of horseshit tomorrow and she kind of deserves it". We know. We know we deserve the sweaty hangxiety and shame that the following morning dumps on us. As we clutch the toilet seat, puking, we absolutely KNOW we did this to ourselves and we swear up and down that we'll never drink again. Funny tho, when that hangover dissipates and 5pm rolls around, many of us find ourselves reaching for a wine glass again. When my gut instinct began whispering at me, pestering me, suggesting that I knew my drinking wasn't fun or safe anymore, I did NOT want to go alcohol free. That wasn't even an option. No, moderation was going to be the way forward-it had to be. I couldn't imagine my life as the dry one, the wet blanket, the party pooper. I thought life without booze would be a life of envying others. A life of white-knuckling through cravings or social events, knowing that I was too broken to even act "normal" anymore.
I started working on moderation and when I say working, I really mean it. It was exhausting. It took effort to make deals with myself, plan out all my tricks and engage my willpower ALL night long.
1) "Ok, Suz, no wine. No hard liqour. You're allowed only cider tonight." - Got rip roaring drunk on ciders
2) "Ok, Suz, you can have wine but you have to watch the clock all night and make sure that you're not drinking it too fast"- Stopped watching the clock after one glass and it turns out I was THIRSTY.
3) "Ok, Suz, you have to drink water between glasses". -Got drunk and peed a lot.
4) "Ok, Suz, you're gonna find someone at the party who's drinking habits you trust. You only drink when they drink-watch them all night" -made another person wildly uncomfortable all night, as I stared at them, somehow ended up way drunker than them anyway
4) "Ok, Suz, you have a partner who cares about you. Get him to help." Asked Tim to keep an eye on me when we're out and let me know if I'm veering off course. That poor guy just had to look at me sideways and I was all "UGH!! Tim, you're not my Daaaaad!!! Back off" as I sloshed wine down the front of me.
In her book "The Naked Mind", author Annie Grace uses the example of the Pitcher Plant. Never heard of it? Ya, I hadn't either. Anyhoo, this plant is a real sneaky carnivorous bastard. To insects, it smells amazing, impossible to resist! Let's say a bee catches a whiff of what must be the equivalent of the funnel cake stand at Wonderland. She flies on over, settling on the rim of the plant's leaf, and starts guzzling that sweet, soul-warming nectar and it's so delish that it's distracting. That rim is designed to be slippery though and slopes down so minimally, it's easy to miss. While she's feasting, the bee doesn't notice that she's slipped downwards. When she finally realizes that she's not where she started, she figures 'Nah, that's cool because I have wings. I can leave when I want to". Even when she notices the decaying bodies of some of her insect pals at the bottom of the plant, she thinks "Mmmkay...too bad for them but I'm still fine! I'll blow this pop stand soon". You see where this is going, eh? She slips too far and can't get out afterall. When Annie's voice painted the image of the Pitcher Plant for me, through my Audiobook, I almost had to pull over. I related to that poor, fat, over-confident, nectar drunk bee. I had slid without even realizing it and now I had to be honest about the fact that I was in a sticky, shitty, perilous spot. Oh, the slide.
I gave moderation the ole college try and I was still drinking well outside of what's considered moderate by most health care professionals. It started to feel like I couldn't outrun this embarrassing problem anymore and I turned to Tim on one evening in late October and said flatly "I'm going to do a dry month. I have to see if I'm capable of it, and if I am, I want to see how I feel."
Annie Grace was the first gentle push I got, not to QUIT drinking, but to start questioning how alcohol was showing up in my life. To start thinking about what mindful drinking would look like. After Annie, I read others and those writers have inspired me to do this- to blog. To share. To say "Um, guys, I slipped and ended up somewhere I didn't mean to land" Everyone's relationship with alcohol is unique, I'm only speaking for myself when I tell you that I'm a better version of me without it. I genuinely like myself more, trust myself more, and expect more of and for myself.
Annie Grace, Craig Beck and Holly Whitaker, with your books, you have changed the trajectory of my life. It was scary to change (like terrifying, fill-your-drawers scary) but it was right for me. Thank you.
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