Wishing and Hoping and Drinking and Stopping

Why can’t you stop someone from drinking? Intellectually I know this is impossible and I can hear the echoes of “You can’t make anyone do anything they don’t want to” but I still harbor this hope that it is possible.

I don’t drink anymore. I stopped a while back. August 28th, 2002 to be exact; an anniversary I celebrate every year. I stopped after years of trying. I tried all those crazy things, like drinking only every other day or drinking only on the weekends or drinking only once a week or drinking only at social occasions or drinking only wine. I did those things to prove to myself that I didn’t have a problem, that I could schedule my drinking; that I had power over it and I could stop when I wanted. Ha. All those experiments ended spectacularly bad, usually with me drinking six glasses of scotch at some bar and waking up the next day wondering how I got home.

But I didn’t black out all the time. I was not a fall down, passed-out drunk. That caricature of the alcoholic is so outdated and dangerous, because it makes it easier for others to think if you don’t look like the drunk on the street than you don’t really have a problem. Similarly, that old adage about “if you can’t stop drinking, then you have a problem” is flawed as well. I stopped drinking AND I had a problem. But that sort of logic tricks me into thinking trick “Wait…I don’t really have a problem because I stopped for years! Pass the scotch, I can drink again!”

I could drink all night and go to work the next day. I was fuzzy but I was there. I paid my bills and kept my promises and went to the gym and stayed healthy and fulfilled my obligations. I might have been able to keep it up for the rest of my life. But I probably would be alone.

I stopped on my own. Well, not on my own, with Nicole. I couldn’t have done it without her support and guidance and bright-and-shining example. It was the beginning of our relationship so there was a lot at stake. Nicole had quit drinking a year and a half before and deep down I knew it wouldn’t work with us if I continued to drink. I didn’t want to lose her because I couldn’t say not to a wheat beer with a slice of lemon. But Nicole wasn’t the only motivating factor: I wanted to stop for myself too. I didn’t want to feel fuzzy anymore; I didn’t want to dull my emotions and reactions anymore and schedule my evening or weekend around what bar I was going to.

So it was hard and after years of stops and starts I finally quit for good. And it felt so much better, for me. The best way I can describe it (cliché as it is) is that when I was drinking I was in this fog and when I stopped that fog lifted. I became addicted to the this new clarity. It is addicting as well.

Now I see all these celebrities in rehab and I am almost jealous. I had to battle my own drinking demons from the confines of my own home, in the very living room where I once got drunk, and through the very city streets packed with bars and liquor stores on every corner. All of my bad habits and patterns were right in front of me. Celebrities get to kick their addiction in spa-like havens with pools, saunas, gourmet meals, round-the-clock attention and daily mountain hikes. They can check out of their lives for months on end if they want. Me, like most people, had to deal with drinks out with friends and coworkers and dinners with wines and all the triggers from the get go. In the end we are all battling the same thing, no matter where you are, and it is ridiculous to feel jealous of how someone else battles their disease. But I still hear about these celebrities going through rehab and think how lucky they are to have that opportunity.

I am at the point where I know I will never drink again. I can go to bars and be around others drinking and sit at a backyard BBQ and not feel like I am missing something. Sometimes in my dreams I drink, and that is disturbing. I wake up in a panic, because it feels so very real. It isn’t hard most of the time, not drinking. But there are days (and nights) when I think how much would love to sit at a bar with Nicole and just drink till I get the buzzed feeling. Or on a cold winter night to be able to have a glass of scotch, straight up. I love the way it felt going down. It was like drinking a burning fire at first. By the third sip or so, that fire became a became a hazy liquid gold. It was like drinking sunshine.

The whole point of this is that I feel so helpless sometimes because there is someone in my life who drinks and I want desperately for her to stop. I don’t want to name names but those who have read my blog in the past probably know of whom I speak. It makes me feel helpless. It sometimes makes me feel bitter. It’s not that MY way of life is the only way to live, and I get that people should be allowed to live their own lives, in ways I may not approve of, and it may work for them just fine, but when it directly affects me (as it has in the past) I get upset. The question is, how do I watch the destructive patterns play out and not do anything? How do I pretend like it doesn’t exist when I see her or talk to her, especially when she is drunk? Ignoring it is dangerously close to denial for me, and that is repeating bad patterns of my own.

Pictured above, if I didn’t stop drinking (and if 10,000 fertility planets didn’t align) I would never have these babies. Not a bad trade-off.