Alcohol and me

Social drinking can be a heavy burden on some people's shoulders. We've asked a man who drank for fun, until it wasn't fun anymore.

Where I come from, people put their rubbish bins out for collection early on a Thursday morning. It’s not uncommon to see men or women in their dressing gowns rolling the wheelie bin out to the end of the driveway at 6 or 7 AM. One morning a neighbour from across the street was doing just that when she saw something odd sticking out from behind my dad’s car. A pair of shoes, with legs attached. All a bit ‘’Wizard of Oz’’ you might think, but as she crossed the road to have a look, the rest of my body came into view. There I was, passed out on my back in the middle of my parent’s driveway. I was eighteen.

It was a few months earlier, on my birthday, that my dad had taken me out for my first legal drink. I’d downed a pint or two of cider reasonably quickly and that had been enough. But as the months passed, the easier the cider went down, and the more thirsty I seemed to get. And the more thirsty, the more wasted, and the more likely to end up passed out on my back in the middle of my parent’s driveway.

The neighbour woke me up, helped me up, and made sure I got inside before my parents woke up. She never told them, but every time I’d see her afterwards, a flash in her eye would remind me of what she and I knew oh too well.

The idea that I’d blacked out scared me. A lot. For a day or two. Because the next week I ended up in almost a similar state. Growing up, nobody really gave me an example of how to build a healthy relationship with alcohol. The point of drinking was getting drunk, wasn’t it? Going out seemed like a race to get drunk the fastest or the cheapest, and while by all accounts I managed to avoid too much further embarrassment, I ended up blacking out quite a bit. Regular were the Saturday or Sunday mornings when I had simply no grasp of when or how I’d managed to get home.

It freaked me out, and then it didn’t. My hangover was more important than filling in the gaps of the night before.

Ready, steady, go.

Nobody told me to take my time, if anything people around me seemed to encourage each other to drink faster, throw up further. And the thing was, I felt pretty decent after the first couple of drinks. I’ve always been shy, so a bit of a leg up worked wonders. I felt more confident, and that felt good. And the really convenient thing was, when it stopped feeling good and started becoming messy, I blacked out and didn’t realize.

Then I went to university, and things didn’t really change. More drinking, more blackouts. Guys would be impressed with how well I could sink a pint, and I’d wake up on my bed, in my clothes, impressed that I’d made my way home, and relieved to be in one piece.

This kind of routine is all well and good; if anything, university is super accommodating to it. I could squeeze a blackout in between lectures, and nobody would be any the wiser.

But things were different when I started trying to hold down a job. I’d call in sick, or make up an imaginary relative to kill off so I could use grief and a funeral as an excuse. Anything goes when your head is pounding, you’ve lost your wallet, and you feel like death warmed up.

Crutch.

It got to a point where I couldn’t really feel comfortable going out unless I’d had a beer at home before. Eventually I ended up in a new city where I didn’t know anybody, and would sit in a bar with a book and some beers, reading until I couldn’t concentrate anymore.

One morning, a couple of years later, someone important to me suggested I might have a problem. So I went to an AA meeting. If anything, hearing some of the stories the people told in that circle gave me hope. It made me realize that I’d gotten myself into some scrapes, but nothing like the near-death situations many of them had had to drag themselves back from. I went a couple more times, not drinking for the week and a half I attended. It’s one of the pieces of advice they give you. I said my name and said out loud that I thought had a problem with alcohol, even though deep down I didn’t believe I really did. Not really. Not compared to these guys. Some of them gave me their numbers and told me they were there for me if I ever felt weak, or just needed to meet for a coffee — alcoholics tend to drink a lot of coffee.

Back to black

After a few meetings, I decided I was fine. That I’d been faking it. Some of the guys in the meetings would say that they were ‘’allergic’’ to alcohol; that it made them consume more, and end up doing things that were completely out of character. I got a bit thirsty, sure, but I wasn’t like them. Right?

So I stopped going to AA meetings, and started blacking out again. Sometimes I’d bring up the idea that I had a problem with friends, but they’d dismiss it, and we’d order another round. Sometimes I’d look around me and wonder if everyone wasn’t struggling with alcohol. Sometimes I’d drink to stop thinking, stop wondering. This kept going up to a point where I had trouble getting in to work. Had trouble holding on to the trust of the person I loved the most, and who loved me the most. Where have you been? What time did you get home? How did you get home? I had trouble finding myself in the mirror some mornings, my face twisted out of shape to such a point that it couldn’t possibly be me.

I’ll drink to that.

The trouble is, alcohol’s a pretty sly beast. Even if I’d put obstacles in its way, like telling myself I wasn’t going to have a drink that day, it would find a way to twist my arm. A leaving party would pop up, or an office announcement with beers and champagne. Or I’d befriend a colleague that preferred going for drinks after work than going home.

It’s going to sound superficial, but it wasn’t the work problems or even the relationship stuff that made me stop and reconsider what I was doing. It was the day I looked at myself and really, seriously, couldn’t recognize myself anymore, I took a picture on my phone and swore I’d look at it every day. Blacking out? OK. But ending up as some cautionary ‘’Before and After’’ I sometimes saw scrolling down my favorite guilty pleasure tabloid website? No way.

I realized that I did have some issues. I realized that the colleague I was always having after-work drinks probably had exactly the same issues as I did. I realized that nobody had ever really given me a real on-the-ground education about alcohol and that, since people around me weren’t that comfortable talking about it, I was probably going to have to figure this thing out myself.

It also got to a point where aging became more than some distant, abstract idea that only happened to other people. My body was changing; my skin was changing; I’d get sick from time to time whereas before I had seemed to be some super-immune, Teflon-covered machine. Something had to give.

Flare-ups.

Some of the alcoholics in AA talked about being « allergic » to alcohol, and I find it a pretty accurate description. I like alcohol, and alcohol likes me until it doesn’t. It goes down just fine until it starts to twist me out of character. What was initially a confidence booster became a genuine handicap. I was a genius when I was drunk, and I was the coolest, sexiest guy in the bar when I was drunk. Until one day I was just the drunkest guy in the bar, and decided I had to be brave and try and do something about it.

I haven’t been back to a meeting, and I haven’t found a way to fully manage the problem. I will still have a drink, but I try to control it. There are still times when I slip up, get lost. When I’m stressed, weak, hurt, or feeling anything else that might trigger a binge. I indulge, and my allergy flares up. I’m what you might call a super high-functioning alcoholic. But I’m much more aware and much more conscious of the push and pull inside me when the idea of a drink crops up. I’m much more aware of consequences, and most of the time I can avoid tipping over the edge. Most of the time.

Despite my determination to never go back to those rooms of people drinking lots of coffee, a lot of what I heard stuck with me. It gots in deep. And when I need to, and I listen, I can hear it. It might not be earth-shattering progress. But even being able to write down what I once found ridiculous and untruthful to say out loud gives me hope. Hope that one day alcohol and me will be like a bad night out; a distant, hazy memory that makes me cringe but also realize how grateful I am.

Cheers to that.