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90 Days

 

Appearances will keep you bound.
I share so much, yet so little, of my life. Whether it is out of "pretending" to be a private person or shame or both I couldn't tell you. Even now I'm almost certain it's that I'm not going to tell you. I have to explain some things about alcoholism. It is not as black and white as you might think it is. See my issue with drinking started back in 2010, 2011. I drank because it was fun. I drank because it was an escape. I drank because my life at that time was difficult, but I didn't drink daily. I've always been a binge drinker. I could party on the weekends and go to work like the weekend didn't happen. I even recognized back then the possibility of a drinking problem. The clearest incident in my mind was one night I had been drinking, I got sleepy and decided to go to bed, now, an alcoholic doesn't waste alcohol. I had my cup that was still about halfway full, I didn't want to guzzle the entire thing so I said you know what I'm going to put this in the refrigerator and drink it tomorrow, so that's exactly what I did. The next morning I woke up bright and early, with nothing to do, I go to the fridge pluck that cup off the door and put it to my lips. At that moment, it hit me, oh no, baby girl, it's 8am, and that's alcoholic behaviour. I poured it into the sink, walked away, and dialed it back for months.

Throughout the years I would go through my binge drinking here and there, frustrated because I still recognized a problem, I even went to an AA meeting. Sitting in that room of people who had lost homes, family, and various other things I couldn't relate to, I left and never returned to another meeting. Let me explain the trick of any addiction, you see, it starts with arrogance. "I can still work, I'm not driving drunk, I haven't lost anything, I still have my house, car, whatever. Those thoughts are a trap that leads you to believe that it won't happen to you. The vicious part of addiction is that it is sometimes a long process, and trust me, it is very patient. 

Now, I named quite a few arrogant thoughts associated with addiction above, I'm going to break this down even more. "I can still work," because you have either the level of drunk you can be to sober up before going to work, or you have learned how to function just tipsy enough to satisfy you and the people around you not to notice a difference. "I'm not driving drunk," YET, it's only a matter of time before the amount you knew would get you comfortable is not enough and you have to, 'just go to the store and back' that's it (insert players club meme). Last but not least "I haven't lost anything," you haven't lost anything because you don't recognize that the first losses aren't always material. Relationships suffered, my mental health suffered, and my physical health, and I'm so good at downplaying things that most could probably tell something was off, but never figured out the truth. 

Over the last year, some have watched my journey to lose weight and get fit. I've been up and down on the journey, but the one thing you can't fight while battling this type of addiction is the detriment to your health. Potassium drops, hospitals, banana bags, high blood pressure, rot gut, inability to sleep, anxiety, and depression all come into play. At some point, you don't even know anymore why you drink. You used to laugh and have a good time, but now it's turned to tears, shame, and conversations you don't even remember having. Even with all those things going on, the worst thing I've ever experienced while drinking. Was nothing I listed above but the distance it put between me and my friends. The times sober me would have shown up, but drunk me couldn't. I wasn't there for some important moments in people's lives, and I'm still learning to forgive myself for it.

There is so much more I can say about this, but my throat is sore holding back the tears thinking about everything I've been through, come through, and moving on from. I think that I have expended the attention span of my readers with the length of this so I'm going to end it saying, there is more to this story, I will do a part two. And to all those I have hurt during this process. I truly am sorry.
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