I still liked the ritual of drinking: pouring it and going out to the porch as I drank myself into oblivion every night. Near the end the only time I felt happy, calm, and content was when I was drunk. I felt panicked all day and felt like I would normalize after about four drinks. I wondered how anybody could possibly be happy sober.
How could I sit on the porch and talk to someone, while sober, and possibly be happy?
How would I relax? How would I laugh? How would I say funny things? I felt that I was more enjoyable to be around, more funny and jovial when drunk. I've been sober for over 50 days and I am still waiting to feel truly jovial and silly.
It wasn't the drinking that I couldn't handle. I simply could not take the hangovers anymore. The daily withdrawal. My tolerance had gotten so incredibly high that 15 standard units of alcohol barely me drunk in the end. I wondered if there would come a time when I would drink a whole fifth everyday. I was getting darn close. I monitored my intake like a statistician in mL to make sure I always had enough. My preferred amount every night was 600 mL of vodka. I couldn't go any further even though I thought I enjoyed drinking. Can you imagine a normal person enjoying that much alcohol every night? Still baffles me.
Roger Ebert, a recovering alcoholic, said that if it weren't for the hangovers he probably never would have stopped drinking.
What it takes is to want to be sober more than you want to drink. For me, the scales tipped in June.
51 percent of me wanted to be sober and 49 percent wanted to drink that night. I didn't drink that night and have not since.
Yes. We can quit drinking even if some part of us still enjoyed it.