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Old 06-20-2015, 12:30 PM
  # 11 (permalink)  
Illuminate
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Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Minnetonka, MN
Posts: 155
Haha, alright. Well for the sake of my recovery, I hope this thread becomes enormous. I'm someone who really enjoys writing, so I hope to write in here quite a bit.

I've been a drinker for a long time. Probably the biggest reason alcohol held such appeal for me was that I'm naturally a very quiet and reserved person. And there are some people who just aren't okay with that and think that I "need to break out of my shell" and all that nonsense. The simple fact of the matter is that I choose not to jump to conclusions. I choose to listen instead of talk. I choose to be supportive and nurturing however I can. But this leads to people taking advantage of my generosity, something that really irritates me.

But to bring this back around to drinking, I found that when I was drunk, all my inhibitions went away. I stopped listening to people, stopped sitting in the background, and became some new, obnoxious version of myself. And what's odd is that some folks liked that version of me better than the sober version of me. I can think of a girl I dated in college who I met at a party...I was drunk and acting silly, and she really dug that. But when we hung out and I was my normal sober self, she found me boring. And so, in the initial stages, I drank to make myself interesting.

I don't really believe that anymore, that I need to be drunk to be interesting. I would say that now I drink to deal with stress and anxiety, and over the years, I never learned how to deal with those things internally. I only figured out how to deal with it externally, by drinking. I've been having a bit of a rough time with my girlfriend but have been open about these things with her, and she's helped me realize that I drink because I have no real coping mechanisms other than trying to distract myself from my anxiety. I haven't told her this yet, but I love her. And I want to make her happy, but more importantly, I want to be happy myself. I realize fully that I should get sober for myself, not for her.

Anyway, thanks for listening.
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