Well, Five... that's a very complex question with a simple answer: I
decided that there was nothing I wanted more
right now than to Not Drink. I dropped any consideration of how I might feel in an hour, later today, tomorrow or 100 years from now. Just for this moment, for now, I don't want to drink.
Here's some of the complexity - thanks for giving me a space to write about it.
:
At the end, I was far beyond drinking socially. That wasn't even thinkable - why would I want to go to a bar and pay exorbitant amounts to keep myself in check enough to drink only a couple of weak cocktails with people I didn't particularly like in any special way? I didn't really have health anxiety about drinking. I mean, I knew the outcome could be nothing but bad news, but it didn't dissuade me because I didn't care. Way back a long time ago, I experienced that ambivalence you are in. It was terrible beyond belief (though I'd bet you can believe it), so there came a time that when I decided to drink, I just skipped the ambivalence part. I got to the point at the end there - and it was a long end - where a flip would be switched, I'd be drinking seemingly without reason, and it took
enormous effort to turn it off. Depression and anxiety were pretty much my two states of "being." I preferred the depression over the anxiety, and so I drank. I realized that for me, the 'bottom' that some well-meaning people told me I had to hit didn't exist. For me, the bottom was six feet under. And still I didn't care; I actually yearned for the grave.
...
but I did care, just a tiny bit, just a whisper of desperation saying, "I can't keep doing this." I kept posting here and it was a lifeline - there were people (strangers!) who cared enough to encourage me to do something to get out of the pit I was in.
I realized there were only two choices for me - either I needed to stop or I was going to have to live out the misery of drinking 24/7 until the next bottom hit, and the next one after that. I was facing something like an infinity mirror, only my mirror was of endless trapdoors leading to more and more bottoms. It didn't seem I was going to be able to drink myself to death fast enough, so I had to give up. That wasn't the end of my misery, but it was the end of my drinking. For now. And since it's always now, I'm safely ensconced in this space where I don't drink.
Honestly, Five? I don't know that I'm at 100%. Maybe it's 99.9? Sometimes I do entertain the notion of drinking at some point in the near or distant future. I think it's just what my brain does - what I trained it to do. But fortunately for me so far, the thought of actually drinking is like standing too close to the edge of the Grand Canyon. Thrilling in the most stomach-turning way. So I take few steps back and sit quietly, reminding myself that I never drink now.
In the final analysis, I don't think it was a "want" that drove me to stop drinking altogether, it was more like an instinctive reaction reflecting the need for my authentic self to survive.
I dearly hope that this mind-dump is helpful to someone.
It most certainly was helpful (not to mention emotional) for
me to write about it - thanks for asking, Five.
O