Tendencies

I was reading the forums and started thinking about what it was like before I drank too much and lost all control. There is this camping thread going on right now about how some of us can or can't go camping anymore. As the drinking and the camping are so entwined in our brains. That got me thinking.

I really learned to drink in college. The legal age is 18 where I went to school. So I learned to binge drink. But that was always just beer. 6 before hitting the pub. I had four buddies so we would split a 24 case of beer. That way you showed up drunk and it was cheap. You only had to buy a few more at the bar to keep your buzz going.

Later I drank when I had money. I had less as the years passed till I was a grad student. However I did start drinking alone then. I had a Christmas away as my parents would not fly me home for the holidays. So I drank in my dorm room by myself. I think that was the first time I drank alone. Hard stuff too.

Then, after I graduated and I started to work, the drinking actually got more regular. I got a job in the Caribbean and rum was cheap so I drank and smoked weed when I was bored. Then I was in Europe for another job and drinking just seemed to be a regular everyday thing for everyone. In fact it was encouraged as I look back on it. Then the drinking calmed down a bit. Then I got depressed and started to drink pretty damn heavy.

I quit when I was 27 because I had gotten fat and I wanted to quit smoking. But that was for a year. I planned it that way and it worked. I quit smoking and lost the weight. Started drinking again but it was controlled. I would be termed a normie then. Since then it got worse after a few years. Until I had to quit after 5 heavy years of drinking.

Seems to me everyone in my family drinks pretty damn heavy. My dad was a full blown alchy of course. Sober and in AA for the last 30 years though.

After work today I was walking home downtown and thinking..."what are the other people on the street thinking?" Work is done. I wonder if they are going home for a drink to unwind.

I know if I was to do that I would spend all day thinking about that drink. That after work drink. Needing it. Leaving work early to get it. And then drinking way too much and going in to work late or hungover. I used to leave work everyday and stop at the liquor store. I was a regular.

I don't do that anymore. 7 months sober. I know I will never be a normal drinker because I see one drink as a waste of time. Why have one glass of wine? A bottle would be better. With Scotch to really get me going eh.

I don't miss all the pain and the fear. I'm tired though. So very tired. I struggle everyday.

It's hard to come to grips with the idea that life is the struggle. It's hard not to live ones' life thinking about some goal in the future and not the day itself. How do I learn to live the day? Was that what a drink was. The reward for living through another horrible struggle?

I struggle with trying to forgive myself now. But to put it in context - I was never married, I did not have any kids, I did not abuse anyone. I did not live with anyone. I never hurt anyone. I killed some relationships so that means I did cause some pain there, but I never did the whole "ball of fire" destroy the lives of people around me like my Dad did. He Lost his kids and got a divorce type stuff. I was able to function pretty well for my twenties but seems like I lost a lot of my early thirties. I find it hard to forgive myself for that.

Sorry this post is way too long and has not real ending.

Hope you all did not mind my wandering thoughts. A little random of me.
That's what happens when you read SR though. LOL You start to think.

Anna

I used to find that life was the struggle, a huge struggle. I was a people-pleasing control-freak all my life. I didn't start drinking until my forties. Then, it was instant addiction. Since I began recovery, life is no longer a struggle. I do have some long-term goals, but I try to stay in the moment. It makes life so much simpler, it really does.

I had a very hard time forgiving myself for getting so off track in my life. And, I did hurt my husband and children in the few years when I drank. When I really stopped and took a hard look at myself, I was very disappointed in what I had become. It seemed to me that everyone I knew had it together, but me. So, one of the things I had to do to forgive myself, was to stop comparing myself to everyone else. I tried to look at my life as the lessons that I needed to learn and it was my journey and I was where I need to be. Just as you are where you need to be.