She’s always been there when I’ve needed her, and has come through for me at any time of the day or night. Holding her close gave me a warm feeling of being accepted and loved. She was never a cheap date, but nothing good in life comes without cost; and in return she gave me complete and uncomplaining loyalty. She’s not been perfect; if I started acting in a stupid way, instead of challenging me in a way that that would help me be more mature, or having boundaries about my behaviour, she not only put up with my foolishness, she encouraged me to go further!
This new year it’s finally dawned on me that my love affair with alcohol has never been a healthy one – physically, emotionally or psychologically. The more time I’ve spent with her, the worse I’ve felt about myself, emotionally and physically. I can see now that drinking has been a way for me to avoid growing up in many ways; and the liquid kiss I’ve kept coming back to has been a substitute for the affection I never felt at home, and which I’ve kept trying to find in a bottle throughout my adult life. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a well-filled bottle, which was a symbol of maternal love and security for many of us when we were babies, is something we turn back to in an attempt to reclaim those feelings as adults!
Alcohol has done a good job of numbing the pain of inadequacy and rejection that I’ve carried since I was a kid, and has enabled me to embark on a series of romantic adventures, which I can see now were a repeated attempt to find acceptance and appreciation. I collected evidence of this love in the form of emails, texts, letters and gifts. I’m ashamed to admit that it wasn’t unusual, once I’d received the yearned for proof of adoration, for me to lose interest in the relationship and go looking for another fix.
Because one truth about being addicted to love, is that it makes your heart very leaky. No matter how much love is poured in, it’s never enough, leading to an obsessive and never-ending search for more. But as Brené Brown rightly says in her much-viewed TED Talk about vulnerability, we can’t selectively numb our emotions. By anaesthetizing and disconnecting from my inner demons, I became unable to recognise, or connect with the feelings of others – which left me incapable of the sensitivity required in any healthy relationship. I was generally ‘missing in action’.
The upshot of all this is that, when I woke with a worse than usual hangover on New Year’s Day feeling that I’d missed quite a lot of the Festive Season because of not having been fully conscious for much of the time, combined with hearing a timely broadcast by a reformed alcoholic describing all the positive things that the past year of sobriety has brought him, I made a decision that I knew in my heart I was going to stick to: not to drink for a month, and if that goes well, to renew that decision on a monthly basis I’m already experiencing some of the benefits of an alcohol-free life, and at this point I fully intend to stay off the booze, at least most of the time, for the rest of my life
So far, I’m enjoying many parts of my new-found status as an ex-drinker. I know I’m just at the beginning of a long road, with plenty of potential pitfalls but I do feel some of that pride that comes with having made what feels like a grown-up decision, even if it is a hard one. I’m already sleeping better, – having let go of my crazy belief that I needed a large nightcap in order to not wake up in the night, even though it never worked and in fact led to more shots in the small hours and a bad head in the morning – and I seem to have more time on my hands, especially in the evenings, which has felt strange but welcome as I’ve resumed some abandoned hobbies.
On top of that, I have money in my wallet at the end of the week, and feel like I have more energy and am more awake to everything, and everyone, around me. At the times when I habitually drank a glass or three of red wine, I use the same glass but filled with cranberry juice – and that helps to soften that feeling of having lost my lover and best friend.
The not so pleasant part about sobriety is that, without that dulling of my buried pain, it’s come more to the surface as a wave of sadness, and even tears, at unpredictable moments. But I believe that this is a good thing, because when we can’t feel sadness, we won’t feel joy either. At least when that pain is out in the open, I can learn more about where it comes from and what I need to do to properly heal and move on. It feels like getting to know and offer comfort to the hurt little boy that’s still inside me. When I ushered him out of sight, and out of mind, he got up to all kinds of sabotage games to attract my attention!
Buddhist therapist David Richo accurately observes that drinking can feel like it’s solving your emotional problems, but all it’s doing is prolonging the problem by helping you avoid doing the work you need to do. At means living at half-cock rather than full blast. That’s not the way for me anymore, especially as I get older and time becomes more precious. Instead, I’m looking forward to a new year and a new life as I stop hiding from my feelings and instead learn embrace and accept of them and, with that, myself. I even feel ready to have another relationship, but this time one based on mutual appreciation and respect rather than me wanting someone to fill a hole in my heart that only I can repair. Wish me luck!
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock