Looking back on old blogs it makes me laugh because I really thought that I had everything figured out. I thought that not drinking for 30 days would solve my problems, but in reality, all it did was give me a reason to justify my drinking. If there is one thing I am, it’s self-aware…painfully self -aware of everything I need to work on, all of my flaws and every mistake I’ve ever made. Looking back, most of those experiences were fueled by alcohol…leaving a party because I didn’t feel “wanted”, running home in the dark and having to cross a highway in the middle of the night because it was the only way to get back to my house, falling asleep in the middle of a public place and waking up realizing so many things could have happened to me but I was too drunk to think about that at the time. I justified my drinking because it didn’t impact my job, it didn’t impact my ability to workout and I could carry on a semi normal life that no one questioned. Behind the scenes, I counted the hours until I could drink, waiting until I could go home and be alone with my drinks because I wanted to feel anything but what I was feeling at that moment.
It all started more or less when I lived in Texas…if you know anything about Texas, there are drive through daquiri shacks all over the place…like a Starbucks for alcohol. The first time I realized I might have a problem (I didn’t really accept it, it was just a passing thought) was when the drive thru worker knew my order down to the extra shot of vodka I got every day on my way home from work. My personality revolved around alcohol…if I was home, out to eat, visiting family, hanging out with friends…I was drinking. Every event I attended revolved around alcohol and I began to equate the positives and negatives in my day to the number of drinks I was able to have, how out of my mind I could get and how much self-control or lack thereof I had. Drinking never led me to anything positive, but I absolutely believed that it did at the time. I had relation-shits centered around alcohol, friend-shits centered around alcohol and a life centered around alcohol. I surrounded myself with people who loved to drink as much as me, just another justification that drinking was okay and not a problem.
By 2022 I could quite literally count the number of days I had not had alcohol in a year on one hand (it was 0 btw). I had reached a point where I knew that I needed to do something to change my life. After years of self-destruction, it was time to change…and that brings us to the present.
Tomorrow starts the rest of my life, I am worth working on and I will continue to do what I need to create a better life, a life I deserve. Asking for help was absolutely terrifying, but I’m doing it and I’m starting intensive outpatient therapy tomorrow. Writing those words for someone to read terrifies me, but my goal is to just be real and to show that it’s okay to not be okay, it’s okay to need support and it is more than okay to take time to work on yourself (will I listen to my own words…probably not, but we are working on it).
