al·co·hol·ism - noun
an addiction to the consumption of alcoholic liquor or the mental illness and compulsive behavior resulting from alcohol dependency.
I won't go so far as to say I was or am an alcoholic. I am able to go long stretches of time without having a drink. But, I do know myself, actually, and now is not the time for me to consume any of the stuff: beer, wine, bourbon, or Manhattans (oh my manhattans).
When I left my home for the last time in early January 2021 I did not have any alcohol except for when I was with other people: dinners, over cigars, etc. That changed in June when I moved into my apartment...my first apartment to have on my own ever (at 36 years old no less).
And whoa.
I knew what it was like to be alone, actually enjoyed it and still do for the most part. But this was a different type of alone...this was lonely, something I don't think I ever experienced before.
Before all of this, before being asked to leave, before the weirdness we all experienced in 2020, before the cracks that began to appear in our marriage in 2018 and 2019, before all of that, I drank alcohol because I enjoyed it, because I liked the taste. I wasn't going after a feeling, I wasn't drinking to relax per se, it was just something different than water and coffee and seemed like a nice break in the day at dinner and in the evenings. And on the beach. And after cutting the grass. And so on and so forth.
But that started to change. Incrementally, not all at once, but slowly in 2018 or so I would drink to alter my physical and mental state. Whether to relax or to forget or to just numb. I was no longer drinking for the enjoyment of the different flavors, but had started to drink in order to let the alcohol do its job.
People jokingly refer to this as "self-medicating" and I went along with that line for a while, but looking back I see what a slippery slope that can become.
I will say that I never lost control, never felt as though I was a danger to myself or anyone around me, but the alcohol became something that I looked forward to, a reason to get to a certain part of the day.
Get to the point.
The point is that the danger of this (for me) became very apparent once I moved into this apartment. Again, never getting to a place of being a harm (physically) to myself or others, but the use of alcohol was not right. I was not drinking it for the right reason or reasons. It was more self-medicating. A numbing agent. A way to avoid, to forget, to see differently (detached from reality), to "relax". Sometimes this would start in the afternoon, others late in the evening to the early morning. Nothing about that is good.
And so I'm cutting it out completely. My personality is all or nothing, and in this present darkness I find myself in I need to begin living a non-alcohol lifestyle. My last drink (a phenomenal bottle of cabernet) was consumed on October 7th, 2022. My goal, established with my 9-year-old so it carries some more weight, is to not have any alcohol from then until the end of 2023. And maybe I'll just continue from that point. But for right now, for the personal goals I have and the personal work I need to do, alcohol is not something that will help me accomplish anything. It does not benefit me in anyway to keep it, and so I'm dropping it.
...this is not going to be easy though but I'll write about those instances later.
For now though, time for a clear day ahead!