When is it problematic enough to be a PROBLEM?
on my tricky relationship with alcohol and trying to find a balance
Last Sunday, I was up all night tossing and turning, over thinking every little detail that I could and couldn't remember from a recent boozy evening on a girls trip. Anxiety consumed me. I was burning up in bed, ruminating over what I had said.
Was I rude? Did I say something I shouldn't have? Did I piss my friend off? She seemed a bit off with me, or was I imagining it?
The last couple of years I have been largely sober or at least barely drinking (definitely not drunk!) and that is because I have wanted to avoid this exact feeling.
This feeling was not an old familiar friend. This feeling was the stuff of nightmares, and it kept me up at night just the same.
I was remembering how much I hate this feeling.
If you’ve read my account of my twenties, you’ll already have a little context to my previous drinking escapades. Spoiler: while some were fun, most ended in some sort of disaster.
Look, I have never handled my drink well. As a teenager, I was always the friend who was way too drunk at parties and needed to be carried home passed out. I spent the majority of my weekends as a young adult completely paralytic drunk, passed out in a field somewhere being dragged by the ankles by my fed-up friends (I don’t blame them, honestly). I started drinking around the age of fifteen, I guess that’s the age where you just start to explore alcohol and the feeling of getting drunk (or at least that’s when me and my friends did).
Well, let’s just say it escalated quickly. I didn’t know my limits but at the time, but I was forgiven for being a niave teenager. I liked to go to parties, I liked to drink, and I liked to have fun. Except, it often wasn’t fun by the end of the night - but I somehow still never saw that as an issue?
But, as the teenage years went on into my twenties; the parties continued and so did the drinking. Except for the time, when I was banned from a party at college and told it was because I’d be too much of a state. Let’s be honest, they were probably (definitely) right. I remember once my mum sitting me down one day and saying she was worried about my drinking, she reminded me that alcoholism runs in our family. At the time, I thought she was wildly over-reacting. I was just having fun; I told her she had nothing to worry about.
To this day, I still have complex feeling’s looking back at my drinking habits. Did I have a problem? I mean I definitely binge drank to excess but that is kind of the culture here in the England. No one really ever thought it was a PROBLEM. Over the last two years I’ve spent (mostly) sober, I’ve had time to reflect and there have been times when the topic has come up with friends.
“Maybe my drinking had been problematic now I think about it?”, I say over coffee. My friends respond saying that I didn’t have a PROBLEM though. I guess the next question is: what is deemed problematic enough to be a PROBLEM?
I could tell you endless stories of my problematic drinking…
✘ At fifteen, I got so drunk on a family holiday that I slapped my dad around the face when he tried to get me to go home. I mean, that is screaming off-the-rails, right? (there’s more layers to this story that I won’t get into but if I’m honest my family dynamic has never recovered from that night, even though it was 15 years ago… so I think you could say that’s pretty fucking problematic)
✘ On my sixteenth birthday party, I got so drunk that I didn’t notice the hoard of random party-crashers that came and trashed the house. I’m talking; phones in the fish tank, blinds and radiators ripped off, doors off their hinges and a shit tonne of stuff stolen (sorry, mum). All the while, I was a drunken mess and had left my own party to go sneak off and have sex with my boyfriend at the time. My mum refused to talk to me for a week after that party.
✘ There was the time I got too drunk at the pub on Christmas Eve and broke into the basement and I kid-you-not there was a HUGE pile of fancy dress - I’m talking everything from sombrero to chicken costume - just in the middle of an empty pub basement? (it still feels like a fever dream). Anyway, naturally I took the chicken costume and proceeded to walk out the door wearing it. As I left, a random guy on the street hit me in the face (I guess because I was dressed as a chicken?). I retaliated by slapping… the wrong guy… (are you seeing a pattern here?).
✘ There was one time where I had my drink spiked. I was probably too drunk in the first place to notice and ended up being carried home by friends. I think I was party naked by the end of the night, much to my friend’s dismay.
✘ I’ve ended up being found passed out in multiple hallways, just… not… quite… making it through the door. Either I’d lost my keys, phone or I was so drunk I just couldn’t quite work out the lock.
✘ There was a time I only recently remembered after looking through my diaries at Christmas. I must have been eighteen at the time at a music festival. I had got myself into a drunken state, and I went back to a tent with two random men to get booze. My memory is really hazy, I was completely out of it but I remember one of the men zipping up the tent saying “I’ll have sex with her first, then you”. Next thing I know I’m running from the tent. I still to this day, don’t fully recall what happened in that tent. I remember something hazy about the zipper to my shorts. And I remember running away in the darkness so drunk all I could see was lights in the distance.
Another instance, I brushed off with the same ‘Oh well’ energy.
For years I thought I just didn’t know when to stop. Isn’t that normal for someone in their teenagehood or twenties? Is any of the stuff I’ve told you normal? I still don’t honestly know myself. I couldn’t give you a clear answer there.
It didn’t start to dawn on me until late into my twenties. 28 to be exact. After a string of embarrassing drunken nights where I got way too out of control. My then boyfriend threatened to leave if it continued, and I finally considered maybe my drinking was a little bit problematic?
Even now, I’m still not sure I had a PROBLEM. Instead, it felt like multiple little drunken problems. Either way, the anxiety of the black outs and the hangovers were starting to really get to me. One morning I woke up, hanging, and said to my then boyfriend:
“I’m going to stop drinking.”
And I did for months, stone cold sober. I loved it. My anxiety went, I was no longer second guessing what I over-shared. I was in complete control of myself. I was a better partner, a better friend and an all together more reliable person.
After a while I wanted to see if I could start drinking here and there for special occasions. For the past six months or so I managed really well. I remembered all my nights, I didn’t have more than two Aperols. I wasn’t hungover. Even at New years this year, I drank but I also brought a bottle of non-alcoholic Prosecco to swap out for the normal Prosecco (I figured this was an ingenious way of having a low alcohol Aperol Spritz so you can feel like a part of it - but not getting drunk past tipsy).
Tipsy is my safe zone. I never want to get past tipsy.
Well, then the girls trip two weeks ago happened. I was definitely more than tipsy. I was drunk. Really drunk. I don’t actually remember parts of the evening. I can’t remember what I said. I’m sure it wasn’t good.
Hello darkness my old friend and all that. So here I am in bed trying to fill in the blanks on what happened. A horrible feeling.
I can feel it slowly creeping back into my life, inch by inch.
Who knows if I really do have a PROBLEM or not? But what I do know is that the anxiety I get from being too drunk is not worth it. Even though I spent years happily living in that space, the feeling of being out of control is a really scary one for me now.
It’s time for me to take another hiatus from drinking. Who knows how long it will be for this time? Maybe one day it will be forever. I’m just not sure whether I’m ready to commit to that yet.
I know I have a few readers who are sober or are exploring sobriety and I’d love to hear if you ever actually felt like you had a PROBLEM? (whatever that even is)
The topic of drinking has a lot of nuance, especially in England where binge drinking culture is RIFE. And I still don’t really know where I stand with my drinking.
I guess it doesn’t need to be labelled.
Or maybe I’m just delulu.
x
For me, when I got to the point of wondering if I had a problem, it meant I had a problem. Everyone who struggles with drinking has different symptoms. I started blacking out after two drinks and that scared me, but I still didn't stop. I also have alcoholism in my family. I didn't really think I had a justifiable problem until I lived with a roommate who was sober. She helped me to realize that each person has their own line and it takes crossing that line to motivate them to get sober. I hope this makes sense. And I am not judging you at all!
I feel this so much. I was sober for a few months and now I'm really working on trying to be less strict with myself and more go with the flow. It's something I struggle with and is where my anxiety comes out (making lists, being super strict with myself, etc.).
I think part of life is trying to navigate these aspects and learning to understand what just feels right. And that is such a hard thing. Proud of you for posting about it!