If I told you there’s a drink that makes your anxiety go away would you take it?
Just one glass, once a day, and BOOM.
The thoughts that rack your brain, keep you up at night, distract you from work, pull you out of conversations, make you bite your nails and hunch and be irritable all day just disappear.
Of course you’d drink it. Who wants to spend life anxious?
Smart people would pause and ask, “wait, what are the side effects?”
“Ah!” I would say, “the anxiety doesn’t ACTUALLY go away. It’s numb for a little while, and then it comes back even stronger.”
I wish someone told me this 15 years ago when I first started drinking.
Sounds like a raw deal now. Who’d take that drink?
My dumb ass. For 15 years I bought into the idea that if I drank, my anxiety would go away.
Drinking only made my anxiety worse, and my friends, partner, and loved ones saw it.
Until 8 weeks ago, I thought drinking was something I could manage. I’d taper off, stick to one or two, and be fine.
As I was soberly describing this to a very stern-faced friend last night, he corrected me:
“One drink to you is like ten drinks. Two is like fifteen. I would watch you change.”
If you want an honest opinion of yourself, ask your friends of ten years what they really think about you.
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On my worst nights, I’d use a few drinks to hash out those anxieties, insecurities, frustrations, and other irritants that bang around my head like a pinball machine.
And then a few more for good measure.
I’d turn at a certain point. Very close friends would see me lash out. The closer you were to me, the worse I’d be.
I wanted you to see the pain. I wouldn’t cut myself, or take a handful of pills, but I’d drink in front of you to communicate my hurt, daring you to stop me.
Eight weeks ago, I took it too far:
The person most hurt by my drunken behavior was the person closest to me: the man whom I love.
He experienced me at my worst: ragefully flailing at him in the back of an Uber, sobbing in the middle of the street, spitting out horrible words at him, vomiting past traumas and built-up irritations onto him.
No anxiety I’ve ever experienced is worse than the pain I was causing my partner.
Drinking finally showed me, nakedly, what it was. It was the amplifier, the anxiety megaphone. Fifteen years of drinking snuck up and overtook me, like a tourist in a seaside photo with a tsunami barreling down.
Everyone around me was already drowning.
_
But you say, where’s the fun part?
Drinking is supposed to be fun. It looks fun! Why can’t you just have F-U-N?
Of course drinking was fun. If it wasn’t fun, you wouldn’t do it. The trips, the clubs, the wine tastings. The goofy memories, the purloined glassware, the experiences that felt like bonding. But the returns were diminishing. Soon it would only be fun after the first, and then it became self-medication. There wasn’t any fun left. There’s wasn’t any real bonding. There was daily stress, leftover trauma, and then coping until it was time to drink again. Living five o’clock to five o’clock isn’t living, it isn’t even survival.
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Eight weeks ago I dumped out all the alcohol in the house and in my friend’s house I had the key to (for good measure, don’t worry, it was a couple shitty opened bottles of Captain Morgan I reimbursed for).
It was dramatic, and necessary. I knew if it was around me, and I was going through hurt, alcohol would be tempting, the salve to heal the wound.
The thought of drinking repelled me. I couldn’t finish it. It burned as it went down.
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As a family we rarely talked about feelings, we just expressed them. But after a few drinks everyone became softer, we laughed, had more kindness and empathy for each other. The pains of the past seemed to melt away. My dad would be happy with his few glasses of wine. My mom and I enjoyed our scotch nights, especially after my dad passed. When your most vulnerable moments with your parents are when you drink, you think that’s the only way you can be vulnerable with anyone.
That wasn’t always our experience. As a kid, I knew alcohol made my parents angry at each other. The resentments that build over a lifetime would come forth, unleashing hurt that would be patched up by the next day. As a very young child I saw this and told myself I wouldn’t drink. Sure there’d be the sip or two of wine, but I never felt anything, I just thought it was any other beverage with a funny taste. Until the end of the first year of college, I happily did that. But I felt alone. My friends drank, and I didn’t. “How bad could it be?” I thought, throwing back six shots of vodka in a Pom Wonderful coffee container and running outside in my underwear during a Finals Week tradition. I felt free. And after that, every time I drank enough, I would just run (clothed of course). I kept running. I’d disappear. I’d run from everything, from my problems, from my hurt, from dealing with parents who loved me but had a hard time showing it, from growing up too quickly, from having to be perfect, from loneliness.
The night I came out I was walking down Sunset Blvd out of the Comedy Store and I drunkenly typed a Facebook status to everyone saying I was bi. It was a complete mess and so was I. Anesthetizing myself was the only way I could get through admitting something everyone knew but still didn’t feel right.
After the loss of both of my parents, drinking became a way to communicate with the dead. I would drink and it would be okay to miss them. I would drink and feel closer to them. Later, I would drink and sense I’d be with them again soon.
If I kept drinking I would have been.
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Alcohol is still a coping mechanism, and if I can cope without it, what do I need it for? I’ve received enormous support from (most) of my friends (the ones who are still holding out I probably drank the most with, and they’re probably feeling left out). I’ve lost 40 pounds in 8 weeks. My skin’s back to normal. I don’t wake up with headaches, or backaches, or a lingering cough. I can hike up the hill with Rover without stopping. I wake up with sunrise and don’t miss turning up anymore. Therapy and prayer are the battle grounds where I hash out my traumas.
It feels best to show up for the people I love in my life. It’s like I’m meeting many of them for the first time, or at least the person who was underneath all the masks I put up.
All of life’s pains and joys, sufferings and elations, the things that make me human, all that I can build, the ways I can be of service, all of it is raw and real and I get to live it every day in this beautiful present.