OK, I’m going to be the Devil’s Advocate here… after reading everyone’s responses.
OK, I’m going to be the Devil’s Advocate here… after reading everyone’s responses. I drink. My main drink is red wine. It was always in our house growing up. Many times my dad came home from work and it was easy to see (even though I didn’t always know) that he may have had a few with business partners. He may have had a glass, or two, of wine at night, but unless relatives were over, he rarely drank to excess at home. He did not ALLOW us kids to drink the wine that was always there, but we took it. Mom rarely had a drink because she could not handle it. But, alcoholism was huge in many relatives, and in all of us kids — not always alcohol, but some form of drug. I played the game with myself that I’ll use pot to quit cigarettes, and I did quit cigarettes over 30 years ago. I rationalized that I couldn’t smoke pot like cigarettes because I could not do that in public, or at my desk at work (yes, there was a time you could smoke at your desk, and even in the lunch room of a hospital). I quit pot, too, for those of you wondering. I have asthma…go figure, huh?
I started drinking when I was 12. I never stopped, maybe a day or two, here and there. I do not like drunk, at all. But, there were many times I WAS drunk, sometimes on purpose, sometimes because I did not fully understand alcohol, or how it could affect me differently if I were tired, didn’t have enough to eat, etc. Also, in my teens and early 20s, I discovered speed. WOW, I could actually focus and understand ALGEBRA! (Now they call it Adderal..) Stopped that, too, because an OD on speed really sucks. So, the game with myself continued. See? Am I really an addict if I can stop the things I really don’t want? BTW — it didn’t matter if I was with friends, or alone, because I actually like being with myself. I can be quite entertaining, and during those speed years, I GOT A HELLUVA LOT DONE. I painted walls, refinished furniture, sewed clothes, gardened, worked out, danced, and really enjoyed being skinny — see this wasn’t just about algebra, because I was out of school by then. It was my form of an eating disorder that I didn’t understand. Had a baby, some belly fat, worked in a hospital prior where I knew which doctors would give me diet pills — free even, because their offices always had freebies from pharmaceutical companies, so how could I have a problem?…got them from a doctor vs my street speed.
I digress from the Devil’s Advocate part in the beginning of this rant. Because I can allow myself one or two glasses of wine at meals and not be high, and rationalize that I am in control. I am typically in control of it, but it is always there. I may stop for a day or two, rationalizing that I simply am choosing not to drink anything that day. Or I can rationalize that I can have just one. Or I can leave it alone and believe it’s because I’m making a choice. Yes, I am making a choice. AA would say you are always one drink away from a drunk. But, if you don’t like drunk — hmmm, is a buzz a drunk? Yes. I don’t know if I will ever stop completely because I really do like the taste of wine. I also like the taste of gin and scotch, too, the expensive ones. But, there were family members who DID quit drinking. My dad because it gave him headaches, same for a brother, another one because he just didn’t like alcohol much. One brother died from it, as did other relatives (other things were included in that..).
But, I do like the idea that today I don’t want to drink because I just don’t want to, not because I am denying myself, or punishing myself because I have been a bad girl from excesses in the past and I don’t deserve to enjoy it today. I can imagine that someday it will be like it was with cigarettes, spending way too much time thinking about them, and knowing I shouldn’t do it for health reasons. I am sure that I would lose ten pounds by quitting, and that is enticing — evidently I don’t have the same eating disorder I had in my young adult times. So, am I an addict, or just an abuser? Will I just switch to something else and work on a different organ because I think my liver and pancreas have carried enough of my choices? I don’t know. I am glad for the things I have given up, and I can’t see myself ever doing them again — though I did toy with the thought of Adderal because I DO believe I am ADHD, but I just use it to get things done. I have used brainwave entrainment, and other mind things to gain focus. I wear VOXX socks and insoles and have found I really DO have better focus because it really DOES increase brain power, among other things (www.voxxlife.com/mdenison). So, for someone who has been able to stop abusive things, and for someone who can rationalize doing harmful things to myself, I won’t beat myself up. My prayer to God is this, “Please protect me from myself today, and if you see that I am going too far down the wrong path, please stop me before I do serious damage to myself, because my eye is on the ‘candy’, and I am like a child.” Namaste.
Originally published at https://medium.com on July 17, 2019.
