Should You Quit Drinking?

On leaps of faith and starting before you're ready.

Photo by Eugene Chystiakov on Unsplash

I laugh now the way I used to as a kid: thorough, genuine, deep, and light as a feather gliding on air. I experience wonder the way wonder is programmed into us as little tiny baby newly emerging creatures on this earth. I’m touched, awed, and moved to delight by the smallest of things. I remember so clearly when I first got sober - like maybe about one month in - laughing in the most natural, soft-hearted, honest way out of the blue at some silly random thing. And being absolutely astounded at just how fucking unbelievably good it felt. It was just a laugh, but it was also heaven.

One of the particularly sad things about addiction (that took a rather abruptly dark turn, eh?) is that it creates this false idea in our minds that the object of our addiction - booze, drugs, money, sex, gambling, fame, etc. - will actually somehow, miraculously, suddenly, finally, bring us the joy, peace, happiness, and safety it can only rob us of in the end. Addiction dupes us into believing that the thing that is killing us is also the thing that is saving us. There is something so fundamentally heart-breaking about that to me. Because even though alcohol is abusing us and causing us so much pain, we still come back to it. But not only that - we aren’t even reluctant to return to the shit show. We blame ourselves for not being able to “handle it” and forgive the booze for the hurt it caused - just like that.

At least, it was that way for me. I would drink to excess on a Friday night (you know, to ‘celebrate’ the end of the week, as one does, amongst all the others who do) and it all felt numb and dizzying and then who knows what happened. Not me, because I was blacked out on the couch at some point, oftentimes with my head wilted at such a distortedly odd angle that when I awoke at 3am to discover my pathetic situation, my neck would be screaming and on fire in retaliatory pain.

Saturday morning would arrive and I would feel like total trash. Water. Aspirin. The only problem was that those two things also made me feel sick. So: Coca-Cola. Pretzels or chips or something savory. Coffee tasted like sickness. Eggs, toast, fruit: sick, sick, sick. I’d get tears in my eyes because the headache was unbearable. And it hurt to cry. But I was so low. I hated myself for feeling that way. I hated myself so much. I hated myself for having done it again. AGAIN. Goddamn it. I did it again on a Friday night when I always swore I wouldn’t.

The shame was a hot burning sensation that ran all the way from the swollen, accusatory lump in my throat, down past my racing heart, achy lungs, and anxious chest, into my very, very upset stomach, and then through my shaky veins. I was just so mad and sad and hate-shame-filled that everything was depressing. The light coming in through the windows as the sun glared through at whatever stupid time it was. Noon? Later? Did I waste the whole fucking day? Again? A g a i n.

This was, of course, tragic enough a situation to behold let alone live through in the exact same way countless times over and over (and over and over) in the name of “just having a good time.” But what compounded the awful reality of the pain was the fact that no matter how many Friday nights I overdid it, or Saturday mornings I woke up to soul-shreddingly regret it, there I would be on Saturday evening starting all over the fuck again. A G A I N. After all the tears and raging sadness, after “nursing” myself back to life with soda and pizza and french fries and Netflix and drawn curtains and drawstring sweatpants and Gatorade and whatever else, I would decide around 6pm that maybe what would really help The Very Most Amount would be some wine.

Wine from the literal same bottle I drank from the night before. Usually, and I cannot explain this so please don’t ask, there would be one bottle left with the most minimal amount of wine left inside that is possible without it being entirely gone. Like a few centimeters high in the bottom of a magnum size bottle. It was as though, even in my drunken state, I tried to moderate at the end? The whole bottle and the wine glass from which I drank would both be smeared with foggy fingerprints and have shallow swirls of yellowy liquid grossness still floating there in the bottom.

Like it was waiting for me to come back. Like it was daring me to toss it down the drain or swallow it in one big gulp the next morning. Just to have it be gone. Just so I wouldn’t forget. Thinking back on that now, I cannot help but wonder: did I subconsciously leave those skant, embarrassingly small splashes of white wine to prove I could end my drinking sessions at some point, or to inevitably invite myself into the next go-around when I eyed them strangely the next morning (afternoon-morning).

I mean, who leaves a little bit? Someone who thinks someone will come along and want it, I guess. And I always did. The end of one drinking cycle, no matter how horrific or scary or painful, was always also the beginning of the next.

When it got to the point that knew I couldn’t carry on as I was because the consequences were becoming more and more dire, I still couldn’t fathom giving up drinking for good. How would I have fun then (fun!)? How would I unwind? How would I “enjoy” my life to the fullest? Without the one thing that promised all the joy or comfort in any given situation, be it celebratory or grief-laden? What would I do without being able to guzzle the miraculous poison that helped me feel good (read: numb-detached)?

I could not imagine a life without alcohol. Even if life with alcohol was a whole fuck lot of demoralizing, disengaged destruction. So I made little rules. Clever girl. Water in between glasses of wine. Light beer after two glasses of wine (umm ew?). Smoke pot instead of drinking more. Just have one glass a night during the week. Try to have none, really, but one is okay if you must. Or two. Two was okay. Don’t start drinking til later in the evening. Like if you usually start at 5pm wait until 7pm and that way you won’t have as much because you can’t because: timing. It’s all about the timing! One drink an hour. NO more. For REAL. Add ice to the wine so it’s more watered down. That way, you trick yourself into having the water because it’s all slopped together with the wine.

The wine. The wine. The wine. Everything was together with the wine. The wine was a must. I was like a walking, breathing, skinny-jeaned version of those absurdly idiotic cocktail napkins which proclaim in terrifyingly whimsical font: “Shut up, liver, you’re fine!” The wine was a non-negotiable. The way to slow down my intake of wine was to make sure wine still paired with everything. Even not drinking it. As much.

You can see the problem here, right? I mean, I couldn’t then. But now that I’m 417 days sober, I can see how sad and tricky the whole addiction conundrum really was. It’s a wonder I, or any of us, break out of it and get free. Because what is actually happening is that half of you knows the booze is extremely dangerous. Half of you knows you should stop. A quiet but relentlessly insistent voice inside of you knows you are sick and confused and trapped, and it keeps telling you. But the other half of you, though, the other 50% of your thought process is entirely committed to, and actively engaged in, developing increasingly more elaborate (however obviously unlikely, I mean ice cubes in wine? gtfo) plans to not give up the offending substance at all, ever. No matter what the other responsible parts of you think about any of it.

Meanwhile, inbetween the madness on either side of your very tired mind, the sliver of you that lives in the panicked middle of the two hemispheres, the slim part of you that’s walking the tightrope-meridian-line down the shaky narrow center, is trying desperately to find some peace by agreeing with both sides. Trying to agree with the reasonable side that the wine has to go, and also at the same time trying to appease the addicted side by assuring it that the wine can stay. This is untenable, of course. And makes for a very loud, chaotic, and vexing experience of one’s inner world. Luckily, wine quiets the noise. Until it doesn’t.

The fact of the matter is that I was never going to be able to quit alcohol while I was still drinking it. And even saying it that way now, I don’t know if someone who has never been addicted to something could understand that sentence the way I understand it: clear and plain as day. What I mean to say (to you, perhaps, if you are still actively engaged in drinking but wish you were not) is that I was never going to be able to reason with my addiction such that it would ever agree that it had to end. All of me was never going to reach a logical conclusion where I would have said to all of myself (and have all of myself agree): “You know what, this is illogical, ridiculous, and excruciatingly painful, and I most certainly do not appreciate drinking anymore. Thusly, I shall stop here and now. Because I am an intelligent human and stopping cold makes the most sense.”

Nope. No. Not in a million years was that ever going to happen like that. And if you are still drinking, I would bet the New Moon in Pisces that it isn’t going to happen like that for you either. I was not able to think that clearly about any of it. I was not entirely ready to quit when I quit. I was not prepared for what quitting would actually entail when I quit. Because I couldn’t have been. I had to commit to getting and staying sober first. It was a true leap of faith. A leap of faith that, one: I could do it, and two: that more would be revealed about why quitting was such a solid idea in the first place. Even though half of me raged against it.

It is very possible that you, like me, will have to quit drinking before you can quit drinking for good. You need time without any alcohol to understand what that time without alcohol means to you. You know that annoying self-helpy-motivational saying: “Start before you’re ready”? In the case of quitting alcohol, Stop before you’re ready.

I had to take a leap of faith that what I had been learning through my research and readings about what causes us to become addicted to alcohol, and what the chemical reactions in my body were causing my brain to believe about alcohol, was all true. I had to trust that my own brain had been hijacked by addiction and I could not be safe with myself unless I stopped drinking completely. My subconscious was so convinced I needed alcohol to survive, to be happy, to sleep, to celebrate, to mourn, to relieve boredom, and on and on, that everywhere my mind went (good, bad, or indifferent) it believed wine should be there, too.

When I talk with people these days about sobriety, it is hard to explain “how” I did it. The first day, the first few days, weeks, are just faith and hope and pushing through the cravings to get to the other side. It’s such a strange thing when you think about it objectively, from a place of recovery. Now that I am stopped for good since January 2022, I can see now what I couldn’t see then. That you have to free yourself from the physical intake of alcohol first before you can ever entirely appreciate what you were up against. Alcohol is a highly addictive substance that woos you into its clutches in a million different ways. It is encouraged and glamorized by our non-stop, booze-obsessed culture. Over time, it bleeds into every aspect of your life and threads itself through the emotional fabric of how you experience life in general. Wherever you go, it’s there. In your hand, in your mouth, in your bloodstream. Ane even when it’s not in any of those places, it’s in your head.

But if you can manage to get a day, two days, a week, of sobriety going, the mind begins to heal and wake up to the truth. It can see that you do not need to drink to get through a day. In fact, days and evenings and nights, you can do them entirely free of alcohol. And not die. And not freak all the way irreversibly the fuck out. And the mornings hangover free? Man, those are perfect heaven. And those are worth chasing. Those are worth committing to one day at a time, one minute at a time if you have to. Once you get a taste of what true bliss is, there can be no substitute. And even though it is very hard to quit, now you know exactly what you were missing and it is better than you even fathomed. Those mornings when you wake from proper, sound, elegant sleep, and the fresh coffee tastes so damn fine, and the sun light sifting through the window is softening your mood (instead of slicing into your pounding head)? They are every beautiful, peaceful, joyous thing alcohol used to promise you, but only sobriety could finally deliver.

And when you get a few months into your sobriety, you may even find that you can laugh at some of the absurdity of it all. Laugh right out loud. And feel how that laugh unexpectedly melts your whole entire heart because it’s real, and it’s yours, and you had to fight tooth and nail to get to it. But here you are. Ready or not. Here you are laughing in the face of what tried to kill you but made you softer, freer, and stronger instead.