I don’t remember exactly how it came up. Jimmy and I were on the way to the boat to go fishing. I think I was being judgmental about someone’s drinking. “Yeah, he really knocks them back.” Or some comment like that.
I paused and felt the thing inside me that had wanted to get out for years. I didn’t over think it or even think about it at all. I just let it go.
“I self-medicated with alcohol for 30 years.”
There it was. The first time in my life I had ever uttered those words. And I lived through it. I did more than live through it, actually. I felt free. I literally felt something inside me break loose and leave my body and soul. I felt it rise up, up, up and out of me. Where it went I don’t know. Into the air or the universe or nothingness.
In its place was an unburdening, a feeling of lightness. I had finally spoken the truth to Jimmy and to myself. It was liberating, after so many years of trying to deflect and deny what was happening with me.
I had an intimate relationship with Chardonnay for decades. What began as drinking in college quickly turned into two glasses of wine after work and more than that on social occasions. At times it turned into outright stupid behavior.
In my thirties I barely thought about it. Everyone else was doing it too. That was my justification. Besides, I was successful--moving forward in a career that was growing. It wasn’t a “problem.”
In my forties, it became a balm for crushing anxiety. I looked forward to it, reached for it, and knew just how much to drink to avoid a headache and get the work of three people done the next morning.
Eventually, I felt self-loathing, usually in the shower when I had not managed to stave off the headache. I swore I’d stop, and I would for two days. Then I needed relief from the anxiety that crawled ceaselessly through my veins.
The panic attacks in my late forties and early fifties were a blessing in disguise, as I look back, because they ultimately got me to stop. After the first panic attack (which I will write about in this blog), I went to my doctor, and he prescribed Ativan. I also started my first round of therapy. I learned immediately that Chardonnay and Ativan don’t mix, at least for me. The feeling changed from calmness to something dangerously out of control. I began to back off on wine, knowing that drinking made the panic attacks worse. But Ativan became more and more important to me.
In 2015, my doctor told me he felt I was becoming dependent on Ativan. He prescribed a mild dose of Zoloft. I’ll write about that day, too. It turned out to be life changing.
It completely removed my desire to drink.
I think it did so because finally something was helping me with the anxiety that was running unchecked in my life.
It was then that I realized how long and elaborately I had self-medicated. I used wine to ease work anxiety, social anxiety, any anxiety that I couldn’t turn into something constructive. It was easy because wine was lovely and so socially acceptable. I was in good company. It was easy to hide.
It wasn’t until I said it out loud that day that I truly acknowledged the role that alcohol played in my life. Which makes sense. After all, isn’t that first acknowledgement what AA is all about?
I remember being at an after-work gathering with some co-workers and our manager a couple of years ago. When the server came around to take our drink order, I ordered a seltzer with lime. I was the only one who didn’t order alcohol. The manager looked at me and said, “What? Are you an alcoholic or something?”
So what if I am?
Hi. I’m Cheryl and I’m an alcoholic.
I don’t honestly know if I’m an alcoholic. Maybe I was a high-functioning alcoholic, if there is such a thing. All I know is that speaking the straight up truth about it helped me to move forward and solidified my resolve to not go back.
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