subscribe to the RSS Feed

Friday, March 29, 2024

Magical Drinking

Posted by fxckfeelings on June 6, 2013

When it comes to drinking, or really any addiction, it’s hard to stop without a “good reason,” especially if you think there’s a better reason not to quit. Then there’s the expectation that, if you really need to stop, the good reason fairy will visit you in the middle of the night to let you know (usually while you’re sleeping in a stranger’s bed, in a dark alley, or a puddle of puke). In reality, it’s up to the drinker to decide if s/he has to stop, and rational thinking about drinking doesn’t require a degree in addictionology. All you need is discipline to gather facts, courage to look at them, and determination to use good reasoning to do what you think is best for yourself.
Dr. Lastname

I’ve lived alone since my daughter left for college (my wife died years before) and I wonder if I’m drinking too much. I’m good enough at my job, but the head of our office doesn’t respect me and I wonder if I’ll have to move on. I’ve always had a tendency to get depressed and I see a therapist, but my antidepressant medication doesn’t seem to be working. I don’t sleep well. I’m not sure drinking is doing any harm and it certainly eases the pain, but I do get completely drunk every night, and it’s become the highlight of my day. I’ve got no friends currently, but I’ve never been a sociable guy so it doesn’t interfere with my social life, and since I’m alone, I get no complaints from friends or family. No harm done. I’m healthy and my hangover isn’t bad, so I wonder whether my drinking is worth worrying about, or whether I should just focus on getting help for my depression.

To paraphrase the old koan, if a person falls into excessive drinking without anyone around to become concerned, does it make that person a drunk? Nobody can ask the tree if it thinks it made a sound, but since you’re a person, you’re not just able, but the only one qualified, to answer the question.

You might be persuaded that you’re drinking too much if a therapist suggested you were using it to escape painful feelings, or if a spouse complained, but then later on you might decide that there’s nothing wrong with escaping when life sucks and your spouse has no right to complain because her nagging drives you to it. Outside opinion is as easy to ignore as the sound of one hand clapping.

So instead of inviting friends or therapists to express their feelings about your drinking, set your own specific criteria for judging how much is too much and then gather facts.

Obviously, drinking is bad if it causes medical illness such as liver disease or withdrawal symptoms. It’s also dangerous if you can’t stop yourself from driving, having unprotected sex, or ripping up important relationships while under the influence (not necessarily in combination). If you’re too drunk in the evening to take proper care of your kids or too hung over in the morning to meet your own standards for doing a good job at work, that’s also bad news. Please note, however, that these indicators rely mainly on observing facts, not analyzing feelings or sharing opinions.

Assuming that your physical exam is OK, however, it appears that you don’t yet have sufficient facts to meet your criteria or answer your question, one way or the other, which means you need to perform a simple experiment: you can answer these questions definitively by stopping drinking for a few months and observing these specific variables closely.

At the present time, it’s arguable whether drinking is impairing your work, preventing you from developing a healthier social life, interfering with your sleep, aggravating your depression (it’s a fact that alcohol is a depressant) and making it hard for your antidepressant to work. The only way to tell if that’s true is by removing drinking from the equation. Then note whether quitting is difficult or causes withdrawal symptoms, and if there’s any improvement in the quality of your work, energy, sleep, health, and/or relationships. Track your mood and see if it becomes more responsive to your current or a new antidepressant. If you do all that, you’ll find your answer.

Yes, you may well find yourself getting distracted from your experiment by your desire to relax, drink, and just not think about consequences. If those avoidant impulses prevent you from taking proper care of yourself, then that gives you your answer, also. Drinking by itself may not be making you sick, but if it’s part of a general pattern of not taking care of yourself and not dealing with issues that you consider important, then you’re in trouble.

Do the experiment of seeing whether you can do an experiment, and force yourself to respect the results. Being a person and not a tree, you have another advantage; not only can you hear yourself fall, but you can pick yourself up.

STATEMENT:
“I feel like life is going by without too much pain, like a canoe drifting on a calm current, but there are warning signs telling me to evaluate whether there’s a waterfall ahead. I will not ruminate on opinions and emotions until after I’ve gathered the facts needed to tell whether I’m on course or in trouble.”

My wife thinks my drinking is getting a little out of control, and the secret is that I’m drinking more than she knows and it’s way out of control, but I don’t see how I can stop given that I work in sales, and making sales requires me to hang out with buyers after hours at bars. I’m naturally shy, so drinking doesn’t just help me bond, it also loosens me up and lets me turn on a charm that is otherwise pretty non-existent. Believe me, without drinking I wouldn’t be able to sell a thing. At the same time, it gives me a regular hangover and I can’t always find a designated driver when I’m legally over the limit, so I’m at risk of getting an DUI. I don’t want to drink, but I don’t know how I’d feed my family without this job or something like it, and I can’t do it without alcohol.

It makes sense that you’re afraid of what sobriety-induced anxiety will do to ruin your sales-mojo and now you can’t let go of the tiger’s tail. On the other hand, fear is both a constant companion for most salespeople and a notorious liar, so you’re bombarding yourself with a load of pure bullshit. It drives you to work hard, day after day, but it’s also a dangerous companion that can kill you. Your job is to use it while learning to protect yourself from its lies.

Yes, alcohol loosens you up and makes you gregarious, but fear of not being buzzed is what paralyzes you, and you have no business doing that to yourself. You could manage your anxiety with behavioral methods and medications that are much safer than alcohol, which always winds up causing more anxiety than it relieves. That’s the nature of anxiety, however; it causes distorted fears that lock you into behavior you’re afraid of. Snap yourself out of it now before an alcoholic meltdown or motor vehicle accident does it for you.

Don’t treat yourself as if you’re a helpless idiot, because you’re not; you’ve got skills at sales and lots of experience, and can learn to manage anxiety. Even if your performance suffers, you have a responsibility to yourself and your family to put values ahead of bucks and do what you think is right, even if there are risks attached. Other people have faced similar fears and learned to master them, and you may find such people in a good 12 step group (like an AA meeting). Nothing makes them feel better than to help you by sharing their experience.

So don’t think of recovery in terms of stopping alcohol and losing sales. Instead, start to learn new methods for managing fear and anxiety; that’s often the key tool for both sobriety and success in general.

STATEMENT:
“I feel like I’m walking a tightrope and stopping drinking will make me fall off, but I know I’ve got solid gifts and healthy options and I won’t let fear-driven distortions prevent me from finding a better balance between making a living and managing my health and out-of-control behavior.”

Comments are closed.

home | top

Site Meter