ALCOHOL ADDICTION
Why Did I Drink Alcohol?
A trip down memory lane
I have been wondering about this question for a long time now. I looked at different reasons available online for which people drink. To relax? Yes, maybe. To socialize, to have fun, to grieve? Maybe. I have read quite a few quit lits, and even before all these revelations in the past couple of years, I knew alcohol was rubbish for my health.
So, I dug a little deeper and went back to when I had my first drink. I was 15, and it was the wedding of a close friend’s elder sister. We were kind of like a gang back then, you know, it being early 2000 and everything. So, a bunch of us decided that we need to indulge in this grown-up behavior to enjoy the wedding more.
We got a bottle of gin, I forgot how exactly, as none of us were of legal age. I still remember that taste as the liquor burned my mouth and went through my food pipe, leaving a mark all the way down. It was disgusting, and I’ve never had gin since. I guess it’s safe to assume that taste was never a reason for my indulgence in alcohol.
Fast Forward 4 Years
I was in college by now and it was an entirely different world. I stayed in a hostel, that’s the US equivalent of a dorm. It was living away from the strictness and discipline of living with my parents and I started to enjoy that freedom. It was a warm summer Saturday when my friend suggested we should have a beer for surviving the first year of our college, and so we did. I still didn’t like the taste, but my friend insisted it will grow on me, and grow it did.
I had a few nights of drinking that year, dabbling in all sorts of alcohol, except my alcoholic nemesis Gin.
But the real drinking started when I got into an engineering college and I could finally see myself fulfilling my parent’s dream of seeing me do something worthwhile. However, I had other plans and by then I realized two things. One: I despised engineering and would rather do anything but that. Two: alcohol can make you forget your immediate problems and drown you in viscous dreams of grandeur and provide you the safety of a fake life.
And I drank…
Not everything was doom and gloom though, amidst my escape from life, I found a new love; the love for writing. I started a blog and started writing there, anything from political opinions to ghost stories. So, that became my life and I became the life of the parties. I wrote, I pretended I was an engineering student and I numbed everything with a drink in my hand. That was how I lost my OFF switch when it comes to drinking.
Life happened since, and I found myself in the middle of a pandemic that damaged everyone on earth in some way or the other. However, I now look at it differently, hindsight people. I now see it as a blessing that let me see things from a different perspective.
The Pandemic Drinking
I started off the pandemic with a light heart. What’s the worst that could happen, I have my writing, I was lucky enough financially to ride the wave; so, I would survive, right? Wrong. I started to drown the anxiety, depression, and everything else that the dreaded disease brought along by drinking myself to oblivion.
But drinking and smoking in excess was taking a toll on my well-being. My mental health was dwindling down a bottomless pit and I knew that something needed to change. When I first started on this journey of sobriety, I just wanted to take a break from alcohol until things were normal again. You see, I never considered my drinking to be a problem.
One thing led to another, and after several failed attempts and false starts, here I am. I am 10 weeks sober while writing this article, and I now know that I don’t want to go back.
On Retrospect
I always thought I am just like any other guy my age. I work, I live a normal life, and I drink, albeit a little more than others. Come on, I can handle more than them, and how is that not something to be proud of?
But now I know. I never drank just for the sake of it, I never drank to just sip on a drink and look sophisticated. I drank to get drunk, and I never did anything less than that. So, yes, I was addicted to that stuff. It was only luck that my AUD didn’t get on the severe side of the spectrum and I had never had any major withdrawal symptoms apart from the hangovers.
Moving Forward
I have so much more to unravel about myself that I feel like there’s a memoir waiting to be written. Lol, who doesn’t? I am healing, and with healing comes a lot of insight; the good, the bad, and the downright ugly. Writing has always been my healthier escape when things got rough, so I will try to do more of that.
If you have been with my story until now, then thanks a lot for reading. I do hope it helps you on your journey.
