I would like
to say that I’m one of those people who is not easily affected by things. I
would love to tell you that I don’t let little things bother me, that I don’t
allow my chronic racing thoughts to consume me, that I use my incessant anxiety
as a workout tool that is alleviated at my daily gym visits. I would like to
tell you that I’m not all that sensitive, that when people look through me or
greet me with snarky comments, it doesn’t chip away at my self-esteem. I would
like to tell you that I only drink occasionally, to be social. That I don’t use
alcohol as a crutch on the rare occasion that I just can’t deal with myself,
that I could easily get through an extremely stressful day without a glass of
triple distilled Irish whiskey.
I would love
to tell you all those things, friends. But they would be lies. And I ain’t
about that life.
I’ve often
heard people talk about self-medicating and to be honest, I used to come down
really hard on all of them. When I was younger, I never really was much of a
drinker and I couldn’t really understand how people continually used drugs and
alcohol as a coping mechanism. Around the time I was 19-20, I would get a
little judgmental towards my peers because I had plenty of stress to share with everybody but I didn’t touch the
bottle. Back then I used crying and working out as coping mechanisms.
To be honest,
I have an extremely addictive personality and that’s why I’ve never really
engaged in vices. Besides the fact that smoking is absolutely disgusting (sorry
to those of you that smoke but I have to be honest), I’ve chosen to never even
try a cigarette because I know my personality.
I can’t have
just one of anything. I don’t necessarily drink to get drunk (because I don’t
like the feeling that I’ve lost control) but I definitely don’t plan on just
“having one drink”. I’m just not one of those people. I drink until I’m satisfied,
whether it’s a wedding or some other social outing, a date with my husband, or
if I’m sitting alone watching The Girls
Next Door. I’ve just always had an all or nothing personality and to be
honest, that’s why I never did drugs. I mean, sure, I knew drugs would be a
terrible life choice but some individuals have that capability to control
themselves. (Think: Jordan Belfort. These people don’t get addicted; they just
wear Armani suits and have illicit fun.) I definitely do not have that ability
and maybe it’s a strength that I’m able to realize that. I get obsessed with things (and people) and we
all know how dangerous vices can be. I don’t even buy Oreos (my favorite sweet
food item) because although I would try to maintain my composure and only have
one or two, I would end up demolishing most of the package. And that’s not good
for anyone, especially my waistline.
But as I got
older and started to realize that maybe I was using alcohol as a crutch, I
started to ease up a little bit on those who allegedly self-medicate. And I
have to clarify because when I say “crutch”, I don’t mean that I wake up in the
morning with the shakes. I’m not going through withdrawals or having issues
completing my ADL’s. I don’t get completely inebriated and jump off cruise ships
or anything. I just mean that for me, someone who is extremely anxious all of the time, for whatever goddamn
reason, alcohol is used as sort of a mood stabilizer.
I’m just
realizing now that that statement may not make me sound very stable. I swear I am,
though. Mostly.
To be fair,
since I’ve started this new job, I can barely have more than one drink a night
because I get up so early in the morning. Being refreshed and well-rested for
work is more important to me than having a sweet buzz the night before. I now
have one of those occupations where I have to think on my feet so being
clear-headed is a priority. And maybe this is what separates me from your
proverbial addict. But at the same time, and in the defense of those who do
feel the need to self-medicate, it is very comfortable and relaxing for me to
come home from work every night and soothe my weary brain with a fresh Jameson
and water. Or a martini. That first one always goes down so easily.
It does seem, the more we drink, the
better the words go. –Charles Bukowski
But honestly,
I see this kind of coping skill, this tendency to self-medicate all over the
place. It’s on the television shows we watch (think: Don Draper, Tommy Gavin
and Sterling Archer), the social networks we peruse, and for me personally, the
field in which I’m employed. People have a tendency to mask their pain with
drugs and alcohol. Sometimes it seems that it’s just easier to suppress the
things we’re feeling, to fill the voids we’re enduring with something savory
and numbing. Wouldn’t you feel better in a dark bar getting gradually drunk on
white wine and making friendly conversation with the heavy pouring bartender
rather than lounging at home and facing your own feelings? When you have
someone to indulge you, someone there waiting with a smile to fill your glass,
why bother confronting the pain you’ve been carrying around with you? It’s just
so much easier to let it trail you like a dreary black dog, right? We see it
every day, don’t we?
I go back and
forth between thinking that it’s a weakness brought on by the coddled world we
live in and that maybe, in some cases, it can be viewed as a strength.
Sometimes I think that we’re all so pampered and overprotected from real life
that we don’t fully grasp how to properly comfort ourselves. Sometimes I think
that the alleged stress brought on by things like insatiable social media
networks and trashy gossip magazines has rendered us so tenderhearted that we
know no other way to handle stressful situations. Things like a changed profile
picture leave us so rabidly distraught that the only thing we can think to do
is drown our thoughts in alcohol. We go crazy when we work hard to perfect our
bodies and no one has the decency to just double tap. Instead of identifying
what we’re going through, instead of processing the different levels of
emotion, we’re putting people on blast for their blatant rudeness. How dare
they not give me a courtesy like?
It seems a
little ridiculous. It makes me want to lock myself in my office and listen to
Frank Sinatra until I forget what century I’m in. (And on that note, I just
have to say, I think the worst thing probably ever invented was the IPhone read
receipt. The most infuriating thing in the world to me is when someone reads my
text message, as evidenced by their goddamn phone’s technology, and they don’t
respond. You want to send me into a frenzy? Just go ahead and pull that shit
ONCE.)
But then other
times, when I feel like having a little faith in humanity, I think that maybe
turning to a stiff drink shows some valiance, some restraint. It’s sort of like
these particular individuals handle their stress, their hypothetical chronic
heartbreak by pushing it down. They are the Strong Silent type, the type of
swarthy, visibly troubled gentleman who has just a shadow of warmth is his big,
brown eyes. They aren’t weakly drinking to forget their problems, to drink away
that woman that broke their heart. They have identified their problem, they’ve
confronted her dark misdoings and cast her aside. And maybe not because they
wanted to but because it was the safest, most mature choice. They have
swallowed her down like a stiff glass of whiskey.
She is still
there somewhere deep down in his mind, she is still lurking around in his newly
darkened heart but she is obscure. She is fading. She is being drowned by the
amber colored liquid swirling around his glass. She may be there again tomorrow
but she’ll be even less clear. Maybe after some serious time has passed, he’ll
even fail to remember what she looks like, forget how the sound of her voice
once tickled his heart.
He put that bottle to his head and
pulled the trigger. And finally drank away her memory. –Brad Paisley &
Allison Krauss, Whiskey Lullaby
Recently, a
woman that I used to be relatively close with passed away. She was young, quite
a bit younger than me and certainly way too young to have her life snuffed out.
I won’t act like I’m insanely distraught because to be honest, I haven’t spoken
to her in probably a few years save for limited Facebook likes and comments.
But I’m sad for her because she was kind and welcoming, she could have done so
many great things, and I know that her close friends and family are reeling
with the knowledge of her death.
But the
saddest part for me, especially now that some years have gone by and I still
remember how much she sparkled, is that she was struggling. I can’t speak on it
personally because like I said, we had since lost touch, but I know from
speaking with others that were close to her, she was engaged in an emotional
battle. And the only weapon she had in her armory was illicit substance abuse.
She was hurting, she was making an attempt to cope, to rectify whatever
problems she was fighting on the inside and she only knew of one way to do
that.
It’s ironic
that all of this happened around the time I started drafting this blog and
looking up quotes to add supplemental content. I felt like I was taking a sort
of soft spin on all of this, reflecting on my own choice to use alcohol as a
coping mechanism but never really experiencing the dangerous effects of it
firsthand. I think the reality is that sometimes, we believe ourselves to be
invincible. (And this is an actual fact that I learned in college; most people,
but adolescents and young adults in particular, experience what is known as the
Invincibility Fable.) We feel that our pain is so tremendous that no one will
understand. We think that if we just numb ourselves enough to not feel the pain
anymore, it will all be alright.
Sometimes,
if I think really, really hard, I can still hear her voice.
But
you know, to be fair, I think that all of this goes further than drug use. I
mean, I feel like sometimes people justify their behavior, no matter how wild
or unrestrained, because they aren’t doing something illegal. I’ve even done
it. I can speak to multiple occasions where I was completely inebriated, way
too far gone to actually properly engage in any kind of rational behavior, and
I justified it the next morning because I felt like I had to.
I
would say that I hadn’t eaten enough. I would say that that last shot had done
me in. I would say that if I had gotten pulled over, I would have certainly
gotten a DUI but thankfully, I’m a careful driver and I made it home safe. I
would say that I was just tired and maybe that last drink just exacerbated the
exhaustion that was already in progress. I would say that I didn’t drop that
glass because I was drunk; it just slipped out of my hand. I would say that I
like to have fun, that I sometimes drink to the point of overdoing it, but that
I’m not engaging in anything illegal. I mean, whiskey is still legal in this
state right…? Last time I checked I wasn’t breaking any laws.
But
I have to be completely honest when I say there have been a lot of times when I’ve had way more than I should have to drink.
And sometimes, when I was a much heavier drinker than I am now, it was because
I was coping with whatever I was feeling. There have been way too many times
that I have driven “buzzed” or even further. (To be clear: I haven’t done it in
years and now won’t even drive after two drinks. I have more than been scared
straight, believe me.) There have been multiple times where I’ve been
intoxicated and have acted like an idiot in the sense that I’ve said things I
shouldn’t have, texted people I shouldn’t have, met up with people I shouldn’t
have, and engaged in activities I shouldn’t have. And in those moments, I did
use being drunk as an excuse.
But
life is a learning experience, right? I’m long since passed all of that. I try
not to let it haunt me anymore; I’ve forgiven myself for the mistakes I’ve made
and after a certain point, you just have to move on. You’ve just got to try not
to make the same mistakes again.
Moral of the Crazy: I’m a social worker so I completely
understand the effects substance abuse can have on a person’s mind, a person’s
life. I see it every day in my job; a mother loses custody of her child and is
forced to work through a case plan to get him back because she chose to snort a
line of cocaine instead of adhere to abstinence. Now she’s forced to have
weekly visits with him that are supervised. He’s an infant and going through
all these exciting milestones but instead of witnessing them firsthand, she has
to hear about them from his designated guardian. It’s incredibly sad and I am
more than capable of understanding it.
I
just feel like there has to be some happy medium between hard-hearted sobriety
and Lindsay Lohan with an ankle monitor.
I
also feel like sometimes people just need an excuse to be bad. And maybe that
sounds like nonsense but I’m telling you, there is some legitimate truth to it.
Maybe
they have particular feelings regarding some specific situation and instead of
telling themselves that it’s not right to engage in the activity, instead of
telling themselves that it’s only going to hurt every party involved, they just
liquor up on some liquid courage and do whatever it is they’ve been trying to
soberly talk themselves out of. Maybe getting borderline intoxicated is the
only way they can relax enough to do something that they know is wrong. Maybe
drinking just to the point of not caring is how they allow themselves to
disembark from reality. Maybe classy drunkenness is the only place that they
can really be themselves, the only way to really get away with the things they
knowingly shouldn’t do.
“Well,
I was drunk and sometimes shit just happens.” Yes, keep telling yourself that.
But
I think that there is also another side to all of this. There are those
individuals who can control
themselves and do so not to keep themselves in check, but because it just comes
naturally to them. Some people are in constant control of themselves because
control is comfort, because chaos can be stressful. There are people who can
walk into a bar, have two drinks and leave. There are also people who can walk
into a bar, have seven drinks and leave inebriated but not ungovernable. They
leave intoxicated but still somehow in control. They aren’t calling their
ex-girlfriends at four in the morning and begging them to rendezvous. They
aren’t driving drunk and killing people. They aren’t getting in fights or
acting like animals. They’re just docile and liquefied, left emotionless with
the help of honeyed alcohol.
These
proverbial people, I like to imagine them as men. Men just going home numb to
their beds, thinking about their past transgressions if they’re able, and
waking up with a hell of a headache. They’re thinking about that crazy woman
that got away but they aren’t weak enough to text her. They’re recalling how
intoxicatingly fragrant she was when she leaned into him and laughed but they
are controlled enough to let the faded memory past. They’re remembering the
things they spoke about and the plans they made but they’ve long since
confronted the distance between them and are learning to move on. They are
handsomely subdued, indifferent to their passing haunted feelings, and too
preoccupied in their own heads to be wandering off on a journey of
self-sabotage.
These
individuals are strong and controlled, their chosen substance is just a pain
reliever. They’ve successfully self-medicated and they’re doing just fine.
These people are stylishly brilliant, thriving very magnificently on their own.
You
know, I’ve always envied those people because even in my most clear moments, I
feel like I just thrive in chaos. I’m not a calm person and the reality is that
I never will be. But I also know my parameters. I’m getting better at reframing
my thoughts because sometimes remembering is just too painful, or maybe too
stressful. Thinking back, sometimes, it gives me great anxiety. Too much has
happened, too many lines have been crossed, and too much has changed. Sometimes
it just feels like there isn’t enough air in the room. There are times when I
would rather just not.
I
feel like lately my memory has been getting rusty and sometimes I feel like
that’s my brain’s way of self-medicating. I actually read somewhere that your
brain has this way of blocking out certain things in order to protect itself.
Maybe my way to avoid falling off the wagon is to just forget certain things.
And maybe, for now, I’m okay with it.
Nowadays, I
just try to preserve my diligent efforts and reserve my judgements for people
who beat their wives and children. If getting intoxicated every now and then
helps you get through the day, who am I to judge? Sometimes we just have a hard
time.
And life is
too short to burden yourself with restraints.
Alcohol may be man’s worst enemy but
the bible says love your enemy. –Frank Sinatra
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