It’s 8am, I haven’t been able to sleep. I feel lonely, so I’m trying to reach out. This may be a bit aimless and meandering. Sorry about that.
Mentions of self harm, mental health issues, underage drinking, mentions of trauma. I’m trying to keep it all vague enough that it won’t be awfully triggering to a passerby, but if you have ANY triggers around those subjects, please don’t read this. If i need to delete/edit segments of this, I will. Just let me know.
I've struggled with alcohol since the day I started drinking, I think. It was fun, it got me out of my head, it was so easy to overindulge and as teenagers, the consequences never felt that severe.
I was warned about the dangers of addiction since I was a child. Not only was I a fostercare kid, spending 5 years in the system, but both my parents had history of substance abuse and it was an openly acknowledged generational curse.
Even as I stole ciders from the store, got banned from gas stations for underage drinking, got called out and punished for coming home drunk, I thought it was harmless. I had rules in space. No drinking two days a row, no drinking on weekdays, and the rest I've already forgotten.
Predictably, that all did fuckall when I turned 18 and I suddenly had the legal right to walk into a store and buy my own drinks.
Granted, there were still some limitations. You had to be over 21 years old to buy anything stronger than 22%, so naturally I'd buy anything that was 22% on the dot. If I was traveling and I could buy hard liquor tax-free, I'd do that.
I got stuck into a repetitive cycle of drinking until I threw up, spending 2-3 days recovering from the hangover and the mental whiplash before diving right back in.
As a disabled student, I relied on welfare to get by. I ate a couple crackers and some noodles most days, relying on school-provided breakfast and lunch when I was still enrolled. I got some well-meaning, kind-hearted people online to send me money for more booze when I ran out by posting sob stories about the mental anguish running out caused me.
I have so many humiliating memories of my government-assigned support person driving me to school while I was so hungover I'd just hide away in the bathroom, throwing up until I felt well enough to take the bus back home. It wasn't long until I had to drop out. Barely made it one semester.
I doubt its any big surprise for anyone that my mental health, which had been in steady decline since I was 15, kept getting worse and worse.
I found myself gravitating towards people who would enable and take advantage of my drinking. I'd start harming myself during drunken breakdowns. I started viewing the whole of it, picking up the bottle and the blade, as some kind of purifying ritual. A punishment and an absolution in one painful, excruciating package.
It was disordered, it was unhealthy, and looking back, I feel shame, disgust and pity at the young adult forcing themselves to believe that it wasn't alcoholism.
Eventually, someone else moved in with me and there were only so many times I was willing to expose them to my absolutely unhinged episodes. My apartment was their home too - I'd not make it unsafe in this way anymore.
Did I get sober immediately? No. The thought scared me. For years I've figured that I'll just be careful. Extra careful. If I indulge, I self isolate to avoid the shame my drunken behavior brings me. I try so fucking hard to keep things under control until I'm by my lonesome.
And for a while there, it looked like it was working. I was drinking only once every couple months, mostly socially. I've been free of physical self harm for years.
Part of me genuinely thought I was over it.
Big fucking whoop, I did none of the work so of course it was only question of time. I made the decision to stop drinking until my 30th birthday after last Saturday.
For the first time in YEARS, I blacked out. I woke up disoriented, ready to throw up my guts, my nose bruised, with messages sent to my best friend that made me want to curl up in shame and, like a proper trauma response, my immediate knee-jerk was to shame-spiral at them trying to do "damage control".
And that scared me. The fact that I still got that potential. That I can lose control like that, fall into those old behavioral patterns I swore I was done with.
It really shook me to my core.
And I think really recognizing how dysfunctional it was and realizing that I've drank 4 bottles of spirits in a week made me realize that it's never been a "coping mechanism". Calling it one was just an excuse to find more ways to hurt, to humiliate, to punish myself.
It was an excuse to trauma-spiral and push that hurt onto people around me.
Drinking has always been a self harm method for me, and I was simply in denial until I was in a headspace where I could properly self reflect and evaluate what purpose these behaviors were serving me.
So. I am going to go completely sober til my 30th birthday. If I am far enough along with my mental health and trauma recovery that I think I can be responsible with it, maybe I won't go full absolutionist for the rest of my life, but I think for me to do that work, this is a necessary step.
