Man, this is hard to type, but I know I need to start taking baby steps to getting honest about this. It feels sickening to admit this and makes it a lot more real to me.
I would have had five years on 8/10 of this year. I’m not sure how I blew it- but I did, and in such an anticlimactic fashion. For what? 
Not sure where to begin, so I’ll just hop into how I got here with some background. I am a bartender at a restaurant and have been for the entirety of my sobriety. It’s really never been an issue or tempting for me, despite the fact that I drank absolute boatloads on the job at this same place of work back before I got sober.
My drinking was of the round-the-clock, maintenance drinking variety. I was very sick from my drinking and felt like death if i tried to quit. I was throwing up blood every day, and I don’t know how, but I managed to keep my job and get through school like that. My world was small and sad, though. I drank by myself all the time and had no real relationships that I cared about. (* If you’re curious, I have old posts you can see on these forums, they’re pretty enlightening for me to look back on*). I tried to regulate/moderate for a year and every time I drank again it was back to where I’d left off- uncontrollable. I tried AA before deciding for certain I wanted to quit entirely, but it didn’t take me long to accept that I needed to do just that. AA gave me a system and a community that worked for me. Honestly, I love AA, and I love being sober. There is so much beauty in this life for me.
I was a pretty good meeting-goer until COVID, but I think Zoom and all the commotion kind of lost me. I stayed “in the herd” for most of the first two COVID years, though, because I had a close circle of AA friends. But things started to re-open, I got into a new relationship (non-alcoholic person), and my life got bigger again. I didn’t keep AA central to my life, and over the past few years have barely gone to any meetings.
My mind started to get tricky- telling me maybe I could drink and handle it, maybe just a little bit, and all of those cunning, baffling, powerful thoughts that creep in. I think being with a non-sober partner has brough me into circles where I find myself jealous of normal drinkers, and being apart from AA separated me from the remembering of how beautiful sobriety is and how grateful I am to be sober today. I entertained thoughts of not being an alcoholic and of the “positives” of drinking; and got further from my understandings of self and the truth of how beautiful a sober life is and how lucky I am to even be alive today.
Well, my relapse (I struggle to say that/see it that way, feels like a gut punch to even type that) was truthfully kind of lame. I guess they all are in different ways, and I should feel SO lucky that I didn’t have to experience the world of hurt I opened myself back up to by drinking.
Basically, I started crossing little lines at work. It began with “straw-testing” drinks, which tbh I then truly saw no issue with. I only did it when I wanted to be sure a drink was right, and it was like a drop of a mixed drink total, so I don’t think this in itself was a relapse or a danger to my sobriety. But my actions followed the same path my alcoholism originally did- slowly crossing lines I said I wouldn’t cross, and then pushing it a little further and a little further. I did these straw tests of drinks when there was a legit reason for pretty much my whole sobriety and saw no problem with it.
But then, maybe a year ago, I noticed I was looking forward to straw testing, and eventually seeking out reasons to do so. This coincided with the period of time when I started to entertain thoughts of possibly not being an alcoholic. But even as I saw this change of intention in my actions, I didn’t consider relapsing or see it for what it was back then- playing with fire. I felt no effects of the alcohol and didn’t create scenarios that allowed me to try drinks, but the big issue, looking back is that my intentions were no longer truly just to ensure a drink was right, some part of me enjoyed it.
Things then escalated about 5 months ago maybe when I started “checking” a margarita batch that we make in a kegerator in the morning. There is a legitimate reason to do this- it is hard to tell if it is properly shaken/mixed without tasting. But I just as easily could have just shaken it well and left it at that, I had never found a need to participate before this time. Essentially, I would take a little sip of batched margarita- maybe 1 oz? But sometimes when it wasn’t properly made it was really strong and I could get that warm sensation alcohol gave me. Over a period of months, I would re-test it after shaking, allowing myself a second serving. And that evolved into larger samples and being able to actually feel the effect of alcohol- to feeling ever so slightly tipsy and that would last maybe 20 minutes. I was doing this on either one or both of my two shifts a week for the past 3-4 months. The last month and a half maybe, I pushed the envelope significantly to a point I could no longer justify even in my head- I was having a small glass on at least one of my two shifts a week to “test it” rather than a 1 oz sip that would have been sufficient. I knew I was going to before my shift even started, and I knew how bad it was afterward. I left each shift feeling guilty and sick, knowing I had crossed a line and trying to play mental gymnastics to deny it was a relapse.
Despite the bad feelings, I still did it each week. I was saying to myself it was too insignificant to give up my five years. And part of me feels that way still, even though I know that’s not how that works haha. But I have come to see this as dishonesty to myself, (and to others for not having told them), and I know it is affecting my life. I also have realized that I do not want to know where this road goes, and I need to change my behavior to avoid that. Part of that involves me getting big honest with myself and AA. It is scary, but I’m grateful for the little willingness I’ve been gifted to move on this.
So far, I have told nobody in AA. Nobody at all, for that matter. Except to a small degree my partner a few months back on the first day I “scared myself”, but at that point I did not consider it a relapse whatsoever. I just had the realization that my intentions were not just “sampling” for work anymore.
So, I’ve been going to AA weekly for a few months now, and I am still close with a few of my AA people who I know I will need to tell. I know I will have to tell it all at meetings here too, but I am struggling to cross that bridge. I know it will bring me freedom, but my pride is in my way, and I have a lot of fear surrounding it.
Thats why I’m here- I used this forum when I first got sober, and I think the total anonymity of y’all being strangers really helped me then and is what I need as this first step. I think my next step will be telling all at an out-of-town meeting to work my way toward telling the people I know.
I really appreciate you all being here for me to take this step, and all of the support available to folks in these forums. I would love to be a resource to anyone I can help, and I hope this part of my story can eventually help someone else too. There’s a Macklemore song about one of his relapses where says “If I can be an example of getting sober, I can be an example of starting over”, and that is my biggest wish, to make some good come of my mistakes.
I really appreciate your reading, and kind words!!
One of the great things about other alocholics is they really won’t shame you for a relapse! haha. So nice to meet you too!
Thank you so much for sharing. Your strength shows and is inspiring.
