Hi All,
I’m new here and wanted to create a post for me to remember why i’m here further down the line and to discuss how you’ve handled telling people about sobriety without having to go in to detail/justification?
I live in the U.K. where drinking is just another pastime and binge drinking is not only encouraged, it’s almost glorified. The medal of ‘last man standing’ is seen as some sort of an achievement and forcing friends to down shots is seen as normal.
I’ve been drinking heavily since I was 15 years old. I’m the daughter of an alcoholic, abusive father who broke down our family and led a life thereafter of homelessness, fear, prison time and who eventually died young from liver failure. All of this was the result of alcoholism.
I decided at the age of 8 to cut this man out of my life, but unfortunately damage was already done. Having endured many horrendous moments with my father (including him lining up bottles of pills telling me he was going to kill himself when I was alone at his flat at just 6) both myself and my older sister have battled with alcohol abuse for a very long time. It does feel like it’s genetic.
I don’t need to drink daily, but when I do drink, I can’t stop myself. The only time I stop is when the bar shuts or I pass out. On many occasions I have put myself in danger in the search of more alcohol when the bar has closed.
More recently I am finding myself escalating further and further. Blackout nights are the norm, as is dealing with anxiety, shame, fear and laughing off all the stuff I’ve done drunk, whilst secretly dying inside. I’ve tried ‘I’ll stick to beer’, ‘I’ll have one’, ‘I’ll go home at 11’. None of it works, one drink and that all goes out the window. I know it’s the right time to start a sober life.
My sister is now drinking daily and is judged as an alcoholic. I don’t drink daily but I can recognise that we have the same issue and I do not want to escalate to that point.
I’m lucky that I haven’t ruined my life already with some of the things I’ve done drunk. But if I look back in my past, everything bad that has happened to me, or that I have done, has been done in drink.
My biggest fear for my sobriety is how I am going to cope socially. My employer culture is ‘work hard play hard’ - you’re rewarded with alcohol. In fact I’ve worked there 8 months and this has been the case 6 times already.
Secondly is my friends and my partner. No one recognises the problem. Even when I’m black out drunk I am told they thought I was fine as I function normally, so no one recognises the danger. I also do not express my emotions or anxieties with others, and I keep what I’ve done over the years to myself.
How have you coped with telling others that you no longer drink, when they’ve known you to do so, and don’t think you have a problem? I don’t want to go into too much detail with my employer about why I’m not taking them up on their ‘reward’ but I feel I need to be prepared to have an answer. I guess I’m nervous about buckling under peer pressure
Thank you for reading