Current Events > I think I'm over my alcohol addiction

(+) Yeah! (+)

It's been 2 months since I had a drink. I was bemoaning my sobriety like three days ago, but everything seemed to click into place and I feel like I can be okay without alcohol now.

There are three things that have led to everything clicking.

* I've been re-evaluating my relationships after an amicable rejection. The woman I confessed to is a friend of mine and she means a lot to me, so I wanted to get back to a place of normalcy by re-establishing our friendship in my mind and getting back to the root of why I like being around her. But during this process, I started thinking about how I feel around my best friend, and I honestly felt like I haven't been comfortable around him for years. Spending time with him now is like walking on broken glass, the amount of rage I have to choke back whenever I see him or hear him talk is painful - and I realised that one reason I was drinking so much was that it was the only way to cope with being his friend.

* I realised that since I've stopped drinking, I've had a voice. Without alcohol to numb whatever I'm feeling at the moment, my only options are to face my problems in a constructive way or to collapse under the weight of the world. So I've developed healthier coping mechanisms to survive. I speak to the people in my life who make me feel safe and secure. I'm vulnerable with them. I've never been truly vulnerable with any real-life person in my adult life. And now I'm in an environment where I feel safe doing that.

* I remembered this quote from Boston Legal the other day - when you're an addict, you get mentally stuck at the age you were when you started using. I spent years using alcohol as a crutch, with any meaningful discourse in my life coming from short outbursts when I couldn't handle being treated in a certain way for any longer. Since I've stopped drinking, my life feels like it's in motion again - so this quote has really resonated with me.

I've made threads trying to justify the idea of me drinking again for stress relief. But I realise how stupid that is now. I realise how stunted I became due to alcohol abuse, and it's through removing alcohol from my life that I've been able to face some of the immediate issues in my life that are making me unhappy.

Some time in the last week or two, I had an episode where I couldn't see a future with me in it. I knew it existed, I had no plans to die any time soon - and I still don't - but I simply felt like there was no worthwhile future for anyone around me with me in it. I could see a happy future where I wasn't there.

Now, I feel more hopeful about myself than I have in years. I think it could be a slight manic uptick on my part - I'll be sad again in the future, I have no doubt. But with everything that's happened in the past few days, I can't help but feel like I've overcome something tremendous. I don't need to drink to be happy - I have people in my life that make me happy without having to numb myself. And I realise that there are people in my life that I literally had to numb myself to be around.

The next step is to hopefully get some antidepressants. I filled out a DASS test with a clinical psychologist, and it indicated that I was in the 87th percentile of people with depression. I'm now filling out a mood chart, and it has been grim so far. The only day Where I haven't indicated any depression at all was during an all nighter, which left me so agitated I ended up going to bed out of frustration. It's a process.

But I'm not affected by alcohol any more. I'm past that. And emotionally, I feel healthier than I've ever been.

I'm done with drinking. It's over.

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Nice man. Keep it up.

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Nice

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Glad to hear it, stay strong!

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Slow down, one day at a time

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