Why I Drink

It started when I was watching Lost. I called it “Wine Wednesday.” Somehow I gave myself an excuse to have a glass of wine during the week and feel okay about it. The wine and celebration of my favorite TV show started a very bad habit.

In the beginning, I waited until the show started. But after a short time, I’d “celebrate” Wednesday with a glass of wine at around 5 o’clock and drink until the episode started. Sometimes I didn’t remember the ending and was glad I DVRed it.

I always felt badly Thursday morning, but not badly enough to not do it all over again the next week. And the week after that. And the week after that.

I honestly don’t remember when or how it all started to spiral out of control. All of a sudden, every day became “Wine Wednesday.” All I know is that I started to make up very strict rules for myself. Number one was – Don’t drink before 5 PM! Number two was – Don’t drink more than a bottle! Of course, it didn’t take very long for me to break these rules. I was drinking more than a bottle of wine every day and knew that I had crossed a line. And I didn’t care.

My father was an alcoholic. I hated him for it and now I hated me for the very same reason. I decided that I had to examine why I was drinking and put an end to this horrible cycle of self-destruction.

The day I entered therapy, I was compelled to tell my therapist about my DUI. The night I was arrested was one of the most humbling experiences in my life. I didn’t feel intoxicated, but I was pulled over for speeding, and then asked to do a sobriety test. Suffice it to say, I failed miserably and was arrested. I didn’t know better than to refuse the test. (In Illinois, you can actually say “no” to a sobriety test.) I was eventually found “not guilty” at a bench trial, but the damage to my self-esteem had been done.

My therapist and I have talked endlessly about my drinking. When you’re forced to confront it on a weekly basis, it feels like absolute torture because you’re forced to face yourself and (it goes without saying) you don’t like what you see, which is why you’re drinking in the first place.

Let’s face it – drinking numbs the pain. It allows you to detach from real life and puts you into a fugue state of not remembering where you are, and you just float away down a lazy river of nothingness. It’s also a way to punish yourself. It takes you down to the lowest level of who you are.

Drinking confirms your darkest fears. And when your darkest fears are your most comforting ones, reaching for the wine bottle just feels like the most natural thing in the world to do. Like you’d be crazy not to drink.

Being married to a man who has minimized me for the last 20 years has certainly contributed to my drinking, but I’m not blaming him for my sickness. His daily dismissal of my needs, wants and dreams has led me to feel less than a human being. This may sound like a twisted rationalization, but this is what I’ve been telling myself for the past three years, each and every time I put a glass to my lips.

If he doesn’t value me, why should I? And so I go about systematically destroying myself in a way that’s easy and familiar – in a bottle and available at the nearest grocery store. I know this is sick.

But something changed not too long ago.

I got a ticket this summer for “not stopping long enough at a stop sign.” My spouse wanted me to go to court and plead guilty, so that I wouldn’t have a record and that our insurance rates wouldn’t go up. The first person I saw when I stepped into the courthouse was my DUI lawyer. He didn’t know my name, but recognized me and said hi.

I was incredibly depressed afterwards and talked about it constantly in therapy. “Nothing has changed since your DUI, has it?” asked my therapist, alluding to my drinking.

“You’re right,” I answered. “Nothing has changed.” And in that moment, I had never felt such shame.

Drinking had affected my life so severely – a DUI charge, a Breath Alcohol Ignition Interlock Device on my car, being stuck in the courts for more than a year, and the pure hell of this all taking place in front of my children.

And yet I continued to drink.

Nothing had changed.

I made a decision that day to curb my drinking. I had been thinking about it for what felt like forever. I knew that I couldn’t keep this up. I’m losing too much of myself to the damn bottle. It’s such a cliché, but I feel it happening to me all the same. I often plan my day around the first drink and that to me is the saddest thing of all.

I’ve been trying to cut back. I keep track of my wine intake on a piece of paper – each and every pour is notated. I now sip instead of gulp. I try and wait until 6 or 6:30pm, or sometimes even later, before I start to drink. My goal is to get down to one or two glasses. I don’t need the whole bottle.

I really am able to handle reality. I know the problems are still there whether or not I try to dull them with alcohol. I’m still in a hateful relationship even if I have a buzz on. Nothing changes that.

But I can change me. I can be clean and sober and experience life like other people do. I hold myself accountable for what happens to me now.