I wasn't sure where to post this, but in the end picked here. Ultimately, my physical and mental health are at stake. Truthfully they have already been compromised in a few different ways related to this. At any rate, I now except I need to change. I have made a start, now can I continue forward with it? This time I really want it as scared as I am to give up the only means of dealing I ever knew. Until of course I realized I didn't need to deny my emotional being and could talk and share on that level. But it has come to serve other purposes as well, and I'll need to find alternatives. Anyway, I could have even written more but this gets the point across I think:

Drinking has been with me as a way to deal for as long as I have needed a way to deal. From the start I drank to excess. I am certain I was stuffing away the anxiety and hurt and all the rest. I don't think it was a conscious thing, I think my mind just latched on to the fact that it worked (well, kind of) and it all went on from there. In high school I drank quite a bit. I had a fair number of run-ins with the law and I'd say most involved alcohol in one way or another. I guess the point is the alcohol was getting me in trouble. But I survived all that (I suppose, but in a way not really) and made it to college out of state from where I grew up.

In college I drank quite a bit as well but my freshman year was pretty successful all in all; drinking at this point was just part of who I was though subconsciously I am sure I was still using it as a crutch (actually my freshman year wasn't a success in that I was surviving courtesy of repression of some sort.) But after I remembered it became more erratic and problematic. I can't remember if I was all of a sudden drinking more but for sure I now had issues I needed to desperately stuff away. I was also continuing to smoke weed when it was no longer fun and was just making all my issues more "in my face" and terrifying. Major paranoia to say the least. Through college I got into some more troubles, with alcohol being present as makes sense given my patterns. I was in so much pain and was trying to drink it away I suppose.

I had a couple periods where I didn't drink much. I worked in Phoenix, AZ for about 9 months and didn't do much drinking there. This was 1995-96 when I couldn't finish college and took up an offer to work down there. I came back to try and finish college summer of 1996 and couldn't even complete a couple classes. I drank lots and had what would be the first signs of trouble (more later). Then I was in Minnesota for a year, 1996-97, and that is when I first was able to talk about what happened even if I didn't phrase it as me being violated. Anyway, I didn't drink much then either.

I went back to finish college in late 1997. I had two classes left I could take as night classes and be done in early 1998. Well anyway I did get that done. In spring of 1998 I had what would be a more clear sign of trouble. I went to a birthday party for someone I knew, woke up in the laundry room of a random small multi-unit complex (thing is, that isn't even the part that phased me even though I don't have a clue how I ended up there.) When I made it back to where I was living at the time, doing battle with the bright sunlight on my walk back, later that evening my ceiling did some crazy stuff and I suppose you would call it a hallucination. I had to pray to make it stop. It was pretty scary.

The next few years were marked by an increasing amount of binge drinking and withdrawals. The withdrawals were crazy. I often couldn't sleep for a few days after stopping. The hallucinations often consisted of demon like things coming out of my walls and saying my name and coming right at me and into my face. Sometimes red lights would light up on the walls. Twice I had incidents where I woke up to piercing screams in my head, so bad my ears hurt. Yet the second time it happened I sort of questioned my roommate if I had been making noises and he said no. Amazing, no real noise yet me ears actually hurt. I'm talking really loud in my head. And then there were the countless times I would wake up drenched in sweat. Not nice at all.

A quick point on the hallucinations, they only happened in that space between awake and asleep. So I'd be awful tired but couldn't let myself fall asleep because I'd slip into the hallucinations. I started to realize that I was usually going into sleep paralysis when this was going on and looked it up and found out about what are called hypnagogic hallucinations. I am not sure if this is what I was having but it seems to fit. As a kid around 9th grade I had two out-of-body type experiences. The first time I was being pulled off my bed (by no one) and then I came two and I was in my normal sleeping position. The second time I actually floated to the corner of my room and then came to. Same thing - I was in my normal sleeping position. These were scary experiences and I think they happened not long after the peer stuff. I think it was all trauma related somehow. So anyway, I might be susceptible to these kind of things.

I pretty much suffered and fought through this whole binge-withdrawal thing from the late 1990s through much of the 2000s. In mid 2005 I got back into therapy, this time addressing as having been violated and being clear I thought I had trauma issues. Then I got hired on at the company I am with and was given an opportunity. It took me some time but I slowed things down quite a bit drinking wise. I didn't want to blow what was happening, both dealing with my past and also job opportunities. My last bad hallucination episode was in 2007, when laying in bed all of a sudden I could hear the wind pick up outside yet it really wasn't a windy night. I figured out what was happening, and by this time I had long since learned I couldn't really fight this stuff, so I had to roll with it. It seemed like the wind was blowing 200 miles an hour and my apartment building was going to shake apart, but really I knew better. Crazy is an understatement and I was cycling through stuff like this almost weekly when I was at my worst for a few years.

So what about today? The last couple years I've made sure never to do a back-to-backer but even a single night of drinking can often be done to great excess (I can't even begin to fathom the number of times I've been blacked out drunk.) There was still withdrawals and they still stunk, just not as bad. I don't keep alcohol in my home so that is good. It is just that I have had this habit of going to bars, whether with friends or me on a classic solo-mission I have done so many times. I guess is has been my way of being around people. Those I know probably think I am crazy, but for some reason just write it off as me being me (though I've probably lost so relationship because of it or at the very least the quality of my relationships has been compromised.) My journals for quite a few years have expressed what a problem I have and that I need to change. Something has clicked in me and I realize I can't work toward any goals whatsoever unless I get myself off that path I have been on. No compromises.

I realize all I say here speaks of physical dependency issues (and you are right) not to mention the "A" word (yeah, I get that too). I don't want to label myself, but I think this honestly says a lot about what and who I am related to alcohol. I guess I've been trying to drink away my misery, and in the process it didn't go away it just got a heck of a lot worse. So I can pick one of two paths. I can keep going the way I have been going. I've done some damage, whether deteriorated health or injuries sustained while drunk. I'll reach a tipping point and this will just accelerate and get worse. To keep on that path is the certain end of me spiritually, physically or otherwise. Or there is that other option. I can quit and try and make something out of my life. I can quit killing myself over losing the me that was so many years ago, and can try to build up a me that is now - a quality adult version of who I have always had to the potential to be, just a little more battle worn and damaged than maybe should have been the case. It has been a long, hard haul - more so than I think most really get - and I just don't want it anymore. It has been a constant fight for many years just to keep my head afloat. All this because I couldn't handle the pain. It just isn't working anymore and I no longer want that to be who I am.

Eric

Eric,

That is great news! Truly! Your honesty about yourself and your courage to change your life are inspirational. You can do it, buddy!

If you need any help, anyone to listen, you know where to find me.

Your friend,

Bobcat

Thanks Bobcat. I may need all the help I can get. Right now I feel pretty good about it all but I know how easy it can for me to emotionally slip and then resort to old behaviors. And my understanding through reading about it and just knowing my own experience, the physical addiction part doesn't just go away. It sort of is always there.

Thanks for the post, Eric,
I know drinking (actually, getting drunk) was a coping mechanism for me and the only way I could hit the "reset" button emotionally just to feel nothing and get back into the swing of my life at the time.

But that had costs, and I found I couldn't live life without getting drunk beyond belief on a regular basis. I didn't want to use the "A" word but I could admit I wanted to change and stop the insanity that came with drinking.

I've never found a way to drink without the insanity, 24 years later, so I stay around people who, like me, have a compulsion to drink and avoid life, but who are working a program of recovery that works.

The tough thing about a program of recovery is that you get to face all the stuff you thought drinking was taking care of-but the truth is, drinking only postpones it and makes it worse.

The other truth is, getting sober is awe-inspiring and a kick-ass way to live.

Try it, but don't try it alone. Seek out the people that are doing it and have a life worth living.

Thanks for your honesty-I forgot that it was 24 years ago today that I had my last drink.

Hello:

The fact that you are asking the question, "could drinking (alcohol) be the problem," implies that perhaps drinking is a problem.

If bad things happen in your life as a result of drinking then stop drinking for about 30 days during which time you can think about this issues. If you are unable to stop drinking for 30 days then that is another indicator to you that drinking is a problem for you.

Good luck.