The Backslide
Trying to quit or cut back on alcohol can be a slippery slope. One day, you’re feeling so good you don’t even think about it. Cut to a happy hour outing and suddenly you’re right back into having multiple glasses of wine and feeling like a pile of garbage the next morning, wanting a little hair of the dog. I can’t put my finger on what it is that’s so appealing about “just one more,” but goddamn it gets me almost every time. I’m pretty hard on myself when I start to feel myself sliding right back into these old habits. Weeknight happy hours can easily turn into stopping somewhere else on my way home for one more. But my question is WHY?! Why can’t I just go the fuck home and end the night on a high note?? Yes, I can see the reminders of why I don’t want to be a drinker anymore, but I find myself getting frustrated because I seem to lose focus so easily. Therapy has been helping…I have one therapist that helps me work through my childhood trauma and how it’s affecting my adult life, and an addiction counselor I talk to regarding my struggle with alcohol and wanting a mostly sober life.
As I’m typing these words, I realize that perhaps I need to fill my time better and/or get a new hobby. I’m trying to get back into working out, but with the holidays looming, I’m feeling that seasonal depression whispering in my ear. I know that I don’t want to drink my way through the holiday season, so something’s got to give. In my logical brain, I know I will have to keep my head down and be incredibly deliberate if I do choose to drink. Holding that boundary is all on me (my friends don’t peer pressure me in any way, aside from hanging out a little longer LOL).
I know that if I don’t want the recurring reminders of why I want to make this change, I need to not do the things that prompt those reminders. One of the sober accounts I follow on social media, Daniel Patterson, recently talked about how it took him 4 years to get sober. Trying and failing and backsliding and trying again is apparently just part of the game. I hope it doesn’t take me four years, but hearing that from him (and others) did give me some solace in a regretful moment. I have to keep reminding myself that healing of any kind is not a linear thing. Changing behaviors is so hard! Nevertheless, she persisted.
