Recovery

This Is Not Normal

Doctors and mental health professionals tried to tell me for a long time that I had a substance abuse problem. I knew I didn’t drink like normal people did. But I made it to work on time, did work I was proud of, and didn’t get in legal trouble. Obviously I had the situation well in hand. Obviously.

There is a long period where I really don’t remember how I was drinking. I think in my post-college years it was at least somewhat socially normal binge drinking for people in their 20s – I was going out to bars and having many drinks with friends several nights a week, but it wasn’t anything in excess of what people around me were doing. Looking at this now, I seriously wonder how normal that behavior really was. At a minimum, it was normalized. I was unemployed for most of 2004, and I’m sure I drank my way through that, but I don’t really remember (probably because of all the benzos I was taking – that, I definitely remember. Well, I remember taking the drugs. I remember very little else).

The great leap forward in my drinking was while I was working two jobs from 2005-2008. I would get up at 3am for Shift #1, get off at 10am, buy a 12-pack of PBR and a mountain of fast food, and eat and drink until I passed out at noon or 1pm. After a few hours of sleep, I would get up for my night shift at 3pm, and work until 10pm, or sometimes until midnight. Rinse, repeat. I probably reeked of beer for that second shift, but no one said anything. My doctor and shrink tried to help me see this was a problem, but I had it all under control. Still. Normal people do not slam a half rack of beer at 10am every weekday.

Phase Two of my problem drinking was after Dan and I broke up in 2011. By this time I was working professionally (no more 4am shifts or night shifts). I would pick up 2 6-packs of hard cider and drink and take pills until I passed out. I did this absolutely every night. It was the only way I knew to sleep. This continued until I attempted suicide, and my family rode to my rescue. Normal people do not drink like this.

With family around me, it seemed that the drinking got better, at least from what I remember. Why is my memory of that time so fuzzy? Probably because I was still drinking heavily. But we would sit around all evening throwing back bottles of beer and cider, and we were all doing it, so it felt…almost normal. At some point I decided even this “normal” drinking wasn’t enough, so I started popping by a very divey bar on my way home and slamming a vodka drink every 5 minutes for 30 minutes so I could be good and drunk before I got home. Even surrounded by drinkers at home, drinking with them was not enough drinking. This is not normal drinking behavior.

The next phase was half a Bota Box of red wine and a huge bag of junk food every night. I drank this alone in my basement. I did this every night for 5 years. Just me and the cats and a Bota Box. Normal people do not load 3 Bota Boxes into their shopping cart to prepare for the week. Normal people do not drink 2 bottles of wine absolutely every night. 

The great leap forward came after I lost 200 pounds. I actually quit drinking during my first year of the keto diet, because I thought (only somewhat accurately) that alcohol prevents ketosis. Looking at the drinking history above, how on earth did I find it so easy? I was achieving so much weight loss, giving up the alcohol seemed like a small sacrifice. Then, when I realized I could drink and still lose weight, I didn’t have 200 pounds of fat to soak it all up. I went from delightfully buzzed to blackout drunk from one drink to the next. 

And my drinking behavior reached outlandish new heights that I didn’t even realize I was capable of. I would drink heavily, even in social settings, which I had always been cautious about before. This put my good standing, as a bon vivant who could hold her liquor, in jeopardy. On weekends, every weekend, I would wake up at 6am, start drinking alone, pass out by noon, sleep it off for a few hours, then get up at 4pm and drink until I passed out again. My mom was concerned, my brother was concerned, and finally Dan was concerned. My drinking had taken on a life of its own, never to approach normal ever again. 

NORMAL PEOPLE DO NOT START DRINKING AT 6AM. Normal people are not blackout drunk by noon. Normal people do not wake up from passing out and immediately start drinking again. 

By the time I knew I had to quit, it was actually very hard to quit drinking, unlike a couple of years earlier. It was all I knew to do with my free time. It was the only way I knew to have a good time – exacerbated by the fact that my poor dopamine production was totally hijacked by this blackout drinking. When you drink, you get a little hit of dopamine. When you drink repeatedly, your brain says, “Whoa! That’s too much dopamine!” and dials down production. Eventually, the only consistent source of dopamine in your brain is the alcohol. Yep, the only way your brain knows how to have a good time is with a drink.

At various times, I made efforts to control my drinking. Because people who can control their drinking aren’t alcoholics, right? When I made rules, and inevitably broke them, they were rules that I thought would help me live the fantasy of drinking like a normal person. I was pretty sure that normal people would go out for a happy hour drink with work friends, maybe have two, and stop. They would not go home after polite social drinking and slam half a bottle of vodka to get properly drunk so they could pass out. Of course, people who drink like normal people do not have to make rules about their drinking. 

Somehow, this whole time, I knew that normal people absolutely did not drink like this, but I could not call myself an alcoholic. I suppose that if you admit you’re an alcoholic, the next step is that you have to quit. It’s right there in the 12 steps of AA. And I absolutely was not ready to quit. Until I was. And then I quit altogether. It’s actually exceeded expectations. 


So in the end, I will never, ever drink like a normal person. I never did drink like a normal person. And I will never be able to have just a drink or two like a normal person. One drink was never enough for me, and now one drink is too many. The life I have in recovery is, I think, better than the life I would have had if I had only ever drank like a normal person and never been addicted. As Maya Angelou says, “If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.” Maybe normal is overrated.

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