Alcohol got you down?

Do you think you’ll just have a glass of wine with a meal but deep inside you know — the delicious panic pulsate-screams all through you — you are going to drink and drink and drink!

Drink by yourself while watching the same old music videos or some movie that you either wouldn’t get through sober or you’d get more out of sober.

Drink the whole bottle of wine and start crying about the Hurt that you cannot reach but that reaches you.

Drink as a way to embrace falling apart and giving up while jonesing yourself up on the inflamed sense that you are really doing something, you are really something!

Drink and drink alone and bored. Again. Another weekend where you don’t go anywhere or see anyone. Because you’d rather drink a bottle of wine alone. Except you really wouldn’t rather, so why does it feel like you’d rather?

Easier to accept the loneliness when you are alone? Afraid that love would hurt you and camaraderie would keep you from the grand victory that you at any moment yes I feel it coming on yes close at hand! are about to achieve?

Alcohol keeping you from being your full self and living your best life?

If I may offer a suggestion:

If I might share a system:

You sit down with that meal — make it chicken with sweet potatoes and rainbow chard the whole plate drizzled in olive oil — that you’ve wished for all week. And you pour yourself that glass of wine that you suppose is required to complete and digest the feast. But this time, you don’t stop there!

No! This time, you pour yourself a generous glass of red wine, a generous glass of (probably better stick to decaf) iced tea, AND a generous glass of alcohol-free wine.

And then between every sip of the regular wine, you have a sip of your two extra beverages. And try to hold and fathom and relish each sip and each bite. Draw the time out. Let the relaxation happen but within these new parameters, within this new outlook: “It is fun to eat and drink! The alcohol is just one part of the pleasure of wine and wine is just one part of the pleasure of beverage and beverage is just one part of feast and feast is just one part of the pleasure of and one way to relax.”

What’s the goal? Eventually it would be nice to leave your apartment during the weekend, but for now at least you are staying focused on your work and not drinking yourself sick and you’re learning to relax without drinking yourself silly. It is good to learn to indulge without having to completely fall apart.

Why do you have to completely fall apart to relax? What is going on there? And why don’t you talk to anyone? What’s your never-ending project bringing you? And meanwhile where is your life going? You’re so lonely because of the loneliness living in you and eating you from the inside out? Maybe that’s part of the situation, but you’re also very lonely because you are always alone. “No! Listen to me! It is lonely to be with other people because I am expected to lie about how I feel all the time! No one wants to hear about what is broken.”

Here’s something: The stiff-upper lip versus wearing your heart on your sleeve. They both have their strengths and weaknesses. They both have their places and their uses. Having to share every little ache and quibble inside of your being is a burden to yourself and others. But so is keeping all your broken parts locked up in your secret dungeon. How to get the balance right?

“No! You don’t hear what I am saying! I never get to meet anyone because no one wants to hear about how I am cut down the middle by some old wound some old attack some deep affront some long-rusted, always-twisting dagger.”

Addicts use drugs as a way to fall apart while pretending they aren’t giving up. Addicts use drugs as a way to give up while pretending they are chasing life. Addicts use drugs as a way to avoid admitting that they hurt and other people hurt and they need love and other people need love. It’s OK. It’s OK. You can tell the truth. We’re all in this together. No one’s going to fault you for being yourself.

Author: Shades Malarkey
Editor: Bartleby Willard
Producer: Amble Whistletown
Copyright: Andrew M. Watson