Chapter 10: Drinking

“Yes, this is a love story. It's about passion, sensual pleasure, deep pulls, lust, fears, yearning hungers. 

It's about needs so strong they're crippling.” 

– Caroline Knapp

I don’t really know when alcohol use got so regular. As the kids got older and didn’t need us so constantly, Gregg and I would occasionally imbibe on the weekends.

It is sometime in mid to late 1995 that I want alcohol more than just once or twice a week. Probably to escape the craziness I am experiencing as I’m told that nothing is happening with Gregg and Allure but feel altogether like something must be. The all-week drinking continues until the early summer of 1996 when I read that alcohol exacerbates depression. I decide to cut it out to see if it seems to have any effect on my mood. 

My depression doesn’t seem much improved to me at the end of the summer, plus I am missing out on the relief and lift the alcohol offers, so I go back on. I drink in the evening, and am fairly good at hiding it, at least from my kids. Gregg usually knows, though not always. I continue to read about depression, trying to find relief in any way I could.

But I don’t give serious thought to quitting until after an incident on Christmas eve, 1996. Humiliation gets my attention. Again. It seems to work well with me (cue up my embarrassment and humiliation of getting pregnant before marriage; though in that there was a side benefit of huge increase in compassion for others in a similar situation).

During the evening it doesn’t seem like I drink so much—but either I did (most likely) or it was an act of God (less likely) that causes me to pass out. To make matters worse, I do my drop in front of the whole extended family. We are just saying our goodbyes, so my siblings and their families, my parents, husband, and kids are all standing around together. In the midst of them, I slump to the ground. One sister revives me, Gregg takes me and our kids to his parent’s house where we are staying the night, and after throwing up, I stagger to bed. 

Drunk is ugly, and feels ugly. Especially that night, the worse night and morning after, ever. I vomit numerous times through the night and into the next morning, so that eventually blood is coming up. Worse yet is the scare I put my kids through, particularly my daughter, who needs me to be really present and available to her while she’s working through some trauma of her own. 

She is afraid I will die. In the night hours, I wonder myself.

I start reading more about alcoholism in May and June of 1997, as the dreams and nagging voice in my head keep proclaiming warning.

DREAM. 1997-1999 off and on, “Brake problems”

While driving the orange pickup truck I have difficulty pressing down on the brakes hard enough to get the truck to stop. I feel anxious that I’ll run into something and do damage. Or I have a problem reaching the brake, finding the brake, putting pressure on the correct spot. I have to push it so hard, and find I am physically unable.

“Difficulty with your vehicle dreams usually arise when events in your waking life seem out of control, you feel powerless over something, or you’re afraid you’re about to fail or crash...”  

- Dream Dictionary for Dummies

Late May, as I’m reading BUZZ: the Science and Lore of Alcohol and Caffeine, I learn more about the alcohol molecule – how it is broken down, and how it affects our liver, brain, and other tissues. I grow in understand of why I crave the stuff.

"We've seen that by inhibiting glutamate receptors, alcohol induces a general sedation and significantly impairs the brain's ability to store new memories. By increasing the sensitivity of GABA receptors, alcohol mimics Valium and reduces anxiety. Like a weak version of cocaine or amphetamine, alcohol boosts dopamine levels, producing a brief period of heady stimulation. And by endorphins, alcohol resembles opium, giving users a rush of pleasure similar to the 'natural high' experienced after a vigorous workout."

I read Caroline Knapp’s Drinking: A Love Story, and resonate with what she writes.

“Yes, this is a love story. 

It's about passion, sensual pleasure, deep pulls, lust, fears, yearning hungers. 

It's about needs so strong they're crippling. 

It's about saying good-bye to something you can't fathom living without. 

I loved the way drink make me feel, and I loved its special power of deflection, its ability to shift my focus away from my own awareness of self and onto something else, something less painful than my own feelings."

Her words help me define:

What alcohol does for me and why it’s a draw:

“Many of us drink in order to take that (psychic) flight, in order to pour ourselves, literally, into new personalities; uncap the cork, slide into someone else’s skin.  A liquid makeover, from the inside out.” (p 60)

 “Drinking released me from the compulsion to hold back, gave freer rein to appetites… I wanted that feeling, and I couldn’t seem to generate it on my own, and the amazing thing - the truly amazing and seductive thing – was that the drink could generate some version of it for me, a most convincing replica of ease and connection and relief, a least for a little while.” (p 69)

“You felt giddy and lighter and you had a sense of freedom, as though some secret part of you were rising up, a part you rarely have access to when you’re not drinking. This felt like a kind of relief: sober is dry and uptight; drink is fluid and liquid and loose.” (p 72)

Where I might be in the process:

“The vast majority of us are in far earlier stages of the disease: we’re early and mid-stage alcoholics, and we function remarkably well in most aspects of our lives for many, many years. (p14)

“The struggle to control intake – modify it, cut it back, deploy a hundred different drinking strategies in the effort – is one of the most universal hallmarks of alcoholic behavior… we develop new rules: we’ll never drink alone; we’ll never drink in the morning; we’ll never drink on the job; we’ll only drink on weekends or after five o’clock… we’ll do anything – anything – to show ourselves that we can, in fact, drink responsibly.” (p 120)

And what I need to face or do:

“There are moments as an active alcoholic where you do know, where in a flash of clarity you grasp that alcohol is the central problem, a kind of liquid glue that gums up all the internal gears and keeps you stuck.” (p 5)

“Liquor numbs the real feelings and the real fears and the real doubts; it deprives you of the courage it takes to be honest.” (p 88)

“When you quit drinking you stop waiting. You begin to let go of the wish, age old and profound and essentially human, that someone will swoop down and do all the hard work, growing up, for you. You start living your own life.” (p 239)

“There’s a big difference between walking through fears, which you do in sobriety, and escaping them, which you do through drink.” (p 254)

After reading that book, I think much about my drinking.

I come to the conclusion that the answers to ‘Why do I drink?’ are primarily for reward, relief, and escape.

·         My depressed brain finds momentary pleasure with alcohol, a surface satisfaction and reward for holding it together all day even though every right choice is sheer effort and I am tired.

·         I find relief from intense feelings of sadness, disappointment with myself and others, and anger.

·         I don’t know what to do with strong emotions of emptiness, rage, loneliness, terror, and unmet needs for love and worth; the alcohol provides an easy external diversion, or an excuse to vent on my husband.

The answers to ‘Why not drink?’ are

·         To learn to look to God to fill my deep yearnings.

·         To be alive with emotion, to go through the pain rather than around it, and to not just drown out my fear and rage since medicating emotions won’t resolve or alter them.

·         To heal and grow authentically, be present in my own life, and tend to my own needs with God’s help.

I know what needs to happen. Finally in late summer 1997 I cut it out. But, as has become my pattern, it was just for a time.