Why do I drink? It’s bad for me. I get dizzy quickly because of the meds. My liver, or pancreas, or bladder, or whatever, is going to collapse too soon. Â It’s probably already brown with spots. My best-man from my first wedding died alone in his flat this month because he got drunk – one more time – on his beat-up liver.
It stars with me having fun. With girlfriends or my hubby. Â Say once a week.
OR it starts on the other evenings, with feeling like I am jumping out of my skin. Everything itches and I have to calm down.
OR it starts on every other possible evening, with feeling like I deserve it – a reward at the end of the day, the chance to touch on the dynamic and clever and tap into the possibilities of the galaxy. Because once you have been there, one you have been hyper-manic or energised, everything else is boring.
Any now and again, my alter-ego from my 20s and 30s takes center stage. Â The real me. The person I expect to be in my 80s. With a fag and a drink. Or narcotics. Â I am strong and powerful and earthy and real.
So I drink.
I can drink and work.
I can drink and work and watch TV.
I can drink and work and watch TV and talk.
I can drink and read stories to my kids.
And then … I don’t get to the place I am reaching for, so I drink some more. Another glass. Hide the empty and open another. Until there is no more reaching left.
I think I am the most sober-looking drunk person I know.
And then I stumble to bed. Â I bump into walls. I take the right tablets to make my sleep even sleepier and tomorrow doable.
And then I write this and I think … say if I am not bipolar? What if I am a fake? And a women with a personality problem and a drinking problem the occasional issue with drinking?
Bottoms up!
Hi cogitate. I won’t fill up your comments with a long story about self-medicating with alcohol. If you are interested, which might not be, you can read my history doing this by searching for my post “When I was on the bottle self-medicating” in my blog. In my story I concluded in the end that I was not an alcoholic, despite psychiatrists and therapists telling me so. I can’t know if you are addicted. I do think you should probably talk about your alcohol use with your doctor and therapist.
It took me a long time to lose the urge to self-medicate, but the right medications did it in two ways:
1. They helped stabilize me well enough that I didn’t need to self-medicate as much. And,
2. Drinking on my current medication mix makes me very very sick and prone to blackouts.
I can drink 1 drink or maybe MAX 2 without really getting sick, but more than that, especially in a row and I regret it majorly.
If you are on psychotropic medications I urge you to work harder with your doctor to prevent the need to drink. It can indeed hurt you. It’s not worth it. Really.
Will go and read. Yes, this needs to end. I don’t believe I am an alcoholic but desperately looking for something. Thank you for your advice and time.