Sunday, 26 November 2017

Why did I become so dependent on booze?

I've been pondering this question for a long, long time... Way before I actually quit drinking alcohol.

I know that I am just like lots of other people out there in that I don't really know the answer to my question; why did I become dependent on alcohol?  I think that in order to begin to answer that question, I have to ask myself why did I drink in the first place?

To help myself answer this I have to delve into my past a little.

When I was younger (late teens and my twenties) I didn't even like alcohol at all.  I rarely touched the stuff.  Partly because I loathed the smell and taste, but also because of my family background.  The following is absolutely not intended to be a sob story, nor an excuse... but it does help me explain to myself why I saw myself as being normal and why it took me a long time to realise that I had a real problem with alcohol.

Both of my maternal grandparents are/were heavy drinkers.  Spirits mostly.  When I was growing up, I remember that we would visit my grandparents every Sunday and have lunch at their house.  There would be occasional fights and falling outs and my mother and step-father would grab us three kids and leave my grandparents house... Usually with the threat that they would never see us again.  As I got older, I realised that these spats always happened when too much vodka or whisky had been consumed by my grandparents and my step-father.  For some reason, I cannot recall my mother being drunk.  Perhaps she was, perhaps she wasn't.  I cringe now thinking about how many times we were driven home by my drunk stepdad.

I clearly remember a time, in my early twenties, when I had arranged to meet my mother and grandmother for lunch and a coffee.  My grandmother had sunglasses on and didn't take them off.  When I got a closer look, I could see she had a black eye.  Curious and naive, I asked her how she got it.  She said something about walking into something.  Later, I asked my mother who told me the truth.  My grandparents had gotten into an argument whilst drunk and my grandad had beaten up my grandma.  This had been a regular occurrence when my mother was growing up and when I was very young but, apparently, hadn't happened for quite some time.... Which brings me to my biological father.

My biological father is also a very heavy drinker.  He is also a class A arsehole and I have nothing to do with him.  I do know that he beat the shit out of my mother when they were married.  If me or my sister cried and our mother couldn't make us stop, he would take his frustration out on her.  Even back in the 1970's it wasn't easy to just leave an abusive spouse, but eventually she did it and eventually met and married my step-father who, yep, you guessed it - is a heavy drinker!

There's a bit of a pattern here isn't there? I think I may need to write a further post about this later.  (I can't believe how I've turned out so normal!  :-) LOL )

I can't say that me and my siblings ever wanted for much in the way of material things.  Mentally, things were very different.  I am the eldest child, so I was the one who should know better.  I was the example.  I was also the one who had to calm and comfort my younger siblings when my mother and step-father argued.  I was the one who would pluck up the courage to tiptoe downstairs and ask them why were they screaming and shouting?  Why were  things being broken?  I'd usually end up getting the blame for the argument starting in the first place.

In those days, 'dad' would go to the pub at the weekend.  I could never understand why my mother had to wait up on him coming home.  There would always be an argument and she would usually start it.  Why couldn't she just go to bed and ignore him?

She did leave him once "because of his drinking".   It was not long before Christmas as I remember.  She took all three of us and we went to stay in some hostel type thing for a little while.  No-one learned any lessons because nothing changed.  Dad stopped going to the pub at the weekend and drank at home instead.

Even when I moved out into my own home and started my family, I didn't escape my parents' sagas....  From having to confiscate car keys because he had driven to my house drunk, from receiving drunk phone calls in the early hours of the morning.  My step-father became very secretive about his drinking:  hiding his empty cans of lager in various places, hiding bottles of spirits in the boot of his car.

You'd think that this type of upbringing would put me off drinking alcohol wouldn't you?  I suppose it did for a long time.  I particularly disliked the way my mother and step-father behaved when booze was involved.  But, as I touched on above, my mother didn't actually drink a huge amount.

I always swore that I would never ever end up like them, but I suppose I did - just without the arguments and the violence.  I ended up just like my stepdad in a way, but I think I was even more secretive than him!

In the beginning, when I did start to drink alcohol, I liked the way a glass of wine made me feel.  It made me feel relaxed and sophisticated.  I can't pinpoint the time when a casual glass of wine turned into that casual bottle.  Life happened, shit happened... It just crept up.

Drinking became my 'go to' method of relaxing after a stressful day at work, then eventually any day after work.  I needed it to help me go to sleep.  Then I needed more of it to help me relax and more to help me sleep.

I liked the taste of my wine.  I didn't like the taste of neat vodka, but I drank it anyway... It was all about the relaxation and sleep.

I used my grandparents and step-fathers drinking as a gauge against mine.  I reckoned to myself that I wasn't as bad as them.  I didn't cause arguments, I didn't have fights.

I realise now that I was just as bad as them.

So, in answer to my original question to myself (why did I become dependent on alcohol), I still really don't know.  I don't think it was just about relaxing... I do think that my upbringing may not have helped, although I understand that I chose to drink alcohol to excess.

I think this is something I have to look at in more detail.

But, in the meantime, I hit my 20 week mark of being sober yesterday.  I feel good.  I feel proud.

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