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tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 4 months

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I'm still trying to not drink alcohol. It is difficult. Writing things down about it is helping. Posting them makes me feel a bit better even if no one reads them. TW for alcohol problems. Regular posting about radio shows from 2015 will resume shortly.

What’s up, everyone? I am not drinking in January, and I am not enjoying that. Honestly, it continues to be harder than I’d expected. I think I thought it wouldn’t be that bad because I went down to once or twice a week pretty easily. I was drinking too often during the pandemic years, and also during the ten or so years before that. I’d think I was doing pretty well if I only got drunk on one weekday in a week, and then again on the weekend. Usually it would be more like two or three or four times in the week.

Pre-COVID, I wouldn’t hesitate to drink when I had to work or go to school or coach tournaments the next day. But that changed during COVIDtimes, when I stopped being used to doing stuff in person. I got so anxious about whether I’d be able to get through the day during an in-person job at all, I can’t risk making it even harder for myself by adding a hangover, so I never have even one drink if I’m working any time the next day. So when I started working full time in person halfway through 2022, I quickly went from being able to drink any time to only being able to do it on Friday and Saturday nights.

I thought that might be difficult, but it wasn’t really. I mean, the transition to working full time in person was really, really difficult. I think that was so difficult that it shut out everything else. During the week, I was so busy worrying about whether the next day would be the one when trying to keep up social interactions all day would be too much and I’d have a panic attack while on the job and get fired, that I didn’t really think about wanting a drink. I just thought about getting through the day, how to eat enough and sleep enough to make that happen.

But I think that made the drinking on weekends even more important, as I get so very stressed during the week and then rely on being able to drink a bunch of whiskey at the end of it to relax and calm down and then feel reset and able to do the next week. Which I didn’t realize until I tried to give it up. I thought, at the end of December, that if it was not big deal for me to give up alcohol five days a week, it might be annoying but not that much harder to give it up just two more days.

That has not been my experience, as I do a second weekend in a row without alcohol, and yes obviously I am aware that if going two weeks without alcohol is this difficult then that is a sign of a problem. I keep reading and hearing things about how giving up drinking makes you feel better, but I’ve had the opposite effect so far. Last weekend I felt like I never properly relaxed, and then last week at work was even harder due to not having relaxed before it, and now it’s happening again. It’s not great. I realize this won’t get better until I find some other way of decompressing, but I’m not coming up with much.

I have tried going for several runs on the used treadmill that I recently bought and put in my basement, and those are nice, but then they end. What else do people do to relax when they’re being mentally healthy and not just locking themselves in their bedroom listening to old comedy recordings all the time? I guess socialize, but my entire social life is tied to a sport that I have stepped back from and hearing stories about it just makes me depressed about how I’ve stepped back from it, and the only thing I do with those friends besides talk about the sport is drink (well, we drink and talk about the sport and watch videos of it and play music). I’ve just moved in with my best friend, which is great, but he’s gone all weekend coaching a tournament and just texted me to ask if I want to have a drink when he gets back and I had to remind him that I already told him I’m not drinking in January.

I did tell him I’m doing dry January, I didn’t mention that it’s sort of meant to be the beginning of me trying to cut back significantly on drinking. It’s hard to tell people that, because then I’ll have to stick to it. Even on here. I made a Tumblr post a couple of weeks ago about realizing I drink too much and wanting to try to cut back drastically and/or stop, and to be honest, I’ve started writing a post like that several times in the last six month or so, and then stopped. Because if you say it’s a problem, then you have to change something.

It doesn’t mean you have to quit immediately; lots of people admit to having a drinking problem and then don’t quit for years or ever. But it does change things. If you tell a friend you think your drinking is a problem, then drinking with that friend won’t be fun anymore, that friend will watch you drink and get concerned rather than think it’s a good time. You won’t even be able to tell that friend stories about you drinking, because they won’t find it a fun story anymore, they’ll find it worrying.

Posting on Tumblr.com is the lowest possible level of this. No one on this website has the inclination to hold me accountable for not drinking, or would have the ability to do so if they did. No one sees me in person or knows what I’m doing, I could be drinking as I write this and no one would know (I’m really, genuinely not, I have honestly not had a drink since December 30 and I will honestly keep it that way until the end of January and then I will see). But I still hesitated for months to write a post about that, because I occasionally like posting on here about beers I had at a pub, or drinking whiskey on a Saturday night and then writing a Tumblr post about how I drank some whiskey and here are some things I think about comedy. And I didn’t want to cut off the option of being able to do that and have it be fun, instead of an admission that I have failed in my efforts to stop.

Also, I wouldn’t lie on Tumblr, even though I could. I’d feel too guilty. If I were to drink in January after specifically informing Tumblr that I’m not doing that, I wouldn’t even enjoy the drinking night, I’d just feel bad about being dishonest. Which is kind of why I made the post. Even if no one else is reading it and it doesn’t matter, I know I’ve put the information out there, and therefore, I have ruined my ability to have fun while drinking in January. You will notice that I did not make any hard promises about after that, because I didn’t quite feel ready to ruin my ability to have fun while drinking forever. I’m working on it, I really am.

But I made that post at the end of December because I decided I finally wanted to be really really serious about not drinking for at least a little while, and when you’ve decided that, you get to be honest about stuff. Normally, when I’m talking about my drinking habits in general, I tend to minimize things, refer to something as “once or twice a week” when it’s more like two or three times, say I only had six beers last night and not mention all the whiskey that went alongside them, that sort of thing. Or I’ll put a divide between social drinking and drinking alone – that’s a good way to lie to others and/or myself. If I drink with friends on weekends and at pubs after practice a couple of times a week, I figure I’m fine because I’m only drinking as much as they are. Not considering that after they get home from the pub they go to bed and after I get home from the pub I drink a bunch more by myself, and also I’m drinking by myself on other nights. Or I’ll say I’m doing okay because I only had one drinking night a week for the last while, in which I define “drinking night” as drinking a bunch of beer and whiskey alone in my bedroom while watching videos and listening to music, and I do not count the several times that I drank with friends.

Because you can’t admit how much you’re actually drinking until you’ve decided to cut back. “I drink this much, it’s way too much, I’m trying to stop” is a reasonable thing to say. “I drink this much, I know it’s probably too much but I really really like it so I’m going to keep doing it” is not something you can say. So I guess the advantage of deciding to cut back is I get to be honest about how much I was doing, instead of finding creative ways to minimize. The drawback is that I don’t get to have alcohol and I really really like alcohol. And once you’ve been honest, you can’t take it back. You can’t say “actually I’m drinking and it’s all fine now”, because no one will believe you, and rightly so.

The point is that I told Tumblr I think I have a drinking problem and want to try to stop, and I’m going to use dry January as a first step toward that and then see where I can go from there. While I told my friend/new roommate that I’m going to not drink in January, and I didn’t tell him more than that. Because he actually could keep me accountable, and I don’t want to have someone holding me to a promise to never drink again yet.

I’m trying to figure out if there’s some way I can do something besides quit completely forever, and have it not be unhealthy. I genuinely don’t know. I do think the month off from it is going to help in some way (it fucking has to, right? Because I’m really not feeling those promised benefits yet, I’m just more anxious). If nothing else, it’ll reset my tolerance a bit. If I could come out of this being able to get to a level of drunk that feels relaxing off significantly less alcohol than that used to require, then maybe I could keep that up? I did try that last year and it didn’t really work, but I didn’t go a month without drinking last year.

I made that post about my drinking habits a couple of weeks ago, and I kept referencing comedians’ way of talking about alcohol to explain what I mean. Because obviously you shouldn’t take major life advice from comedians, but also, hearing from them does sometimes help in really concrete ways. I’ve Googled signs that you have a drinking problem before, and it’s all stuff about how you know it’s a problem when you drive drunk (something I’ve never done and would never, ever do) or disappoint your children (I haven’t got any) or get fired from your job (I’ve gone into work hungover before, but never still drunk, and not even hungover anymore). It kind of helps to hear comedians talk about their “realizing they drink too much” stories, and those stories sound a lot more like my own experiences (just having too much in a pub or in a hotel while traveling or in your own house, hating yourself and getting paranoid about whether you were a terrible person the next morning), and I figure if they could have those experiences and think they have a problem, then maybe drinking can be a problem even if you don’t crash a car or anything.

Which brings me back to John Robins and Elis James, again. They have this ironic catchphrase “Keep it sessions” (the irony being that they’re self-aware of it sounding like a sort of bro catchphrase, though it also about something they genuinely do so it might not be all that ironic), which refers to John Robins’ preference for drinking session ale, which is beer that’s less than 5 percent. Because that way you can have more drinks before the point where you start drinking and the point where you get too drunk to keep going. So it sounds like a good way to engage in responsible drinking, and then turns out to just be an excuse to drink as much as possible.

I haven’t actually employed the method of drinking beer that’s less than 5 percent before, because that sounds a bit terrible, but I have done similar things. I remember in about 2019, explaining that to a friend of mine. I talked to him about the nights I spend drinking by myself in my bedroom, watching videos from my sport, and I find it fun to play a game where I drink for every point scored (this is a sport where several points get scored every minute, it’s not, like, soccer). I said I really like the game but have started taking smaller sips each time so I can play it for longer and do more matches. And said I was considering buying less strong beer so I could have more drinks in a night.

And he didn’t understand that. This is a guy who’d been my drinking buddy for ages, he liked alcohol quite a bit, I’d assumed in the same way I did. He certainly understood the idea of wanting to be able to get more drunk throughout a night, in a way that could be achieved by having stronger alcohol. But he didn’t see why I would be motivated to find a way to take more drinks – like literally take more sips of alcohol – between the beginning and the end of the night. And I remember that conversation making me realize there was a difference between what I got out of alcohol and what he did. I like the feeling of being drunk, but not just that. I like the psychosomatic experience of taking a sip of alcohol and feeling like I’m doing something that’ll make the world go away a bit. I like the feeling of whiskey burning in my throat and my chest for a few seconds after it goes down. I like the ritual, I like verbally (if I’m with others) or mentally (on my own) toasting to something or someone before I take a drink. I’d like to do that more times throughout a night, and my friend had no interest in it. He was in it for things like the pleasant buzzed feeling and the taste of craft beer.

So it is interesting to me, to hear that John Robins, when he was my age (I’m currently into the late 2015 episodes, when he was 33, as I am now), had the same idea that I did, trying to find ways to take more drinks throughout a night. And the way he talks about his drinking rules reminds me of the way I plan my own drinking as well. The rule about not starting before or after a certain time and then doing it right in the way you’ve perfectly worked out will maximize what you’re looking for.

I don't suppose there's a way to do the "keep it sessions" thing that that's actually healthy? Like drink low-percentage stuff while having a low tolerance, possibly achieved by not drinking at all for a month, and then you get to have the ritual of taking a bunch of drinks throughout the night and enjoy yourself, but you don't need to drink massive amounts of it just to get drunk?

I did look back last week and was a bit distressed to think of just how much time in the last few years I’ve spent trying to set everything up perfectly to have drinking go the way I want. Oh, and to avoid those next mornings where I become convinced that I behaved terribly and hate myself for it, even though my way of avoiding it involved drinking when my roommate wasn’t home and always using headphones so I couldn’t bother the neighbours and not letting myself message anyone, so I couldn’t have behaved terrible in front of anyone, but I’d still have the feeling that I’d done something horribly wrong that I should feel guilty about. I guess the lack of anxiety hangovers is one advantage of not drinking that I’m getting now? Kind of. I now just have a sort of low-level anxiety all weekend instead, I’m not sure that’s better.

I had all these other comedy references in this post I made a couple of weeks ago, but the one comedian quote that has gone through my mind over and over and over today is that Ed Night one where he said he doesn't understand how sober people just wake up every single morning and say "I'm going to experience the world exactly as it is today, with no modifications at all."

I was hoping I'd reach some sort of conclusion or point with this post, but I don't have one. Well, maybe a bit. Part of the ritual of drinking for me, part of the thing that I spent way too much time and energy setting up beforehand to make sure it all went just right, is having a night where I can spend some hours just drinking alcohol and listening to my favourite music and re-watching my favourite videos (used to be sports, these days it's always comedy). I have a folder on my computer specifically for comedy that's only funny when I'm drunk, or at least much funnier when I'm drunk (there a fair bit of Frankie Boyle-era Mock the Week in there, some Amstell-era Buzzcocks, Nathan Barley). And I'll write things down about it, save it in the Word document and usually use a "write drunk, edit sober" policy for turning it into a Tumblr post (though occasionally, I do go with a "write drunk, post while still drunk" policy). I've thought that maybe I can try to recreate that sort of ritual without the alcohol. Maybe I'll do that. If I start posting a bunch of indefensible Frankie Boyle quotes in the next little while, you'll know why.

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