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The author of this piece is CK Nyakina
PART 1: The Day I decided To Quit Alcohol
I felt defeated, I was at rope’s end. As I sat in that old wooden chair that always stunk of cigarettes and weed, suicide was my only option left, I couldn’t think of any other way. All this pain and guilt within me, there was no way I could live with it. My plan was simple: Using the last money I had left on me, I was to buy some cheap liquor from the store around the corner from where I resided with my parents, get myself drunk and when I was highly intoxicated, cut my wrists and wait for death. That day, I almost lost my life, and it so happens I haven’t taken any liquor or any sort of hard drugs ever since and I don’t intend to. I am glad I survived. And as I would later found out, Suicide, just like alcohol, is no solution to any problem.
As luck would have it, I woke up the next day with a huge blood clot on my wrist and a lot of blood on the floor, despite the pounding headache that I was experiencing I was glad to be alive. My first thought was to drink some more liquor to numb the pain and push me through the day but I had no money, no job, my parents had cut me off(and rightly so), and any friends that I had had who could lend me money, I had somehow found a way to sever those relationships. My only friends then were my drinking partners who we meet daily at a local bar, I even doubt they knew my second name.
To hide the awful deed I had tried to do to myself, I dragged myself up to the bathroom and took a shower to wash up all the blood I was covered in. I then took my clothes and threw them in the bin. I cleaned the room and threw away the empty whisky bottle and that lay beside the chair I had been in. I was about to head to the bar when my younger sister came knocking on the door telling me I was being summoned by my parents. Normally, I would have ignored her, as I was about to do, but as I was headed to the gate, two gentlemen came to me and stopped me as I was about to open the gate.
Deep down, I knew who they were, I had been expecting them. A couple days earlier I had borrowed my friend’s laptop, only to pawn it for some liquor money. It was only a matter before they caught up with me. As the two policemen led me to their vehicle, behind me I could hear my sister and mother crying. I could hear my father talking but I couldn’t figure out what he was saying.
You hear of things people do, stories that seem so wild to you that you never imagine you’d ever find yourself in those situations. But there I was, in one of those situations I’d thought I’d never find myself in. That, is what alcohol does. For me, alcohol has always been like a virus. Like any virus, when it gets into your body, it tricks the body into thinking its part of the body and the body goes on to reproduce copies of the virus and if the immunity is not strong enough or the viral replication isn’t suppressed, it overpowers the body and worst case scenario, one dies. And one thing to remember, one you have a virus, it’ll always be with you. Just like even people who quit, will always have to remind themselves why they quit.
The first sip of alcohol isn’t the best, it’s bitter and to some, disgusting, still people go for a second taste, and then some more despite it’s unpleasant taste, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes sweeter than the sweetest thing you’ve ever tasted. As it takes root and starts changing your physiology, your body’s chemical balance is affected and it sends signals to your body demanding more of it, and the more you drink, the more it chains you. And when it’s fully chained you and taken away your freedom to say no it, it now controls you and can do anything to get a taste of it. And that is how I had found myself pawning a friends laptop.
It was my first time in a police cell and if rock bottom had a name, that would be it. I would spend a week in there. I wasn’t always like this but here I was. I had been a top student growing up, a leader, that I had been elected the school captain even. I had been voted most likely to succeed, I had been so good at many things I believed I had a promising future, but here I was, in a cell, with addicts, rapists and people accused of murder and in there I would lose all hope, but it in there also, I would find hope and courage to change .y life. When I walked out, I was never the same man.
Don’t ever underestimate the power of solitude. While I was always with people who had committed all kinds of acts, the disconnect from the normal world sent me into a rage of depression that I found myself huddled in a corner alone most of the time, sometimes tears dropping from my eyes. It was in there that I truly felt alone. I felt the world was against me and it was out to punish me, I felt like the world was picking in on me for choosing to live my life the way I had chosen. I wanted to die, I wanted to not feel the pain, I wanted to sleep and never wake, I sometimes had this fantasy where I would wake up and find out none of this was true but a bad dream. I wanted to drink alcohol and feel great one more time, but none of that was possible.
The third day my rage had cooled and I was beginning to have a cooler mind. I had this anger inside me to punish the world for all it had done to me. To revenge against my parents and siblings for letting me stay in a cell instead of bailing me out. To revenge against the world for letting me suffer. But I also had this motivation to rise and show the world I can be better that they were thinking. I had this anger to never feel this desperate again. To never feel such hopelessness ever again. To never feel like I need to depend on anyone or anything to survive.
The fifth day as other lay sleeping, I was thinking how I’d gotten to that point and everything went back to alcohol, but even deeper I would realize that the reason I drank was to numb my loneliness, to numb the failures I had taken in life, to fit in with people and hide the ugliness that I thought I represented. I drunk because it made me forget eliminated my self esteem and made me an egomaniac. I drank because when I was sober, I somehow never felt complete. But then I would realize I never felt that way before I tasted my first liquor. And the desire to fix myself was so overwhelming I swore never to drink until I had fixed my mental and emotional problems. When I was released I was angry at everyone. I wasn’t talking to anyone, but I directed that anger towards self recovery and that’s how I found myself swearing never ever to drink again.
PART 2: Slipping Back Into The Drinking Hole And Relapses
Remember when I told you alcoholics who quits always have to remind themselves why they quit? The reason is because of relapse. When you forget why you began the journey, you are bound to stop the journey, when you forget why you quit, you might just relapse back. Before I finally quit, I found myself relapsing more often than I’d like to admit after promising myself to quit drinking. At the back of my mind I always knew alcohol was a problem, but like most people it’s hard to resist honey when you had a taste of it.
I remember this one time I quit 3 months before I asked myself why’d I stop drinking and the brain being mangiest is capable of getting rid of painful moments to the point of making you forget about them. The reasons for me quitting weren’t as powerful then as my mind deceived me into thinking I needed alcohol again. I have since known better. Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic, I have always believed that, and I tell anyone who vulnerable to alcohol addiction to always remember that fact.
In my efforts to fight my alcohol addictions, I did trying cheating the system by thinking that maybe if I limited my drinking, I’d be ahead of the curve, but boy was I wrong. I kept on adding on to the limits and before I knew it I was down the slippery slope that alcoholics always find themselves in. Another thing I did try was trying to drink on specific days only in order to be productive in other days, but that never worked either and as you would know by then, I used to anticipate each Friday and I’d spend the whole week thinking about it and when it came, I’d drink as if I wanted to finish all the liquor in the world.
They when alcohol comes in, start running, because if you don’t, you might never leave. The truth is while I did try to quit alcohol and failed before, I never stopped to work on myself and discover why I always felt like crap and depended on alcohol for my happiness.
I always knew alcohol was bad for me and that fact had been made clear by the anti social behavior I exhibited while drunk, but still given between sobriety and liquor, I always chose liquor. And I can tell you right now from experience, if you rely on anything, anything at all to make you feel better, you are going to end up in pain. For me, I happened to do that with alcohol and the thing is, as long as you are searching outside yourself, that thing is never going to be good enough.
No matter how much I drunk, whenever the liquor left my system, the sorrow swept back in. And that prompted me to take more liquor and the cycle kept going on, the only way for me to change was to break the cycle, and that meant, dealing with whatever shame that I had within me and always took me back to the liquor in order for me to feel complete. It’s the lies they we tell ourselves that are more dangerous, even more so when we believe them. And I was just beginning to believe I would never be able to break free from alcoholism.
The more you relapse the more powerless you feel about your self control and if you fail just long enough, you are bound to give in to that lifestyle, that’s why I have always believed some people are never lucky to breakthrough. I quit several times and several times I relapsed to the point I stopped trying and sometimes it takes more for people to quit, for me it took hopelessness before I could begin climbing up, others it takes divorce, bankruptcy, and the not so lucky, only death is able to stop them. The bottom line remains, if you can’t quit while you are ahead, you are headed to a crush.
PART 3: Staying Sober
I remember sitting with my friends in a bar the other day and after ordering water, they both ordered cold beers of Heineken, and as the waitress walks over and holds the perfectly cold bottles with dew rolling down the bottle neck, I felt a certain surge to drink one. The waitress went on to open the beers and I could hear the pop sound that is produced when beer is opened, followed by a hiss and a waft of the beer hits your nose. My throat went dry and I felt like drinking just one beer and not drink again. Every fiber in my body wanted that. I was salivating as my friends drunk their beer. The water in front of me became tasteless and all I wanted was a taste. Realizing the temptation was overpowering me, I simply picked up my coat, told my friends I was going to bed and went home and started reading a book and the next day I woke up happier I hadn’t fallen prey to that. That’s what some days will be like and it’ll take a lot from you to say no. Some days you won’t think about alcohol at all. Some days you will obsess over it, but the trick will be not drink for just one more day and those small wins are all that make a difference in our world. As the days pile up, the confidence grows bigger, we trust in ourselves to make the right choice and before you know it, you’ll be looking at alcohol with so much contempt you’d want to throw up if it found itself into your mouth.
It’s hard to miss alcohol when it’s celebrated everywhere, it’s even hard to avoid it when it’s advertised as if it is essential in life as water. All around you, people, the media and even your friends are telling you to find a reason to drink. Drink because you are happy, drink because you are sad, drink because you are feeling the way you are feeling, alcohol is advertised as the solution to everything. You can’t go a kilometer without seeing a liquor advert and the people in it are enjoying life, so why not you?
Remember why quit.
Sometimes I sit and remember all the things I did while drank, and I cringe. As my confidence has been growing bigger in me and learning to trust in myself, I have been freeing even further from the chains of captivity that alcohol threw around me. And I don’t forget the fact that I am one drink away from becoming a mess. I have always believed I would have been better if I never found alcohol or If I would’ve quit earlier, but I am happy for the experience alcohol had given me, I am happy I was able to pull away before it could completely ruin my life.
I always remember a drinking buddy of mine who died because he drunk too much one night and drove and drove right into a tree and into his death. It could have been avoided, He wasn’t so lucky I say, I have a second chance to make things better in life and I remind myself of that every single day. All the things I’d always wanted to do, I follow through and life is easier, I am more free and light without the alcohol weighing down on me. And I appreciate the fact that I get to experience life in a sober state. I no longer wake up and ask what I did the other night and that has made a huge difference in the world.
The hardest part quitting for me came when I had to clean up the mess I had created. Taking responsibility for all the mistakes I had made. While it was hard owning up to my transgressions, it felt better correcting my wrongs, people are easy to forgive if you show them you are truly sorry and mean it. I remember when I was drinking I would say things I didn’t mean and that took away the respect most people had for me, to gain back the trust, I had to earn, and that journey towards sobriety and staying sober, is the only way to lead a disciplined and happy life.
I’ve learnt to enjoy life without alcohol, I have learnt to be happy without depending on anything, I’ve learnt that happiness was always with me.
After all the drinking I have done, when I quit, it’s like I started seeing life in color after spending all my life in black and white.
Finding a purpose has been my greatest strength, rediscovering my passions and actively pursuing my purpose to help people deal with depression. After I quit I was able to finish college and will soon be enrolling for clinical psychology in order to be in a position to help people more. I now seek and am attracted meaningful connections.
I now realize how I never needed alcohol to socialize, to loosen up, to cover up my loneliness, we don’t really enjoy alcohol, it’s the social interactions that we do and if we are honest enough with ourselves, we can enjoy those interactions without the need of alcohol.
It takes commitment to stay sober.
PART 4: Final Thoughts
This might just be the toughest road you will ever take but many of us have managed to quit and work on ourselves and I can tell you right now, this life is better sober. To be able to experience everything with full mind and keep it registered in our minds.
For anyone who tasted alcohol and experienced how it can alter our brains into thinking it’s necessary in order for the body to survive knows it isn’t simply that easy to push it away.
But for those who know what alcohol has taken away from them will tell you they wish they never drunk. Living life fully aware of your senses is the best way to live. I will not drink with you today!!! To many more years of sobriety.
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