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The author wished to remain anonymous.
My story begins when I was 15. I was a rather shy individual and, as a matter of fact, I didn’t even like to party that much, until I discovered alcohol. The first time I drank booze was with my friend and his big brother, who also had peers over for drinks. We were playing pool and, unbeknownst to me, I was about to be served my first drink. I got immediately hooked. In fact, I distinctly remember waking up the next day, with my entire body tingling, like when you sit on your hand for a couple of minutes. I could only interpret it as a bad omen.
After having my first drink and becoming amazed at its effects, I began to party every time I could, but I was never in control of my drinking, not even at the very beginning. The first party I went to, I blacked out. I don’t remember anything past 11pm. How did I get home? What did I do? I was bewildered but intrigued. My friend contacted me the next morning asking me what the hell had happened, I asked him why, and it turns out that I had sent him a couple of embarrassing texts, where I told him I had been mugged. That was a complete lie, and I had deleted the texts from myself, so I had no idea I even talked to him that night. I remember telling him that it was a joke, but I forgot to add the context. He believed me. This was the beginning of a very embarrassing drinking career. Long story short, I would make a fool of myself in front of girls I was trying to impress, I would even go delusional sometimes and attack my friends, thinking they wanted to hurt me. Hell, I even spoke Latin once to a girl and annoyed her so much that I almost got my ass kicked by her male friends.
The following years were quite serene because my very strict parents would barely let me party, and whenever I finally convinced them to let me go out, I would drink until I forgot. At first, I thought it was normal, I thought everyone forgot chunks of the night. This went on until I turned eighteen, and my parents basically let me go out on my own, so I was happy (or so I thought).
The summer before entering college was the beginning of the end of my drinking career. I basically would go with my friends to the beach, to basically drink our asses off. The difference between me and them was that they drank for fun, whereas I drank until I suddenly woke up at 5am, in the couch or in my bed, with no memory of what happened after 11-12pm. I would wake up feeling a bit nervous, because my friends would usually fill me in with what I did (most of the times it was fine), and whenever a friend said “Hey André, remember yesterday when…” my stomach would sink a bit. What did I do now? I grew so tired of telling them I didn’t remember that I began to lie and make excuses to my dumb behavior when drunk. I secretly must have known I have a problem, but I didn’t want to give up my precious booze, after all, it “helped” me loose up and speak to women, so why should I quit?
This went on and on during that summer until I had a small “fuck-up” moment. My friends and I had gone to the beach to party, and I was so drunk I separated from them, and some guy found me lying on the floor, took my phone, called my parents, and sent me to bed in a taxi. My parents were so damn worried, and I ended up brushing it off. I lied to them and told them that would never happen again (spoiler alert, it did).
That following year went mostly fine, I was now in college, and I had kept my drinking “in check”. Don’t get your hopes up, I was still blacking out, but at least my parents were not being called by random strangers on the street, so to me, it was all good. Thankfully, mostly went fine, in fact, that very next summer, I had kept in mind what had happened last summer so I surprisingly moderated myself just fine, in fact, I didn’t even black out the first time I went out during the summer of 2020 (eventually I realized that it had to do with the group of friends that I was with). Eventually I ended up going to the beach with the wrong crowd, so I went back to blacking out daily.
Now, the story goes mostly the same until the pandemic hit. I had met a woman just prior to the lockdowns. In fact, I had met her while blacked out, but somehow managed to hook up with her and we kept talking the day after (I remembered so little, that I was skeptic that I even had the right Instagram profile because I didn’t remember her that well).
Long story short, nothing came out of that, and I became depressed for the following five months during lockdown. There, I started my self-improvement journey. I lost weight, began lifting, that sort of thing. When I finally gathered enough self-awareness on my own behavioral patterns, I could finally see the truth.
A year later, once the pandemic had calmed down a little, I went to the beach with the same friends (the bad, or even alcoholic crowd), and yeah, you guessed it! I blacked out the first night. When I woke up, I realized what I just did. I had become my older self again. That fat kid who couldn’t handle his booze, and all the guilt and shame for all those lost years rose to the surface and I was off the rails. I was depressed, anxious, and angry at myself, but I had to bottle it up in front of my friends. Because of my depressed state, I obviously resorted to blacking out every night to “drown” my sorrows and went back home.
That’s when something weird began to happen every time I went out for drinks. I would wake up extremely depressed and anxious. I was disoriented, why was this happening? Later I discovered that the feeling I had was called “hangxiety”. Anxiety the day after about what I did while blacked out, which would last for days. It also has to do with a chemical imbalance in the brain from the flood of GABA that we give ourselves when drinking too much.
At first, the hangxiety wasn’t so bad, I could handle it. It was mostly intrusive thoughts, but it would go away when I realized I hadn’t done anything wrong. This was until I partied with complete strangers. I blacked out, and I was one hundred percent sure that I had been homophobic to a group of people in the party, so I became so anxious for a week and a half. That’s when I realized this had gone too far. I had to stop.
Nevertheless, I didn’t want to give my precious alcohol up, so I convinced myself I could moderate. That’s when I realized I could not moderate. It just wasn’t fun to have one or two drinks. I wanted to get trashed, but my brain had had enough, I just couldn’t do that. I either blacked out or nothing. I lost my “middle” point. I was either sober or blacked out. No in between, no dizzy feeling. It was go big or go home.
I slowly began realizing just how big my problem was, and eventually, I knew there was only one way this could end. I could either go down the road all the way to alcoholism until I die or quit drinking for good (or a long time, at least).
During this time, I also started becoming aware of just how alcohol has no benefits at all. It wasn’t making me feel well, I wasn’t feeling excited in expectancy of a drink, and it didn’t make me laugh more than usual.
The problem was, alcohol was my whole personality, I was “that guy” who loved booze. My friends knew me as the biggest drinker in the group. I was always down for a drink (or a bottle) and I was always there, until the last drop of booze, or if it wasn’t enough, I was the one who bought another bottle to keep the party going.
So you see, giving it up meant letting go of my old personality, and letting go of the friends who probably only liked me when drunk, or when I enabled their own addictions by drinking with them until passing out.
So, how did I quit? I realized that alcohol has no benefits. It does not relax you, in fact, it stresses the body, and the “relaxing” feeling you get is just your body becoming physically numb, and then you get dumb enough to stop caring about your responsibilities.
Alcohol does not make you happy. In fact, the brain becomes inhibited so the next day it has to balance its chemicals which makes you depressed.
I didn’t need alcohol to talk to women. Most of my flirting was done while blacked out, so now I have to learn how to do it on my own.
Another pro tip: try this out whenever you can. Imagine alcohol in your head and try to provoke a nauseous feeling inside of you, that way you can rewire your brain to think of booze as something disgusting. If you can’t do this, it’s okay.
Another fun experiment to do, is stay sober at one party, just one party, and see just how annoying people can get while drunk. See how your friends begin to talk over each other, and how some even get angry and start a fight. You’ll eventually see how they may act like buffoons, which further helps you in quitting drinking.
How has my life changed after quitting? I’ve gone to a few parties since I quit, and honestly, it just feels amazing to be able to remember everything. To not be hungover. To not be so drunk that you can’t pay your bill in the pub. To not make an ass out of yourself.
Oh, and did I mention hangovers? Man, not being hungover feels amazing. I can actually wake up feeling so refreshed that I crush a morning workout, and not skip a day in the gym because I prioritized drinking and now I feel like shit.
Now, you may start to distance yourself from some friends, especially from the drinking buddies, because they can either join you in sobriety, or be in denial about their addiction and keep drinking.
How can you determine if you might be becoming an alcoholic? Well, it’s rather simple I would say. Do you black out consistently? Have you tried moderating but failed? Does the thought of going to a party while sober make your stomach sink? If you can answer “yes, absolutely” to all of these, then I would recommend going down the sober path. Spoiler alert: you won’t regret it at all, just like you won’t regret a night out every again. After all, have you heard anyone say “oh, I wish I had drank more alcohol yesterday”? No, no one has.
My last words: don’t forge your personality around drinking. Don’t be “another” person while drunk. Learn how to interact with people, learn how to flirt while sober. It’s not worth it to wait until you are drunk to take your chances. Start self-improvement, don’t make your family worry. Pursue your passions, exercise, fill your weekend with fulfilling activities instead of mindlessly drinking at the bar with friends. If your friends join you, then great. If they leave you, let them go.
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