Are you going to start drinking again?

This question has started to surface in the wake of my breakup, and, to be fair, I had to ask it of myself in a crazy train of thought. The asking of this question shows that none of us truly believe that I quit drinking for myself, of my own volition. Which is a true statement — I made this choice for myself.A few years back I did The Artist's Way. One of the exercises looked at things that did not serve you. Drinking came up for me, a lot. It's not that it was out of control all the time, but it sure did feed drama, take away from my creativity and demand a lot of time and energy.I still feel like I'm getting out from under its grip. When drinking, there's a freedom because if you do something ridiculous you can just fall back on — Well, I was drinking! The reality is that I want to risk doing ridiculous things — just because I want to. Maybe I'll dance in the grocery store aisles or wear bright colors or engage with a stranger. It all boils down to vulnerability, and a great way to avoid being vulnerable is to hide behind alcohol so there's always a scapegoat as to why you did what you did. I want to get out from under the weight that keeps me from doing these things — not add a bottle of booze to the mix.Back to the original question: Are you going to start drinking again? The timing is strange. At a low point in an addict's life, like a long-term relationship ending, I would never ask them if they were going to start shooting up again. Instead I'd ask — What keeps you strong? How are you not going to revert back to those once comforting behaviors?It shows me that society really does not like a non-drinker. I'm always feeling that and working on how to be comfortable around the issue. It's not my job to make anyone else comfortable with the issue.Rather than taking offense, I viewed the asking as a test. It's always good to check in around issues so they don't just become didactic rules. I felt strong. I was willing to admit that I had also queried. It's life. It's reality.When I asked myself about drinking, it's because I was thinking ahead. Not that I want to… but my brain just spins sometimes. It was reaching for all the desperate ploys to create fear, drama and reaction… Will you ever date again? How will you date if you don't drink? Who would want to date you if you don't drink? Do any fun, creative people not drink? And the thought wheels went on.Acknowledging these fears, I realized A) There's still work to be done around the drinking issue and how it relates to identity, and B) it's more important than ever to not drink because all of those reasons would be to fit in and fall back into those old patterns of wanting to fit in and be and do what everyone wants from me. It's time to do the down and in work and release those chains. I am enough. I am whole. Rinse and repeat.The other factor about this query is a simple dietary one. For a year I followed Paleo — which does not include alcohol. Now I'm on an anti-Candida diet (in the hopes of working back up to Paleo!) which doesn't allow for sugar of any kind. Alcohol wreaks havoc in my body — playing with my blood sugar and flooding my system with sugar overloads. Not a great thing for someone diagnosed as pre-diabetic in her 20s. Just because we ignore these health things doesn't mean they'll go away, so I stand up and pay attention and do my best.The physical/dietary guidelines play a supporting role in motivation. I'm glad they're there for when the deeper emotional desires are tired and feeling barraged. I've learned to have multi layers of defense. A hard facet of breaking up is losing part of my support network. We never talked about drinking or our personal struggles, but I knew I had a solid pillar of support and understanding. Or, at the very least, a fellow human who didn't drink. I'm not sure if I have any close friends who don't drink. Even pregnant ones will have a sip of wine and count down to when drinking can resume. It's ever present.So for now I will stand strong alone, even in an emotionally tough time. It doesn't matter to me if you drink or not, but if you want to be supportive, let's have conversations about how to stay strong. It doesn't even have to be about drinking — it can be about exercise or any other desires. I can translate in my head to my own situation. But I can't continue to be a repository for why you don't want to stop drinking. Let's talk about other ways to unwind, relax or be social without a lubricant. Let's make this fun and non-threatening — I'm not trying to take a bottle away from you and you can stop trying to give me one.

Are you an alcoholic?

A few people have asked me over the 3 years that I've been sober if I'm an alcoholic. I don't know how to answer that and struggle with the label because of the extreme images it conjures. I've read in several places about the idea of addiction and what it means. There's one component that's filling a void, soothing and loosening the grip of loneliness or inner torment or whatever emotional demons. Fine — for that I can see many options from food to tv to socializing or sex to the extremes of alcohol and drugs. We can see a sliding scale of healthy to unhealthy behaviors and amounts, et cetera in our human judgy selves.Then there's this other aspect of addiction which revolves around thought patterns. These are harder to see but are the internal equivalent of: It's 5 o'clock somewhere. It's just one. Well, you are on vacation. You're allowed to celebrate! It's not like you have to drive. …and the list goes on.My internal dialog was personalized to me and my issues. Is it okay to drink alone? Is it bad that you want a drink? It's just a glass of wine. You can have wine with dinner. There's just a little bit left. You didn't have a drink yesterday. Everyone else is drinking. You just got home from work; it's okay to relax.And so on and so on.Drinking had a mental grip on me. If alcohol was available, there would be a mental process about it. I couldn't dig below all this torment and find out if I really even wanted it. Or liked it. So I would have some. Or not have some. And the torment would continue either way.Elaborate rules form about how much or how little. Just with friends. No hard alcohol. Only at parties. These increased the mental torment because now I had a list of rules and regulations to mentally check through to know if what I was doing appeared to be ok and normal to everyone else.And then one day, after my boyfriend rolled his truck and somehow survived, I had a wake up realization that what I was doing was not okay with me. We took a break for a few weeks, so I was not under any pretense of doing this to support him. I also didn't do it out of fear of an accident — most of my drinking happened walking distance from my house. This was an internal welling up of truth that had been there, and I was finally ready to listen and do what it takes.Just taking that stance for myself and having just one hard and fast rule — no drinking of alcohol — alleviated the mental torture. It resumes occasionally when I'm faced with alternative medicines like tinctures or even vanilla extract. There are alcohol-free versions of most things, but I realized that I don't have a physical trigger. I'm not going to taste a tincture and then want wine. So I do have to address the mind grip gremlins and tell them to ease up a tiny bit and look at underlying motivations and mental stability rather than tormenting me and eroding those very foundations.With all of that I still can't say I'm an alcoholic. I really don't know. I can comfortably state that I struggle with addiction issues and habitual behaviors. I do wish I could re-trigger my healthy habit of running every morning — it didn't seem like an addiction to do it, but there was certainly a void when I didn't. When we shine the light on addictive behaviors, we don't get to pick and choose. They all start coming into the light, and all underlying motivations are up for review.And so we slog on. Doing the best we can. Searching for freedom in all its various guises.