Eight Years Ago Today, I Drank My Last Drink

"Functional" Alcoholism Was the Most Dangerous State I've Lived In.

When I was young, I swore off drugs and alcohol because I was told constantly how they had destroyed my family. How drugs were so powerful they made my mom abandon me. Stuff like that.

Those are lies - my mother left because my dad was an abusive, twisted alcoholic fuck.

When I got older I found out my family was peopled with horrible, abusive assholes, and about the only way to make things feel ‘right’ when I was exposed to them was by looking at them through the bottom of a glass.

I got very, very good at looking through the bottom of a glass. Not to brag or anything, but I easily outdrank the Scottish. By the time I quit drinking, I was tucking away over a fifth a day.

I knew I was in a ‘bad way.’ I was still, however, dangerously functional, even though I had all the classic symptoms of my alcoholism starting to really take hold of me and get out of control. But again - I was FUNCTIONAL. I was working a six figure job and training for marathons. But I was also taking shots before work. I would sneak out on lunch with my boss to get some absinthe. I drank WHILE running a marathon.

Carbs, right?

As I became more and more of a drunk, there was always someone there to approve of it. Other drunks, you see. It’s often how people will make themselves feel better: they were saying, in their mind “at least I’m not as bad as Jamie,” all while shoving booze and approval at me.

Too Drunk to Notice the Image was out of Focus.

I ran my body through so much (literally and figuratively), that when I went drinking a couple of days after that marathon - it was too much, and I passed out in Darren’s arms.

I came to in the hospital, and that effectively shattered any idea of me being ‘functional.’

As soon as I recognized where I was and what had happened, I started pulling tubes out of myself - utterly ashamed.

I felt terrified, out of control, and vulnerable - and I knew that if Darren couldn’t save me from myself, that only left me to do it.

The doctor was, of course, an absolute asshole. I told him I planned to quit drinking and he rolled his eyes at me and said “Whatever.” Well, you piece of shit - I still haven’t had anything to drink and it’s eight years later.

When I say things like “I should be dead from the amount of alcohol I was able to drink,” I mean it. Allow me to share my lab results from that day:

I should be fucking dead.

In a philosophical sense, I did, in a way, die. (I am dead yet I live). The alcoholic woman that was rolled into the hospital that night doesn’t exist anymore - because there was no reasoning a way around the fact I was so fucked up I required medical intervention.

I could go into all the reasons why I was drinking myself into oblivion.

They were all such good reasons, and that’s just the surface ones. Two short months before, my darling dog Cesar died suddenly and far too young. My grandmother was actively dying after my dad threw her down the stairs, which meant I had to have contact with my lying half-brother. It was the first time anyone in the family ever actually talked about the abuse that happened in that house. My job was blowing up not-so-slowly. In the center of all of it in my ever-beating heart, was the feeling that I wasn’t worthy, that I was less-than: that I was the thing that people had to tolerate.

The reasons didn’t matter anymore, though. Because it was quit drinking or die from it.

That simple.

There was no reasoning with it.

There was no middle road.

Honestly, it’s the situation I’m the best at. I’m the absolute best at absolutes.

So, on the 7th of May, I started a life of absolutely not drinking.

I didn’t submit to a higher power or authority.

I didn’t do the 12 steps.

I didn’t fix the part of me that felt broken and unworthy.

I just stopped fucking drinking. That worked for me.

If it didn’t, I would have found another way. Because now I knew for sure I was going to die if I didn’t.

Once sober, I allowed myself to recognize some pretty unhealthy patterns I had set up around me. I allowed myself to fully recognize the generational trauma I carried, and I actually started to look in on those deep memory holes that had plagued me my whole life.

Dark, tough stuff.

Not stuff to face with a head full of whisky.

Sobriety allowed me to acknowledge the ways in which I was letting the stress from it all kill me.

It also forced me to acknowledge that I was going to have to start making some pretty drastic changes.

I spent the next few months trying to find out what the ‘best me’ even felt like. I had been drunk my entire adult life - I picked up drinking at 18 and never really stopped, so getting to know myself again was part of that journey.

I even quit cannabis for a while (it ends up the best me definitely consumes cannabis - how I started again is a story in and of itself. Plus, the worse thing that has happened to me about cannabis is that I got super high and watched a sunset to sober up. Drinking nearly killed me).

Another thing I found during this process is that most of the people that I felt were friends were actually just drinking buddies. That made me cherish the friends more.

Did it sting to find out I built up relationships to be more than they were?

Sure, but it wasn’t anything I wasn’t prepared for.

I was just surprised at just how deep all those cuts went, and how few friends I actually had. It was hard for me to discover how many people were really just drinking buddies, but I don’t take it personally. I know many sober people who walked away from me, too. Growing apart happens, for a variety of reasons.

I am constantly reinventing myself by reassembling all my broken pieces into a different order. When I look back at nearly 8 years of sobriety from alcohol, I’m proud of the fight I’ve waged and how I’ve fought it. I’m also proud of some of the pieces I’ve left behind.

The thing that has kept me going all these years?

I just want to become the person that Cesar thought I was.

I miss you every day, you silly mutt.