Why does it seem that the only discussions about alcohol have to do with people who are “alcoholics”? Why does your whole *life* need to be falling apart from it before it seems that society thinks you should question it?

What about those of us who do not consume enough beverages to classify as an alcoholic, but whom still struggle and suffer to successfully maintain the “in moderation” that they DO consume?

Somehow in our society, the measure of “if someone has a problem with alcohol” is measured by an external number of drinks consumed, and if you stay below that magic number then you “don’t have a problem”.

Well, I stay below that number, but I have a problem with my relationship with alcohol.  I struggle with moderation. I’m plagued by always wanting more to drink, and stressed by the self-control it takes to successfully limit it.  And even though I drink less than most people I hang out with, I seem to suffer more than they do.  With fatigue, muscle heaviness (like a lead weight), headaches, nausea, etc.  My body has been continually telling me that it doesn’t like what I’m doing to it. Yet, I continue to do it, to the maximum amount I can “get away with” before I fear the consequences (which isn’t much).  And, most of all, moderation seems to always eventually fail.  Even when I’d been very ‘good’ for a long while keeping things low, eventually I seem to mess up again, overdo it, and pay a price the next day that I’m no longer willing to pay.

This just happened again recently, and it was yet another wake-up call in a long series of alcohol-related wake up calls.  I’ve been becoming increasingly aware over the last two or three years:

1. How much my body seems to dislike it (the price I pay, later in that evening and the next day, and to a subtler extent the day after that as well).
2. How I seem to handle less and less as the years go by.
3. How fleeting the ‘pleasure/fun’ part really is.

So, over the last 2 or 3 years I’ve been progressively doing ‘better’, gradually cutting back.  Well, most of the time – there were definitely periods where it ebbed and flowed, depending on life.  But, all the while, there was that torture of always wanting more than I could have. Moderation is exhausting.  And, as I recently proved, it fails.

So this last hangover really made me truly question, for the umpteenth time, but now at a deeper level of the Onion, why is it that I do this?

Alcohol is truly the elephant in my Health Room.

I do SO MUCH for my health.  I make a lot of choices for the well-being of my body, many of which are “sacrifices”.  But I continually invest my time and effort into these things, because I believe that they matter.  I believe that they empirically matter – that I AM feeling better than I otherwise would be if I didn’t try.

Yet, despite that I’ve cut back a lot compared to when I was in my twenties and early thirties, I still put something into my body that consistently gives me strongly correlated negative side-effects.  It really makes no sense; it is absolutely inconsistent with everything else I do. I’m a whole-foods, very-leery-of-pharmaceutical-drugs-and-even-OTC-drugs type person. Yet, I do drink.  I mean alcohol is a poison, it is a toxin. That is a fact.  Yet, so many of us treat it different than other toxins. A toxin on a pedestal. Like it’s been tucked off to the side in this dark corner where it gets a free pass from all our rules. Grandfathered in, perhaps?? It makes no sense. There’s gotta be a lot more to this. Time to start peeling the Onion and seeing what is going on here. What am I not seeing? What am I unwilling to see?

Society seems to think we don’t have a problem with alcohol when it doesn’t affect our work or friends or social life.  But what about when it doesn’t affect those things, yet we do still *suffer*, mentally, with the addiction of it? Of always wanting more than we can have?  To me, anything that we never seem to “have enough of”, to be satiated by, is on the addiction spectrum.  If we’re constantly craving it and looking forward to the next time we can have it, even if that’s way out on Friday, it’s on the addiction spectrum.  Successful, moderated control on the outside doesn’t always equate to peace from turmoil on the inside.  And I live on the inside.  That’s why I gave up sugar, and continue to be very careful around it, because of the addiction and the relentless ‘wanting’ that it triggers within me.

I’m tired of feeling that way. And since I tried alcohol in moderation and it doesn’t seem to be sparing me the ‘itchy feeling’, I think I’d like to try something else. I want to stop altogether until a time when I’ve forgotten what it’s like to always need it.

But it’s also not some accomplishment I need to dangle in the future at the end of a stick.

All we have is the present moment. If I can create that feeling now, without waiting on some level to fail, then it will be easier.  And more pleasant for the duration.

“Enjoy this moment, for this moment is your life.” 

–Anonymous

I don’t want to give it up as some restrictive “cleanse” and “sacrifice” where I’m longing for that day I can start drinking again. That sounds like a series of unpleasant present moments. (Not to mention ending up back where I started, having already decided its outcome).

I want to give it up until I learn what its like to be free from the compulsion.  And give my body time to heal from the toll it takes.  And then reassess what it does in my life and what I truly want for myself.  I want to calibrate.  You have to reset to zero to calibrate anything, to see things clearly.

But it will be challenging. But, challenges are actually good, if you have the right mindset around them. If it’s a choice.  Society and drinking are practically synonymous.  It is so ubiquitously accepted, and you feel left out if you don’t. Social bonding over shared experiences is a thing.  And in my case, I feel left out of so many of those experiences already due to be gluten free and dairy free and other-things free.  When people partake in eating things, I rarely can.  The concept of ‘let’s order a pizza’ has been long lost for me.  Drinking was one thing I could do too (except normal beer, of course, so there was still some exclusion there too).  But now there will be yet another thing I don’t participate in. And its probably important to acknowledge and honor that. It is a reality and true on some level.  But on another level, I’m sure there are ways around it. Other ways to connect. That’s the challenge, the Game. Not to suffer, but to figure out how to thrive.

“It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” 

–Jiddu Krishnamurti

Game on.