Alcohol in moderation. The most socially-accepted drug ever.

There is a true stigma associated with being an “alcoholic”, yet consuming alcohol under the vague external metrics of “moderation” is ultra-approved of… if not literally expected.

If you give up alcohol – your friends and family question it. Acquaintances may jump to conclusions that you might be an alcoholic. After all, who would give up alcohol *unless* it was destroying your life? It is as if the only accepted reason to give up alcohol is because you are an alcoholic.

And there is a huge stigma to being an alcoholic. And because of this stigma, people generally don’t want to talk about alcohol. But, being an alcoholic is associated with being black-out drunk, or having negative feedback from friends and family about your behavior, or not even being able to go a few days or even a week without it ….

But what if *none* of those things are true for you? If alcohol hasn’t “taken everything from you”, could you still have an issue with it? Could it still be something that is *not* serving you for the greater-good-that-you-think-it-is in your life? I think so, yes. At least for me, it’s a yes.

Yet, we “suffering moderates” kind of get lost in a grey area. Most of the help/programs/advice and generally all discussion that seems to be out there is about being “an alcoholic”. Which simply doesn’t apply to me. And it IS hard to go against the crowd. Without having any other validation that your concerns about alcohol in your life are real, and when all the friends you talk to who drink like you do don’t see any issues, then it leaves you thinking you’re just making a big deal out of nothing. And you stay on the hamster wheel.

As I shared in previous posts, I was in that limbo for ~years. I kept drinking, while *feeling* the dissonance between what I realized was actually right for my body, yet powerless to stop. Even when I proudly did my 3-month cleanse years ago (which further “proved” that I didn’t have a “problem” with alcohol so there was no reason to give it up), it was always in the mindset of being temporary. I *knew* I’d be having a drink the day it was over.

This time is different. This time it is an open-ended experiment.

I’d been honestly wanting (e.g. physically feeling like I needed to) do another ‘cleanse’ for many months prior. But I simply couldn’t build up the conviction necessary to do it. The conviction to not engage in what you get to see others ‘enjoying’. And it was a perfect storm that made it possible – combining a bad hangover with a day that there *really was* important stuff I wanted to do in my life… that I missed out on because I was ill and on the sofa.

…And, the night that caused this suffering, did I drink “too much”? By some external metric, not necessarily – the three people I was hanging out with drank the same and were not wiped out like I was. But, clearly, the external metric is irrelevant. I definitely, and easily, drank too much and missed out on things I wanted to do because of it.

Our brains desperately want to justify that we “don’t have a problem” so that we don’t have to give up a drug we are addicted to. So we flock to any documented or socially-approved proof that affirms the opposite. But that doesn’t really stop the little voice inside our heads that whispers the truth.

And I’m glad I started this experiment when I did. Normally, I’d wait till it is more “convenient”… e.g. avoiding the circumstances that I most wanted to drink at. We had that big party coming up, and normally I would have started ‘after’ that… Instead, I gave myself a free card for that one day and that allowed me to not procrastinate starting indefinitely. And, much to my pleasant surprise, I ended up not even using the free card – because I became more curious about if I could create an enjoyable experience without it.

I realized that to really explore what it is like to be a non-drinker, you kinda HAVE to do the things that you WOULD do with alcohol, but without the alcohol. Otherwise, you’re hiding from it. That’s not an experiment of what is like to be a non-drinker. That’s kinda like just going to a different room than the room the elephant is in. That’s avoidance. Instead of working through those experiences where you use alcohol to medicate or suppress something you haven’t healed or dealt with.

But having any external validation of this journey, despite being “moderate” was extremely vital in being able to work through this journey. It let me know that my struggle was real, even if society-at-large thinks it’s not a problem. Pelago is a substance-use support provider offered through my company. It’s been helpful to have weekly chats with them to simply talk things through and get those vital sanity checks, since no one in my family/friend circle is on the same journey. Also, there actually *are* people calling out the costs of ‘alcohol in moderation’ online, simply in corners of the internet I hadn’t travelled. Early on, these were also crucially helpful. You can check out:

• Giving up Alcohol May Change Your Life with Andy Ramage
• What Alcohol Does to Your Body, Brain & Health

Or search for your own! What you actually look for, you can find.