Feb 22 2008
Anxiety While Drinking – Your Road to Rock Bottom
The experts believe that stress can contribute to someone drinking excessively and this is certainly a factor. What I would like to enlighten you with is how stressful it is to maintain a life of abusive drinking while trying to appear absolutely normal. I have compiled a list of the stressful situations the problem drinker will no doubt find themselves in.
1. Keeping your secret is extremely difficult to do. Those around you at home and work think you are only a social drinker. If you drink too much at an office function your reputation is at risk.
2. You start drinking at home one evening and are well on your way to intoxication when the phone rings and your son or daughter has had an accident and they need you.
3. You are constantly running out of alcohol before its “time” to replenish your liquor cabinet.
4. You have run out of alcohol so you jump in the car and drive to the liquor store, shaking on the way, only to find out the stores are closed due to a Statutory holiday. Evading police inspections is also an exercise in anxiety.
5. The unexpected always rears its ugly head. There are funerals, births, graduations, business trips (you’re always on), severe weather (everything closes for days), travel (long drives), family reunions (best behavior), your kids need to be driven everywhere, always something interfering with “topping up” and taking the edge off.
6. The cost of your drinking is becoming noticeable what with the after work pub crawls and what you need at home. Absorbing the cost and justifying the expense is getting more difficult.
7. Making mistakes at work and covering for yourself is harder than you thought it would be. Maintaining normal work habits isn’t easy when you toss drinking into the mix.
8. Keeping track of all your excuses and lies is becoming extremely difficult.
9. Health issues are becoming very worrisome. You know passing blood isn’t normal but you ignore it and it stops, but for how long? You need to drink but can you get away with it given this health warning? You chalk it up to an anomaly and carry on.
10. Your drinking is always on your mind. You can’t stop thinking about when you can have your next drink.
11. There is always the stress of others finding out about your unsavory secret. Can they smell the alcohol on your breath or tell by your eyes?
12. When they do find out about your alcohol abuse the stress of maintaining the denial is overwhelming.
13. Everything about your life and relationships evolves around drinking. Alcohol has become the most important thing in your life despite all you have and you feel guilty about it but aren’t able to do anything about it. This guilt is nearly debilitating. Living with it is stressful.
14. You are now very argumentative and defensive and it is straining your relationships to the breaking point. Just thinking about past, present and future arguments adds stress to your life.
15. You are running out of liquor stores to go to and the embarrassment of being recognized at each one is weighing on you no matter how you try and dismiss it.
16. Your empties are piling up since you can’t just throw them in the trash. Finding a solution to this is becoming a hassle you don’t need.
17. You know by now that you need help, you can’t avoid it what with your drinking always being a topic of discussion but you are powerless to do anything about it. This is not who you are. Normally so controlled you now can’t leave the house without a little bit of alcohol in your system to be able to function.
There are many more stressors involved with maintaining a drinking habit that is out of control. It’s like the only thing in your life that matters is your alcohol and this takes its toll on you physically and mentally. You started consuming alcohol socially when life’s daily stresses began to wear on you. A drink or two was a nice way to chill out from the day. Now the alcohol is consuming YOU and you can’t stop it.
Your life is spinning out of control and the stress of this makes you want to drink even more to slow the world down around you. You start experiencing grayouts and blackouts and not remembering where you where, what you did or how you ended up where you are. You can’t make your heart stop racing while you try and figure things out but it’s all missing. No stress there!
How much stress can you endure while you’re drinking before you bottom out and your life falls apart? Something has to give. When it does you may have just hit your rock bottom.
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