Insidious: What my drinking actually looked like and how it changed over the years - part 1.
Age 14-18:
I took my first sip of alcohol when I was 14. Well, that’s not strictly true.
When I was younger I had, on a handful of occasions, been allowed to have half a sherry glass of wine with dinner on very special occasions like Christmas which always made me feel very grown up.
Wine was always ever-present throughout my childhood. My whole family drank it, often, and always with dinner. No one got sloppy with it, from what I remember anyway. It was just there, and something for adults to enjoy. So being allowed to have a little bit on occasion definitely gave me a bit of a thrill.
But I was 14 when I had what I call my ‘first drink’ with the intention of getting drunk. Myself and my school friends at the time had a sleepover at my friend’s place and we spent our Saturday night drinking sickly sweet raspberry Vodka Cruisers (eww) and chatting with boys on MSN messenger.
From memory, I drank a 4 pack over the course of the night and I fell in love there and then. With just a few sips, I could slip out of my awkward skin and feel like a whole new person, someone cooler, more confident and way more carefree.
Because I had moved countries and schools only a year or so before, I also felt like it helped me create a deeper connection and sense of belonging with my friends whom I’d only known a short time.
It worked well, or so I thought. We giggled endlessly, rolling around on the floor, taking funny photos of ourselves and gossiped into the early hours of the morning. It was sweet and innocent fun.
However, it didn’t take long for my drinking to take a darker turn.
A few months later at a party, I downed 12 Vodka Cruisers along with some beers, and gave myself alcohol poisoning. I remember violently chucking up cherry red vomit for hours and hours, and feeling scared that I might not survive it. This was the first time (of many times to come) that I felt filled with shame about the amount I drank. Why didn’t I stop drinking earlier?
Looking back now, it was clear that from the get-go, I didn’t have an off-switch but also, no one else around me did either. At this point, I did not stand out whatsoever. In fact, drinking very much helped me to meld in, and to be part of the group. After losing all of my childhood friends & family a year or so earlier, I really needed that.
But that feeling of belonging to the group didn’t last long.
Two years later, I found myself angrily cast out of that same group of friends because of something that happened during a night of drinking. I’ll likely write in more detail about this happening in another post because there was a lot to it but for now, I’ll just say that this was a significant emotional trauma for me that deeply affected my life in the years that followed.
I lost my entire friendship circle (for the 2nd time in my life) in one night , and then had to continue to see them in classes at school and actively avoid them in the playground for at least a year afterwards. Every time I saw them, they would sneer at me and cackle behind my back and my stomach would churn itself into knots. I was likely labelled a ‘slut’ and definitely a ‘loser’ and was plastered as enemy #1 forevermore.
Things got so bad that a year later, I ended up going to another school at the other end of the country for my final year of high school, and I never saw or spoke to that group of girls again. The deep shame I felt however, I carried with me into my next chapter.
Age 19-25:
During my university years, my entire social life revolved around alcohol.
I spent most weekends binge-drinking my way through parties and wild nights on the town with a new group of girlfriends that I had made.
Whilst I had many very fun nights out, my drinking also brought a lot of chaos and negativity to my life.
It was common for me to wake up the next morning (sometimes in a strange man’s bed) not knowing exactly where I was or how to get home.
Relationships with men were mostly meaningless and when I was 21, I suffered my first sexual assault when drunk. In fact, I was so down on my sense of self-worth, that I didn’t even realise it was that until about 10 years later but that’s another story for another time.
I lost shit all of the time (like my keys and my wallet) which caused me stress and sometimes a lot of money to fix; like that time I lost my car’s smart key and it cost me $400 to replace…ahh!!
And I also injured myself, sometimes badly - one night I stood on something sharp whilst walking barefoot down the road (as you do) and I nearly cut my little toe off. I ended up in hospital getting stitches and was on crutches for about 6 weeks.
After a while, the cost of my “fun” nights out started mounting up.
Age 26-29:
When I became a teacher and started my first job, the way I was drinking started to shift.
I still spent a lot of weekends out dancing & partying with my girlfriends, but I also started drinking wine during the week too.
At first it felt rather idyllic and very grown up. I could afford it and I enjoyed washing down a stressful day’s work with a glass or two of Pinot Gris. It helped to blur my edges.
But oh so gradually, one evening turned into 2 and then into 3 and before I knew it I was developing a daily wine drinking habit.
I don’t think I saw the connection at the time, but the more I drank, the more I struggled to manage my emotions day-to-day, especially at work. Then, two years into my teaching career, I had a massive panic attack (in the dark, enclosed closet office at the back of my classroom) and a few weeks later I quit altogether.
I decided to go travelling instead and ended up drinking my way through Cambodia and my week in Rome, my favourite city. On my last night in Rome, I had a crazy thing happen at a Couchsurfing meetup I attended which ended up in me wandering around the frozen stone streets alone, shoeless and afraid.
By the time I made it to London at the end of my trip, I felt broken. I was also completely broke and I had to return to New Zealand much earlier than expected.
I got another teaching job where the whole cycle started over again and would continue on into my 30’s where my drinking intensified even further.
Part 2 coming soon!
