The 3 Negative Traits My Drinking Most Exacerbated
I drank for twenty years, and I have been sober for five, so it’s pretty easy to draw comparisons. Life feels so different post-booze that it has become a way of measuring time. But, of course, I’m still the same person. And I still have many of the same foibles and weaknesses as well as my many talents.
For your enjoyment, I have written a listicle of the ways in which the drinking me compares terribly to the sober me. See if you relate.
1. Queen of Procrastination
When I drank, I was Queen of Procrastination. I had no follow-through and no idea I had no follow-through. I had no idea I was autistic or had ADHD back then. And so I beat myself up endlessly for my lack of purpose or achievement. And I drank pints to cheer myself up.
I had no clue that alcohol played a part in how stuck I felt. Beer was a part of who I was. It fuelled my good times. I wouldn’t have dreamed of going without it.
I stayed in relationships that made me unhappy. I stayed in a job I hated. I missed the deadline to apply for an MA for three years in a row.
I. Was. Stuck.
After I got sober, there was a steep acceleration in many areas of my life. My health improved and the aging that had been tormenting me since I turned 30 seemed to slow down to something less alarming. I ended a relationship that wasn’t working and found one that was a better fit. (We went halves on a corner sofa, need I say more?)
I finally secured a permanent academic post. I discovered that my ongoing ‘mental health issues’ were actually unaccommodated neurodiversity.
Five years after I quit drinking, I still procrastinate like a mother-flubber but I get sh** done, too.
2. Decision-making was difficult to the point of impossible
While I drank alcohol so often I had little idea what I felt. I’ve written more extensively about this in the context of autism because emotions are a bit of a revelation to me. I had no idea my feelings were supposed to guide me in the decisions I made. Hence I fought valiantly to make no progress at all like this sweet doomed lil cat.
Hand on heart, I rarely had a clear enough sense of what I felt to get a clue on where I should go next. If you relate, I recommend Dr. Jonice Webb’s Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect.
Drinking was a very successful method for dealing with my anxiety (what anxiety?) until the mega doom of the next day’s hangover, at least. But the mega doom was okay because I had a fantastic cure for anxiety. (With that foolproof logic, many finer a woman than me has drunk herself into an early grave.) I gradually lost contact with my gut. And decision-making became difficult to the point of impossible.
“It doesn’t matter what you do, just do something,” my mum used to say. But I just… couldn’t. It was extremely frustrating. To cheer myself up I drank more of those lovely pints.
3. Accidentally selfish
I used to believe greeting cards were a gigantic waste of time. My dad taught me this in a stand-out moment of Missing The Point, which I internalized as The Truth. We joked about posting the same birthday card to each other for the rest of our lives, though we never actually managed it because that would have displayed a level of commitment and diligence that neither of us was capable of.
As a boozehound I canceled many things. Remembered few birthdays or occasions. Sent very minimal cards.
Not all heavy drinking humans are selfish - I know many who live full and wonderful lives, with alcohol as a part of that - but for me, drinking turns the selfishness up way too high.
Defending myself to a friend who called me selfish for forgetting to tell her I had changed my plans and wasn’t meeting her anymore (in my defense, I needed to stay in the pub drinking beer), I said: “I didn’t mean to be selfish! I just didn’t think about you!”
“That’s literally the definition of selfish, Chels,” she said.
She got me good!
These days, I am the kind of person who has spare quality cards in a drawer. This is an incredibly hardwon personality shift, and as you can tell I’m weirdly proud of it. Because my dad was wrong. Cards aren’t just BS invented by Hallmark. They mark positive and meaningful occasions, which if we don’t make the effort to celebrate, can disappear in the drudgery and administration of being alive. Every card he managed to send me, actually meant a whole lot.
I wasn’t a bad person when I drank, but I wasn’t the greatest version of myself either. Undiagnosed neurodiversity played a huge role in my procrastination, my challenges with knowing how I felt, and my self-centredness. My failures were due to executive functioning issues more than negative personality traits; I literally couldn’t keep up with all the Many Things a woman is supposed to be able to do.
What really frightens me is to think that if I hadn’t quit drinking, I might never have worked out any of this. I might still be stuck and hating myself for being stuck. I’m so happy not to live that way anymore. But it’s taken an awful long time to feel this way.
If you suspect your life would be better if you didn’t drink, you’re probably right. I had a sneaking suspicion for a good few years before I finally managed to quit. My only regret about quitting is that I didn’t do it years ago.
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What bad traits did drinking exacerbate in you? What is your opinion on greetings cards? What is a new habit/trait you have developed in sobriety that you are weirdly proud of?
If you need help to be okay, you’re not alone.
If you’re ready to try something different, read beautiful hangover and discover what I did to get freedom from alcohol. Do whatever it takes to stay sober for 30 days: go to your doctor, try Smart or AA or Hip Sobriety or Soberistas.
Listen to Recovery Elevator and SHAIR podcasts. Read This Naked Mind. Try Moderation Management.
There is a whole community of people waiting to help you. Reach out. Something better is waiting.
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Chelsey Flood is the author of Infinite Sky and Nightwanderers, and a lecturer in creative writing at Falmouth University. She writes about freedom, addiction, nature and love, and is working on a non-fiction book about getting sober, and a new YA novel.
She also writes and draws Polite Robot an illustrated newsletter about autism.