I went through about 11-12 years of heavy drinking, especially on weekends.
Every weekend I went out partying with my friends and binge drink both friday and saturday evening. Every sunday was a nightmare that I usually spent in bed.
I slowly started developing a habit of drinking every day. I would crush a 6 pack of tall cans on a normal weekday and then on weekends I had no limits.
I was never the street-drug kinda person, booze was my way to let loose. I never touched anything but a bit of green and alcohol, most of my friends though started doing blow, ecstasy and all that shit.
When I was around 25 it started getting very serious. The hangovers were getting worse and worse and my body was showing some weird symptoms. I had twitches and muscle pains all over my body but the worst symptom was the anxiety.
Every sunday after a heavy weekend I would get so fucking scared. First it was just hypochondria. I would spend all week calling doctors and self-analyzing and googling symptoms. Every week it was a different disease.
I was convinced that I had brain cancer, colon cancer, ALS or MS. Pretty much any disease you can think of I was convinced of having it at one point. I spent a shitton of money on doctors and self medication, but deep within myself I knew that all this shit came from drinking and not taking care of myself.
After years and years of fullblown hypochondria I developed a new form of anxiety. I never really experienced any memory loss from drinking only when the night was seriously bad.
In 2018 I spent 4 days drinking and skating at a contest and when I came home I went into full blown paranoia. My friend called me and said "Don't you remember? We facetimed at around 5am in the morning and you were bla bla bla..."
I did not remember any of that and I started getting scared. What if I did something bad while I was shitfaced and don't remember it anymore. What if I hurt somebody?
I was searching for evidence. I would read the news, searching my pockets of the pants that I wore that weekend. Every bloodstain on my clothes, that evidently was my blood that stemmed from an injury that I got while skating, I was convinced that it was the blood of a person that I hurt.
I was never a bad drunk, I was always very calm and would behave. I never got into fights or any altercation, but somehow I was so afraid of messing everything up. Eventhough there wasn't any serious evidence of any fight or stupid behavior.
I was getting freaked out when I heard police sirens or saw a cop looking at me. I couldn't sleep and every night I would go out and walk around with no direction.
At that point I quit drinking cold turkey and went to a psychiatrist. After about a month of sobriety I was developing serious health problems and had to go to the hospital. My appendix almost burst and I was completely fucked up. I had to get three surgeries and couldn't do shit.
One day when I woke up at the hospital, two cops were in the room starring at me. My heart almost exploded. They weren't saying a word, they were just standing there waiting for something. I was convinced they were coming to arrest me for whatever.
Then the door opened and the guy that was with me in the room came in after his kidney stone removal. Turned out, the cop was his sister and took a break from her duty to come and visit her brother.
This was one of the bad situations of all the anxiety that I went through and I had to get clean.
I would quit cold turkey for several months and then would "allow" me to have some drinks. But every time I would just slowly get back into binge drinking. My anxiety would kick back in full blown after some heavy nights.
I then managed to quit for two years and had a lot of time to think about the whole situation and sobriety really helped me out a lot. But I didn't want to turn into this sobriety-advocate so I would allow myself two to three beers on a day off.
No binge drinking anymore, no all-nighters anymore and so far it worked out.
Now if I notice any sign of anxiety kicking in, I will pull the brakes immediately and quit for months and relax. But I don't want to cut out alcohol completely. I take it as a treat after a good session or a heavy work week, or maybe have a glass of wine or beer with a good dinner.
The one thing that really helped me through all of this was skateboarding. Without it I would probably have ended up in an insane asylum. And I have to tell you, you skate 10 times better when you're not hung-over or drunk.
Your muscles regenerate a lot quicker and you can focus a lot better.
At this point I am just trying to regulate everything and see where it will take me. Maybe I will go through phases of anxiety again and quit or maybe I can stick to my rules and drink occasionally on weekends.
Topic: SOBRIETY (Read 21905 times)