Hello everyone,
I’ve struggled for many years with my drinking. Alcohol surrounds me and is a normal part of my life. Most of my social time with friends and family involves drinking, and I love to drink alone as my way to relax. When I’m not working or studying, there is nothing I’d rather do than have some beer or wine.
I feel like my drinking has impacted my view of myself. I embarrass myself and am unable to do anything the next day. My hangovers are so intense that I generally sleep through the entire day without being able to eat or drink until the following day after. Lately, I have been blacking out more frequently. I wake up bruised and banged up and occasionally in unknown places with no recollection of how I’ve gotten there. I’ve also started to black in and out... where I lose my memory for part of the night and will suddenly gain some sense of consciousness and realize I’m soaking wet and have no idea what happened. These moments of gaining consciousness seem to happen only for a moment and I wake up the next day confused.
Every time I know I am going to drink, I think of a game plan beforehand. It’s usually that I’ll stick to only one beer but that never happens. I try to buy only 1 bottle of wine, but when I’m finished I always find more, either from friends or at a bar. The last time I blacked out I premixed wine with water, to dilute it and make it last longer. Again, I just ended up drinking other people’s alcohol and blacking out. As soon as I have my first drink, all my strategies vanish and something else takes over.
I found this study by searching something like how to quit drinking online. It’s hard for me to visualize myself as not drinking. Whenever I think about quitting I think about my favourite Christmas cocktails or having wine with dinner. As hard as it is for me to visualize myself as sober, I can’t imagine myself continuing my habits and still achieving all of my goals for the future. I feel torn and kind of hopeless.
