Did I believe I could control my drinking? What were some of the experiences with this, and how were my efforts unsuccessful?
I tried for quite some time to control my drinking. I thought what I wanted to be able to do was to have a "proper drink" once in a while ... to have a moderate drink in social situations ... and to not drink the rest of the time. I was kidding myself really though because what I really wanted to do was to drink to get trashed without it being a problem to do so ... and without any of the consequences of doing so.
I believed for a long time that I could control my drinking if I could only try hard enough and be more consistent in my efforts. I'd set up rules and boundaries and then almost immediately set out to break these down by fabricating or creating exigent circumstances. I didn't seem able to recognise that I was in fact self sabatoging. It was like there were two of me, one that mostly wanted to do the right thing (but not enough obviously) and another part of me that just wanted to get wasted to escape from reality and life altogether.
So I'd make a rule, try to convince myself that this would then "allow" me to drink within limits and thus exercise some kind of control ... all the while knowing that what I wanted out of drinking was the "out-of-controlled-ness" and mind numbingness ... yet I seemed unable to acknowledge this was my motivation for drinking most of the time.
When I joined BrightEye I did so because I recognised that my drinking was problematic. I wanted to regain "control" ... or so I thought ... at least on some level. I think I was so mired in addictive thinking that I was unable to distinguish rational from irrational thought patterns as they occured in my mind. I didn't really feel in control of myself let alone my drinking, and was scared/anxious most of the time. I must have felt pretty desparate because I reached out for help ... albeit in a non face-to-face environment where my anonymity was assured. Even so, I signed up and started posting on the forum.
At the time I asserted with quite some vigour that this control thing was about choice. I firmly believed that control was a matter of learning consistency in the act of choosing. I believed that I had choice even whilst drinking, to stop after a few drinks ... or to carry on. What I failed to take into account was how compromised my ability to exercise choice had become ... and how further compromised it became with every glass of alcohol.
I could feel the compulsion or 'phenomenon of craving' as the Big Book describes it but I prescribed my own antedote ... more rules, stronger boundaries, grander and grander Master Plans that were going to help me sort this out ... sort this out without me having to change very much at all other than not drinking! It seems like irrationality and an unwillingness to contemplate fundamental change go hand in hand with me. Both are deeply rooted in my fear and anxiety of not measuring up.
It didn't seem to matter to me that all previous Master Plans had failed abysmally. I thought or rather hoped that the failing lay in the plans themselves rather than in me. Part of detaching from reality for me was the amount of time I spent wishing my life was different and fantasising about how it might be if only I could magically resolve all my issues and become this entirely different person. The unrealistic nature of these thoughts and the obsessive way I mull them over is something that I still find difficult to put to one side so I can look to see what is rather than what I wish could be.
My efforts at control were largely unsuccessful because fundamentally I didn't want controlled drinking. I wanted to drink to get drunk.
What things did I do that I can hardly believe I did when I look back at them?
I feel a lot of shame about some of the things I've done whilst drinking. I also feel a lot of bewilderment that I allowed myself to act in such ways.
I used to visit Jan knowing that there was an entirely unhealthy aspect to our "friendship" besides the fact that it was almost completely a friendship based on drinking stacks and stacks of wine. I told her so many lies and fabricated this whole different persona ... a different Jos altogether, with a different life, lots of friends, a different past and a very different present. We both played mind games although at the time I didn't really understand that this is what we were doing. I think we both quite enjoyed the private little bubble we created. I knew I wasn't any good at this stuff and knew too that I wasn't able to handle it. It was a bit like my drinking ... I kind of liked the out-of-controlled-ness of our relationship and her wildness. I'd never had anyone persue a friendship with me in quite the determined way that she did. She seemed very "cool" and sophisticated to me. On some level I knew there was likely to be a sexual element to our friendship because there were things she did and said that seemed "off" to me. She talked openly and very positively about my body and stuff like that in a way that I'd never heard before, and certainly not from women friends. It made me uncomfortable but I thought perhaps this was just something where I was being niave and a bit stupid.
When Jan & I slept together it was at her instigation but there's no doubt in my mind that I wanted to s well. I don't remember ever seriously contemplating that this would happen but I do remember trying to figure out the apparent incongruity between some of the things she said and did ... and the huge amount of unsaid stuff that might have been inferred but because of my inexperience I just couldn't seem to read the signals. I was pretty sure I'd got my wires crossed completely so I was surprised when she kissed me and further surprised that she wanted to develop that into further intimacy.
At the time I don't think I was prepared for the emotional fallout of this sequence of events and even now in retrospect it remains something that feels very large and wrong. Not only in terms of my unfaithfulness although that in itself produces it's own share of guilt and shame ... but also in terms of Jan herself. The risks we took by becoming intimate whilst staying at her house with her children upstairs were far more potentially devastating for her than for me. I'd hate to think what would have happened if we'd have been caught as I can't see how her sons would not have told their father.
This remains the outstanding thing that I can't believe I did whilst drinking. Not only has it left me deeply ambiguous in terms of my own sexuality but also it's undermined any belief I had in my own integrity. I believe that manogamous faithfulness within marriage is important, so too honesty and trust. And yet I broke with all these tennants without a second thought ... and more than once. I would never have believed that I was capable of acting in this way.
Did I put myself in dangerous situations to get alcohol?
I've never drunk and then immediately got in the car to drive. I have driven after short amounts of sleep whilst knowing I was over the limit. In effect I drove whilst still drunk but not to get more alcohol ... just to get to work.
I can't remember a time when I put myself in a dangerous situation to get alcohol. We always had a pretty full wine rack, and wine cellar ... pretty full spirits collection too. No shortages were permitted to occur as we kept an eye out for bargains and bulk bought at cash & carry wine merchants.
Did I behave in ways of which I'm now ashamed? What were those situations like?
By far the most shameful things I did were in my relationship/friendship with Jan. At the time I felt completely obsessed with her and couldn't seem to think rationally or logically. I don't know what I thought would happen as a result of our intimacy but it knocked me of kilter for a long time afterwards. It remains my shameful secret and although we've not kept in touch exccept indirectly through mutual friends I believe she has kept it secret too although I can't be sure. I worry that I have harmed her, and wonder about how I might go about making ammends. I also wonder whether she was just playing games and having screwed around with my head has now moved on to biger and better things. I worry as well that if I were to try and stay in contact then I would once again fall into that obsessiveness that I felt before. I recognise the unhealthiness in my thinking when I'm recalling these events and I see how easily I fell into a level of obsessiveness I didn't really comprehend at the time.
The way I felt when it was all going on is hard to describe. It felt out of control. There was a lot of confusion in my mind ... a lot of wanting and not wanting at the same time. Right and wrong just didn't figure in my thinking and it just seemed to snowball into an obsessiveness out of all proportion with the events themselves.
Did I make insane decisions as a result of my addiction? Did I quit jobs, leave friendships and other relationships, or give up on achieving other goals for no reason other that that those things interfered with my drinking?
Over the years I became more and more reclusive. Never was that comfortable around people anyway, so I preferred solitude and certainly when it came to drinking. I liked drinking with Trev well enough but my true preference was to drink alone. As such I let friendships lapse through neglect and through willful action by continually cancelling things at the last second and making up reasons because I couldn't tell the truth, which was that I'd either already drunk too much to drive, or was about to drink and didn't want to do anything other than drink despite having prior commitments elsewhere.
Did I physically injure myself or someone else in my addiction?
I used to sit in the bath sometimes and look at all the bruises wondering how on earth I'd got them all. UDI's (unexplained drinking injuires) I called them. I'm lucky that it wasn't worse, and even more lucky that no-one was ever physically injured through my drinking. I recognise completely that this was more through luck than judgement.
How have I over/under reacted to things?
I think it's quite clear that I both over and under-react to things. I over-reacted completely to the whole Jan episode and the aftermath of that was many months of wallowing in pointless guilt remorse and shame. Didn't stop me drinking though and in some ways my drinking became even more desparate as I tried to escape myself by drinking even more to excess.
I know I am too thin skinned and overly sensitive to criticism, either real or implied. I over-react when faced with difficulties of any sort, usually thinking that I will not be able to cope and will make whatever situation I'm faced with even worse. I get angry very quickly and often it's out of all proportion to the issue that triggered my annoyance. It's like anything that annoys me is only a tiny step away from being intolerable ... which is how I'd justify flying into a stupid rage about things.
The converse is also true in that when things happen that demand a response from me I tend to under-react as a kind of fear based paralysis sets in. I sometimes fail to respond because I'm scared that my inadequacy to cope will be exposed. I don't want people to rely on me in areas where I feel I might let them down, so I tend to shy away even when I know that it's inappropriate.
There are also times when I just can't be bothered and that feeling in some respects bears little or no relation to the gravity of the matter at hand. So I can react like that in grave situations just because I feel jaded within myself regardless of issues of friendship, commitment, loyalty, right and wrong or anything else really. In other words supremely selfish at such times.
How has my life been out of balance?
In so many ways that I can't begin to count them. I think I've always felt this deep unease within myself and sought ways to ease it ... always through things outside myself ... until relatively recently it's never been about changing myself, just changing the way I feel. The consequence is that I've not looked forward enough or with sufficient clarity to see the consequences of such selfishness and self centeredness. One cannot live in such isolation and not end up functionally alone.
In what way does my insanity tell me that things outside myself can make me whole or solve all my problems? Using drugs or alcohol? Compulsive gambling, eating or sex seeking? Something else?
I think avoidance strategies have been my way of dealing with things my whole life. I don't really discriminate between drinking, smoking dope, and other forms of hiding out from life. I do / did them for much the same reason ... and regardless of the consequences. I put feeling better in the moment above other considerations and would rather hide out than face up to stuff even though it means that nothing ever gets resolved. Anxiety is thus perpetuated and yet still I seek to solve my problems by running away from them.
Is part of my insanity the belief that the symptoms of my addiction (using drugs/alcohol or some other manifestation) is my only problem?
I did think that my life would become better than it has by stopping drinking but I was under no illusion that drinking per se was my only problem. Far from it. I felt that drinking helped me to cope with my other problems when in fact all it did was help me not to face up to them. Since stopping drinking I've become acutely aware that the way I think, act and feel are still very tied up in unhealthy patterns and it is this I am seeking to resolve through working the steps programme.
When we acted on an obsession, even though we knew what the results would be, what were we feeling and thinking beforehand? What made us go ahead?
I still have mental tussles about the most ridiculous things that go round and round in my mind. I don't really understand how one breaks out of this tendancy to obsessiveness except to keep trying to break the patterns as I become aware of them and not give myself too hard a time about having them in the first place.
I think whenever I've acted on an obsession I've first gone through a process of detaching from the reality of the situation and the likely outcomes / consequences. This sounds like a clinical assessment for what is in fact a very messy and confusing set of thought patterns that basically have me doing mental gymnastics whilst I try to juggle competing and self contradicory justifications (denial) why it's OK to act on an obsession 'this time' in very much the same way that I did when I was drinking. It's the "this time" element in my thinking that is so consistently a clue that I am in fact acting on an obsession rather than acting in line with rational reasoning.
It feels to some degree like something that helps me feel more in control. Like my "internet habit". I know I spend far too much time on there and I don't feel I can control it ... and yet when I'm on the internet I feel quite calm and in control. I like that feeling and the way it helps me to block out other stuff that I should be getting on with.
So, denial, then the justification followed by the action ... that's the pattern as I see it. I carry through to the action because I want to feel better in the moment even though I know it's likely to be transitory at best ... and even knowing that I am becoming entrenched in yet more problematic habitual behaviours driven by fear.
