The Bad Old Days...

The reason that my teeth are so bad is more than likely because of the copious amounts of alcohol I have drunk over the past fourteen years. And that's a lot of sugar, hey.

You could say I'm an alcoholic, I suppose, but I prefer to be known as a Drunk. I don't like the implications that the term 'alcoholic' brings with it; mainly that you have admitted there is a problem and are doing something about it. I prefer to stick my head in the sand on this topic. Denial is the key to my happiness.

I know I'm not the sort of person who should drink because I don't know how to stop once I've started, but if I ever took that giant step and cut all the alcohol out of my life I know it would only be a matter of time before I slipped up and fell off the wagon. So I choose not to get on the wagon at all. At least then I can't fail and people's expectations of me are still relatively the same as they always were; for better or worse.

At my worst I was drinking, on average, about three litres of crappy white wine every day. It built up slowly to that level- at first I would only have a couple of glasses every night. But eventually I found myself drinking earlier in the day- as soon as my Son was home from pre-school; and staying up later and later, often until after three or four in the morning. A few hours of sleep later and I'd be awake again, to drearily deliver my son off to school with the standard peanut butter sandwich and piece of fruit that comes home soggy and inedible, and then back to bed for the rest of the day to nurse my hangover away and catch up on the sleep I'd missed out on. And then I'd start the ritual all over again.

I don't recommend this. It's not a great way to live. My Hubby would get angry at me for doing nothing but sleep all day, which only depressed me further and ultimately encouraged more of the same destructive behaviours. But it was only wine, I'd tell myself. At first, in the beginning, I didn't smoke pot at all. I had tried it, of course, when I was younger, like most kids do- but I hated to see the shapes of things hiding in the shadows, mostly witches and other goblin-like creatures. And it used to make me vomit- especially after I'd been drinking, unsurprisingly, so I tended to stick to wine only and question the choices of people who did both. Naturally, I would have preferred to drink beer or bourbon, but that's way out of my Hubby's everyday budget, and besides, most Drunks I know prefer quantity over quality- and I am no exception.

Back in the bad old days I was constantly worried about how much wine I had left in the fridge, and would fret that I would run out and not have enough to get drunk on. I hated sharing it with anyone too, and so would always have a back up spare ready to go into the fridge on a moment's notice if somebody turned up wanting to get on the piss with me. And there were a few of them, mostly people that I had met at university, who would often pop over for a soiree of cheese and biscuits, to drink all the free cheap boxed wine, and to smoke the seemingly endless supply of pot and cigarettes that I somehow bought their friendships with. It ended when they all got jobs and moved back into the real world where people don't drink and take drugs all day every day, and then they got sick and tired of seeing Me do it all the time when they visited- so they left me here and stopped coming back.

These days I'm not even sure if I'm still a proper Drunk or not, though almost everybody still sees me that way. People get surprised when they find out I'm not drinking as much as I used to, like they never expected it from me or thought me capable of slowing up. When I do drink I still have more than I should and still don't know when to go home. But then again these days I can go a week or even longer without a drink and it doesn't seem to bother me at all. I've replaced it more and more with other bad habits; and my lungs aren't thankful for the change let me tell you- but my kidneys and liver are smiling a little brighter these days. For now at least.

I worry about my health in the long term. An Aunty of mine has very bad emphysema from smoking for fifty years and that's not a pleasant diagnosis or one I wish to hear for Myself one day. I worry that if I tried to quit I wouldn't be able to- so I'm really just saving myself the unpleasantness of withdrawal and inevitable failure by not trying to.

Or am I?