You Don’t Have To Be an Alcoholic to Have a Drinking Problem

On coming to terms with my relationship to alcohol

I’ve always had a complicated relationship with alcohol.

If you’ve read any of my other stuff, you may know this because I’ve talked about the challenges of being raised by alcoholics.

But what I’ve not talked about are the issues I, personally, have with the substance.

Now, I’m not an alcoholic. If I were, that might make this story more interesting in some ways.

But just because I’m not an alcoholic doesn’t mean I don’t have issues with drinking.

My Drinking History

The first time I ever got drunk was freshman year in high school. Two of my girlfriends and I were having a sleepover and we raided the liquor cabinet and wine rack of the girl’s parents whose house we were staying at.

Between the three of us, we split three bottles of wine, some whiskey, and even some beer. By the end of the night, we were projectile vomiting all over my friend’s bedroom. Unfortunately for her, I puked all over her bed, her computer, and her keyboard.

It got so bad, we woke up her parents. Funnily enough, we tried to pass off our sickness as food poisoning. We claimed we’d just eaten bad pizza.

I’m sure the putrid wine stench and our slurred words gave us away though. My friend’s parents wound up calling each of our parents, who had to come pick us up in the middle of the night.

My parents had some mercy on me. When I woke up in the morning, they told me my hangover was punishment enough. But that punishment didn’t stop me from drinking again.

I continued to drink all throughout high school. Almost always to excess. My friends even affectionately started calling me “pukey.”

Then in college, it was more of the same — though I didn’t throw up quite as often. I would drink at parties or with my boyfriend. I would do stupid things I didn’t want to do and then regret them in the morning. I would flash my boobs or make out with another girl at my boyfriend’s urging. I would have violent hangovers the next day. You know, typical college stuff.

After college, I had alternating periods of drinking and abstaining. Depending on varying levels of stress, I would either go long stretches of having a few drinks several nights a week, or I’d go several weeks or even months barely touching the stuff. The days of drinking to the point of puking, though, were mostly behind me.

In recent years, my drinking has mostly been of the weekend warrior variety. Up until very recently, I typically consumed an entire bottle of wine on Friday nights and sometimes one on Saturdays, too. A lot of this was to combat boredom, especially while doing household chores and errands. And also to unwind from stressful weeks.

Given my family history, there have been times when I’ve wondered if I’m an alcoholic.

According to the NIH, having more than 3 drinks on any day or more than 7 drinks per week is considered heavy drinking for a woman.

If you do the math, this means I was drinking heavily each week.

A 750 ml bottle of wine contains 6 drinks. Given that I was sometimes knocking back two of these (one on Friday and one on Saturday), that puts my weekly total at 12 drinks. That’s well into heavy drinking territory. Yikes.

Writing that out feels weird and a little scary to me. It’s eye-opening. I’d never thought of myself as a “heavy drinker” — perhaps because I know people who drink way more than that, and I’d always thought of them as the heavy drinkers. Not me.

In fact, it was only while researching for this article that I learned my level of consumption was considered excessive. But here we are.

Hi, my name is Brittany, and I’m a heavy drinker.

But I’m not an alcoholic.

And I don’t say that as someone who’s in denial.

Because I’ve seen what alcoholism looks like.

Alcohol has never been a priority in my life. I’ve never had withdrawal symptoms. I’ve never let it significantly affect my family life or employment. I’ve never driven drunk. And while I do have some issues moderating myself in the moment when I’m drinking, I’ve never felt like I couldn’t stop altogether.

However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have a problem.

How I realized I needed to cut way the fuck down on drinking

Since the new year, I’ve reduced my alcohol consumption considerably. I’ve only drank maybe two times, and each time was a beer or two tops.

The decision to reduce has been a long time coming. There were a lot of reasons contributing to this, including, but not limited to:

• The fact that it was severely affecting my sleep. Weekends are supposed to be restful, but I sleep like shit when there’s a bottle of wine coursing through my veins. And I’m not alone. There’s plenty of evidence that alcohol hinders one’s ability to get good sleep.
• The fact that I cannot handle hangovers like I used to. It really is true that hangovers get worse in your 30s. Even when I only drink a small amount, I tend to feel sick the next day. The whole day. I don’t bounce back after a few hours in the morning like I used to.

But the biggest reason I cut down is because it started affecting my relationship.

Somewhere along the way, I became an angry drunk.

I hate that this happened. And I don’t know why it did. But it did.

In recent months, whenever I drank, I became the manifestation of all my self-loathing. And I took it out on my husband.

I became accusatory. I blamed him for things that weren’t his fault. I started fights for no good reason. I’d push him away to see if he’d pull back. And I’m sorry for that.

There was one moment in particular that made me realize I needed to stop my weekend drinking nonsense for good.

My husband and I were in the supermarket, doing our weekly shopping. We were in the wine aisle, and I reached for my usual Yellowtail Sparkling Rosé. And he said:

“Are you sure you want to do that?”

And the look in his eyes was the same one I used to give my mother when she loaded the grocery cart with wine or beer. He was scared. He was worried I’d start another fight. He doesn’t like the person I become when I’m drinking, just like I didn’t like who my mother became when she was.

At that point, I realized my drinking was hurting him. I had to do something.

So now I no longer drink on the weekends — or really much at all anymore.

It was difficult at first, but I broke the habit. Developing a new hobby helped.

The reason I drank was often due to boredom. But deeper than that, it was also because I don’t like being in my own head. I have a hard time being alone with myself. My brain doesn’t always go to the best places when I’ve got nothing to distract it with, and so drinking was a way to numb that.

I also often saw it as a reward at the end of the week. I spend the bulk of my weekdays tightly wound, and drinking was a way to release all that tension after a rough week.

When I decided to cut back, I knew my chances of success would be better if I had something to distract myself with. Something fun that would still allow me to unwind, but that wouldn’t leave me feeling angry or hungover.

That’s where baking came in.

I’ve written about this recently, but I replaced my weekend drinking with a new hobby. Now, on Fridays, I bake cakes.

The first few weekends I did this, I wanted to drink and bake. I thought drinking would make baking all the more fun. But, I resisted.

Also, I supposed you could argue that baking is not a super healthy habit either. But it’s a lot healthier than what I was doing, and it doesn’t cause any fights between my husband and me. Plus, it’s fun, and I get to exercise my creativity and feel accomplished when I make something.

It’s been about 10 weeks since I had a significant amount of alcohol.

I’m not a teetotaler and I don’t plan on abstaining from alcohol 100% for the rest of my life.

However, I also don’t want to go back to my previous level of consumption. When I drink that much, I become someone I’m not, and it makes me feel like shit.

It made my life subtly, but noticeably worse. Despite that fact, in the moment, I often convinced myself it would make things better.

But at the end of the day, that warm feeling I would get on a Friday night wasn’t worth the damage I was doing to my body, my sleep, and my relationship. These days, I feel a lot better without it.

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