Alcohol Problems Progress, But Not Always in a Predictable Way

The journey from social drinker to addict doesn’t always follow a straight line, I’m living proof of that

Years ago, I naively believed that the development of an alcohol addiction always followed a linear progression.

That’s to say, a person starts off by boozing socially in a moderate way, but then gradually becomes increasingly obsessive, consuming larger amounts of alcohol with each month or year that passes until they eventually reach the stage of becoming an addict.

They essentially travel from Point A (social drinker) to Point B (alcoholic) in a straight line.

However, it wasn’t that simple for me. The progression was much more bumpy and ambiguous.

Over the course of my lifetime, I’ve had periods where I drank more and periods when I drank less. For sure, the general trend only went in one direction, which was towards an increasingly compulsive relationship with alcohol, but it wasn’t a straightforward pathway.

A False Sense of Confidence

During my late teens and early twenties, I drank a lot. The only thing that tempered my consumption was money. There was a period of a few years after I finished college and before I’d settled into any sort of career, when I consumed phenomenal amounts of booze on a daily basis.

However, once my life situation changed, I eased off the alcohol without much strain. All it took was landing a demanding job and a serious girlfriend. The switch to moderate booze consumption seemed easy and happened without a great deal of effort.

It gives you a false confidence when this happens. You truly believe that you are immune to alcohol addiction. After all, if you can drink heavily for an extended time, then seemingly go back to “normal” consumption, you obviously haven’t got the alcoholic gene, or the disease, or whatever people want to call it, right?

Unhealthy Habit

My drinking didn’t sink into a destructive daily pattern until I reached my mid-thirties.

Two things happened that contributed to me adopting a routine of excessive alcohol consumption. The first was that I quit smoking and replaced cigarettes with alcohol as a means to relax. The second was that I found myself in an increasingly stressful work environment and began using alcohol as a way to unwind in the evenings.

Each evening, I bought two bottles of wine at the store and consumed them at home. This pattern of drinking didn’t seem like a problem at the time. If anything, I saw my behavior as a practical and enjoyable way to alleviate the uncomfortable emotions that were left over from my workday.

Move to America

In my mid-forties, my drinking habits switched again.

This followed the monumental decision I made to move to the US and marry my online girlfriend. My life in England had gotten into a rut. A move and a marriage seemed like an opportunity to make a fresh start.

By this point, I’d figured out that my drinking was a problem, but I believed that I could moderate my consumption fairly easily with a change of environment.

After arriving in the US, I dropped the two bottles of wine a day habit and set about drinking just a six-pack of beer each day. Of course, half a dozen five percent beverages is way over the recommended levels and not at all healthy, but it was a reduction for me. I also figured that if I could discipline myself to stick to this amount, I might be able to lower my consumption further at some point in the future.

I generally stuck to the restriction, too, for a couple of years. My wife wasn’t a big drinker and so there was a pressure on me to rein in my drinking at home. The limitation never felt good, though, and whenever there was a chance to exceed my quota, such as going out to a bar or party, I would do so.

Deterioration and Divorce

Without going into the ins and outs, lets just say that it wasn’t a successful relationship. As the romance declined and fractured, my drinking began to increase. I wasn’t a sloppy drunk, it was more that I found that I could shut myself in a room and use alcohol to help me check out mentally and emotionally.

Then, when my wife and I separated, I drank even more: beer, wine, and liquor. There was sadness over the break-up of my marriage, but also a sense of liberation. Untethered, I could do what I wanted, which meant boozing as much as I wanted.

For many months, I socialized a lot and drank like a crazy man, but that didn’t last. By the time that my divorce had gone through a year later, I’d calmed down and slipped back into the old habit of quietly quaffing a couple of bottles of wine each evening.

Age and Alcohol Don’t Mix

My experience is that when you’re in your twenties and thirties, you can really hammer your body with alcohol, but for people in middle and old age it’s disastrous.

I was now approaching fifty and I knew that my body and brain just couldn’t handle the abuse. Anxiety, nausea, fatigue, stomach aches and diarrhea had all become regular issues, thanks to the drink.

Despite this, I simply couldn’t reduce the amount that I was boozing, no matter how hard that I tried. I’d become obsessed with the idea of alcohol.

I eventually had to acknowledge that I just wasn’t able to make the switch back to “normal” drinking like I’d done in my younger days. After several decades of excessive boozing, my brain was now wired differently.

So, to cut a long story short, I started to take longer and longer breaks from alcohol, then quit completely.

Conclusions

Here are my thoughts:

• It was not clear to me for a long time whether I was addicted to alcohol or not. Whenever the signs were ambiguous, I always erred on the side of believing that I wasn’t, which later evolved into a strong sense of denial.
• To this day, I still don’t know at what juncture I actually became hooked, or whether there even was a clear turning point. I’ve come to accept the idea that alcohol abuse is a sliding scale: you can can have mild, moderate, or severe problems. It’s quite possible that I had issues much earlier than I thought, they just weren’t quite so big or noticeable.
• Addiction was much easier to slip into than I ever realized. The process was relatively subtle and happened over many years. I didn’t see it coming, in part because there were quieter periods which enabled me to tell myself that my drinking was under control and there was nothing to worry about.
• For a long time, I just thought that I really liked alcohol, not realizing that that’s how an addiction can manifest. It wasn’t until I tried to cut down and quit that I began to understand there was a strong compulsion driving my behavior.
• I used to view my drinking in terms of physical measurements like how much I drank, and how many days that I did or didn’t consume alcohol. Nowadays, I see it much more as being about my overall mindset. It’s actually possible to drink moderately, or even not at all, and still have an unhealthy emotional relationship with alcohol.