How to Stop Getting Drunk by Accident
Take control of your life and be the person you’re supposed to be.
Ah, how easy it is to accidentally drink too much on St Patrick’s Day! All around the world, people gather in pubs to don Guinness-sponsored fluffy green top hats and drink with absolute impunity.
Or thereabouts.
It’s pretty easy to accidentally drink too much when it isn’t St Patrick’s Day, mind you. There’s always something that requires a little drinky: good news/bad news/someone’s birthday/weddings/illness/stress…
Then there are the alcohol-pushers.
“You know what Mary’s like, it’s impossible to stay sober when she’s in town!”
There’s always a heavier drinker around to utter that devastating phrase: “Pint?”
If you’re anything like me, all this accidental drunkness is probably not even your fault. In my early twenties, I stumbled upon the ultimate culprit for my frequent alcohol mismanagement. More effective even than the Bad Influence Best Friend (BIBF™), I discovered: the Problem Drinker Boyfriend (PDB™).
Like BIBFs, PDBs had certain things in common: they drank more heavily than me, didn’t mind how much I drank, and rarely pulled me up on my mad/bad/rad behaviour. The only trouble was how clearly I could see the P in them, and how strongly I felt it my duty to tell them so. Often.
PDB1.0 became needy and unhinged. PDB2.0 turned aggressive and lecherous. PDB3.0 shifted fun nights into dim-witted arguments. No matter how fascinating and sweet the boyfriend started out, their problem drinking emerged to shatter my romantic illusions a few weeks or months or — let’s be real here — days in.
Alcohol, a key part of our relationship, unleashed a beast within them, and it was only a matter of time until we were shouting at each other in the street. I would sprint away, mid-argument (an elegant technique for conflict-avoidance I learned in my teens and hadn’t upgraded since) too hammered/immature to think how else to end our senseless, looping duel.
I remember the very first time it occurred to me, that I might have a P of my own. The thought arrived in my head, completely new like an alien landing, after a nightmarish tussle with PDB3.0. We were holidaying in Greece with one of his oldest drinking buddies and my beer-loving dad; on reflection, not the wisest combo.
This became exquisitely clear in the early morning of my dad’s first night when PDB3.0 arrived home to the apartment we were sharing, unable to walk or speak English (or any of the human languages). A quietly livid neighbour handed him to me, having found him stumble-crawling along the corridor unsure where he lived or what he was. PDB3.0 looked up at me, from the floor, and I saw that he was brain damaged. Probably forever.
My happy-hour hangover bloomed as I listened to PDB3.0 snore, oblivious, beside me. I scrunched my eyes shut tight, wondering when I was going to grow out of having holidays like this. The place and person were different but somehow the situation was the same. Am I the alcoholic? I thought, incredulous. Because someone definitely was! How did I keep choosing them from the line-up?
The foreign thought dissolved as quickly as it formed. Off that alien scuttled, burrowing under more comfortable notions of myself as sweet and enduring and put-upon. Yes, that was more like it. A bad picker, maybe. But Problem Drinker Girlfriend (PDG™)? Absurd!
The next afternoon me and my dad were happy-houring in the Irish bar again when PDB3.0 walked in, shame-faced, his cheek still creased from sleep. With a sheepish glance at me, he took the pint his pal offered and drank, thirstily.
I swore under my breath.
“You’re too soft,” my dad said.
Hot shame, likely ancestral, flushed my system as I swallowed the ancient BS that it was somehow my responsibility to keep that man-behaving-badly under control. The women who had gone before surged in my veins, railing against their drinking men, and I wondered if it would appease them, for me to take a harder line with my poor, hopeless 21st Century love-interest, but no. The line of female oppression must end here!
Besides, I had more pressing matters, like getting served before the clock struck five — these pints didn’t buy themselves. And so I murmured that PBD probably shouldn’t drink so much again given the state of him last night, and then I cheersed The History Women, wondering if they were drinkers too, relieved at least that I wasn’t stuck indoors, waiting for a man to bring me his wages. I was free like the men had always been!
PDB3.0 was apologetic and desperate, begging me not to hate him.
“Lee just put the pint in my hand!” he said. “What am I supposed to do?”
The BIBF. Classic.
He was genuinely bemused.
I drank and stewed. Bloody piss head men, it was never their fault. Why did they have to be so sloppy? Did I not set a fine example of the correct amount of inebriation?
“You didn’t even seem drunk,” people would tell me after I discovered I’d bumped into them mid-blackout.
For many years I was the innocent party. A gentle, fun-loving dreamboat with an unfortunate knack for picking the one man at the party/pub/uni/restaurant who couldn’t handle his liquor. By PDB4.0 I was seriously beginning to wonder.
Could I have a part in this? Sweet, creative, wholesome lil me? Might I, myself, have a tincy problem? Not with booze, obviously, but with something.
Seeing my spiralling anxiety and depression a friend encouraged me to go to the doctors and I began CBT with a woman called Ruth who smiled far too easily, and definitely couldn’t help.
I told her about PDB and how happy we would be if only he didn’t get so drunk and unmanageable all the time, and she asked questions about me, which I didn’t know how to answer. For instance, why was I so obsessed with how much my boyfriend drank?
“What difference does it make to you?” she asked. “You don’t have to drink, do you?”
“Of course not!” I said, affronted. I wasn’t that stupid!
For a few hours I was relieved — my problem was solved! I just wouldn’t drink, even if he did.
Empowered by Ruth, I asked questions.
“Why is it that you prefer being drunk to being sober?”
“What are you getting from alcohol?”
“What are you getting from alcohol?” he shot back. For the first time I began to hear and respond to these questions for myself.
Because it turned out it wasn’t possible, after all. Not drinking while he drank was physically painful, and it made me hate him and myself even more. I was mad with jealousy and resentment. If only he wasn’t such an alcoholic, I could have a drink.
Eventually, I realised that I was trying to control my boyfriend’s drinking as a means of controlling my own. I had singlehandedly struck upon the least effective and most painful method for managing your drinking ever.
I began to perceive the depth of my own problem. I saw how I couldn’t quit whenever I wanted, that I couldn’t moderate successfully. Finally, I took my own advice and asked for help. Things began to change, and today I haven’t accidentally gotten drunk for three and half years.
Years later, as I mark another day sober, my life full of many of the things drinking kept me from, I’m grateful for that pattern, and how it repeated itself so painfully, so perfectly, until at last, I was able to identify it.
Those beautiful, unhealthy, talented, hilarious, heavy drinking boyfriends allowed me to stop blaming other people and start to take responsibility for myself.
If you relate to this, and you’re ready for something different, try the alcohol experiment. Do whatever it takes to stay sober for 30 days: go to your doctor, try Smart or AA or Hip Sobriety or Soberistas. Listen to Recovery Elevator and SHAIR podcasts. Read This Naked Mind. Try Moderation Management.
Quitting drinking alone is boring, difficult and for many of us, impossible. There is a whole community of people just waiting to help you. Reach out.
Originally published at beautifulhangover <3