50 Years of Alcohol and My Journey to Sobriety 

Many people start drinking in highschool (or before) and often become binge drinkers by college. Due to having been raised in a church that held alcohol to be a sin, and even going to church colleges that held the same beliefs, Wayne and I didn’t start drinking until the year of our 30th birthdays. I’ve often wondered how different the rest of my life might have been with a different choice at that time.

Like the movie, “Revolving Doors”, it would have taken many different turns, some better, some worse, no doubt, but I’m convinced very different without the use of alcohol! But as it was, we drank martinis, whiskey sours, gin & tonics, for years, often too many with visits to kneel at the “porcelain throne”, which at least emptied our bodies of the poisonous alcohol. Often social evenings got cut short due to spinning rooms & feeling ill from imbibing too much. We hadn’t learned how to drink! I was taken home from a dance at the Petroleum Club, no longer able to walk to the car without help. My friend, Betty, ended up with her face on her dinner plate at the Kahiki Club where we were drinking “Sufferin’ Bastards”. The guys took Mary, who had passed out, to the VW and locked her up in the back seat to sleep it off while we sat in another club where we had gone to enjoy a Comedian’s act.

By the time I married Dick, who was always a “one drink man”, we were entertaining, and being entertained by friends, with mixed drinks and elongated “happy hours” prior to dinner. In addition, I was bought many Tanqueray martinis by a co-worker who had unsuccessful hopes of luring me back to his apartment. Although I’m thankful I didn’t yield to his persuasive moves, I did very foolishly drive myself home in a very inebriated state which could have ended in disaster! Other women-friends and I often spent lunch hours across the street at a bar where we ordered carafes of wine with our salads. We also had some years in Richland when we made wine and champagne, so always had plenty on hand. Fortunately (or not?), I was never confronted personally with DUIs, lost jobs or depleted money, or other disaster, so didn’t see that I had a problem.

Our friends...our Society... drank and saw it as normal, even desirable, to do so. The incidents (above) were scattered throughout 50 years in time, whereas most of the time, my drinking would be called “social drinking” without any outstanding repercussions or awareness of needing to stop. In fact, I was moderator of our church Congregation for two terms, with the responsibility that entailed, and I was able to return to school and graduate with my degree in 1985. So I was able to function where it was important to me, even while drinking regularly. Scattered throughout these many years, I did experience, among our extended family and friends, marriage problems, alcoholism, Rehab stays, and suicide attempts, which one would think would have raised red flags for me...but didn’t. We were attending a liberal church at which wine was served at our social events. We sometimes treated ourselves by buying a bottle of an expensive liqueur, Cointreau or Galliano, which due to their costs and high-alcohol content, we tended to drink more moderately.

When Dick quit drinking altogether, probably in conjunction with his marathon- running days with a greater health emphasis, I switched fromhard liquor to just buying wine, which I consumed regularly. In retrospect, as my children grew up, and some had varied addiction problems of their own, about which I felt great concern, it’s amazing that this didn’t halt my own drinking. I did attend CODA (Codependents Anonymous) for 2 years, reading lots of “self help” books and learning about my tendency to enable and how to stop that.

This brings me up to my most recent decision and journey, last year March 2019 to now. In March, 2019: I told Dick I had decided to stop my daily wine drinking, which was a real surprise to him, but a welcomed one. I felt I was drinking more, and more often, and becoming dependent on it. With too many drowsy evenings, depleted energy, and concerns that with aging, alcohol could make worse whatever instability or other incapacities I might encounter, or might cause a fall which I was determined to avoid, I just felt I would be better off not drinking. I decided to stop and I rid our apt. of all wine from my wine rack, refrigerator, cupboard, and quit my daily drinking. I even gave away a couple bottles I had received as gifts. Though prior to this, I always bought 9-10 bottles and filled my wine rack each time it neared empty, to be sure I always had a supply on hand. From March on, I never bought another bottle of wine nor brought any wine to the apt. So I started this journey, with good intent, a year and 8 months ago. This didn’t stop me from thinking about it and craving it.! Over the next few months, there were 3-4 times when I had one glass of wine with a friend in the Bistro, or even by myself, sorta testing myself out. I missed having wine, sometimes with strong cravings, and felt I was depriving myself of something I enjoyed when I considered not ever drinking again. Every social event at the Manor featured drinks, and I didn’t like the thought of never participating again. Since I was no longer having my daily drinks at home, I started looking forward to special events mostly for the wine, rather than for the sociability and entertainment. At the 9th floor pre-Christmas party, I really looked forward to having some wine, and I drank enough to not feel at all well by the end of the evening! I made it to the apt., holding onto the handrails. I wondered if I had learned my lesson?? On New Years Eve, a traditional Champagne time for me, they were offering it free in the dining room, and I took advantage of the welcomed offer.

CURRENT: Shortly after this, in early 2020, I came upon the book, by Annie Grace, “This Naked Mind”, which changed my thinking, to no longer seeing being sober as a DEPRIVATION but rather as a FREEDOM. No longer wishing to put poison in my body, and also helping to get rid of the dissonant thoughts/debates in my brain between whether to drink on occasion, to just switch to moderation. or to not drink at all. The internal arguments continued for a bit. But the things I read and made a part of my Truths, helped destroy the rationalizations that I had been dealing with prior to this. I learned that:

1) 87% of Adult Americans drink Alcohol, which is Ethanol, the same as what you put in your car’s gas tank, with fortifiers for taste.

2) 88,000 alcohol-related deaths occur each year, more than twice the deaths in all other drugs combined (prescriptions and illegal).

3) World Health Organization has found that Alcohol is a causal factor in damages and deaths in 60 different diseases, including the immune system, liver, brain, heart, and cancers.

4) In rating harmful drugs, researchers have named Alcohol at 72, heroin, 55, and cocaine 54. Yet there are laws pertaining to heroin and cocaine.

5) Illegal drugs kill 327 people per wk. Prescription drugs kill 442. Alcohol kills 1,692.

We casually refer to “drugs and alcohol” rather than accept the fact that Alcohol is the most dangerous DRUG of all.

My long-held UNCONSCIOUS beliefs had made me see Alcohol as fun, social, stress- reducing, happy-making, relaxing, “the good life”, so it felt like to moderate or quit, I was depriving myself of all these things. Because my unconscious controls my desires and emotions, this thinking had taken over and I was no longer making wise and conscious decisions for my best self. I was not in control. Alcohol controlled me.

Since I don’t even know how I came upon this book, I truly felt that the book had come to me on purpose, as a part of my daily prayer requests for healing of my addiction. I have not had anything to drink since that time, so am well on my way to a year of complete Sobriety. I have turned down drinks from friends, and even when asked to pour/serve glasses of wine at a “toasting” after the death of a good friend, I was able to do so without being tempted to drink any myself. At 10 months totally sober, I am happy with the freedom that I feel in being the new healthier me.