How I redefined my relationship with alcohol
The next stop on my self healing journey is focused on my relationship with alcohol. Keep in mind that I’m sharing my journey with you in no particular order. This just happens to be the part I feel pulled to talk about next. And it’s a big one. This took me a looooong time to face, process, and handle. I’m definitely not saying it’s something I’ve mastered because life is always a work in progress. But honey, I am worlds from where I used to be.
As most of you know by now (if you read enough of my stuff), I was a party (“porty”) girl in my younger years. I worked hard and I played hard. I started drinking alcohol in high school. To be fair, it was only on weekends when there was a party or an underage bar open. There wasn’t a lot to do in Jackson, Mississippi, so I gravitated to these social events. Drinking was just a part of it. I didn’t get into trouble, I made straight A’s, and I was very involved in my high school . . . but I did like to let loose on the weekends. Drinking wasn’t a huge focus for me in high school, but that’s when the door was opened.
Once I got to college, I totally drank more. This felt normal because drinking in college IS the thing to do! I was at Ole Miss for the majority of my college years and that school knows how to party. I mean, we threw down. Dancing on tables and bar tops, football Saturdays in the Grove, bar hopping on the Square, wearing thong bikinis to fraternity parties, sneaking booze into games through my bra, and jumping on stage at Three Six Mafia concerts was the college life for me. The lifestyle of working as a server/bartender, the overall freedom of college, and the active bar scene made it even more tempting to drink. Binge drinking was pretty regular. I for sure drank too much, blacked out, passed out, or threw up. But hey, college is when I learn my limits with alcohol, right?
After college, I wasn’t really going to raging bars and frat parties anymore so the binge drinking lessened . . . but it didn’t completely go away. When I’m having fun, I don’t want it to stop. What do you do to keep the fun going at a bar or party? You keep drinking. And that’s what I would do. Most of the time, it wasn’t a big deal. I just woke up feeling like shit the next day. However, there were times I got so drunk that I totally blacked out or woke up the next morning having to piece together the end of the night. It continued like this for a while, but I didn’t have as many black out/ blurry nights to concern me. When I say that out loud, I can’t believe it. Yo, Lindsay . . . blacking out is NEVER good.
There was a period that looked like this: Friday night-go out, drink, and party. Saturday- wake up a little hungover, get up, eat bad food, go out so I can drink the hangover away, and party so more. Sunday- wake up super hung over, do nothing but recover, eat more bad food, and maybe have a drink at the end of the night once I was feeling better. This was like almost every weekend. I had moments where I questioned it. Then I reminded myself that all my friends did the same thing so I was convinced it was normal. Weekend after weekend. The moments of questioning started happening more frequently. Each time I went a little deeper. I worried that it wasn’t normal, questioned whether or not I drank too much when I did drink, and then got scared because it was super embarrassing. So I resisted. I would not and could not accept those thoughts. Because if I did, I might have to stop drinking and there was no way in hell that was happening. So every time they came up, I ignored them. This eventually became too uncomfortable. I was putting in so much work in other parts of my life and this one piece was making me feel inauthentic.
Then one day, I allowed myself to go there. I thought,
“What if I don’t know when enough is enough? What if it’s not okay to still be binge drinking like I did in college? What if it’s not normal to be hungover all weekend? What would all this mean for me? Something has to change no matter what, right? So what is it? I can totally figure this out.”
This brought on a lot of anxiety, but I’d been learning to sit with uncomfortable and negative emotions so I continued down the rabbit hole.
“Well, that doesn’t mean that something is wrong with ME. It means I have always approached alcohol with an attitude of ‘Let’s get drunk and party!’ It means that as I got older, I didn’t learn a different approach to drinking. It doesn’t mean I have to stop drinking. It means that I need to redefine what Lindsay + Alcohol looks like. We can still co-exist, but I need to take some steps back to create a new, more mature and healthy way of consuming alcohol.”
Whoa. All this time I was resisting the truth: I didn’t have the healthiest relationship with alcohol. It was time to stand in my raw, difficult, uncomfortable truth. Once I did that, it didn’t seem so bad. The worst part was accepting it . . . and I just crushed that. Now I had to do something about it. I had no fucking idea where to start. I just knew that, for me, quitting altogether wasn’t my solution. So if I wasn’t giving it up, I needed to establish what it looked like for me to drink without going to the extreme. Coming up with a plan took some time. It looked something like this:
No more shots. For real. I had to make a rule not to slam Fireball and Tequila shots like a 21 year old. Shots are the devil. They get you where you wanna go really fast, but what’s the damn hurry?! What about the rest of the night?
I established 3 - 4 “no drinking days” each week. This was the hardest one. I didn’t rage every night of the week, but I was in the business of selling booze! I had to taste alcohol on most days. I set this boundary because sometimes a little morning or afternoon wine tasting could mean drinking more once I got home. This could literally be almost every night of the week if I wasn’t careful. Having set days that I didn’t drink at all allowed me to be present with this process. It’s hard to be mindful when you’re intoxicated.
I planned less “nights out”. Instead of keeping my calendar full of activities that made me lose track of time and the amount of drinks I had, I took control and slowed it all down.
On the nights I drank at home, I paid attention to how I felt while I was drinking each drink. THIS was super helpful. I noticed that after one drink, I was relaxed. After two drinks, I felt good. After 3 drinks, I felt REALLY good. After 4 drinks, I was ready to dance on a bar and make bad decisions. Anything after that was just getting me more drunk—especially if I wasn’t eating. I realized that getting more drunk just meant I got dumber. Being aware of the fact that I was dumber made me think about alllll the dumb shit I did back in the day once I got to this point. Ugh.
Labeled and spread out the “big drinking nights”. You know what I’m talking about. The nights you just KNOW you and your friends are going to get buck wild. You put on your drinking pants before you leave the house, you know you’re going to shut the bar down, and you don’t plan anything for the entire next day. Yeah, those. That used to be every Friday and Saturday for me. I started marking them on my calendar and spreading them out as I was planning my month. I only allotted for a certain number of them instead of allowing them to be the usual. No joke. Sorry, I can’t hang out with you until next month. I’ve already reached my allotted drunk nights for this one.
Filtered out the people that I only hung out with on the drunken nights. Harsh? Maybe. But #sorrynotsorry. You gots to go. I like you and all, but if you don’t add any value to my life other than someone to black out with on the weekends, it’s time for you to find someone else to eat late night pizza with. I’ll cherish our blurry memories.
There were several others I played around with that didn’t make the cut. For example, I tried to plan a cut off time and have my husband hold me accountable for it. This was a bad idea. If he tried to tell Trixie it was time to go, she would hit him back with, “Oh here comes Mr. Fun Killer. Can you please tell everyone in the room why we have to go, Mr Fun Killer?” I might proceed to order a shot just to prove a point. Poor Bobby. Trust me, you can’t argue with Trixie. She’s completely irrational.
I worked these rules for a very long minute. It took a lot of time, energy, mindfulness, and PATIENCE. I’m proud to say that my new relationship with alcohol is a much healthier one. I don’t rely on alcohol to have a good time. I allow it to enhance my experience. I don’t have to drink and drink until I can’t drink anymore or until the party is over. I watch other people act a damn fool towards the end of the night while I’m enjoying my buzz. I’m able to pay attention to how I’m feeling as I consume each drink. I don’t just slam them back mindlessly. I know my limits much better. This doesn’t mean that Trixie doesn’t still beg me to tap her in. Sometimes it happens . . . but it’s not the normal occurrence.
Did you notice how many times I used the word “normal”? I used everything and everyone around me as a standard for what I should be doing. I’m not beating myself up because that’s what you do when you’re growing up . . . you look to others for guidance. I now know that nothing is really normal when it comes to alcohol. If everyone around you is drinking every day or getting black out drunk, that doesn’t mean it’s normal. If you’re around people that never drink, that also doesn’t mean it’s normal. You create your normal. Here’s what I want you to take away: If you were a big drinker growing up, you might want to take a step back as an adult and ask yourself if your relationship with alcohol has evolved or stayed the same. If it hasn’t evolved, why not? And how is it affecting your life or others around you? If it’s affecting anyone negatively (including you) in the least little bit, own that shit. It’s then up to you to do the work and redefine YOUR relationship with alcohol.
Me and my boo, rosé, will live happily ever after.
