maanantai 18. marraskuuta 2013

Days 352-354: Alcohol


16-18112013



Since I am currently on my way to an event that will probably include drinking alcohol, I thought it fitting to address my issue with drinking that has surfaced recently.

I grew up in an environment that encouraged drinking alcohol, and although everyone knew that legally I shouldn't have been drinking before I turned 18, I was pretty much allowed to start drinking when it started to interest me. My older siblings and even parents would buy me drinks if I asked them to: I never asked for anything “too much”, and for them my behavior was normal, what kids my age were doing anyway.

I got “into” drinking when I was about 15-16 and my group of high school friends started forming. For me drinking was a social thing: I enjoyed parties, their exciting, adventurous and carefree atmosphere, and I was thrilled to be meeting people, because I had learned that apparently relationships mostly formed in parties when people are a little drunk (less tense and defensive / more welcoming and appealing). When I look back on it I can see that my reason for partying was mostly sex/relationships, although sometimes it was to feel like I “belonged” somewhere, to feel “connected” to people, and to be less lonely.

After high school I got alienated from my friends and so the social environment I used to drink in was no longer there. My group of friends changed while my income decreased heavily, and because my new friends were always drinking in bars and night clubs I could no longer financially afford to drink socially. I quit drinking through bitterness and it created a nasty undertone to my friendships.

I later realized real reasons to not drink: it's damaging to my physical health AND to my mental condition. For many years I have not really been drinking because I have always been low on money and I have been too busy to fit that kind of socializing into my life.

Now that these limitations (money and time) have been removed, since my income is decent and I have time and opportunities to socialize, I've noticed that I am very prone to drinking. I realize that this is a problem, because the reasons for my drinking are the same as they were when I was 16: relaxing, fitting in and being social. When asking myself “why do I drink” just now, my answer was: “Because I can.” Now I am “finally” able to drink alcohol, and for a while I've just been going with it because of the energetic release of “having access” to something that used to be inaccessible.

But as I am now continuing to write this after the night of drinking I mentioned, I know that this tendency to use alcohol as a way to “unwind” has got to stop. What I witnessed in myself was a relaxation, opening up and talkativeness when I was drinking (like, after two sips of wine, lol – completely a mental thing) with my tension returning twice as bad the following day. The points of nervousness that I bypassed with alcohol were there just the same when I had to face them sober.



I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to escape anxiety, tension and nervousness into drinking because when growing up I learned through observation and direct advice that this is what people do and how people live.

  • I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a habit of rather escaping anxiety, tension and nervousness than directly dealing with their starting point, because as a child this is what I witnessed the people around me doing.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a behavioral pattern / a habit out of drinking as an escape from anxiety, tension and nervousness because when I first tried it out it appeared to “work” (when getting drunk for the first time I gave myself the permission to “let loose”, which I misinterpreted to have been caused by the substance itself) and so I continued to do so whenever I wanted to feel relaxed, energetic and excited.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make alcohol the symbol of “fun”, not realizing that by doing so I limit myself from having “fun” without alcohol and make the experience of “fun” dependent on alcohol.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child/teenager to create an image of alcohol in my mind – an icon / a symbol – that represented “fun”, “enjoyment”, “relaxation”, “friends”, “leisure”, “good times”, “excitement” and “adventure”, not questioning this positively charged image/icon/symbol even when I saw myself and others manifest the complete opposite when drunk – aggression, depression, hallucinations, violence, regression, physical poisoning, fighting – and I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to ignore the actual consequences of mine and my friends' reasons for drinking alcohol just to hold onto the positive image of alcohol as the “ultimate release”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that in order to celebrate (to express my gratitude over something) - be it a finished task, the people in my life or life events - I need to drink alcohol.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that one of the reasons I feel compelled to drink alcohol when I'm doing something social is because to me socializing is often a form of celebration (expressing my gratitude/appreciation for the people that are there), which I have learned to connect with the culture of drinking.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize how vast the culture of drinking alcohol is and that unraveling this habit from myself is a lengthy task.

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that alcohol is a “bad” thing and judge myself and others accordingly, not realizing that the substance itself is neither good or evil because it is just a tool, a conveyor of the intentions behind the use of the substance.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge others for using alcohol because I have assumed that their intentions to use it are destructive (escapism).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that alcoholism will exist whether I judge it or not, and that if my goal is to affect the existence of alcoholism, judgement doesn't really help me get anywhere.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the world and its phenomenons will exist no matter what I think of them within my mind, and that the way to affect the world is not through the conceptual reality (judgement) but through the physical reality (actions).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge those who drink alcohol as escapism (almost everyone) because I have held onto my self-judgement and projected it onto others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge myself for drinking alcohol because based on the consequences of my drinking (conflict, mistakes, embarrassment) I have labeled drinking as “bad”, not realizing that it is not alcohol or even the act of drinking that creates the negative consequences but MYSELF, because alcohol releases from me all of the things I would like to express but normally suppress, which makes WHO I AM within the act of drinking the cause for all the consequences of the action itself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that drinking alcohol makes me stupid, annoying, reckless, loud, vicious, desperate and depressed, not realizing that alcohol simply brings out who I already am.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge the qualities listed above as “no good” (qualities I do not want attached to “who I am” / my personality / the image of me that others see), and to thus judge myself when and as these hidden/suppressed qualities eventually surface.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to deny these dimensions of myself / of human expression, not realizing that in order to release them and truly make a choice to either live or not live out these dimensions I need to first embrace them all.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that as long as I judge myself for a dimension of human expression (such as being loud), I will not be able to fully let it go.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that drinking alcohol makes me happy, joyful, laughing, energetic, excited, horny, social, funny and elevated, not realizing that I have already been all this on some level but used alcohol to emphasize these dimensions of human expression to override the negative.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to use alcohol to get high on positive energy, not realizing that I am escaping the reality where I do not feel OK with myself into a temporary illusion.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the illusion of self-elevation created when drunk dissolves easily when the pattern of being drunk is broken.

  • I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a mind pattern of a “successful night of drinking”, where the chain of alcohol is uninterrupted, I do not react negatively to anything and I have pleasant people around me all night – not realizing that when I expect my night to go like this the night is easily “ruined” (the energy high crashes) even with a small disturbance.
  • I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel like a night is “ruined” because I reacted negatively to something.
  • I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel like the memory of an otherwise fun evening is “ruined” because of something negative that happened at the end of the night.
  • I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in drinking to create “nice memories”, not realizing that this starting point itself holds the expectation that the evening as a whole should go “according to plan” so that the memory would be unspoiled, and that having an expectation like this is simply unrealistic because of the numerous factors included in an event that concerns several people, if in a bar maybe even hundreds.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to expect that drinking should be fun, thus reacting when it is not fun, not realizing that my expectation itself is unrealistic and that having an expectation on any social event doesn't really serve any purpose as the events can't really be foretold.

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I commit myself to investigate why my life feels tense / unfulfilling so that there is a need for “unwinding” through alcohol-related socializing.

I commit myself to walk through the above-mentioned tension points in writing to see how to release them in order to make life truly and sustainably enjoyable (“fun”) in every single breath.

I commit myself to stop drinking alcohol for now to see how it affects social situations where I would usually drink (e.g. celebration).

I commit myself to be patient with myself concerning this point as I see, realize and understand that I have grown within a culture of drinking and that the culture is thus embedded into me in multiple layers.

I commit myself, in my occupation as an alcohol vendor, to investigate how alcohol as a tool is being used, and instead of judging alcohol itself as “good” or “bad” to look at how and why alcohol is being used.

I commit myself to utilize my position as a bartender to discuss alcohol with other people.

I commit myself to go through memories of differing consequences of my alcohol use and to map out how these consequences have manifested who I was during that time.

When, as and if I do drink alcohol, I commit myself to investigate the dimensions of human expression that arise in me and to investigate them thoroughly in writing to see why I suppress and deny these dimensions in myself.

I commit myself to investigate what kind of expectations I set on different kinds of social situations.



This was a box of worms, whew! Lol, I'm glad to see this point finally opening up, as I've been meaning to focus on it many times before. I'll continue with this later on.

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