If you’ve ever decided to stop drinking for any period of time and spent time with those who are drinking, you’ve most likely heard the phrase: ‘Go on! Can't you just have the one?’. It’s said with a well-meaning naivety, often by people who are clearly in possession of an ‘off switch’.
When I was trying to get a handle on my drinking, this question became the key that unlocked the door to the other side of things: the greatest gift I ever gave to myself was to admit the truth and stop trying to have just one.
“I was thinking about my next drink whilst finishing my first.”
It wasn’t actually that I couldn’t have one: I didn’t want one. I was thinking about my next drink whilst finishing my first. Handing over the whole day or evening to the sacred event of getting drunk. Clinking with bags full to a party, mostly worried that we might run out.
“By being honest, I actually learned I didn’t really like the sensation of one drink: it didn’t do the job.”
One drink left me briefly lifted, but ultimately groggy as I sobered up in real time and tried to ignore the insistent voice which badgered me to carry on.
“Two drinks made me want three, and once I’d had three, why not have more?”
God, it was boring. I tried moderating every which way you could, made every rule (and broke them all) and the whole experience was truly exhausting and deflating. Drinking lost its shine when it became something I needed to monitor and control - as Catherine Gray says: “No one should spend this much time and energy trying to have just three drinks”. It ultimately took away the thing I thought that drinking gave me and the only thing I wanted: freedom.
“This way of being is both rewarding and exhausting in equal measure.”
Like many people who feel the absence of an off switch, I am also a fully-fledged member of the Never Enough Club. I’m a perfectionist who channels most of my energy into being productive, I feel guilty resting, my to-do list is longer than the Ticketmaster queue for Oasis and my achievements rarely reach the lofty standards I’ve set for myself. This way of being is both rewarding and exhausting in equal measure. It has given me success in my detail-focussed career, my standards and judgement seek out the very best of anything I want to experience - but the goalposts are always shifting and moving to the next thing, and the next… and the next. I find it difficult to truly celebrate my achievements without seeing the ways in which I fell short. My therapist often describes me as someone who looks at themselves through dirty glasses.
“The relentless internal pressure I can feel in life to be “ON” needed a counterbalance to swing it the other way.”
Understanding my perfectionism also helped me understand what was driving my drinking in the first place. Three years of sobriety has given me the wonderful gift of looking back with curiosity and compassion as to just what problems drinking was solving for me. The relentless internal pressure I can feel in life to be “ON” needed a counterbalance to swing it the other way. I wanted permission to be in a place of no deadlines, no shortcomings, where I didn’t need to be achieving anything. Somewhere where there was a clear stop sign - a place to clock off and leave something for another day. It was a beautiful free pass to a version of non-responsibility that I was comfortable with. A couple of drinks and you can’t even drive a car! Alcohol was often the only thing that made me feel I was allowed to be present without worrying about what I needed to do or what I felt I should be getting done.
“I was trying to use alcohol as my off switch - to force me to stop and give me some space from the relentless drill sergeant living in my head who constantly tells me I am not doing or being enough.”
Crack open the wine and I could finally let go, be free, turn my back on whatever pressing responsibility was on the pedestal that week.
“If I stopped drinking, it was time to go back to the real world, so I’d have another beer to keep that all at bay, and I wasn’t paying attention to the cost of that escape.”
As they say, it worked for a long time until it didn’t. I t reached a point where it was unsustainable. I was also anxious all the time, couldn’t find space in my schedule for the things I actually said I valued outside of work and the whole thing just became another stick to beat myself with. And trust me, I had enough of those.
“There is an opportunity to channel any extra energy and drive we find ourselves with in healthier ways.”
At its very best, it is transmuted into discipline, passion and focus. It is something that can work so wonderfully for us, but left unchecked it can be our own undoing. We must also learn how and when to slow down. Solve the puzzle of how to give ourselves a bloody break. Over the last three years, I’ve had to renegotiate how I talk to myself about rest and fun and how I both seek it out and allow it.
“I’ve been having to learn how to find new off switches, ones that support my dreams rather than kick the legs out from underneath them.”
This is what true freedom is to me now - understanding myself enough to know when and how to say “It’s ok, take the day off” or give myself permission to do something just because I feel like it - without only being able to do that by pouring booze down my neck. It’s still a work in progress, and something which I struggle with, but at least now I’m trying to figure it out, rather than just using alcohol as a cheat code. My rest is now of more value than it ever could be with a hangover, and waking up with all my energy available to me on any given day is a privilege I won’t ever take for granted.
If you relate to Bex's story and would like to connect on Instagram, you can find her at @Bexatrex
