#but if i didn't. fuck no wonder multiple members of my family are alcoholics

[pheonix-inside]

I love when I'm just starting to feel the effects of weed and I think "oh I'm high" and then minutes later I like. Feel the fuckin drop. And suddenly everything is like. Blurrier but more solid. In my brain. And slower. And everything is louder but softer. And I think. "Oh. Now I'm high."

[thelampisaflashlight]

I quit drinking almost a year ago now, so let's talk about it.

I'll start off by saying that my relationship with alcohol has always been a rocky one; It was first offered to me as a teenager by a relative of mine, and although I refused it on multiple occasions, I was always bullied into taking a sip or called names for not doing so.

I never wanted to drink, coming from a family with a history of addiction and growing up with an alcoholic parent, it wasn't something I ever wanted to do, and I was well aware of the risks involved with starting.

Drinking always lead to me feeling guilty or ashamed, but for a while, during the beginning of the pandemic, it was a way of coping, one I fully acknowledged as such, but never enough to make me completely stop.

In the weeks leading up to my decision to quit, a family member of mine was falling harder into their addiction to alcohol, and was making me drink more by proxy in order to justify the amount of it they were buying.

Unbeknownst to me, they were also hiding things like beer and cider in their room and their bathroom closet, because myself and another family member had begun counting the alcohol left on the porch when they continually appeared intoxicated despite only one or two drinks being missing from a case.

They would boldly lie to our faces and claim they hadn't been drinking or that they'd only had one or two drinks, but would be stumbling drunk...

The final straw for me, was coming home from work to a puddle of blood on the floor of my living room after they'd fallen down the stairs and decided to return to their bedroom on the second floor, where I found them with a head wound, bleeding into their pillow.

I can remember standing with them as they told the paramedics that they only had four drinks and thinking, "That's got to be fucking bullshit."

And it was.

Their blood alcohol was sky high and I have the paperwork to prove it.

After they were taken away by the ambulance, and I was left rinsing their blood off of my hands, the first thing I did was search.

When I tell you, in that moment, I hated their guts for what they'd done, for what they'd put me through, for arguing with me when I was trying to save their fucking life...

To this day, I am still angry about it, and why wouldn't I be?

It's only been about a year, but in the grand scheme of things?

I had to endure their addiction and the way they brought about my own for years.

I never bought alcohol for myself.

Despite being old enough and able to.

They always bought it for me, and growing up they always made it seem like it wasn't a big deal that they drank as much as they did, or that they turned another family member into their drinking buddy when they were only fourteen...

But I digress.

In the long run, alcohol has been a problem for me since even before I personally started drinking, and I'll admit that I, as someone who has dealt with a lot of loss and utter bullshit in my life, used it to self medicate on more than one occasion, because it made me feel less in touch with everything.

But it did not make me happier.

It didn't fix my trauma or give me less anxiety.

And it made me feel ashamed.

So what can I tell you, about how it feels to be almost a year sober?

It's honestly hard to say.

Because while I'd like to come here and say that I've felt amazing or that the experience has been freeing, truth is life has continued to be hard, and new challenges come and go, and, well, I've kept going.

There's that.

A year ago, if I had a bad day at work, I'd have a drink about it.

Now?

I talk to people.

I'm more open about how I'm feeling, physically and emotionally, and in that sense I have felt freer.

But I'm also seeing what addiction -not my own, but another loved one's- has done to my family, and I find myself wondering if I should separate myself from them again.

To burn the bridge I was determined to rebuild.

It's lead to a lot of complex emotions as you can imagine.

Ultimately, I think quitting was the right choice for me, and even if life is tough right now, I'm able to look at it objectively.

[infiniteglitterfall]

in case you've ever wondered how many people have experienced the same level of trauma you have

There's this thing called the Adverse Childhood Experiences study, which figured out how to quantify this stuff. Here are the 10 things it counts. You can also take it here.

(For people as literal as I am: Please note that it's not asking if you sustained 18 years of constant trauma. It's asking if these things were happening at any point during those 18 years.)

1. Before your 18th birthday, did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often…

swear at you, insult you, put you down, or humiliate you?

or

act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt?

2. Before your 18th birthday, did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often…

push, grab, slap, or throw something at you?

or

ever hit you so hard that you had marks or were injured?

3. Before your 18th birthday, did an adult or person at least five years older than you ever…

touch or fondle you or have you touch their body in a sexual way?

or

attempt or actually have oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse with you?

4. Before your eighteenth birthday, did you often or very often feel that…

no one in your family loved you or thought you were important or special?

or

your family didn’t look out for each other, feel close to each other, or support each other?

5. Before your 18th birthday, did you often or very often feel that…

you didn’t have enough to eat, had to wear dirty clothes, and had no one to protect you?

or

your parents were too drunk or high to take care of you or take you to the doctor if you needed it?

6. Before your 18th birthday, was a biological parent ever lost to you through divorce, abandonment, or other reason?

7. Before your 18th birthday, was your mother or stepmother:

often or very often pushed, grabbed, slapped, or had something thrown at her?

or

sometimes, often, or very often kicked, bitten, hit with a fist, or hit with something hard?

or

ever repeatedly hit over at least a few minutes or threatened with a gun or knife?

[Please note: the gendering of this question is fucked up. It's not any less traumatic if this happens to your father, stepfather, or nonbinary parent. And in fact, there's a shocking amount of domestic violence aimed even at cis straight men. My dad had to go to work with a black eye at one point.]

8. Before your 18th birthday, did you live with anyone who was a problem drinker or alcoholic, or who used street drugs? [It counts even if you didn't realize it at the time]

9. Before your 18th birthday, was a household member depressed or mentally ill, or did a household member attempt suicide? [This also counts even if you didn't realize it at the time]

10. Before your 18th birthday, did a household member go to prison?

"The screening yields an ACEs score ranging from 0 to 10, which quantifies the different kinds of severe trauma that a child may have accumulated over time, including physical, emotional and sexual abuse; neglect; and familial death, mental illness and substance abuse.

"According to the CDC, more than one-third of Americans have never had an adverse childhood experience, 26 percent have had one and about 12 percent have had four or more."

If it seems impossible that 36% haven't experienced any of these, because everyone you know has multiple ACEs... well, people in marginalized groups tend to have much higher rates of all of these, because that's one effect of oppression.

Bonus fun fact: CPTSD (complex post- traumatic stress disorder) is caused by, basically, having to live with the person or people abusing you. Especially in childhood.