Too often there are deeper reasons why so many people flock to the bar after work or insist on drinks while cooking, lunching, brunching, or when curled up in a blanket to languish away the day on the couch—the bottomless glass of wine or cocktail as much a part of the scene as the floor beneath their feet. Sure, everyone who drinks doesn’t drink to mask their feelings, but an alarming number of people do.
When asked about drinking most all claim to be social drinkers, even those who have made drinking a big part of their daily or weekly life; when alcohol becomes the beverage of choice for every occasion and un-occasion, is it still only social drinking? Do you drink because you like the taste, or is the truth more akin to you like the buzz? Do you drink for a temporary escape from reality? If you answer yes to either question, maybe your drinking isn’t so social after all. Alcohol, like other substances such as some prescription drugs, illegal drugs, and a life that involves an endless succession of cocktails may have everything to do with masking emotional pain, and much of that pain often has its roots in childhood.
As many of you know, I grew up in a chaotic alcoholic home. My mother was the alcoholic, and it seemed to me that she erected a screen around herself and only allowed the particles to sift through that she could handle. She wanted everything in her life to be beautiful. When the reality of her life didn’t match the pictures she had in her head, she self-medicated: first, with a prescription for Valium, and then, alcohol.
What many people fail to understand about alcoholism is that it’s not so much a drinking problem as it is a thinking problem, or a way to numb emotional pain. Alcoholics lack healthy coping skills. Alcohol becomes the go-to solution to soothe fear, worry, anxiety, depression, or any number of other uncomfortable emotions. It’s not so much about how much you drink, although that is a factor, but why a person seeks out the drink is more important.
Alcoholism is a brain disease. It’s not a moral failing like so many tend to think. It’s not something that needs to be shushed or whispered about either. Alcoholism resides in the mind. What does that mean? It means that most alcoholics, (not all) drink to mask feelings of inadequacy, fear, abandonment, not feeling good enough…all emotions that may be real or perceived. I equate alcoholism with an internal wiring that is different from the average person—different in that most people don’t subconsciously seek ways to alter the way they feel.
Alcoholism is also described as a disease of perception.
A person can perceive their reality or who they think they are as much different than it actually is. One of my hurdles in early sobriety was not so much the not drinking part but the learning about myself part; It took time to discover what made me tick. What did I like? Who was I? These are questions that we all can ask ourselves, but to answer them honestly is no easy task. It took time for me to realize that I was not at all the person that I thought I was: I had believed that I was an extrovert and loved parties, crowds, and socialization on any level. Once I got sober, over time, I came to realize that the person who I thought I was, was not the real me. I’m in INTP (Introverted-intuitive-thinking-perceiving. Take the quiz here). personality type. My story is not unique. So many people share this same story. We think we’re one way and then we get sober and realize our drinking personas were just that, a persona.
I also didn’t realize that I had spent most of my life in a fog. Not that I drank all that long, comparatively speaking to some. I experimented with alcohol as a teenager and by the time I was in my late twenties, I quit drinking. Even though my drinking years didn’t span decades, I was still in a fog. It wasn’t until I got sober that I realized how I had numbed myself and most days were a blur. I never saw spring; smelled the rain; saw the brilliance of autumn colors or appreciated the beauty of a fresh snow until I got sober. Looking back, it saddens me to think that I wasted years of my life not being fully alive.
It can take years of working on ourselves to heal. Most of the baggage that alcoholics are saddled with starts in early childhood. So many alcoholics, food addicts, gambling addicts, drug addicts—many seem to have the common denominator of growing up in dysfunctional homes, or homes where there was some form of abuse or neglect. This is not a hard fact though. I also know people who say they had wonderful parents and grew up with lots of love and stability and for some reason (probably genetic) they ended up battling addiction anyway.
I never realized what a gift it is to learn who we are, and be okay with the person staring back in the mirror. So many go through life hating themselves and their lives, so they self-medicate and keep running—be it from relationship to relationship, house to house, city to city (those geographical cures never work) because no matter where we go or what we do, there we are.
“He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened.”
― Lao Tzu
When don’t like ourselves we’re more apt to self-sabotage, make poor decisions, or find ourselves looking for validation from others because we don’t have enough self-love to ignore what others may think. It’s freeing to be able to shrug off other’s opinions and not give a damn. It’s a blessing to come to the place where you feel okay in your own skin and it makes no difference what other people think.
To seek validation from people and situations outside of ourselves, we only end up hurting ourselves. Lee, sought out men for validation that she was a worthwhile person. Here’s a snippet of her story that she shared in Raising the Bottom. Lee’s truth went like this: “That feeling of not belonging, coupled with low self-esteem, was a perfect storm for this alcoholic. All I knew is that once I drank I felt better. Part of the reason I felt left out [in my family] was because I couldn’t relate to my mother or my sister. I settled for male attention, since the females in my family weren’t responsive. I believe I suffered from touch deprivation. The back of my head is still flat. I asked my mom why, and she said, “You didn’t stay on your side so I just let you be.”
Those early childhood experiences led Lee to roar her way through four different marriages, and it was only when she got sober and learned about her patterns and the behaviors behind her unstable relationships was she able to build a successful marriage with husband number five. The previous four marriages caused untold pain to herself, her daughter, and to the men with whom she became involved.
Patters. Behaviors, Early childhood experiences: These are the things that we have to address in our adult lives. It takes an enormous amount of courage to face our fears, work through the baggage that we all carry in one form or another, and to get to a place where regardless of what we have or don’t have—we can feel peace.
The journey can be long. Most often it is hard. Rise up and make the trek, because nothing is sadder than an unlived life or a journey shrouded in an alcoholic haze. We all deserve to be awake for the greatest trip—our travels through this life that we are all so blessed to live.
Lisa is the multi-award winning author of, Raising the Bottom: Mindful Choices in a Drinking Culture. After short stints where she trained polo horses, worked as a flight attendant, hairdresser, and bartender, she revamped her life and settled in as a registered nurse. For the past twenty-nine years has worked with hundreds of women to overcome alcoholism, live better lives and become better parents. She was prompted to write Raising the Bottom when she realized after twenty plus years of working in hospitals, that doctors and traditional healthcare offer few solutions to women with addiction issues. You can start reading for free on Amazon. Follow her on Twitter @LBoucherAuthor and Instagram