The temperature outside for just a few days after Christmas is amazing, it's in the upper 50s lower 60s I’m actually walking around outside in my shorts wearing a light jacket. My dogs and I are just enjoying my last day off for the holiday before I return to work. I will have to work two days and then I will have 4 days off again then it will be the new year which will be the beginning of my prohibition on drinking which if all goes as planned will last until May. I think it would be so cool if I could quit forever. I really am sick of it. Knowing that I am about to be cut off from doing one of my favorite activities I've found myself to have actually been drinking more than normal I guess I’m subconsciously trying to get in as much as possible before the I have to stop.
Over the last of few weeks, after I’ve achieved a slight alcoholic buzz I find myself spending a lot of time on the Second Life app. I really enjoy the conversations that I have with these strangers but I have to admit that I think it's more fun when I’m buzzed for drunk. I just don’t think these random statements and less frequent substantive conversations would be as entertaining if I were sober so while conversing the other night with all these strangers on Second Life (in London City) I told them, these people hidden behind representative avatars, after January 1st they won’t be seeing me as I won’t be drinking and don't plan on visiting in a sober state. I don’t understand why I really only enjoy it when I'm drinking but since I don't plan on drinking for the next four months if I stick to my plan then I guess that means I just won’t have the interest in the application anymore. Many people on Second Life can be rude and nasty (which is only fun to deal with being drunk as more than likely they too are drunk or at least high on something on their end) and were shouting stuff like like “Yeah we won't have to hear from him anymore.” But there were one or two nice people that were kind enough to respond “Too bad you know we’ll miss you” or “I'll see you when and if you ever return to Second Life.” For the life of my I don’t understand why so many people have to be nasty, its like they enjoy causing trouble and stress even in what is supposed to be a place of entertainment. I hate it when we are having a nice pleasant conversation, whether about movies or politics, or just life in general and then some idiot comes out of nowhere and start harassing us shouting cuss words or interrupting our every word. But I guess that’s part of Second Life, the anonymity and being someone you different than your are in “First Life”.
My self-imposed restrictions on drinking begins in a few days so I suspect I will be drunk once or twice or maybe even three times more over the next few days. I hope that with my reset I go back to working out, I have a full workout room in my basement that I use randomly throughout the year. Usually as part of my resolution I try to include fitness and eating right oh and most importantly I try to go back to taking my HIV medicine the way I'm supposed to be doing. I’m horrible at keeping up on my meds. Every year I plan to do everything right and by the book so we will see how long that last in 2017. As a “binge” Drinker I go through periods without drinking and then I binge for a night or a weekend (so far never longer unless I have days off from work) and usually this form of drinking means being sober during the work week and getting drunk over the weekend. I don’t know if a 4 month gap and then returning to the drinking returns still defines me as a binge drinker but my guess is that in the psychological world the answer would be “yes”.
I think though when it comes to drinking there are no excuses for why one drinks just like there are no excuses for what one does while they are drunk. If you are drunk and drive and have an accident or if you were to go out and murder someone or rape someone saying you were drunk is not an excuse so I’m sure the same applies as to why you might be getting drunk in the first place. I listen to the young people at work, the professionals with their degrees (and mostly the unmarried ones, the ones without children but there are some that have families) and they talk about how they can’t wait for the weekend or on Fridays for the evening to come so they can have a drink, anticipating the alcohol days before makes me question if there can possibly be a true definition of what a drunk is, just like being a racist, or being pro-choice or anti-abortion (I have to get on the soapbox with every post). If you think about it in terms of the conversations I just mentioned technically to me they are all binge drinkers, everyone that anticipates getting drunk, whether you binge once per year or 50 times per year. If you drink with the anticipation and then succeed at getting drunk then you are a form of alcoholic...you have “binged”. They go all week (some admitting to a beer or two during the week) and then on the weekend they will consume until drunk (or buzzed, remember the billboards on the highways, when you are stopped by the police there is no difference between being drunk or being buzzed) but the difference is that they usually do it socially, with other people at a bar, publicly not at home, alone in front of a computer or TV. These co-workers or co-binge drinkers, aren’t sitting alone as I do (and with my husband sitting 3 feet away from me and not speaking a word to me for hours or paying any attention to me when I speak I might as well say alone) at least that’s not the impression I get from listening to them when I overhear their youthful discussions.
Now I know what I am doing is trying to rationalize my own drinking in this posting, trying to assert that one must be a binge drinker whenever they hold off drinking until the weekend then get drunk, so as such pretty much everyone is a binge drinker, the question is just how much of a binge. Unless a person doesn’t drink at all or unless they stop after that first drink the moment you drink to inebriation even that one time you have binged, now the real question is your level of severity, I do it every weekend when makes me a severe binge drinker. The definition must include the “getting drunk” part in order for my argument to work. I’m suggesting that you “HAVE” to (must) get drunk in order to be classified as a problem drinker. It really is just all so complicated, these rules as to when you’ve reached the point when you are actually defined as a problem drinker or alcoholic. I’ve even read that if you have more than three drinks in one sitting that you are an alcoholic but I’m sure there are people that have had three drinks in one sitting and then gone months before their next drink. Technically these random drinkers would be alcoholics but believe me if I were to compare the way most people drink to the way I drink then I would have to say no, they don’t have a problem but that I definitely do have a problem.
The thing is though what’s the problem with me getting drunk on the weekends? It's not like I’m out driving or socializing. I guess the answer is it bothers me. It affects my productivity. I get more things done (including the workouts I was mentioning) when I don’t drink. Believe me the morning after a binge I definitely don’t feel like working out or doing any of the other things that make for a responsible adult (housework, painting, landscaping, mowing the lawn, etc). So in the end the drinking does negatively impact me and despite the recent college graduates at work talking, how many of them really do fall through on their plans of spending the weekend drinking and how much of it is “cool talk” to try to fit in with the other children their age? I’m sure most of it is to impress their friends but I don’t talk about it, I don’t enjoy the conversation about the amount I drink for fear that one might get the impression that I’m drinking too much. So you see my thought process alone make me a living distinction from these kids at work and their bragging and boasting to impress one another.
So as I said, even with the three or four-month Gap in between January 1st and until April or May before I start back up again I’m still a drunk and since they say once you’ve determined you are a drunk you are always a drunk forever and ever, never being released from this dubious definition, just like a child predator can’t take back their title an alcoholic is punished for eternity by their newfound label with defines them for life. Even if you stay sober there’s no getting a reclassification, once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. At best because I’ve already personally determined that I have a problem I will be a drunk for the rest of my life, even if I never drink again I will always be a drunk, just a sober-drunk.
So my husband’s sister (in one of the rare times she helps defend me or my personality rather than making me try to feel bad for who I am) says the fact that I can go more than a few weeks without drinking proves I don't have a problem but I think again there different levels of drinking problems (like even with her health problems I don’t believe she goes a single night without at least having one drink, and one point years ago she actually admitted to me that she and her husband (like me when I used to drink to this level) would go to bed every single night with a buzz) or then there are those that drink every day, those who are drunk and stumbling in the streets, the homeless bums (not homeless for other circumstances but those that have lost everything due to their drinking) we see lying on the benches, and of course there are those that are functional drunks (which I was and probably technically still am) and of course, finally, the binge drinkers (and I really do believe I'm a binge drinker).
At one point I classified myself just as a functional drunk because I would drink every night and still go to work the next day, sober during work of course (I have never had a drink on the job and would never, at least at this point, consider do such) but as soon as I got home I would pop open a beer or have a screwdriver which as I have said in previous posts at my age has gotten to be too hard to do (thank goodness, I can’t imagine still doing that) and I think facing those 8 hour days that feel like they last 50 hours long just aren’t worth the buzz the night before. I’d rather go to bed early, get the workweek over and look forward to my weekend drinking. The biggest problem is the “boredom”, I really think it’s the boredom that makes me drink so much.
My sobriety will start soon and I'm looking forward to it and I hope I do it right this time since I failed in November and then again in December. I'm hoping that I have the strength and resolve to go the next 4 months. What's funny though when I do finally put myself into the mindset that there will be no on drinking, I usually am able to go without drinking, however, I’m nervous this time because I feel like things are different, I don’t know if I can make it this time. Part of me doesn’t want to stay sober, I hate this life and staying sober all the time is just so boring and helps make it pass that much quicker without all the stress of dealing with reality. But during this period of sobriety (and I have done this so many times I know what I’m talking about) I generally get to the point where I can drive by the liquor store without thinking about stopping and it doesn't cross my mind anymore while I'm going through this dry period. So with that I'm hoping I quickly reach this point again, where I get to my home I realize that I didn't think about stopping for booze or even drinking that night.