Step 3: I Gave Up Alcohol

In my last post I covered step 2 of 10 steps that I took to get to where I am today. I will cover step 3 in this post. I gave up alcohol. This is going to be one of the harder posts that I write, but I am going to lay it all out here so go get your bucket of popcorn and prepare for the show.

I was not a drinker in high school. Kids all around me were going to parties every weekend, and I just wasn’t interested. I tried drinking once in high school, and ended up sleeping in a closet, and really thought I would never do that again. Then came college…..and drinking was the thing to do. I was surrounded by people who drank, and I wanted to be like everyone else.

I partied hard on the weekends, but I still managed to make Honor Roll at New Mexico Tech. As my the stress grew in my life, so did my love of having a nice drink to relax on the weekends. I sometimes overdid it on weekends. Then I got pregnant with my first child. Of course I quit, but I missed it. Then I nursed my baby, and still couldn’t drink. Having had four kids, I was pregnant or nursing a baby for nearly 8 years straight. I’d have a few months in between stopping the nursing of one baby and getting pregnant again, and you can bet I chose to enjoy some margaritas.

When I finished nursing the last baby I started having wine….and I became quite the wine snob. I LOVED having my nightly glass of wine with dinner. Being mom was great, but I had given up my career and was chronically exhausted as I was in the process of loosing myself as a person. I was also alone a lot, at home, being the good mommy. I grew depressed. I really needed that glass of wine or that nice stout beer with dinner every evening. My mom pointed out to me that she thought it was becoming a problem. But it was one glass of wine, it was one beer….. and in my mind, that wasn’t a problem.

Then, one night we had some friends over, and I was nervous about the dynamics of the people getting together that night. I drank more than one glass of wine….and it wasn’t pretty. This is not at all easy for me to say, but here it goes. I some how ended up under a guard rail after the wine triggered a severe PTSD episode. I didn’t even realize I had blocked some memories from my childhood (father issues), and such anger and fear came out of me that night, and I was not well behaved, and I did not do good things. Some friends took me to their house and got me through it.

When I was sober enough to listen and understand, my friend explained to me that I needed to stop drinking…completely. He feared that alcohol was a trigger for something I didn’t realize was a problem. I didn’t want to give up my wine, I enjoyed the glass of wine with my dinner….so I decided to just have one glass of wine on Fridays. Well…let me tell you, when I had my one glass of wine on Friday evenings, my Saturday morning workouts really started to suffer. The rest of my workout days were great, but that Saturday one suffered….and I didn’t want to hurt my ability to lift, so I made the difficult decision to give it up entirely.

It was difficult to realize how much peer pressure there is to drink. I’d go to annual Christmas parties where I used to drink and be bombarded with “aw come on, just have one drink”. Then there was “loosen up, have fun, take a shot”.  Even in my own house “why won’t you even have a glass of wine with me”. It angered me that so many people depend on drinking to alter their minds and give themselves a break from their reality. It really saddened me, and made me realize that I needed to make my reality such that I didn’t crave the break from it! It took months to loose the social desire to join the fun and drink!

But I refused until………about 6 months after quitting, I had a really bad Friday and decided to take myself to a local pub and have ONE BEER! I had ONE BEER and I got so buzzed I had to call a friend to come sit with me for hours to help me sober up! And the next morning for my workout I felt like I had been run over by a semi, then a bus, then a train, then kicked by a crossfitter while having my grandma smack me with a broom! Yes, it was that bad!  I was HATING LIFE that entire day!!! That was the breaking point! Alcohol would never cross my lips again!

We have social pressure from a very young age to drink. It’s cool, its the thing to do! We peer pressure each other to death to imbibe a poison that slowly kills our brains and damages our bodies. And if you don’t partake in the drinking festivities, you are the social reject! This is wrong and needs to change! People need to realize that if you need to drink, you are obviously needing to escape your reality. It’s not the drink you need, its a life change that you need! I won’t ever drink again. I’m making my reality worth staying sober for, and I am not going to do anything that disrupts my ability to lift. I now watch all the people make fools of themselves at parties and I can’t believe I used to be one of them. I am proud to say I will forever be alcohol free!