May 25: I have concluded that I am dealing with a borderline addiction to alcohol. My drinking has progressed to the point where I drink 3 or 4 glasses of wine each night, and that habit is having an effect on my health and psychological well-being.
I have had alcoholics (active and recovered) throughout my life and I have always been aware that an addiction was not something to be taken lightly. I have seen the devastation it causes to those addicted and those who surround them. I am alert to the potential of going down that road in my own life.
I believe that I have had a “typical” relationship with alcohol: I started drinking at 18 and went through periods when I drank more than I should. Ultimately, caution took hold and I retreated from those situations; my life changed and I moved on. Still, there has never been a time during those years when I did not drink to some degree. There was always a bottle of wine on the counter to accompany dinner, and weekends were a time to “celebrate” with something more. When I travelled in Europe, a glass of wine (or more often two or three) was a reward at the end of the day, a good way to relax and coincidentally, try a different kind of wine from a different region most days. Research, if you will…
When I bought the cottage, several cottage owners pointed me to boxed wine as the “daily go-to” refreshment. It has the great benefit of being relatively less expensive than bottled wine – important if 6 or 8 people show up – and it’s far easier to transport and recycle than cases of glass bottles. The downside is that there’s always another glass waiting. A box is virtually bottomless and I have found it increasingly easy to rationalize a third or fourth glass because “I have nothing to do tomorrow, it will do no harm to have another now, so…”
Drinking to that degree is beginning to have an effect on my health and psychological well-being. I am not sleeping as well as I should, and recent studies show the potential health risks of drinking any amount of alcohol, never mind three or four glasses each night. It is easier for me to postpone work and I am becoming less committed to seeing jobs through to the end. I hear the little voice in my head saying “just a bit more and then the day is done and we can have a glass of wine”.
The thing is: I don’t want to be in a place where I can’t have a glass of wine. I enjoy the feeling it brings. I want to be able to share that feeling with others, and while I know that life can be enjoyable with or without alcohol, for now I am not prepared to stop drinking completely. I am trying to break a habit before it becomes an addiction (perhaps angels dancing on the head of a pin). For now, I will borrow a phrase from my friends in AA: “One day at a a time” as I try to come to terms with this latest phase of my drinking life.