"God, It's hard not drinking anymore. It's something I miss. Not just being drunk, though that was great from time to time, but being able to go out for a drink with my friends without worrying, 'Is this the beer that'll toss me over the edge?' or 'Will I be able to stop?' It's so many simple things like that, being able to be normal. My former favorite desert, poached pears in wine sauce, now even that's off limits, because what if some of the alcohol wasn't cooked out? God, it isn't fair.
I want to blame my screwed up family. For starters, they're the reason I began drinking. I wonder how they never noticed, or maybe they didn't want to, but they never intervened either. But I can't blame them.
I have to give credit where credit is due, and I could have stopped so easily back then. I could have just put down the merlot, the chardonnay, the brandy, and the vodka. The drinks got harder as my drinking got worse, and so did my tastes. From girly drinks like port and fruit liquor, I moved on to spritzers, vodka and brandy and rum. I still liked the fruit liquor, and drank the wine when it was the only option, but I learned to get drunk the quickest way possible. Amazing how one's tastes can change so quickly over time.
My life's a screw up. I remember as a kid, drinking from a glass -not to be civilized - but because it was easier to chug from a glass than a bottle (you didn't have to stop for the air to balance itself out to accommodate for the missing liquor). I could manage half the glass before I had to focus on not gagging (even with time, the hard stuff tastes hard), whereas with the bottle, it was more like a shot and a half.
Surprisingly, scotch was never my drink. I know it's one of the more common 'drinks of choice,' but the stuff tasted bland to me, bland and strange at the same time. I preferred either something with strong flavor and a burn as it went down or vodka, which had no flavor to speak of, just an aftertaste reminiscent of rubbing alcohol.
I remember when my tolerance started increasing too. A glass or two of wine, small glasses at that, did the trick in the beginning, but it eventually ended up being the whole bottle, or, my favorite, 8 shots of hard liquor. My friends would joke about it sometimes, but it wasn't funny. Then it was, in a strange way, but in retrospect, the fact that I found it as funny as they did, was a bad sign. I had a problem then, and according to AA, I still have one now.
Maybe alcoholism does leave you eventually, and you can have a glass of champagne at a party or wine with friends at dinner in a nice restaurant of some sort, but according to AA, you're always recovering, never recovered. Whatever.
I've slid back before, so maybe they're right, but maybe, just maybe, there are people out there who can drink like everyone else when they're out with friends, just like I wish I could."
Abby sighed when she looked back at her entry, it confirmed what she had been told, what she had been taught, she would always be recovering and never recovered, after all, the entire entry had been about booze. Having a martini with friends, but just one. Maybe two, it would never happen. One drink was all it took to lose her frail hold on sobriety.
beta'd by Saldemar the Fantabulous