I hate the whole pop psychology concept of "addictive personalities". Like there's a whole subsection of people who are just magically inherently more prone to wanting to distract and sedate themselves from life, just because of who you are as a person.
I come from a long line of alcoholics. Hell, on my father's side of the family, every single man was an alcoholic and every single woman was mentally ill (though I will aknowledge that some of the women could also drink quite heavily, and the men were also certifiably insane). My paternal grandparents had three children and outlived two of them, as my aunt killed herself and my father drank himself to death.
Mom always painted my relationship with substance abuse as a seamless continuation of my father's. He died a few months before I turned 18 and could buy alcohol, so I guess from her perspective it looked just like that. His drinking stopped and I picked up right where he left it. Mom would not talk about my drinking without bringing up my father, saying that I acted the same way as he did while drunk, hid my booze in the same ways, even smelled exactly like he did.
I was taught from a too early age that I come from a family of alcoholics, and that if I ever touch alcohol, I will become one, too. That abstaining from it completely was the only way to be safe. So I spent about a decade being drunk as often as I thought I could get away with, and got caught a lot of times when I couldn't. Including at work.
Then one winter, three things happened in a row: One day I just realised that I feel just as bad drunk as I did sober. Suddenly there was just no point in drinking - if I'm going to feel like shit when I'm drunk just the same as I feel like shit when I'm sober, then I'm just wasting money. The second thing was getting diagnosed and medicated for ADHD. The sudden surge of motivation and mental energy enabled me to actually start doing things, not just because I had to, but because I wanted to do things.
The third and final one was cutting my family out of my life. That's a whole separate story, but suddenly I just didn't have their shadow in my life anymore, worrying about what they think and what they'd disapprove of, and how to avoid telling them about things that make me happy because they'd find a way to drain the joy out of anything. I was free, genuinely free.
Alcohol isn't a part of my life anymore, in any way. Not because I spend all my time dedicated to self-flagellating ascetic ritualistic purity practices of prohibiting myself all sources of joy, but because i simply don't enjoy it. I could drink, but I don't want to. I have better things to do, things that are more fun and rewarding and which I couldn't do while drunk.
I still have the same blood as my father, same temperament, my sweat smells the same as his did. It wasn't some inherent and hereditary family curse, it was misery. Being born under the wrong stars doesn't make a man so miserable he'll drink himself to death. Being unmedicated and dealing with my family does.
germansingergirl
vaporwave
stormborns
yousharknotpass
ellievsbear
