About

What would you like to know about me? I am in my mid-40’s, married for 20 years, with two teenage kids. I live in the suburbs, and I have a job in my community.

I guess you’re here for the sober story, so I’ll give you my drinking history.

I think I had a very normal american start to my drinking career. Ihad my first drink at 16. I occasionally drank at “keggers” and parties in high school. That became every weekend and the occasional weekday in college, with a summer job that involved drinking at least 5 nights a week. At that point, and in my first few years out of college, I could take it or leave it. If others were drinking and alcohol was around, I would drink, and if not, I would not drink. It didn’t take effort to not drink. I would not occur to me to drink if others were not drinking.

I married a wonderful guy who drank a bit more than me. Slowly my drinking ramped up. Not necessarily drinking more, but drinking more often. Then I had kids. That was about a 5 year window of either not drinking because I was pregnant, or having a hard time finding the time to drink because I was so busy with babies and toddlers. I remember my husband noting that I was still on my first (now warm) beer. I guess that was a time of me resetting myself alcohol-wise. I probably had the choice at that point to become a person who drank very occasionally, but I went the other way instead.

Very slowly, over the course of about 10-11 years, my drinking increased. I don’t need to say it to other parents out there, but being a parent is a never-ending job. There are all these things, big and small, that you used to do to “treat” yourself, (maybe this is what is referred to as “self-care”), but you don’t have the time or money to do them anymore. But you know how you can treat yourself while still parenting? Have a drink! Have a drink while you watch your kids play in the yard. Have a drink while you fold laundry or give them a bath. Have a drink while you make dinner and another while you read them bedtime stories. It seemed so normal. It did not seem at all like I was doing something that might seriously and negatively impact my life. I was never “out of control”.

Then there began to be an incident here or there where I drank too much and did something I would not normally have done, but we swept these under the rug, saying, “everyone over-imbibes once in awhile”. I also began to have these seemingly isolated episodes of drinking by myself while getting house work done. Drunk cleaning! So much more fun than sober cleaning! My kids got older and there started to be more and more times when I was actually a-l-o-n-e for an hour or two…and why not speed up the un-winding with a drink!

At some point my husband and I got into the habit of starting the evening with one pretty strong cocktail, then switching to beer. This was a time in our lives where we hit that buzzed sweet-spot almost every time. It was lovely. But my tolerance or my greed must have grown, because I started feeling like the first cocktail wasn’t enough before switching to beer. So I started making mini-half cocktails on the sly. Then a whole second cocktail on the sly. At some point my husband noticed that I was drunker than normal and also noticed that coincidentally our liquor levels were lower than normal. He put two and two together.

So at this point I swore to cut that out. And not too long after that I started to secretly buy alcohol. So much easier, right? Because I could drink as much as I wanted and he had no idea. As long as I could pull off looking not-too-drunk around him. And my kids. Who were getting older. And wiser. And I would pull it off. Until I didn’t. And then I would hate myself and pull myself back together. Kind of.

This is the world I have floundering around in for the past 2-3 years.

And now you know more about me!