I’m Just Here For The Buzz

I’m Just Here For The Buzz

That’s the feeling I wanted. That’s what I chased. I didn’t like feeling out of control or past the buzz point. But then the dilemma was how to keep just enough buzz without moving past it. It was a fine line. That last one was always too much. No matter how much I knew better. 

If you get my emails or see my social media accounts, you may know that I have not had an alcoholic beverage in a while. It’s actually been 913 days. So, yeah, a while. 

I really don’t ever think about it much anymore. Not drinking is just part of my life right now It doesn’t serve a purpose for me. It was fun, but it was getting to where I was questioning why I was drinking or if I was trying to numb something or if I was just using it to cope with life. I was starting to think about it all the time. It was the – oh, I can’t wait to get off work so I can have a glass of wine – thoughts.  And then the reward thoughts. The if I get my workout in then I can have wine. Or sometimes I ditched the workout altogether and just started in on the wine. 

It also wasn’t doing my health any favors. I was drinking sometimes every night. And then I would tell myself, okay, I’m just going to drink this weekend, and not drink during the week. That would last for a few weeks, sometimes a month. And then I would be right back at it again. It was getting dumb. I would buy a couple bottles of wine for the weekend. But if I had too much of one, that would not leave enough for the rest of the weekend so I would have to go buy more. That was the part for me that was starting to feel really out of control. So I did something about it. I told myself I was going to stop. I needed to check myself. I needed to see if I could do it. 

The more it was becoming normalized all over social media, the more I was getting sick of it. You couldn’t go look on someone’s Facebook page without there being pictures of people drinking. It was in your face everywhere. 

It was being normalized for women to think they couldn’t make it through their day if there wasn’t wine for later. Society was telling us we couldn’t deal with life without wine. Wine time and mommy juice were becoming normal terms. People thought it was funny. It can be, but when it starts to rule your thoughts and your behaviors, then it’s time to take a closer look. 

If you wonder if you drink too much or if you have a drinking problem, you might drink too much and you might have a problem. Isn’t that usually how we start to wonder if something is not quite right in our lives? We wonder why we keep doing what we do. 

We deep down know, but we deep down don’t want to admit. We tell ourselves everything is fine. We still function. We still get up and go to work. We aren’t in jail and we are just having fun. I got tired of burning off the morning fog with caffeine. I got tired of the puffy face and tired eyes. I got tired of feeling like shit all the time. 

When that fun turns into day drinking, and every night drinking and all the weekends drinking and looking for the most amazing flavored vodka drinking, there might be a problem.

But, who the fuck am I to tell you that? There is no right or wrong choice for you. It’s just your choice. I don’t care if you drink. I have a lot of friends that drink and I still love every single one of those friends and can still have fun when I am with them, even if I don’t drink. That’s my choice and I don’t look at anyone who drinks any differently that someone who doesn’t. 

You have to decide how you live your life. Every six months or so, I reevaluate my choice to not drink. I don’t know if I will drink again, but right now I feel really solid in my decision. 

I don’t miss anything. In fact, I love going out and being sober. I love not having to worry if I will be able to drive home or if my husband is going to drive home. I love not having to make the wine decision on a Saturday afternoon, because I might still need to drive somewhere later. I really don’t miss it. I love not feeling like shit anymore. I’m still funny, whether I’m drinking or not. And I still have fun. So for now, I will be sticking to my alcohol free life.