my friend stopped everything unsavory and her partner never found out (as it usually should be because often the telling is really about the cheater trying to relieve their own guilt). i was honest with my friend in a loving way (i’m upset, i’m disappointed, scared but i love you and how can i help you make things better) and she was honest back, and we are doing pretty okay. but anyway, i am back-ish.

littleO loves kitties so much that i cannot show her any books with kitties in them at the library or bookstore because she SCREAMS at them and shrieks at the top of her lungs and people do not think it is cute. oh and she has no teeth. lets see, what else can i say? be patient people, i am WAY out of practice here. i can’t even come up with a title.

onto my problem. one of my bestest friends (in real life – not in blogland) is, i just found out, having an affair. WTF is my effing role? I am so MAD. I understand the reasons, but we are family friends, and I just want to lecture her and make her listen to me tell her how mad I am and say “how dare you” and stuff like that. but honestly I have no idea what my role is here. i have never been through this before. they have kids. i love her partner. they are having marital difficulties. we go on vacations with them. WTF do i DO?

I only wish I had tried this earlier. For some reason (stigma? stubornness? fear?) it took me years and years of being depressed, and anxious, and loop-thoughty to finally try medication. Instead I went to therapy (to great benefit). I went on spiritual journeys, I was rigorously honest with myself, I surrounded myself with good, honest, loving people. I went to more therapy. I have done it all. But not until this past January did I finally try some effing medication. Like, hello!? Anyway, this pill does not make my problems disappear, but it takes takes a HUGE edge off the depression, and makes it so much easier for me to cope with my problems, even at the lowest prescribed dose. And thankfully, it does not flatten the top end of my emotional range. So things are better.

First, the drinking. It has been mostly very, very FUN. Wine tasting, tipsy sex, a glass of wine after putting the kids to bed on a Friday night. Searching for wines is also amazing and overwhelming. And I discovered that I get quiet and observant when I get a little drunk, which is hysterical if you know me IRL, being an intrinsically unquiet person. The process is also confusing. I think most people my age (33) have, by this point, figured out how much they can drink, if they can mix different alcohols, how much water they need to drink, if there will be any consequences the next day. For me it is all new, and I am discovering that too much wine and no water = parched feeling of wanting to die in the middle of the night, crappy sleep and grumpy me the next day. Does drinking make any of you more depressed the next day? Just so you know, by ‘too much wine’ i mean 3 glasses, which is the most I have had so far. Sometimes I wonder if I like it too much, talk about it too much, think about it too much. Maybe that is good. Some checks and balances. Ultimately I know I cannot avoid a period of thinking about it mucho after 17 years of abstinence. It is just too damn exciting.

What I want to blog about today, however, is the subject of me being in a funk. Depressed. Insecure. I have made some new friends lately (the last 6 months at my new job) and that is a vulnerable process for me. One friend in particular, I really like and we became instantly close. We planned a number of trips together, both alone and with our families. Ah. How do I write about this without it being boring?? And long?? Um. I am just always wondering if people really like me and it takes me a long time to trust that someone does…that I am worthy of smart, funny people liking me. I make everything they do personal. Do you know what I mean? Like if New Friend is a little off one day, or doesn’t return my call the same night, or tells me that she would rather we take two cars on our upcoming family vacation after we planned on all going in her minivan, I get all ‘she doesn’t like me anymore’ instead of thinking maybe she had a bad day, or didn’t get my message, or just wants some quality time with her husband. Why must I be so insecure and self centered? I think about everything too much. Today I just wish I was someone else. Someone who wasn’t so hard on myself. So needy. This leads me to thinking I should go back on antidepressants, because when I was on Wellbutr!n, I ruminated so.much.less. But I was a little angrier too. Anyway thank you for reading this self indulgent post when I hardly ever post anymore.

p.s. amer!cas funniest home videos is so.much.funnier after a beer. for realz.

so.fun.

more later.

p.s. thank you for all of the lengthy comments. I LOVE lengthy comments.

Recently I have been considering that my teen drinking career may have been more normal than alcoholic.

I stopped when I was 16. My father was an alcoholic…you know, the kind who slept in the creek sometimes. He got sober when I was 11. I displayed some early behavior indicating that I had problems drinking: wanting to get drunk every time I was around alcohol, stealing weed from my friends, not ever knowing my limits, barfing. But hello? I was stealing before the drinking started, and of course I wanted to drink when it was around, since it was so hard to get. I stopped for those reasons, but mostly I stopped because I made friends with sober people in high school. I went to meetings for a few years, and then I found that I didn’t need them anymore to stay sober. I met S, and she stopped drinking altogether 6 months into our relationship because I asked her to.

Where am I going with this? I always believed that alcoholism was a disease I had, which meant that certainly, I could never, ever, ever drink. I assumed that my teen behavior (for less than a year) and my family history meant I needed to be sober forever, lest the progressive disease catch up with me.

I’m not sure what happened recently but something changed. All of a sudden I told S that she could drink if she wanted to. I started to question my unquestioned beliefs about myself and alcoholism in general. My dad was surely an Alcoholic, capital A, as are many more functional folks. But I decided, and I really can’t be more articulate about it in this moment because my thoughts and feelings about this are incredibly complex layered and detailed, to consider drinking again. As an adult. With guidelines.

What I know for sure is that 17 years without drinking is a long time.  I could have a problem, but most likely I don’t. I find myself surrounded by friends who drink “normally”. By normally I mean sometimes they get drunk and regret it (once a year?). By normal I mean that they monitor their drinking and have made rules for themselves that they generally respect. Some don’t hang out with people that they know they will be a little out of control with. Some have decided not to drink around their kids, in general, or on weeknights and so on. Most have decided not to make drinking a regular (daily) practice of relaxing. I have been quizzing them about their “rules” so I can muddle through if I decide to drink. I know that I probably can’t ever drink without monitoring myself. If I am a giant genetic alcoholic I may find that I make rules I cannot adhere to. I have, of course, considered that this whole attitude change is just more of my justifying addict behavior/thinking, but when I really check in, that is not what is happening.

Current research actually does support people returning to controlled drinking after a period of abstinence. I know that for people in 12 step programs all of my thinking probably sounds blasphemous. I’m not sure that I am explaining myself well, but I suspect that even if I did there is no way NOT to sound justifying. What is really upsetting to me is that I don’t know any on else in this position. No one I know or have even met has been sober so long with such a limited drinking career. I even tried googling this and came up with nothing.

So. What to do.

What are your rules? How do you not use alcohol or drugs in an abusive way? Has anyone ever started drinking again after a long period of abstinence?