Before the Fall

Sometimes I wonder if my inability to remember large tracts of my past is due to the alcohol and drugs, or just a subconscious self defense measure. Regardless of the reason, I do have a hard time recalling certain portions of my life before my slip into total dependence. I am most curious about what my state of mind was as my alcohol abuse slowly phased into alcoholism because it is this time in my life I think is most important to my current recovery. Other than the memories of pain and misery serving as a visceral reminder, the hard core alcoholism portion of my life has very little instructive value. I drank to live and lived to drink… everything else that occurred was just a means to this end. It is this time right before the fall, when I was still a person instead of an alcoholic that I am most interested in.

I guess one of the main things that I can recall about this time frame is my almost total disconnect from the world around me. I do not mean in the same way an alcoholic retreats from others when he can no longer hide his disease, but more in the sense of being on the outside looking in through a window. I still participated and interacted with others, but never felt like I belonged in the scene. It was as if it was my point of reference that Hopper painted his the famous Nighthawks, I was the lonely guy out in the dark, empty street of the city.

Eventually this disconnect became real because of my own actions. I started to neglect things such as work, family, and commitments because I had become detached. It seemed the only time I got feedback out of life, was through the effect of alcohol. I began to depend on my drinking for the stimulus of all things. I needed to drink if I was going to a wedding, just as I would need to drink to go to a funeral. It got to where I would not participate in anything if I could not drink, often avoiding everything altogether by simply sleeping through them. By the time I was avoiding the real world through sleep, I was dependent on the alcohol in my time awake to construct a satisfactory world.

The thing is, I don’t think this “outside looking in” syndrome was anything special to my situation. I think that most people have times in their lives that they feel insignificant or a loss of control. My problem was the alcohol abuse. Even though I was not yet physically dependent on the alcohol, I had begun to rely upon it both as a reward in life and as coping agent for things less pleasant. My drinking was no longer the problem; it was my inability to function with out drinking that became the problem… before the fall.

Cross Posted at The Discovering Alcoholic