la_bebe member for 29 weeks 3 days Send a message

I thought about it today... I've been completely sober for almost a week! At first it sounded funny when I told my friends I was feeling strange in the morning. I said to myself -"What is this feeling?... oh I know! I'm not hungover!"

Being around alcohol all the time (I'm a bartender) I've learned to see it as a social thing. People come to the bar, sometimes by accident, they become regulars, they meet more people, and before you know it, you have a full bar of familiar faces every day of the week. There is the loners (The ones that come by themselves, don't really talk much, have a couple of drinks and leave at the same hour every day). The Obnoxious (The ones that have been coming to the same place for 30 years and for that reason they think they own the bar) The "Bar Flies" (Women, most of the time, that come with the only purpose of getting guys to buy them drinks.) Here's how it works. They come early, buy one drink, and then sip on it slowly until the first victim arrives. If they are very lucky, it will be someone that doesn't know them good. Those are the easiest ones. They will talk about anything to catch the guy's interest, and all of a sudden, her drink is sipped faster. The guy doesn't want to stop talking so he buys her another one. That one goes on faster, so there comes another one. After the first three, they are both buzzed and having a great time, so there is many more to come. By the end of the night, they are best friends forever, exchange phone numbers, sometimes they leave together, and sometimes they never see eachother again.

I'm not scandalized by this behavior. It's a way of life for this people, and little by little it was getting into me too. I see normal people having a drink or two every day to release tension, and even doctors say this is a healthy habit, but sometimes it gets out of hand, and that's exactly where I was. I started drinking one beer with my boyfriend after work and I think that was pretty normal. Then I was going out with friends at night, a couple times a week, having a couple of drinks, and I thought that was not too bad. After a while I realized I was spending too much money going out, so I thought it would be smarter to buy a bottle of something and drink it at home... Big mistake. I would find myself drinking every single night of the week, sometimes alone after my kid was in bed. I would drink so much sometimes that I wouldn't remember at what time I went to bed or why in the world I was not wearing any clothes, and I'd be puking all night and wake up still buzzed to take my kid to school, and then sleep all morning and feel like shit all day long.

The funny thing is that I didn't stop abusing myself like this because I thought I was doing anything wrong. I stopped drinking a week ago as a promise to God in exchange for my boyfriend's health that was very sick last week. I'm not a religious person, but when there is nothing a human being can do to heal the ones you love, God comes in handy, and he doesn't care that you have been a jerk and neglected and even denied his existence. I didn't realize, until today, that the one in need of him was me, and that my boyfriend's illness could have been only an instrument to make me do what I wouldn't do for myself...