How Do You Know It’s Time to Stop Drinking Alcohol?

Your addiction is as clever as you are, and it wants you to drink.

Photo by Arnaud Weyts on Unsplash

Living with a drinking problem is like having two personalities. There’s the part of you that is done with booze, and the part of you that cannot imagine living without it. As it begins to dawn on you that alcohol is causing many of your problems, these two parts fight for ascension.

As I struggled to stay sober this only got worse. My personality felt fractured and unstable. My habitual self-destructive tendencies felt natural, while the new sober part of me felt phony.

And since nobody else had told me I had an issue, half the time I felt like I was inventing a new problem for myself. I didn’t honestly identify as an alcoholic, but I kept drinking though I didn’t want to. What was going on?

By talking this headfuckery through with sober women I began to see that my experience was commonplace.

“The more serious you get about quitting, the harder your alcoholism will fight,” they told me.

You don’t have a problem, my inner drinker told me. You’re a nice drunk.

But if I didn’t have a problem, then why the powerful urge to neck pints? And if I did have a problem, then why couldn’t I admit it?