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My Last Drunken Halloween
On my last Halloween as a drinker, I went to a costume party dressed as Janis Joplin. But of course. At this point, I had been exploring my relationship with alcohol for a few years. I was exploring periods of not drinking. “Sober experiments” as I called these alcohol time outs. Then I would also have periods of drinking again. Maybe escalated drinking with worse and quicker consequences than before my alcohol time out. I was trying to figure out how to keep alcohol in my life without killing myself or pissing off anyone that I love. This was an incredibly tricky thing to navigate. Trying desperately not to be addicted to an addictive substance, while still consuming the legal and celebrated drug that is alcohol.
On this particular Halloween, where I was drinking, but also working to be less of a drinker, I had signed up to run a 10K race bright and early the following day. I did this because I wanted to be a healthy person. I wanted to be the kind of person that woke up early and ran races, even after a holiday. I wanted to be the kind of person that prioritized things above drinking. So I was practicing this lifestyle. I had one foot in both worlds’ as I was figuring this out.
If you are working to drink less or not at all, I want you to know that it’s a process. At the time, I thought my drinking again was a failure. Each time I drank again, I thought that was proof…
