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My identity was wrapped up in my drinking. I was a drinker, and for a long while that was a positive identity to me: it signified I enjoyed life, I was fun, adventurous, edgy even. As the weeks and months tick by I'm shedding both the positive and negative of that drinker identity.
But in the void of that lost identity doesn't seem to be a new identity forming. I don't feel a kindred connection with non-drinkers/light drinkers and I have yet to meet anyone in the flesh that is in recovery. Drinkers have clear edges, you either can hold your own belly up to the bar or not. And once you prove yourself and are in the club, you really can do no wrong...all bad behavior is excused or made into a good story--and you are always welcome into the circle. That part of the identity is what I miss and I don't think sense of belonging occurs in the non-drinker side of things in the same way. I am wrapping my mind around this drinking identity as being another discarded costume I have worn as part of the process of becoming who I am. It served its purpose, and I really mean that, to get me here...right here...in my life. Maybe there was an easier way to get here, but probably not.
3 Comments
I completely, 100% agree with everything you have written above, and find myself in a similar boat. Its a beautiful thing to be surrounded by a group of people whose behaviour validates your own, until you aren't surrounded by them, and your behaviour is no longer validated. I like to look at my drinking identity as being a false identity - drinking for me started as a way of nullifying a painful adolescence, and only 10 years later, now that I'm looking to remove the drink to find out what is below, am I finding the real me. having said that, I can get incredibly angry sometimes - woe is me, why me? why can't I drink like a normal person, I would give anything to drink like a normal person. Ironic, seeing as a normal person wouldn't make that statement.
I Will Start
9/23/2015 03:02:22 pm
Hi Harry,
Haha glad it helped, it really can be such a mind f*ck thinking over relationships with alcohol, often leaves me questioning what is real and what isn't. Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI used to drink with the best of them, but I don't anymore. My life is so much better for it. Archives
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