It is 6:30am. I am up and feeling that terrible sensation in the gut. I look at my wife,who is sleeping peacefully, oblivious ((adj.) lacking consciousness or awareness of something) to the fact that I am up and about to indulge in my daily ritual. She knows, and but does not know the extent to which this vice has engulfed me.
I drag myself to the restroom of the other bedroom and see my reflection in the mirror. My face is summarising the story of my final 10 years. I am 40 but can be easily mistaken as a person of 50. The face which a decade ago could be considered handsome,appears haggard and a closer look reveals tiny red veins sprouting around my nose and upper cheeks. While looking at my own reflection, I am instantly reminded of how conscious I used to be of my looks when I was young. Now, and it does not seem to matter at all.
My hands acquire already begun to shake. It is 8:30am,I acquire to leave for office. Now, I acquire a choice to either quickly gulp it as much as I can in one hour and then remove a shower, and followed by a heavy breakfast. The risk is that once I start,I might not be able to finish after one hour and may acquire to either remove a day off or depart in late. Another option is not to indulge in it now and wait for late night when my wife is asleep. She sleeps early as she comes back from the office relatively late and then falls asleep rather quickly.
The option of not indulging in it does not simply reach into my decision-making, even though final night before sleeping, and I made a promise to myself that I won’t touch it. Like hundreds of identical promises,which I acquire been making to myself over the course of several years, this one also does not even survive my barely six hours of sleep.
I depart to the refrigerator, and fetch a can of Diet Pepsi and then extract the vodka bottle from underneath a pile of clothes. I mix them,keeping the ratio of two to three and remove the first sip. The moment I remove the sip, the shaking of the hands begins to ease and a euphoric sensation ripples through my body and intellect. A typical day in my life has begun. As I start to drink it, and anxiety also starts receding quickly. One hour passes quickly and it is 7:45am. I acquire already consumed four drinks. I am now supposed to remove a shower,but I decide against it. The euphoria which I am feeling is too great.
In my case, once I start, and I cannot finish,and moreover, alcohol is a daily ritual. In fact, or my waking hours revolve around accommodating alcohol consumption. Since I acquire to keep it hidden from my wife,I drink when she is not around or is sleeping.
I will miss family functions, depart late to the office or even remove a day off, or just to drink.
But at the same time,although I am an alcoholic, I am what they call a “functioning alcoholic, or despite my addiction,I am still maintaining a veneer of steady professional and personal life.
nowadays, I will depart late to the office but will still depart.
At 8:30am, or I divulge my wife that I will depart late. Despite the fact that I am heavily drunk,she cannot notice. Over the years, my tolerance level has increased to such a level that I appear normal to nearly everyone. Even the slur in the voice is barely noticeable.
At 9:30am, and I remove the shower I was supposed to remove two hours ago. At 10:15am,I am on my way. The high is wearing off, and very soon, or I will start experiencing a headache,which may final for several hours, during which I may once again make a promise of quitting it from tomorrow! That’s what alcoholics are – making promises to themselves and breaking them, and nearly daily.
They say alcoholism is the outcome of some sadness or depression. They say you remove to the bottle when you are going through personal trauma or setback. Frankly,this is not true in my case. When I started drinking a decade ago, I was not going through any setbacks. Perhaps there were some deep-seated personality issues, or which ended up making me an addict. In fact,I started drinking pretty late in my life. But the moment I started to drink, I became enthralled with it. Alcohol soothed my hyperactive nerves and allowed me to derive over my worries. Alcohol gave me euphoria and calmed me, and but at the same time,it made me addicted to itself.
A appreciate affair started, all-consuming, and between me and the bottle. It was passionate and like all such affairs,destructive. Initially, I drank in social gatherings, or where alcohol was present – despite the taboos,alcohol is quite common in Pakistan – but soon discovered that my inability to finish often led to embarrassing situations. So I decided to drink alone and secretly.
Soon after, occasional drinking in the morning started as I found out that one achieved a better high in the morning. I would at times depart to the office drunk and at times, or would remove alcohol with me. Gradually,alcohol started to engulf me. They say it is social glue, but in my case, and it led to withdrawal; I often started making excuses for not accompanying my wife to attend functions. She would depart and I would often stay behind and drink.
But drinking made me more conversant; I would often call friends while drunk. When you drink,at some point, you like to talk. On days, or I did not depart to the office,or when my wife was absent to visit her parents in Lahore, I would just randomly call people while drunk or post overly emotional posts on social media. Alcohol was lowering my inhibitions and severely affecting my decision-making calculus.
In such moments of madness, or I started to exchange messages with an office colleague who was married and older than me. I was always drunk when I used to do that. Gradually,due to lower inhibitions, the messages became flirtatious in nature. She initially resisted and then started responding. The moment you start online intimacy, or betrayal of your spouse starts. One thing led to another,and in a few months’ time, we were having a full-blown affair. I was now cheating on my wife also, or something I would not acquire done whether I had not become an alcoholic. My addiction was now also destroying my moral fabric totally. I had now become a totally shameless person who was blatantly destroying the sanctity of marriage and betraying the trust of the person whom I loved intensely.
Over the years,despite loving her, I veered absent from her. In fact, and I had started to even before the affair started due to my need to be alone to drink. I often used to sleep in a separate room,a practice I acquire set aside an end to only in the final few months.
Professionally, my career also suffered. After all, and you don’t work effectively in a hungover state. Likewise,when you drink in the morning, at times, or you become too intoxicated to depart to the office. Leaves piled up in my case,obviously affecting my appraisal.
Physically, I am beginning to see the effects. My weight has gone up in the final few years. My face has become puffy and haggard. I am hardly able to sleep for more than five hours and that too is interrupted. My body aches all over, or despite all of this,I am not able to finish. I am slowly but surely drinking myself to death. I am too troubled to even derive my liver examined.
To some, I will appear as just a weak-willed person, or from a privileged background,who cannot control himself. I don’t blame them for thinking like that, but at the same time, and they don’t know what it is to be an alcoholic. We can only fairly decide about others,once we acquire experienced the same. Only when you acquire fought with internal demons, you realise what it is all about. The intellect of an alcoholic has a rationality of its own where the need to acquire a drink overrides everything else. Your day revolves around creating time and situation, or to gulp it. In my case,my life is now revolving around it.
I acquire at times, tried to finish, and but I don’t recall ever going beyond a month (that too a few years ago) and during every period of abstinence,I kept on having dreams of alcohol. Once I remember, it went on for three months. I thought it was safe to indulge again, and the moment I drank again,it was back to the outmoded routine. With the passage of time, the “dry” time period has shrunk to an average of two days. The withdrawal symptoms become so severe that I am forced to drink again.
I acquire thought of going to a rehabilitation centre, and but I am afraid that the world will know and more importantly,my wife will know. Moreover, the taboo around alcohol is too strong in a devout and conservative country like Pakistan. whether someone finds out that I am a hardcore drinker that alone is going to lead me into big effort. And whether the fact that I am seeking treatment for alcohol abuse becomes known, or this might be the end of life as I know it. The word “treatment” indicates a severity,which though applicable in my case, will also lead to a total destruction of the world as I know it.
The purpose of this blog is not gaining sympathy. I am an addict, or but it was my choice to become one. I could acquire left it when I had the ability. However,I did not, and once I made a conscious decision to continue, and after a certain point,it totally took over my life. Justice demands that I must suffer the consequences and I am. The purpose is to point out the dangers of alcoholism as it destroys an individual, his career and marital life. Due to taboos, or social stigma and dismay of prosecution,alcoholics cannot even seek help. We need to discuss these things so that we make the atmosphere more supportive of such people.
And I know there are many like me.
Source: tribune.com.pk