16: Truths I’m willing to admit

Since my diagnosis, I’m finding it easier to be honest with myself

image © the author

I’ve known deep down for many years that my drinking was a problem. But, it’s never visibly impacted my life (no lost job, no DUI tickets, no car accidents, no destroyed relationships, no drinking during the day, none of the dramatic stories I’ve read about). For as long as I’ve been drinking I’ve mostly been witness to people who are drinking more than me, who more clearly have a drinking problem, who more clearly lack control. In the cases where I was the one who wanted to drink more than others, I’ve been happily oblivious or able to hold myself back despite the urge. And so, even though I knew the truth deep down, I was able to suppress the idea that alcohol was a problem for me and keep those thoughts hidden from the world and from my consciousness (at least, that’s what I thought). 

Since being diagnosed autistic, I’ve been much more open to reflecting on my life, writing through some of the hard things, and looking more intentionally at myself and my behavior. The revelation of my autism has motivated me to reexamine the world and how I interact with it, and it has made it somehow safer and easier for me to be honest with myself about different aspects of my reality. 

When it comes to drinking, these things are true:

• When I wake up in the morning after an evening that involved drinking, I feel ashamed and regretful. The more I drink, the more ashamed and regretful I feel, but those feelings are there even if I only had a glass or two of wine.

• In the mornings, I often tell myself I’m not going to drink that night, knowing that it’s not true and that by the time four o’clock comes around, I’ll be eagerly opening a bottle of wine.

• By not drinking Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of each week (which has been my personal rule for the past year), I am able to tell myself that I’m in control. But the whole time I’m just waiting for Thursday, often quite anxiously, when I’ll have no hesitation to drink because I’ve “successfully” gotten through the first part of the week without it. 

• When I’m drinking, I have to play tricks on myself to avoid drinking too fast (like pouring three ounce glasses of wine instead of the usual five), and often those tricks don’t work. After I go through the pretense of swirling the wine, smelling its “bouquet”, and savoring the first sip (as if my pallet is sophisticated enough to detect any kind of nuance), the second and third sips won't be far behind. Before I know it I’ll be refilling my glass, and before I know it again I’ll have consumed the total amount I said I would allow myself for the evening.

• When I’m at home, alone or with my wife, I usually have enough discipline and will power to limit my drinking to two glasses of wine on nights that I drink. But, every night that last sip feels like the end of the party, when the lights go on in the club and the bouncers kick you out. If we have guests, or if we’re out somewhere, there is no possibility of limiting my consumption.

• There are more nights than I care to admit when I don’t successfully limit my drinking to two glasses. Halfway through the second glass the rationalization begins: “You are drinking so much less than you used to”, “Can’t you just let yourself relax?”, “Most people don’t measure their wine on a kitchen scale like this - your two glasses is less than what most people would consider to be two glasses”, “You’ll still only have had one bottle this whole week. Well, one and a quarter, or one and a half.”

• I judge other people (mostly silently in my head, but not always) for the same behavior that I let myself get away with. “Wow, I can’t believe how fast they just drank that”, “So and so can’t keep their eyes off the wine bottle”, “I know what she’s thinking - why hasn’t he offered me another glass yet?”, “Wow, I can’t believe how many drinks he’s had”, 

• I don’t hesitate to say that I haven’t been drunk in years, or that I rarely get drunk. But if I really think about it, I’ve been dangerously drunk so many times. And those nights that I really let myself go feel so good in the moment. I love the lack of limits, the relaxation of my rules, the “excuse” to do things that I wouldn’t otherwise do (dance, for example, or say the things that pop into my head that I normally would suppress). If circumstances were different, I’d have those nights a lot more often. 

• It’s not really true that I haven’t had relationship problems due to my drinking. My first long term relationship suffered a lot because my girlfriend thought I drank too much - it was a frequent source of conflict. I thought she was overreacting, and projecting her mother’s alcoholism onto me. In retrospect, I think she was just being honest and calling out what she saw. But, we were in our 20s. Everyone we knew drank all the time. I didn’t think my behavior was anything out of the ordinary.

The only reason I’m able to write down these thoughts now is because I’ve admitted to myself that I need to stop drinking. My last drink was October 24th, 2021 - three weeks ago as I write this. To my surprise, abstaining for the past three weeks has not been hard. At least not yet. So far, it has felt like a relief. Finally allowing myself, after so many years of internal debate and struggle, to just acknowledge the truth, feels freeing. What I’ve noticed most of all, especially in the third week, is that as I make my coffee and start my morning routine on Thursday, I don’t have this feeling of “Oh thank god it’s Thursday! I made it! I can have a drink tonight!” Likewise, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I don’t have this sense of drudgery at having to get through the day without alcohol. Knowing that I won't be drinking no matter what night it is takes away the anticipation, frees my mind from the waiting, from the fixation. The absence of anticipation has also helped me realize how much time I spent thinking about and desiring alcohol. Many days, I think, I looked at my objective as simply making it to an hour of the day that was plausible to have a glass of wine without feeling too self conscious. 

Displacing alcohol as the punctuation of my day felt so scary before - something I couldn’t imagine. What would I do at four o’clock if I didn’t have a glass of wine? For so many years I drank every night. I rarely got drunk, but I drank. I remember feeling so put out and annoyed on the rare night that I couldn’t drink because I was having a blood test in the morning and the doctor said no alcohol the night before. Recently, making it through Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday without drinking each week has felt like such a chore. But, instead of making me feel anxious and incapacitated (as I imagined it would), I feel free to just relax. Sit and read. Have a non-alcoholic beverage if I crave the ritual (kombucha can be quite satisfying). Breathe. Draw a picture. Write in my journal. Sit and stare out the window at the trees in the park across the street. There are so many things that can occupy that space.

Knowing that I’m autistic has given me an emotional freedom that I didn’t feel before. It is allowing me to accept myself in new ways, and to embrace the idea of letting go of my old coping mechanisms. Instead of using alcohol to endure the constant stress and pain of functioning in the neurotypical world, I’m getting more comfortable with the idea of letting myself be myself and be honest about my needs. I’m realizing that for most of my life I’ve been trying to alter myself to fit in with what I perceived the norm to be, rather than being confident and comfortable in my desire to avoid the things that many people find appealing. Drinking, for me, has been not just about allowing me to cope when faced with the stress of social interaction, but also about trying to be like others. To do what other people do. To exist in the same world as other people. That includes participating in the activities where drinking happens, but also drinking itself, and the kind of drinking that the group I want to identify with engages in. I’ve aspired to be a wine snob, trying so hard to taste the nuances I read about in Food and Wine magazine, pretending to discern the subtle flavors that the sommelier describes at the restaurant, or that the wine importer raves about at the tasting. I’ve acted as if I understand all those adjectives, and tried so hard to convince myself and others that I knew what I was talking about. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it - I absolutely enjoyed it - but it was largely about acting as if it was something more than it was, as if it was a hobby or a passion rather than a drug.

Not drinking comes with the awkward obligation of telling other people you don’t drink anymore when the circumstances arise (like, when they offer you a drink). I think most people would “be fine” with the idea that I’m not drinking - we’re all old and mature enough now to resist judgment. But, I don’t think they would understand the challenge not drinking poses for me. They wouldn’t understand how much harder it is for me to get through a social event with neurotypical people without alcohol. They wouldn’t understand the effort required to resist alcohol, while they all enjoy it, and while I’m wearing the mask that autistic people wear to find acceptance with others. There is a reason, I think, that the vast majority of social time in my adult life has involved alcohol. 

Before I found alcohol, my free time would be spent in the library, on long walks, reading, writing in my journal, sitting in a coffee shop alone with my thoughts, standing next to a flowing river or a fountain for hours, staring at the water until I lost myself in the blur of the gushing water. I felt the judgment of others, but it didn’t bother me. I could stand by a fountain, pacing around it, for literally hours, as people came and went, going about their days. But once I got pulled into the social arena I got hooked on it the same way I would eventually get hooked on drinking. I wanted to be more normal. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to get rid of the feeling that I was hanging out with a group of friends, but I wasn’t really part of the group. Drinking seemed to help with that. Getting tipsy, toasting, participating in drinking games and rituals, made me feel like I was really there. But I wasn’t really there. I wasn’t really part of the group. I just felt like I was for those few hours. 

The dilemma I feel now is figuring out how to face the obligations, the rituals, the markers of life as a married man with a young child, who works a corporate job, without using alcohol to get through it. Can I stop drinking, but not retreat from the life I have been participating in? Can I endure Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners? Can I travel for work without going to the bar with my colleagues after a day of meetings? (Could I even get through those meetings without the promise of drinks as the reward?) Can I meet some friends for a beer without having a beer? Can I watch other people drink without judging them? Can I appear to relax and enjoy myself without the comfort of my drink? That’s the one I’m most worried about. Spending time with other people (unless there are just two of us) and not drinking generally has not worked out for me. Either I get annoyed, or other people get annoyed, or both. Will I be able to give people grace? Will I receive it? These, I think, are the hard parts. Much harder than the physical act of not drinking.