Hitting Rock Bottom: The Ugliness of where I have just been

To be fair, it wasn't always bad.  But it hasn't been great for a long time.  I found this picture I had uploaded as a profile picture to Facebook, New Year of 2008:

A friend had commented and affectionately called me an "alcky".  Little did she (or I) know how close she had come to the truth, 14 years ago.

The "routine drinking" started in 2006.  I had just left my first job as a young engineer with Shell UK under stressful conditions, and started a new job in a small consultancy.  Unfortunately the stress followed me to my new job, and I was faced with debilitating insomnia.  Living in Aberdeen, where the summer days started getting bright at 2am, it was a nightmare.  To cut a long story short, after months of trying this and that, I worked out that if I drank a bottle of wine a night, I could sleep.  This was the start of my undoing.

What followed was 15 years of drinking, every.single.day (save for a 5 month hiatus in 2020, a story for another time).  At its most stable state, I was drinking approximately 1.5 bottles of wine a day, every day.  This did not include the bigger drinking social events, this was just business as usual.  It had become my security blanket, and I was absolutely terrified to let it go.  All suggestions to get help and/or stop were met with a vehement no.  I didn't have a problem!  I had a high metabolic rate!  I worked out/trained lots, it made up for it!  It did not affect my ability to function!  The justifications were endless.

The reality was, the alcohol became a pesky nuisance that reared its head more and more often in time.  Where I used to "only" drink in the evenings, it started to sneak in as "exceptions".  Thinking back, I remember a period of time when I would gulp some wine on my way out of the door in the morning on my way to work.  One day I gulped so much I had to take a nap in the bathroom at work.  And then started the dreaded occurences of what I called "bad days".  Bad days were days when I woke up with a knot of anxiety in my stomach, unable to face the day ahead, and would thus dive straight into the bottle.

Bad days came and went.  I was stressed.  I was unhappy.  I was anxious.  I was everything but an alcoholic.  I seeked psychological help.  I was given help, paid for even.  I was prescribed antidepressants.  I was prescribed sleeping pills.  I continued to drink.  I got a dog.  I got a grand piano.  I rebooted my life.  I landed in my "dream life" where beyond my wildest dreams came true.  I kept drinking.  The bad days loomed threateningly.  The bad days started crowding out the good days.  I was slipping into a dark abyss with no way back.

In the last week before I decided enough was enough and shipped myself to rehab, I drank from morning to night, every single day.  I was up at 3 to 4 bottles of wine a day, often forgetting to eat more than breakfast.  I was sick many nights, and would wake up with crushing anxiety, that would only go away with more alcohol.  I was stuck in a vicous cycle with no way out.  I was very afraid.  I tried to space the alcohol out.  I'd go to the supermarket and buy 1 bottle of wine.  I'd go home, and drink it, and try to sleep, to buy some hours.  Other hour buying methods include endless stabbing my phone playing ridiculous games.  Or eating and throwing up.  Before eventually heading out to buy more alcohol.

This was the darkness of my world.  In Alcoholics Annonymous (AA), they say you have to hit rock bottom before you find your way out again.  That was definitely my rock bottom.  And I hope to never EVER return there again.  Because I won't know when my next drink will be my last.

This picture was taken on my last day at rehab, very fitting picture for how my world looks now without alcohol,: