When I started the Return on Sobriety blog, I was convinced I was on a crash course with alcoholism. I had been a pretty steady binge drinker for many years and a near daily pot smoker for over twenty of those. When covid came along in 2020, my binge drinking and weed smoking went into overdrive. Hell, we were all stuck at home with nothing to do and driving ourselves stir crazy. As a result, I became a very heavy drinker and smoker. I was teetering at the extreme edge of what I later learned was heavy gray area drinking.
Drunkenness is nothing by voluntary madness.
– Seneca
I remember how ecstatic I was the day BevMo began their curbside pickup service. With covid impacting the availability of everything, I loaded up on beer, vodka, wine, and whatever alcohol I could get my hands on. My garage fridge was soon overflowing with every kind of beer imaginable. And with little to do but watch tv, play board games, and lay around the house, a couple of beers a day soon became a few, and eventually became many.
A largely social pre-covid drinking habit became, by circumstance, an entirely individual one. Drinking ballooned from 2-3 days a week to 5-6. My pot smoking remained a daily affair, but instead of relegating it to once or twice in the evenings, my toking expanded into the early afternoons and sometimes late mornings.
It wasn’t until I had reemerged into the world after the better part of six months of isolation that I came to realize how serious my “gray area drinking” had become. By then, though, these habits had become sticky and hard to shake off. And truthfully, I wasn’t quite ready to take a hard look at them or admit I had a problem.
Gray Area Drinking or Alcoholism?
At the time, I had never heard the terms Gray Area Drinking or Sober Curious. I figured you either had a drinking problem, aka alcoholism, or you were okay. Since I grew up in an alcoholic household, I had experienced the ravages of this disease up close and personal. So I thought I had a good grasp of the concept.
My younger brother was a full-blown recovering alcoholic by the time he was the ripe old age of 24. I, on the other hand, thought I had escaped alcoholism since I could stop drinking after a few beers, go for periods of time without drinking at all, and frankly preferred marijuana over alcohol anyway. So, I tended to stick to smoking weed most of the time, drinking a couple nights a week on average, and binge drinking on occasion.
The first inkling that my gray area drinking had become a problem was when I began experiencing long stretches of insomnia. I had never struggled with insomnia and figured it was melatonin related due to getting older. So, to fix this, I added a daily dose of melatonin to my evening routine.
Unfortunately, melatonin didn’t help. I didn’t sleep any better. The only thing melatonin did was make me feel even groggier the next morning.
More research led me to the conclusion that my sleep was a victim of my heavy drinking. Of course, this was not something I wanted to find out, but I accepted the science and proactively made some adjustments to my drinking schedule.
Scheduling Sleep Around Drinking
I wasn’t quite ready to confront my drinking problem just yet and didn’t see my marijuana addiction as an issue. So, what did I do? I simply adjusted my drinking schedule a little bit. Not the amount, not the frequency, just the window in which the binge drinking took place.
I figured that if I could finish drinking by 8pm, I’ll metabolize enough of it by bedtime (11-11:30pm) that it wouldn’t impact my sleep. Even if I got drunk.
Boy was I wrong.
It made no difference whatsoever. I still slept like sh*t most nights and continued to suffer from exhaustion, hangovers, and what I later discovered was hangaxiety (anxiety caused by excessive alcohol use).
Not sleeping well, having recurring negative thoughts, gaining weight like crazy, and being generally unhappy, I decided I needed to do something. And fast.
Becoming Sober Curious
You could say that between the exhaustion, weight gain, and increasing frequency of negative thinking, I had become sober curious. Should I go to AA like my brother, sister-in-law, and a good buddy of mine? Did I need that kind of help? I was certainly open to the idea. Especially since I had noticed a new drinking motivation arising: drinking to relieve hangovers.
You don’t have to be an alcoholic to quit drinking.
– Ruby Warrington
According to the Mayo Clinic, one sign of clinical alcoholism is drinking to avoid the symptoms of withdrawal, of which a hangovers, insomnia, and anxiety are examples. Whoa!! That was exactly what I was starting to do! This wakeup call scared me straight!!
I became sober curious. I had admitted to myself that I had squarely entered the scary end of the gray area drinking spectrum, and was on the cusp of going over the edge. But, again – what to do?
Meditation & Journaling
First, I read everything I could find. I visited all kinds of addiction, alcoholism, and recovery sites. That’s where I learned the difference between clinical alcoholism and gray area drinking. My research led me to the conclusion that I wasn’t a clinical alcoholic yet, but if I didn’t reign in my drinking or quit altogether, I’d end up there sooner or later. Drinking to alleviate symptoms was proof positive of this trajectory.
Further research led me to the conclusion that meditation might help. So I downloaded the Lojong app and got started. That was 158 consecutive meditation days ago! To make meditation a daily ritual, I created a morning routine that incorporates reading empowering books, meditation practice, Yoga, hiking, and journaling. My morning routine improves my mood, my outlook, productivity, and keeps me ontrack with my sobriety goals.
Since I started daily meditation over five months ago, my gray area drinking has gone from an extreme of 5+ nights a week plus marijuana (and an average of 7-9 drinks per sitting) to 2-3 nights a month with zero marijuana (and an average of 2-4 drinks per sitting). As I’ve written many times in Return On Sobriety, marijuana ‘quit me’ at day 35 of meditation. I have not had any pot of any kind in 120 days as of writing this. And, more importantly, I never think about it anymore! It’s just gone.
Daily journaling is also so important to achieving my goals. It keeps me honest. I know I’m going to have to report my activities in my journal (and eventually in this blog), so that alone is a huge motivator for ensuring sober periods of weeks at a time and being mindful about how fast and how much I drink when I do decide to do so.
Not Out of the Gray Area Drinking Woods Quite Yet
All of this is not to say I won’t need AA or some other professional intervention at some point in the future. I may and I’m open to that. I’ll know I’m out of the gray area drinking woods when I no longer think about or plan around drinking.
I remain fully aware of the little voice in the back of my mind (I call him Drinkie) that still plots and plans excuses to drink. He and I visit daily and discuss his intentions. On average now, I’m able to dismiss him outright on average 90+ percent of the time. And that continues to improve. On the few occasions I do drink, I’m also able to dismiss him after only a few beers pretty much 100% of the time. That’s a BIG deal. A HUGE improvement.
But Drinkie is still there. Lurking in the shadows. And my sober curiosity continues to question when or if he’ll ever completely go away like Smokie did. Only time will tell. But I remain committed to rebuilding mind, body, and soul, and in that commitment, over the long haul, there is not place for Drinkie or Smokie.
