I’ve temporarily lost my ability to socialise and engage with people on a regular basis. I say temporarily because I’m confident this will return in time; perhaps not exactly as it was before, but I will learn to feel more at ease seeing friends and family without relying on alcohol.
I’m a solitary person and enjoy my own company. Always have. Still, most of us move through life gathering friendships and even casual acquaintances along the way. Some people naturally appeal to us more than others, yet friendships and relationships often form subtly, sometimes without our conscious awareness. It’s difficult to truly know no one at all, but living largely alone in that way remains a lifelong aspiration of mine.
Tonight I had a mate visit. He continuously messaged me wanting to know when I was free and I started running out of excuses. Don’t get me wrong, this is a great guy and we have known each other for over 15 years, four of those we spent living together — a genuinely good person. But he’s also a smoker and a drinker, and almost all of our past catchups were built around booze and smoke. That’s true of so many relationships: get a few drinks into me and I had all the confidence in the world, I’d be the last one standing and beg people to keep drinking with me. Now I don’t drink — over seven months sober — and I’ve had to adjust a lot of things that used to attach themselves to that habit. I’m slowly working through the list. I’ve found parts of sobriety unexpectedly exciting and deeply rewarding, and there are very few triggers for me these days. I can be around people who are drinking, but I can’t stand a drunk. Hypocritical? Yes — because that was once me.
After a couple of hours and my mate a few beers in, I told him I was ready to call it a night. I had wanted to say that twenty minutes after his arrival, but kept putting it off. I simply wanted to slip back into my own routine and do whatever felt right—perhaps write this blog, or kick back with some YouTube or Netflix. Really, what I was trying to say was that I wanted to be by myself for a while.
It’s not just being in other people’s company that weighs on me. Even simple, everyday errands become triggers — like visiting the pharmacist next door to a bottle shop. I pick up a lot of scripts, so I’m there frequently. I used to buy a couple of beers while I waited for my prescriptions to be filled. Grocery shopping was another trap; I’d find reasons to stop at the booze aisle. I could list many more examples, but the pattern was the same: every chance I had, I would drink that awful poison, regardless of the situation. For me there was never an inappropriate time to enjoy a few beers. The only thing that reliably kept my drinking in check was when I had to drive; everything else felt like fair game.
As usual I have gone off topic. I do this often. Basically, what I want to work on is socializing and enjoying the process. I’ve done so well overcoming so many other obstacles while maintaining sobriety; I’m just finding it difficult to be around people for any extended period of time.