I admire your honesty, in regard to why you drink. Not a lot of drinkers are this honest or this conscious of why they drink. I feel for you deeply as you face the impact this has had on you and your daughters.
As a 54yo gal who's an ex drinker, I can relate to drinking and its ability to shift emotions. Kinda like 'Don't want to feel stress, drink to feel peace. Don't want to feel depression, drink to feel happy excitement. Don't want to feel social anxiety, drink to feel socially fearless. Don't want to feel your thoughts or inner dialogue, drink to feel thoughtless' and the list goes on. Alcohol can appear as a mind altering solution, literally. As a liquid solution in a bottle, it can feel a little like a magic potion but it does come with unwanted side effects. Just some of the side effects
- The hangover. While most consider the hangover as simply feeling sick the next day after drinking, the lack of energy, the sleep disturbances it causes and the body being in a state of hyperactivity (as it tries to cleanse itself) are just some of the things that can lead to feeling depressed and anxious
- Loss of consciousness. I imagine this is largely what you're daughters struggle with in regard to you drinking. When sober, we can be conscious of so much (including our stress, pain, inner dialogue and more). With each drink, we lose a degree of consciousness. So the more alcohol, the less conscious of things we become. While we can be happy gradually losing conscious awareness to different degrees, it doesn't always serve those around us. When the people around us need us to be conscious and we can't be, they can be left to feel disappointment. Other emotions can be felt also, such as anger, resentment, sadness, a sense of hopelessness and more
- A lack of skill development. When I stopped drinking in my 30s, I woke up to the fact that I didn't possess a lot of skills. Speak to just about any ex drinker and they'll tell you the same thing. It takes skill to manage stress, skill to manage socially challenging situations, skill to better understand and manage emotions, skill to manage what we sense (especially if we're sensitive and able to easily sense what's depressing and incredibly challenging). It also takes skill when it comes to developing a greater sense of self understanding. To say that doing life sober can be a challenge is an understatement. There is a great sense of pride and satisfaction felt though, when it comes to continuously graduating to new levels of consciousness, achievement and skill development
Having been on both sides of the fence, as a drinker and non drinker, I can see both sides. While my husband remains a drinker, I can say that living with a drinker definitely comes with quite a number of challenges.
I'm wondering whether you're beginning to feel the need to stop drinking. This can be a challenging feeling in a whole number of ways, that's for sure.
