Skeletons 2.1 – My Recklessness

Recklessness: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.” – Albert Einstein (so it is written.)

Suffice it to say, I brought upon myself a multitude of consequences in my 14 year drinking career – physically, emotionally, mentally, financially and legally.  I also dodged many bullets in between all of the ramifications that I suffered.

I mean, seriously? I don’t know how I am still alive to be completely honest.  My drinking took me to some pretty low places with some pretty low people.  You know that song by Garth Brooks “Friends in Low Places?” Yeah, see, all of those “friends” were never really my friends at all.  No, they were only my friends for the following reasons:

1. NGL, I was pretty fun to party with. If I were you, I’d want to party with me too. But only for like an hour, 2 tops.
2. They had something to gain from me – physically, financially or both – I’m talking about the opposite sex people, do I really need to explain this one? I alluded to my history with these DUDS in the last post of Part 1 and elaborated even more in the final asterisk of that post.
3. They were friends with one of the winners referenced in #2.

My “drunkalogue” is jam packed with stories of embarrassment, humiliation, shame, remorse and then some.  I couldn’t possibly recount every single one of them for you in this post, nor do I even want to.  That being said though, Part 2 is all about WTF Happened, so in short, here’s a list of some of the consequences I suffered as a result of my drinking.

1. Physically – hangovers that felt like death sentences,  a severely bloated face and midsection, bruises spread out all over my body, terrible sleep on a nightly basis, and in the final years of my alcoholism, it jacked my reproductive system.  There’s more but that’s enough.
2. Emotionally – I binged on the weekends which left me with major “booze blues” come Monday morning.  Depression set in and took me down for days. This is where I’d make grandiose promises to cut back or quit for a certain amount of time. However, I never made promises to quit all together. I mean, that was unfathomable – never drink again? – yeah freakin’ right.
3. Mentally – I had zero control of how I was going to feel on any given day and had no idea on how do life like a normal person.  To this day, 9 years later, I’m still working on this piece but now that the obsession to drink has been removed, I can actually acknowledge that I DO need extra help in this area and I’m taking action to improve my mental strength.
4. Financially – DUDS took advantage of me for their own financial gain.  Now, let me say this: I have ALWAYS been over trusting and codependent. Even if I wasn’t drinking, I’d likely still have made the same poor decisions. However, I’m sure if my head wasn’t so foggy and I wasn’t so concerned with being liked or needed by these guys, I would have “seen the light” and dropped their sorry asses a lot sooner.
5. Legally – as previously mentioned, I’ve seen the inside of a jail. More than once. And all I’m going to say about that is this: alcohol made me make really bad decisions when it was time to go home at the end of the night.

Soooo, that’s that. I’m sure I’ll elaborate on some of the items above because, well, you know, I can’t help myself.

Here’s what I know: I don’t ever have to suffer consequences as a result of reckless drinking ever again if I don’t want to. It’s my choice to make.

I wasn’t really given the choice 9 years ago.  As far as I was concerned, I was forced into early retirement from my drinking career, hence why it took me so gosh darn long to get to this point in my journey.

Today, Iiiiiiiiiiiii choose my recovery. No one else can make that choice for me.

So there. 😉

#morewillberevealed