?I thought I told you to go home.....??, my boss quietly, and quite very angrily, hissed. I groggily raised my head away from the PC monitor that I'd been staring blankly at to look at her and remembered that, yes, now that she had mentioned it, she had indeed ordered me to go home. This was about 10:30am on a Thursday morning.
My boss had called me to her office for an update on something quite trivial around 45 minutes beforehand and this morning, well, this morning there was no disguising it. I was drunk. Hammered. In the 30 seconds it took for me to get back to my desk I must have forgotten her instructions. Now I was being ordered home, in front of my colleagues. And the CEO of our organisation, watching the scene through his window.
That night my colleague Paul sent me a SMS to offer some support and to tell me to take some days off to get myself right. I appreciated it. Paul is the same grade as I am but as strait-laced as they come and, really, it was nice to know that he cared. I took the next day off, drank as little as possible over the weekend and went to the doctor on the Monday to get a med. cert. for having the flu. When I returned to work the next day the CEO took me for a coffee at 11am to see what was going on with me. It was a nice conversation. I don't think he realised that I had about 200ml of vodka inside me during it. Most conversations are quite tolerable and enjoyable with that amount of alcohol in your system.
I was sent for counselling.
This was good.
It helped.
I began to drink less. (Although I had attended every session slightly drunk.) I no longer stayed up until 4am drinking and smoking, but instead started a new way of getting through life. Sleep by 11pm or so and then wake up and have a couple of drinks in bed before work. I could see no other way. Everything I did was filtered through a haze of booze and benzodiazepines. My addiction was two pronged, spurred on by enjoyment and anxiety.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's not hard to remember your first anxiety attack. The sensation is so strange, so memorable. For me, it felt like an electric shock to the back of my head. My body tensed, my mind was momentarily terrified and it felt like something drastic and awful had happened to my brain.
But, it was also easy to shrug off. After all, I had been away for a weekend at a music festival drinking and taking ecstacy for two days. You put it down to the drugs and promise yourself you'll take it easy for a while.
This was almost 8 years previous.
The next attack wasn't so easy to cope with. I was alone in my bedroom and the feeling, which is known to many many people as ?The Fear? began to take hold. I had never experienced anything like it and was quite sure I was going to die. I called a close friend and begged him to come to my place. He had no idea what I was going through, which didn't help matters much, but, after a while, my anxiety subsided and I was ok again. I decided to knock the ecstacy on the head. I was 23 years old.
I gave up taking ecstacy and began running. The endorphines and fitness kept my mind in check. I got through a job interview, shaking like a leaf but finding inner strength in my healthy(ish) mind. I worked two years, sometimes sitting in meetings in an awful state, wishing I could run out and breathe. Scott Sossel of the Atlantic has recently written a book on anxiety and I don't feel I have anything to add to that particular subject as he has covered it all, from what I can see. My personal downfall was in taking three years out to go to college and finding how to drown it out in the worst way possible..
I started in college full of optimism. And dreadfully hungover. I'd finished work on the Friday and spent the weekend boozing. I sat in the huge lecture hall on the Monday morning wracked with anxiety. All these people. What if I have a panic attack? It'll take me about 30 seconds to get out of the place for starters! I struggled through, avoided some smaller group sessions, scraped by. Then, in my second year, a date was set for me to give a presentation to my tutorial class. 18 people in a small room all looking at me. For five minutes. How could I possibly do that?
The clich? of alcoholism being a progressive disease is very true. There's boundaries, marks. Once you break them you're at the next level. It can actually be quite satisfying; a new devious way to drink secretly that you have thought of, connived.
My presentation plan seemed absolutely insane to me at first. I would drink beforehand.
Why it seemed so insane is hard to pinpoint; after all, I'd drank before doing plenty of things: playing gigs, going out with girls, going to weddings, funerals. But, and it's amazing to think about it now, the idea of being drunk in a room full of (I presume) sober people on a weekday afternoon in a university was just crazy. But, like a bike rider taking his first shot of EPO because he knows he'll be back to the amateur ranks if he doesn't, I decided upon necking a good quantity of wine before my presentation as it had to be done. If I didn't give that presentation I would fail that module..
And I didn't slur my words. I didn't feel a moment of anxiety. I almost got a standing ovation. The girl who sat in front of me turned around to whisper to me that it was really good. I'd never even spoken to her before.
And so the line was crossed. The lectures I was with it enough to get up to the college to attend in the first place were usually accompanied by an old bottle of water filled with white wine and all my exams were sat in this fashion also. I remember the awful feeling of wanting to leave an exam hall as I'd finished my exam but was too worried that I might knock something over while walking out.
The smirk on the invigilator's face who was picking up my paper. He knew.
Towards the end of college I got some news. I was to become a father. There was no chance I would give up on my child, nor make a go of it with the mother, unfortunately. She lived 75km away for a start. I had no money and no promise of a job. Ireland was in its worst recession for 25 years. I hit the drink badly. This was more than curing anxiety, this was shutting out any thoughts whatsoever. One bad week, I was due to hand in an essay. I remember being in the library with my water bottle full of wine. I'd gotten the relevant books on the desk and was ready to write. I woke up about four hours later with the library about to close.
At the end of that week I went to my parent's house. They said nothing for a couple of days. I cold-turkeyed it. Not sleeping, hearing things, constant anxiety. I stayed sober for 7 weeks. I went to the doctor. I told him I'd given up alcohol but I wanted something for my anxiety. He prescribed me a minimum dose of Xanax. And it worked. I thought of all the things I'd never do again. Like running out of a supermarket queue due to a panic attack, or leaving an exam because of a panic attack, or thinking about suicide as it seemed the only option to not having panic attacks.
But boredom kicked in. I began to drink again. But this time, when I woke up hungover, I popped a couple of Xanax and.....magic. Not only did I not feel hungover, I felt great. Happy, relaxed. The problem was, that for this lifestyle to continue weekly, my prescription was about 1/3rd of what I needed.
I went back to work.
Anxiety ridden but popping Xanax to get me through. Until they ran out. Now what? Well, what about that trick I used in college? I started with the same old water bottles of wine. I was hidden by my PC, I could get away with it, right? It was noticed, remarked upon once after a couple of months; but I only ever drank enough to stave off the anxiety.
Then the Benzo-tolerance grew. Hell, my alcohol tolerance and daring was growing. I began to see that work was a lot more enjoyable when one was drunk enough to function but not drunk enough to obviously drunk. For the following 15 months, I drank pretty much every day in my job.
I am slightly proud, though more horrified, by the level of cunning which has to go into the whole enterprise. Drinking first thing in the morning is difficult. One has to have made sure to get to the off-licence the night before in time to stock up. This might seem an easy task, but there were plenty of days when I would come home from work, lie on my bed and immediately pass out. Often I'd wake after 10pm, look at my clock and fly into a blind panic, think it was after 10am and I was late for work. It should be mentioned that in Ireland, it's impossible to buy alcohol after 10pm, except served in a glass in a licensed premises.
Then there's the vomiting.
Unless you have an iron stomach, you have two options. You can get up and eat something, then drink, then puke up your breakfast, OR, you can forgoe food till later and just concentrate on getting a couple of drinks down. Sure, you'll puke all that liquid too, but it'll be just liquid, which is more pleasant. If that's the right way to describe it.
My boss had called me to her office for an update on something quite trivial around 45 minutes beforehand and this morning, well, this morning there was no disguising it. I was drunk. Hammered. In the 30 seconds it took for me to get back to my desk I must have forgotten her instructions. Now I was being ordered home, in front of my colleagues. And the CEO of our organisation, watching the scene through his window.
That night my colleague Paul sent me a SMS to offer some support and to tell me to take some days off to get myself right. I appreciated it. Paul is the same grade as I am but as strait-laced as they come and, really, it was nice to know that he cared. I took the next day off, drank as little as possible over the weekend and went to the doctor on the Monday to get a med. cert. for having the flu. When I returned to work the next day the CEO took me for a coffee at 11am to see what was going on with me. It was a nice conversation. I don't think he realised that I had about 200ml of vodka inside me during it. Most conversations are quite tolerable and enjoyable with that amount of alcohol in your system.
I was sent for counselling.
This was good.
It helped.
I began to drink less. (Although I had attended every session slightly drunk.) I no longer stayed up until 4am drinking and smoking, but instead started a new way of getting through life. Sleep by 11pm or so and then wake up and have a couple of drinks in bed before work. I could see no other way. Everything I did was filtered through a haze of booze and benzodiazepines. My addiction was two pronged, spurred on by enjoyment and anxiety.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's not hard to remember your first anxiety attack. The sensation is so strange, so memorable. For me, it felt like an electric shock to the back of my head. My body tensed, my mind was momentarily terrified and it felt like something drastic and awful had happened to my brain.
But, it was also easy to shrug off. After all, I had been away for a weekend at a music festival drinking and taking ecstacy for two days. You put it down to the drugs and promise yourself you'll take it easy for a while.
This was almost 8 years previous.
The next attack wasn't so easy to cope with. I was alone in my bedroom and the feeling, which is known to many many people as ?The Fear? began to take hold. I had never experienced anything like it and was quite sure I was going to die. I called a close friend and begged him to come to my place. He had no idea what I was going through, which didn't help matters much, but, after a while, my anxiety subsided and I was ok again. I decided to knock the ecstacy on the head. I was 23 years old.
I gave up taking ecstacy and began running. The endorphines and fitness kept my mind in check. I got through a job interview, shaking like a leaf but finding inner strength in my healthy(ish) mind. I worked two years, sometimes sitting in meetings in an awful state, wishing I could run out and breathe. Scott Sossel of the Atlantic has recently written a book on anxiety and I don't feel I have anything to add to that particular subject as he has covered it all, from what I can see. My personal downfall was in taking three years out to go to college and finding how to drown it out in the worst way possible..
I started in college full of optimism. And dreadfully hungover. I'd finished work on the Friday and spent the weekend boozing. I sat in the huge lecture hall on the Monday morning wracked with anxiety. All these people. What if I have a panic attack? It'll take me about 30 seconds to get out of the place for starters! I struggled through, avoided some smaller group sessions, scraped by. Then, in my second year, a date was set for me to give a presentation to my tutorial class. 18 people in a small room all looking at me. For five minutes. How could I possibly do that?
The clich? of alcoholism being a progressive disease is very true. There's boundaries, marks. Once you break them you're at the next level. It can actually be quite satisfying; a new devious way to drink secretly that you have thought of, connived.
My presentation plan seemed absolutely insane to me at first. I would drink beforehand.
Why it seemed so insane is hard to pinpoint; after all, I'd drank before doing plenty of things: playing gigs, going out with girls, going to weddings, funerals. But, and it's amazing to think about it now, the idea of being drunk in a room full of (I presume) sober people on a weekday afternoon in a university was just crazy. But, like a bike rider taking his first shot of EPO because he knows he'll be back to the amateur ranks if he doesn't, I decided upon necking a good quantity of wine before my presentation as it had to be done. If I didn't give that presentation I would fail that module..
And I didn't slur my words. I didn't feel a moment of anxiety. I almost got a standing ovation. The girl who sat in front of me turned around to whisper to me that it was really good. I'd never even spoken to her before.
And so the line was crossed. The lectures I was with it enough to get up to the college to attend in the first place were usually accompanied by an old bottle of water filled with white wine and all my exams were sat in this fashion also. I remember the awful feeling of wanting to leave an exam hall as I'd finished my exam but was too worried that I might knock something over while walking out.
The smirk on the invigilator's face who was picking up my paper. He knew.
Towards the end of college I got some news. I was to become a father. There was no chance I would give up on my child, nor make a go of it with the mother, unfortunately. She lived 75km away for a start. I had no money and no promise of a job. Ireland was in its worst recession for 25 years. I hit the drink badly. This was more than curing anxiety, this was shutting out any thoughts whatsoever. One bad week, I was due to hand in an essay. I remember being in the library with my water bottle full of wine. I'd gotten the relevant books on the desk and was ready to write. I woke up about four hours later with the library about to close.
At the end of that week I went to my parent's house. They said nothing for a couple of days. I cold-turkeyed it. Not sleeping, hearing things, constant anxiety. I stayed sober for 7 weeks. I went to the doctor. I told him I'd given up alcohol but I wanted something for my anxiety. He prescribed me a minimum dose of Xanax. And it worked. I thought of all the things I'd never do again. Like running out of a supermarket queue due to a panic attack, or leaving an exam because of a panic attack, or thinking about suicide as it seemed the only option to not having panic attacks.
But boredom kicked in. I began to drink again. But this time, when I woke up hungover, I popped a couple of Xanax and.....magic. Not only did I not feel hungover, I felt great. Happy, relaxed. The problem was, that for this lifestyle to continue weekly, my prescription was about 1/3rd of what I needed.
I went back to work.
Anxiety ridden but popping Xanax to get me through. Until they ran out. Now what? Well, what about that trick I used in college? I started with the same old water bottles of wine. I was hidden by my PC, I could get away with it, right? It was noticed, remarked upon once after a couple of months; but I only ever drank enough to stave off the anxiety.
Then the Benzo-tolerance grew. Hell, my alcohol tolerance and daring was growing. I began to see that work was a lot more enjoyable when one was drunk enough to function but not drunk enough to obviously drunk. For the following 15 months, I drank pretty much every day in my job.
I am slightly proud, though more horrified, by the level of cunning which has to go into the whole enterprise. Drinking first thing in the morning is difficult. One has to have made sure to get to the off-licence the night before in time to stock up. This might seem an easy task, but there were plenty of days when I would come home from work, lie on my bed and immediately pass out. Often I'd wake after 10pm, look at my clock and fly into a blind panic, think it was after 10am and I was late for work. It should be mentioned that in Ireland, it's impossible to buy alcohol after 10pm, except served in a glass in a licensed premises.
Then there's the vomiting.
Unless you have an iron stomach, you have two options. You can get up and eat something, then drink, then puke up your breakfast, OR, you can forgoe food till later and just concentrate on getting a couple of drinks down. Sure, you'll puke all that liquid too, but it'll be just liquid, which is more pleasant. If that's the right way to describe it.
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