“A drink sir?”
Absolutely.
“Would you care for a drink?”
I thought you’d never ask.
“One for the road?”
Definitely, and bring a doggy bag.

If you haven’t figured it out yet. I love drinking. I drank in the morning before the dog even had the time to brush its teeth. I drank midday because well, I felt like it. I drank every Thursday to Sunday, and a few beers on Monday, maybe Tuesday and definitely on a Wednesday.

That’s the whole week, ain’t it?
Why didn’t I say I drank every day of the week?
Well, because my way just sounds better. Cool. Deliberate. Justifiable.

Honestly, alcohol wasn’t really the problem.
I had a problem until alcohol became one of them.

When did I start drinking?
You may ask.
All I can say is, even the age entry cut in half can’t touch me

Why did I start?
You may ask.
I’d tell you it’s none of your business because. I was enjoying the visuberance of my own vobosis.
The world was my oyster and the fountain of youth still upon me.
It was great.
Really great.
Until it wasn’t.

Because after hitting 30 I suddenly realised, my hangovers are lasting about 3 days longer than usual.
How in the hell?
I used to get up and be on the go like a crackhead, now I’m sweating in bed, my knee hurts, I’m having weird dreams that I’m on a flying bus with wings.
And it’s smiling at me.

Did OMEGA change the ingredients to my Tequila?
How was I such a zombie?
And then it hit me…

I guess I just need another drink to keep going.
And this is how alcohol turned from being my escape, to becoming my very own prison.

The euphoria that comes with intoxication was the relief.
A light buzz helped me build confidence.
The shy introvert disappeared.
I could say the best lines, think fast and solve problems quick.
I loved who I was when I looked in the mirror but over time, I started hating the person I was seeing the reflection of.

Bad decisions, unnecessary risks, financial problems, career suicide, prison, a tarnished reputation and toxic relationships.

Yes, this was the new me.
The confidence was stripped away. 
The best lines turned to negotiations. 
The problem-solving skills became the greatest liability. Relationships no longer existed. 
And prison, well, was prison.

This is not to say bad things were never going to happen.
Reality is no fairytale.
However, certain situations, conversations and decisions which would have resulted in better outcomes could have been avoided or never happened if I had chosen to put down the bottle when my instincts told me to.

I’ve hurt people.
People that I love.
People that I care for.
I’ve hurt all of them, although not physically, but emotionally and psychologically.
I’ve pushed people away and burnt bridges (arguably some that were meant to be).
I’m a manipulative bastard when it calls for it.
And when it intoxicated, it always calls for it.
I’ve missed incredible opportunities, wasted valuable time, squandered perfect moments.
All for the love of the game.

It’s only the next day would I say to myself, “if only I wasn’t drinking the day before.”
But by then it’s too late.
This new lifestyle and habit destroyed my inspiration and worst of all, my writing capabilities.
The euphoria after every drink, the feeling of feeling better, and my ability to supposedly solve problems took so much time and “ideas” away from me that at some point, I completely lost the ability and creativity to write.
I also lost a lot of muscle mass.
My skin turned unhealthy.
And suddenly, I found living with even deeper regret.

What was the root cause of the entire alcoholism to begin with?

My mental health was deteriorating and I was burning out. This started during COVID.
A wave of incidents that I thought I was strong enough to handle gradually stripped away my sanity.
But you know me.
I’m no punk.
I kept my mouth shut and drank my way through.
At some point, albeit too late, I decided to have my last drink.
This happened on the night that I left from the most important event of my life.
An event that, in the morning, I thought I would never be able to attend because the previous night’s drinking spree had me sick to my knees, barely able to stand.
Admittedly, alcohol got me through that day too.
Otherwise I would have collapsed.

Oh, but what a hail merry send-off it was.
I told the waitress, I will be back.
Having one last shot of bourbon.
Sharing one final laugh.
Before I walked away from that life forever.😌

So let’s break it down.

This is what I have learned from alcoholism, and let me share what I am currently doing to cope. We will start with the definition and how to notice the signs of alcoholism.
No bullshitting.

This is also based on my personal experience and recollection, so argue with your doctor and psychiatrist.
Not here.

Alcoholism

Definition: The medical term you are more likely to hear today is Alcohol Use Disorder, or AUD.

It describes a problematic pattern of alcohol use where a person has difficulty stopping or controlling their drinking despite the consequences it causes in their life.

And this is important it isn’t simply about how much you drink. You can drink every day and not necessarily meet the criteria for AUD. You can also have a serious drinking problem without fitting the stereotypical image of an “alcoholic.”

• You can have:
  • A job
  • Money
  • A Family
  • A business
  • A shower every morning

You can smell fucking fantastic. And still have a problem.

AUD is diagnosed by looking at a person’s symptoms and behaviour over a period of time. Clinicians use 11 criteria, and having two or more within a 12-month period can meet the threshold for AUD. The number of symptoms determines whether it is considered mild, moderate or severe. (NIAAA)

So no.

“I’m not an alcoholic because I’m not drinking from a brown paper bag under a bridge” is not exactly a medical diagnosis.

The signs

Here are some of the signs worth paying attention to.

Over the past year:

• Have you regularly drunk more, or for longer, than you intended?
• Have you wanted to cut down or stop but found yourself unable to?
• Do you spend a significant amount of time drinking, recovering from drinking, or dealing with its after-effects?
• Do you experience strong cravings or urges to drink?
• Has drinking interfered with your responsibilities at home, work or school?
• Have you continued drinking even though it has caused problems with family or friends?
• Have you given up or reduced activities that were once important, interesting or enjoyable because of drinking?
• Have you repeatedly put yourself in physically dangerous situations while or after drinking?
• Do you continue drinking despite knowing that it is worsening a physical or psychological problem?
• Do you need considerably more alcohol than you used to in order to get the effect you want?
• Do you experience withdrawal symptoms when the alcohol wears off, such as shaking, sweating, nausea, anxiety, insomnia, a racing heart, hallucinations or seizures? (NIAAA)

And before you start counting these like points on a driver’s licence, remember:

This isn’t a self-diagnosis tool.
It is a reason to take a closer look.

So if you recognise yourself in some of these, speak to a healthcare professional. The more symptoms someone has, the more serious the concern becomes. (NIAAA)

Coping mechanisms

Now we get back to me because I fucked around with alcohol long enough to learn some things the hard way, these are not prescriptions. These are some of the things I am doing to cope with the absence of something that, for a long time, occupied a fucking enormous amount of space in my life.

Food

First things first:
Eat

Sounds stupidly simple, but when drinking becomes part of your routine, everything around it can become dysfunctional too.

Skipping meals, drinking on an empty stomach, replacing proper meals with alcohol or simply not giving a shit about what you’re eating can become part of the cycle. For me, getting back to eating properly is part of getting my body back.

My proper meals included:

• Protein
  • eggs, chicken, beef, sausage.
• Fruit
  • everything I could find
• Vegetables
  • Whatever I could make taste good
• Starch
  • Rice, bread, pasta, samp, potatoes, mealie meal
• Fast Foods
  • Regularly fried chicken and kasi food
• Junk food
  • All the time because I have amazing genes and a cheat code via an extremely high metabolism. Basically I can shred 10kg in a week without trying.
• Seafood
  • You would never pay me enough money to eat that but apparently it comes highly recommended. 

I ate not because food magically cures alcoholism. It doesn’t. But the goal was trying to stop treating my body like it is disposable. And if alcohol was previously filling a space in my routine, I needed something else to occupy that space.

Activities

This one is probably the biggest because asked myself:
What was alcohol actually doing for me?

I had to look back into that reflection i hated and find all the good things that used to exist. 

Remember, alcohol gave me;
Confidence
An escape
Relief
Less social anxiety

It helped me switch off.

And that was painful because simply saying “don’t drink” didn’t answer the problem. I needed alternatives for the things I was using alcohol to achieve.

Writing

So I slowly started writing one sentence at a time. God hit a factory reset button so I was back to using my old resources. I felt the joy, the voice and passion of my words return with each sentence. My pen was more refined, shaped by the forged by past experiences. The messages that I write about today are not the same messages that I once carried.

Work

The irony is that I finally realised that everything I had attained was just aesthetics. The real work was what I represent, create, teach, and learn. Somewhere along the way I lost these principles. And somehow, they found their way back to me because in the heart of it all, this is what I truly am.

Exercise

Didn’t you know I hold the record of being a top student in the country for 2years? So yes, I got back go my fitness expeditiously.

My workout routine consists more of strength training with the occasional cardio. The technique involved a few crucial executions:

1. Perfect form
   • to avoid injury
2. Stretching
   • to lubricate the joints and loosen the muscles
3. Isolated exercises
   • developing muscles independently
4. Compound movements
   • muscle co-ordination for overall balance and proportion
5. High weight, low rep
   • maximum muscle efficiency
6. Hydration

My methods will not work for everyone. My goal was not to attend the gym every day. 3 times a week was fine. 2 hour sessions. The aim was to destroy the body and rest for 2 days. And remember my cheat code for weight loss? When it comes to muscle growth, for some reason, I do not have to work as hard as most people to achieve the same results either.

Walk

When God pushed my reset button, I started taking regular walks. First to the bottle stores like 3-4 times a day. Then to just, getting out of the house, absorbing nature, basking in the scenery. We often take the simplest activities and abilities for granted and only realise the beauty of it after the convenience has passed.

Create

This is where I really started thriving because alcohol made me admire my art more than using the momentum to create more. So instead of glazing myself, I put my head down and generated more masterpieces. The clients and audience had the final say.

Spend time with people

Honestly, no. I never did this. It had nothing to do with shame of my habits, I genuinely don’t have much of a tolerance for people. I tend to absorb energies and spot micro-fractions of emotions. And as an over thinker this is a recipe for disaster. I avoid people as much as possible. It’s self-preservation.

However, I always enjoyed working with kids though. There is something special about writing a children’s book and then spending time with kids and explore their imagination through colour and creativity. But don’t be me. Spend time with family, friends and loved ones.

Get out of the house

This is always encouraged , but I still kept it strictly on business. Which kind of made me a cleaning freak. So if anyone saw me outside, then there was a 99.9% probability that I was generating money instead of spending it on a bottle of liquor.

All of these gave me something that made me feel like I am actually living instead of waiting for the next drink.

The activities themselves weren’t the magic. The point is to always start rebuilding a life where alcohol isn’t the centre of the universe.

And since stress was one of my biggest triggers, learning healthier ways to deal with stress was particularly important. Through my own meditation methods that studied I wrote about.

However, Evidence-based behavioural treatments for AUD can help people identify triggers, build coping skills and reduce the risk of returning to problematic drinking. (NIAAA).

Drinks

This one sounds obvious but it’s not.
“Care for a drink sir?”
That question is diabolical and the answer is becomes even more painful. 
“Yes please, do you have;”

• Water with lemon and cucumber
• Sparkling water
• Tea
• Coffee
• Juice😭
• Chocolate Milkshake

Non-alcoholic alternatives can work for some people too.
What’s important is to not assume that the replacement has to taste like alcohol. Sometimes the thing you need to replace isn’t the liquid. It’s the ritual.

The goal is to teach your brain that relaxation does not automatically require intoxication.

And if a particular non-alcoholic drink reminds you too strongly of drinking and triggers cravings, ditch it. There is no prize for finding the perfect fake beer.

Entertainment

This was is difficult to figure out because, beyond any measurable standards, I have a very adventurous lifestyle. If anything, I had to train myself to slow down and find something that would not excite me, this triggering me to go grab a bottle.

Movies and TV series. 

They help with distraction (external), and focus (internal). I often used these as creative tools.

Music

Personally, I avoided music because of the over-stimulation it may cause which led to the drinking. I also actively avoid enablers which may include people, situations, conversations and settings that would make drinking justifiable or easily accessible.

Fix, Make or Build

It is always advisable to keep your mind pre-occupied and fixated on participating into something that will reward you with positive results. The aim is to have a dopamine release. It helps keep that urge to drink at a balance because now, you have a substitute that will slowly become a new routine.
This was fairly easy for someone like me. I could keep busy by crafting or designing within my expertise: It truly was a win-win situation. One of the traps of is that eventually, you can start believing: “I don’t enjoy this unless I’m drinking.”

It will take an incredible amount of strength adjust from associating any activity with alcohol.

So separate them.

• Watch the movie sober.
• Listen to the music sober.
• Write sober.
• Go out sober.
• Laugh sober.
• Enjoy your own company sober.

You may have to relearn some of these things. That’s okay. You’re not trying to recreate the exact feeling alcohol gave you. You’re trying to build a life where you don’t need that feeling to enjoy being alive.

Resistance

If you have been drinking heavily for a prolonged period, do not assume that suddenly stopping is automatically safe. Alcohol withdrawal can be dangerous and, in severe cases, life-threatening. Symptoms can include sweating, shaking, anxiety, nausea, a racing heart, hallucinations, seizures and severe confusion. People who may be dependent on alcohol should speak to a healthcare professional about how to stop safely rather than attempting to manage significant withdrawal alone. (NIAAA)

Detox

Getting alcohol out of your system may be the first step. Again, I am no expert so my detox method will definitely not be associated with any medical advice. But, drinking a glass of water with a pinch of salt before bedtime definitely was a must. A slow and consistent water intake throughout the next day helped flush some alcohol out. This was just the hangover phase. The body needed to recalibrate.

Recovery

My relationship with recovery is post the hangover phase. It is my interpretation of the long-term actions that can involve behavioural treatment, support groups, medication where appropriate, and learning how to deal with the things that made drinking attractive in the first place. There isn’t one recovery method that works for everyone. For me it needed one moment after a prolonged cycle of self inflicted pain and regret.

So if you think you have a problem, don’t wait until your life looks like mine did. And don’t wait until somebody else tells you that you have a problem either.
Look at your own behaviour.
Look at what alcohol is costing you.
Look at what you are becoming.
And ask yourself the question I eventually had to ask myself: Is this still something I enjoy, or is this something I can no longer live without?

Because there is a massive difference between the two.
And know which side of that line you are standing on, is what determines your next step.