ALCOHOL

"We drink alcohol because it helps us feel like we can be ourselves and not be afraid. But we punish ourselves with it." - Tommy Orange

Do you enjoy drinking alcohol?

How often do you drink?

And why do you drink?

While you answer these questions for yourself, I’ll answer them on my own behalf.

Yeah, I enjoy drinking alcohol.

I don’t drink as often as I used to (which was every weekend and one point, everyday), but I still have some days where I enjoy pouring a cold one.

I don’t really have a good reason why I drink anymore. I’m not sure if I ever actually had one, but I guess I mainly do it because it relaxes me. It allows me to get out of my own head for a bit and not give a fuck what anyone else thinks. Alcohol is an escape from the problems that I either don’t want to face, or don’t have the courage to face when I’m sober.

I’m sure you can relate to my reasoning for getting fucked up. But as I continue my mission to become a hero, I’ve realized how much alcohol has held me back.

I drank a lot in college. There were times when I was shit-housed almost every other night. I didn’t have money to buy decent groceries, yet I had the money to buy a 30 rack of beer and work through it like I was trying to drink myself to death. Now why did I drink like that? Because I didn’t want to deal with anything. I wanted the alcohol to build a wall between me and my fucking problems for the night, all so I wouldn’t have to face them until the next day. But it had the opposite effect… It built a wall between me and the important people and things in my life.

Drinking made every single one of my problems worse. It created toxic situations between myself, my significant others and even my friends. It made for a rocky relationship with my family. It held me back from taking steps towards becoming the man that I knew I had the capability of becoming. And, to be honest, it made me feel like dog shit the next day (easy to see why alcoholics drink every day). Alcohol had become the sole source of my issues.

There came a point in my life where I was drinking every single day. Where I was starting to accept the fact that I was going to spend the rest of my nights on a barstool with other drunks, waiting for someone to walk in and change my fucking life for me. How close I was to being that person is scary to think about. But then I realized that the life I wanted to live was much different. I was better than that.

I want you to think about your perfect life and what that looks like. And maybe that vision includes alcohol (like sipping margaritas on a beach down in Mexico). Are you going to achieve that by investing time and money into your social drinking life? Or are you going to invest that time and money into things that can help you grow and develop? I ask because these kinds of questions are relevant to me as well.

Those weekends where I could have been building my own business, I chose to chill on the couch and drink.

The times when I had problems that needed to be worked through, I instead cracked open a bottle and let that fucker warm my veins.

Now, I’m not solely blaming alcohol for everyone’s problems and I’m not preaching to you to stop drinking. Personally, I will still continue to drink (on occasion). However, what I am saying is that alcohol doesn’t fix the issues you have in your life. If anything, it will almost always make them worse. Worse because you use alcohol as a drug to escape reality. And reality has a funny way of coming back to punch you in the face when you least expect it.

As I have gotten wiser and developed more discipline, I realized that there are so many other healthy things that can fill the void left by whiskey. Things that require more effort than just picking up a pint.

So as you continue to get your life in order and work towards becoming your own hero, remember to put down the bottle, face the shit you’ve been avoiding, and stop relying on a crutch to get you through the day. You got this.