One is never enough...two is too many.

You know what I hated more than hangovers?  More than slurred speech, drunk texting and sleepy slits for eyes? 

I hated the feeling I had when I only had one or two drinks.  And I always have.

I could never, from the first day I started drinking, only have one drink.  I hated that "sobering up" feeling you get when you've had a glass of wine at lunch and now it's 4:00 pm and no one else wants to go drinking.  Hated. It.

I never understood people who could do that.  Now I see that they are "normies" and that people who are not alcoholics do that all the time.  But then it truly baffled me.  I thought there was something wrong with them!  I actually used to tell people that I didn't see the point of stopping for happy hour before going home.  What's the point of having one or two drinks if you're just going to go home and not drink anymore? 

Now I know why they looked at me like I had three heads.

Guess I should have known then that I had a problem.

Aw fuck who am I kidding...I knew.

Because it was never about the taste, or the "winding down from a hard day", or the office get together.  It was ALWAYS about getting drunk.  It was always about getting back to that place when we had the best time EVER.  It was always about recapturing something I thought existed but, in reality, probably never did.  That time when the hubs and I shared all of our intimate secrets with each other and were just so in LOVE.  That time when all of the gang got together and just has so much FUN.  That time on the business trip when we went after work for drinks and dinner and just BONDED.

You know that time.  You've got them too.  Those times were just so FUN.  No way would they have been that fun if we'd all stopped at one drink and just gone home right?  I mean, we needed the alcohol to prime the pump right?  To loosen us all up?

Yeah...maybe.  But so what.  After those fun times everyone else went back to their normal lives and their normal drinking patterns and filed those memories away where they belonged...in the past.  But me?  I kept trying to get them back.   Tried to recreate them only to be disappointed when I couldn't.

One drink?  Puh-lease. 

If we're only going to have one or two than I'll just have Diet Coke.  That way I won't have to feel irritable and discontent later when I begin to sober up and I can sit here and laugh at you all while you drink.  Then I'll feel all smug and superior because I abstained.  And see?  If I can abstain then I must not have a problem right?

What a complete and fucked up mess I was.

I have, however, managed to turn that particular feeling into a positive for me because that's where my head goes whenever I think, "I'll just have one.  It's okay.  I'll be fine."  It goes to that dry mouth, slight headache, irritable and discontent feeling I always had with just one.  And since that was worse than my hangovers to me, I'll stay sober thank you. 

Because, if I'm brutally honest (which I always try to be), I'm not picking up unless I can get good and drunk.  Otherwise, what's the point.

Just sayin'.

Namaste