Why Don't You Drink?
/I’m not a teetotaler. Just a depressive with a keen understanding of how my depression and anxiety are exacerbated when alcohol is added to the chemical mix of my body. I trust my audience enough to not reiterate all the ways that alcohol acts as a depressant on the human body. For anyone wanting to relive the online courses about alcohol that most college freshman now take, check out the embedded video.
I come naturally depressed, and any amount or type of alcohol just adds to the stinking pile within my mind. This is why I am exceedingly careful about when and how much I drink. I’ll have a beer, maybe two, every quarter. Never hard liquor. Tequila shall not pass my lips again for reasons that will go unstated, but that I feel everyone will understand regardless. I enjoy a cocktail and recently had a spiked Arnold Palmer while on a delightful date. Being a depressive means following certain rules if I want to stay ahead of the dangers lurking in my mind.
I didn’t always follow these rules, and sometimes I stretch them, but they’ve served me well for the better part of the last ten years:
Only drink with people I feel safe around.
Drink water along with my glass of beer. A 2-to-1 water-to-beer ratio hydrates me while allowing me to partake.
Order an O’Doul’s! This still tickles me because it’s all my grandpa ever drank, and I share many of his other mannerisms.
No more than two drinks on any given night. I am a happy lightweight.
Ensure that I have no need whatsoever to get up early the next day.
Since I had two mixed-drinks about two weeks ago, I’m probably not drinking any type of alcoholic beverage until at least August. Drinking quarterly isn’t a hard rule. I’ve just never been big into drinking and I don’t like how my body or my brain feels in the days after imbibing. Always treating my depression as an opponent that I strategize against each day; drinking is like spotting my depression fifteen points in a game of twenty-one. I’ll risk that when I’m feeling especially good, but it’s not a sustainable strategy.
The immediate effects are great — it’s the one to three days after too much alcohol that pain me greatly. I’m lethargic and increasingly anxious. Laying in bed cycling between fitful sleep and waking into full-body paralysis from panic attacks that started while I was unconscious. You’d think it’d take one of those kinds of mornings before I learned to ration my alcohol intake, but no. I was a college freshman with undiagnosed depression and I drank more than my body could handle. I never made the connection between the beer and not being able to get up for afternoon classes. Then I was diagnosed and hospitalized. I raged against my condition and continued to drink for many years before accepting the facts:
I am a depressive.
Alcohol depresses the brain and body (also tends to screw with antidepressants).
Likely future pain is mitigated by rigorously moderating my alcohol intake.
One other benefit to spacing out my drinking is that it makes it much easier to identify why I may be depressed. Alcohol muddied my data tracking. Was I depressed or just hungover? Was I more nervous than usual or was I just experiencing my natural side-effects after drinking? I couldn’t narrow down what precipitated any depressive or anxious spiral when I drank more than once a quarter.
What’s important here is that I found what works for me. There are depressives out there who can drink every week and manage their mental illness. I am not one of them. What I did was stay curious about my depression, learned its ticks and tells, and figured out when I gave it too many advantages.
I play the long-game against my depression; my hope is to play until I’m wrinkled and grey.
