Are you self-sabotaging with gray area drinking?

I thought my drinking wasn't an issue... until I quit.

In November 2022, I found myself sitting on a bus in Italy, traveling between cities in Tuscany, while frantically typing into the Notes app on my phone and suppressing tears. I was writing out every single memory I had of how alcohol had impacted my life, starting with my family and family friends during my early childhood, through my teenage years when I started drinking myself, and up to a recent blackout experience. I was a 37 year old data engineer, living in my own apartment in New York City, had just completed my first ever marathon, and I was doing just fine in life - but something had been off for a long time. I didn’t realize at the time that this bus ride would change my life drastically.

Growing up in Germany, I started drinking legally - and enthusiastically - at age 16. I was a party drinker, the kind of person people would call on when they wanted a wild night out. But I hardly ever drank at home or alone and I could easily go days or weeks without a drink, so I never thought of it as a problem. I just didn’t realize that drinking still caused me a lot of problems: I would get into drunk arguments with my partners, was unreliable, and had debilitating anxiety and mood swings. Behind the successful facade, my world was a rollercoaster ride of depression and explosive emotions, turbulent relationships and missed opportunities.

Since my early twenties, I had been making attempts every few years to seek help from a therapist or was put on medication to handle my anxiety and mood swings, but nothing really helped. While my healthcare providers would always ask me about my drinking habits on the standard patient intake form, only one ever addressed my alcohol consumption.

“You just mentioned you blacked out last weekend. How often does that usually happen?” my therapist asked in a session in early 2015.

“Eh, not that much, maybe once a month?”

“Actually, that’s quite a lot…” she replied.

“You just don’t know how to party” I thought to myself, laughing silently, and immediately forgot about the interaction. She never brought up the topic again.

My personal rollercoaster ride went on for almost two decades, until, in early 2022, I found myself sitting at a bar on a Monday night. I was sipping on my third tequila soda of the night, and I realized I didn’t actually want that drink. I was emotionally drained from two years of the pandemic, a tumultuous relationship, and a difficult breakup. I played with the idea of cutting out substances that could impact my mood, but wasn’t considering giving up on drinking. It wasn’t until I found out about “gray area drinking” that I recognized myself and my own relationship with alcohol that was, in fact, an issue.