Reality Aches

I went to the doctor yesterday. I have had a persistent ache that flares into intense pain occasionally for over a year. It’s located just under my ribs on my right hand side – just where my liver is. It gets worse a couple of days after I’ve been drinking, so I’ve been very worried for a long time that I might have done serious, if not permanent damage to my liver.

I haven’t stopped drinking. I’m drinking right now. I really am addicted. There’s no other way of describing it. I drink even when I don’t want to, and even when I’m scared it may be hurting me.

I can’t stop, and being naturally cynical and not a little morbid, I already have myself pegged as in terminal decline. Of course, that’s exaggerrated, but if I tell myself this drink doesn’t count, then I’ll keep drinking until it kills me. This binge may not be my last, but I have to face the reality that alcoholism, and alcoholic diseases, don’t just happen, they creep up. My liver will die a cell at a time, a sip at a time.

Unfortunately, I’ve been in a champagne phase for a while, and it shows no signs of going away. How do I reconcile a background, a lifestyle of binge-drinking – drinking a lot, drinking to get drunk – and a genuine love of alcoholic beverages? I can’t just sip a glass of wine, if I like it – I have to drink the whole bottle (especially champagne). I can’t just try one cocktail, I have to have eight or ten in an evening.If I start, I have to go all the way.

So, naturally, I expect I will have to stop altogether. That’s not alien to me – I had a dry spell of 15 months or so at university – but it isn’t welcome. I don’t always enjoy being drunk, and I never enjoy being hungover, but drinking is fun. The buildup – listening to my favourite music, watching certain dvds, getting ready… that’s what I enjoy. Once I’m out, in town, in a bar, in a club – I can have a good time, but I often don’t. Depression, low self-esteem, and serious body-image concerns make me shy. I drank to disperse the shyness – but I end up acting like a twat, or being ill, or engaging in dangerous behaviour of various kinds.

This isn’t the life I want. I can change it, but once the hangover dies away, it’s hell. Staying in, drinking water, or herbal tea, or cola – I get tense, I crawl up the walls. I go cold turkey for a few days, then it comes back. I pop a cork, take a sip… and I’m lost. One step further towards damnation.

You’d think that this amount of self-awareness would save me – if I can see what I’m doing rationally, and understand the consequences of it, then I can stop. But that has never been the case. I doubt very much that drug addicts, gambling addicts, alcoholics and all those who do things they know will harm them don’t have these thoughts – on the contrary, the tragedy is all the worse: we humans are cursed with consciousness that can see, but that cannot control its own excesses. We know that burger, that extra helping of chocolate cake, that cigarette, that flutter at the races, that line of coke, that can of beer, will lead to another, will keep us chained, fat, a junkie, an alcoholic – and we don’t stop. We do it, see ourselves do it – watch ourselves – and then hate ourselves, beat ourselves up, lose a little more self-esteem. And so on.

I’m not saying all is lost. I went to the doctor, and he agreed my drinking was probably the cause. He did a full examination, of my tongue and eyes, my abdomen, and has sent me for a blood test. Maybe if I’m faced with the truth, my behaviour will change. Maybe I’ll ask for help, or be offered it. Maybe I’m wrong, and it’s an ulcer, or my kidney, or something else. Maybe I’m doomed anyway.