I am still funny by Stacy Leshner
I went to Santorini for a week and spent the whole time either in a bar or sick in bed. I also gained a ton of weight that year that I didn’t shake for years. I figure it was the alcohol and the kebabs. Partly because of poor planning, partly because of some poor grades, I did a 5th year at university, and I graduated in 2010. Obviously, in my last two years, I was able to drink in bars so it was always a juggling act how much money I could squeeze from my mom, and how many shifts I could pick up so I would have drinking and smoking money. Then once I graduated I moved home for a year, before moving to France in 2011. Living in France is what sent my drinking into overdrive. I came to a place where it was not only ok to drink before during and after every single meal but encouraged! You start with 2 hours of pre-dinner drinks and snacks, then a two-hour meal with bottles of wine, then after dinner you get the digestive. If you say no - people assume you’re pregnant or just no fun. So I said yes. I met someone here who was a heavy drinker, as were all his friends, so we would hit the bars weeknights after work, bars or parties on the weekends, and then Sunday lunch with his family. In 2013 I decided to go back to school to do a master's, was teaching English part-time and on the weekends I was working at a restaurant, and I burned out . I went back to the doctor and he put me on antidepressants, a different kind. This time something new and strange happened. If I wasn’t drinking, I was totally fine but if I had even 1 beer, I became an alcohol monster and I could. Not. Stop . People started noticing. I would wake up on Sunday morning and go to the shop for a fifth of vodka and tomato juice. Then I started doing it on Saturdays, but always with enough time to sober up for work. Until I stopped leaving enough time to sober up. I got fired for being drunk at work. Of course, I did, I was dropping stuff and smelled like booze. That was the first wake-up call to me that something was really wrong. I went back to my doctor and told him what was going on because I was worried. He told me if I couldn’t make it three weeks without drinking to come back and see him, we would need to have a very different discussion and possibly talk about medication for alcohol addiction. That scared me straight…for the three weeks. I remember going out and being so awfully bored with everyone that was drinking and how ridiculous it all seemed. I also managed to pack-on more weight at this time. People noticed and commented on what only French people can do.
I worked my way off the meds but continued drinking. It literally never occurred to me that all of this was linked to drinking.
II got my act together, went on a diet started exercising, and was feeling pretty good. I would skip meals to save my calories for drinking, plus you get messed up faster if you don’t eat so it worked out. I would sometimes go a few weeks or max a month without alcohol for whatever diet I was doing but it was always hard and I hated it. I hated being with drunk people, I was bored, I didn’t have any hobbies or sober friends. But at least it was ONLY 30 days. If I could make it that long. These past two years my drinking increased and increased. I could drink more when I was going out, I was waking up at 4 or 5 am my heart pounding, laying there wondering what I was doing with my life and how I could be such a mess. Checking my phone to see whom I had called or texted, messaging my friends whom I had been out with the night before apologizing for some real or unreal transgression. All to do it again the next night. I changed jobs and I hated my new job. Hated. I dreaded going to work every day. I stopped sleeping. I went back to my doctor, a new one actually because my former doctor had retired. He put me on a different type of antidepressant and gave me sleeping pills. He prescribed me Ambien. You cannot drink on these pills. I repeat you cannot drink on these pills. And I didn’t. If you stay awake a little too long on Ambien you get euphoric, so that’s what I would do. I would go out until like 9 pm, go home take an Ambien have fun for a half hour, and then pass out until the next morning. I kept going back for refills. Then I started taking two Ambien. Then I decided to see what would happen if I drank on them. Eventually, I ran out of them which was for the best because I could have seriously hurt myself and I feel lucky that I didn’t. This brings us up to 2020, I was still drinking heavily, almost every day. But now I was blacking out almost every time, probably due to my medication. Again, I feel so lucky I didn’t hurt myself or someone else, I very easily could have done either.
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker