In AA, they say if you’ve ever had to ask yourself, “Am I an alcoholic?”, there’s a good chance you are. Which is a suspect notion. Because if so, nearly everyone I’ve ever met is an alcoholic.
If, however, you’ve awoken more than once to vexed glares following a blackout, then that conclusion would be more warranted.
The following is a list of quirks that would seem deranged to your average, neurotypical citizen. For those of a more eccentric, boozy disposition, they may ring all too familiar. If any of these traits speak to you — like they do to me — now’s the time for some serious introspection. Here are 6 warning signs that your drinking is a real problem.
1. Lying About Your Drinking
Maybe you tell your physician you only have 2 to 3 beers a week when that could only be true if each is served in a pitcher. Or you make a pact with friends to do Sober September — privately excluding business dinners or if you have kind of a bad day.
Neither scenario raises a red flag. At most, they’re an orange flag at half mast.
But if someone asks with undisguised concern, “Have you been drinking today?” and you say no when in fact you have been drinking today — that’s a different species of untruth.
Because the question “Have you been drinking today?” implies that a) the asker basically already knows you have and is gauging your honesty, and b) it’s an odd time of day to be drinking, no?
I’ve been on the receiving end of many such inquiries and epitomized high-octane denial. It’s the convention of avoidant behavior and self-delusion. In other words, lying is hiding.
2. Keeping Secret Stashes
To hide how prolific at the bottle I was, I used to keep pints of vodka tucked away in my dresser drawers. That way I could slip into my room and steal a swig while no one was the wiser.
Then, the stashes grew: under the mattress and bathroom sink, inside suitcases or the glove compartment. I was even pretty adept at concealing plastic pints in the waistband of my pants.
Having exhausted pretty much every nook and cranny, people in my orbit soon discovered a variety of caches and were shocked (and creeped out) by what demons I harbored — mainly, really cheap bottles of vodka.
3. The Cashier Knows Your Poison
Having a bartender at your local haunt know your poison is one thing. The convenient store clerk having your bottle ready for you is quite another.
There’s a liquor store I used hit up in south Los Angeles. I was there so often that the lady behind the bullet proof glass was ringing me up for a pint of Taaka before I even reached the register.
This was a humiliating synopsis that played out everywhere I lived.
Without having to ask, the cashier had my pint on standby. One clerk even had the audacity to say, “You drink too much,” as he put my pint of Royal Gate into a brown paper bag at nine in the morning. He was a creep, but he also had a point.
So I began alternating between liquor stores. That’s right — to create the illusion of moderate drinking. But for whom I resorted to this sad subterfuge is all too obvious. Here’s a hint: it wasn’t the clerks.
4. Fear of an Empty Glass
“Cenosillicaphobia” is an Urban Dictionary term for fear of an empty glass. Let me tell you, it deserves an official spot in Merriam Webster — because it’s a real thing.
The onset of cenosillicaphobia may occur when someone’s afraid of enduring the cavernous, empty-headed comedown of sobering up. That’s when the brain is seized by depression.
From there, this fear can transgress even further into staving off alcohol withdrawals — my predicament toward the end of my libational career.
In fact, I used to raid the communal kitchen pantry and take nips of other people’s liquor. It was less to get buzzed at their expense than preventing the shakes.
I’ve known alkies who’d buy handles at a time and re-up before they were three-quarters empty just to avoid the alarming lag between drinks.
“Normies,” as they’re often referred to in recovery circles, can have a glass of wine — yes, a single glass of wine — and turn in for the night. If you’re not only incapable of cutting yourself off, but also filled with trepidation when you’re down to the dregs, that’s more or less a sign of alcohol dependence.
5. Abandoning the Things You (Used To) Love
Losing interest in previously rewarding activities is the evergreen benchmark of depression. Same goes for a drinking disorder. One might say the two go hand in hand.
The inability to experience pleasure naturally is called “anhedonia”. Scientists chalk it up to the prefrontal cortex being on the fritz, as it’s the part of the brain that governs personality expression, decision making, and social behavior.
Not surprisingly, both depression and alcohol consumption have a direct correlation with anhedonic personalities.
Having been anhedonic myself (and still am in some ways), I lived exclusively by what I call the Fuck-It Mantra. Almost as if all that you love had been a fluke. Then alcohol comes along and somehow exposes life as fundamentally tragic and incurable. Thus the refrain, “Fuck it, I’m going to drink until I don’t feel feelings.”
As I succumbed to the slaver of cheap liquor, my gym routine, my love of writing and music, all fell by the wayside. Cliche, right? Even leaving the house was an ordeal, and whenever I did it was usually to procure more liquor. Because after all, few things can hold a candle to its swift and searing anesthetic effect.
6. Slacking on Self-care
For a while there, I had enough vanity in the way of meeting a certain gym quotient in spite of how much I self-medicated.
Once I resigned more devoutly to the Fuck-It Mantra, however, I became pretty lax about it all. I only showered when my sulfur compounds offended even me and preening was little more than putting on sunglasses.
I packed on some weight too, which, if I’m being honest, probably exacerbated this negative feedback loop alongside depression, no self-esteem, and fear of my own thoughts — which in a way is, fear of oneself.
Basically, yours truly had become a grim simulacrum of what once was.
Gradations of alcohol abuse
We have a tendency to think of alcohol abuse binarily. You’re either an alcoholic or you’re not. You either have control or you don’t. Either you can drink normally or you can’t drink at all. One or zero, black or white. All or nothing.
In reality, alcoholism is more nuanced than that. Even the word “alcoholism” is misleading: it’s a folk psychology term that encompasses various spectrums of problem drinking and erroneously calls for a one-size-fits-all answer for the gamut; namely, finding God and atoning for your misdeeds.
But “alcoholism” isn’t a moral problem; even Alcoholics Anonymous acknowledges that. It’s medical and ought to be treated medically. That might look like a thorough regime of medication, counseling, and support groups. It might entail taking a long break. Or, as is my case, not drinking at all and going to therapy.
It becomes a moral issue when you do nothing about it. If any of the six idiosyncrasies sound like you, now’s the time to stop doing nothing.