Only an alcoholic thinks that they need to hit a lower bottom in order to be alcoholic." —sober alcoholic
There seems to be this misconception that you have to be one or the other- you either fit in the box of having your shit together or you fit in the box of being an alcoholic. But, the truth is, it is almost always a combination of both.
Oftentimes, when people think about alcoholics you envision these lives and situations that are a real mess. You think about rock bottom as this disastrous place where you’ve destroyed your life.
DUIs, jail, losing jobs and losing homes and losing families, and overall losing everything.
You think of a person who is a mess all-around and looks like a mess and everywhere they go you can tell they’re a mess. It’s drinking to blackout and losing friends, getting arrested, waking up with bruises that you have no idea where they came from.
And if we continue drinking, we can all get to that place.
And then there are high-bottom people. A high-bottom is the person who is over-drinking, who is uncomfortable with how much they are drinking or how much they look forward to drinking or think about drinking. But, for all intents and purposes, they are okay and have their life together. On the outside.
This is where so many people, so many of you, separate yourselves. You hear these stories and you separate yourself by saying,
"Oh, I’m not that bad, I would never do something like that, I have a job, and money and I take care of my family and I’ve never blacked out."
And you try to convince yourself that your problem is different.
You hear someone else’s story and tell yourself that you aren’t as bad as them. And that allows you to lie to yourself and not make recovery a priority. You can tell yourself that you can still get it together, and since you aren’t as bad as them, you can probably still figure out how to drink in moderation, you don’t have to get sober, because you aren’t as bad as them.
You’ve never lost a job because of drinking. You never lost a home or a relationship, you were never homeless, and blacking out isn't a huge part of your story.
You have a beautiful place to live, a $60k car in the garage, you always look great and show up for work and make a lot of money. You have a full life and social life, you dress great, people love having you around, and there are plenty of people who have no idea how much you drink.
You hear plenty of stories about people hiding their drinking or their partner telling their in-laws their dirty little secret, or being at their kid's events drinking, or all the fights that get started because they are drunk and spouses threatening to leave- and you’ve never had those experiences.
You never had to hide your booze or lie about your drinking, you never drove with kids in the car, you never started crazy fights with your partner because you were drunk, you never hurt yourself because you were drunk and fell down or touched a hot stove or burned your kitchen down because you fell asleep with a frozen pizza in the oven.
You know a whole bunch of people who wet the bed or poo their pants- you never did any of that.
But those details aren’t the details that matter.
Just because you didn’t fall into a campfire and you didn’t blackout and you didn’t drink in the morning and you didn’t burn your life to the ground, doesn’t mean you’re not an alcoholic.
Because, when you get honest with yourself, any of those things can happen to you at any time, or maybe they have.
You dont stress about it, youve never considered quitting, but you know what you’re doing doesn’t feel right. But its too important to you. When going into social situations your thoughts are:
"Don’t worry about it, you can just have a couple of drinks and everything will be fine.”
Or when you’re going to work hungover you think,
"Don’t worry, just get a couple of drinks down and you’ll be fine."
On the outside, you seem to have it all together.
I keep saying that because in recovery you learn you can’t compare your insides to other people’s outsides. And what I mean by that is, you are trying to compare how it ‘looks’ for other people, to how you ‘feel’ on the inside.
It doesn’t matter what the outside details are, because many of those details won’t match. What does matters, is what is happening on the inside.
Rock bottom has levels- just like we are talking about the high bottom and low bottom- ‘bottom’ is a spectrum. And the thing I want you to understand, the absolute truth about bottom, is that once you are at any level, there’s only one way to go… down.
If you are a high bottom now, you will eventually drink yourself to the middle, then the low middle, then the low bottom.
You’re only high-functioning on the outside. Because on the inside you’re so desperately sad.
You’re heartbroken over the person youre becoming, youre so painfully lonely because you cant let anyone in, you cant let anyone see who you really are.
A liar. You hate yourself and how weak you are because you hide in the bottle instead of facing your life and your problems. And a total fraud because you have two lives and two personalities.
The one on the outside is amazing and funny and full of friends and going out- and the one on the inside is totally alone and isolated and full of fear and pain and self-loathing. Ashamed, embarrassed and hiding from life.
But you’re still high-functioning!
You see, high-functioning and high bottom are two separate issues- high functioning is about all the outside details- the picture you can create for everyone else to see- the lie you build about who you are, all those outside things; holding a job, being the life of the party, making money, living in a nice place- all of those details are about controlling what other people think about you.
You have to show them a certain picture so they believe you have it all together.
It’s the same thing if you isolate and drink at home alone, turn your phone off so you can’t drunk call/text people, all the rules you put around your drinking or leaving a party or gathering early so you can go home and drink the way you really want to- you are controlling your image to other people by not showing yourself so they can’t see you drunk.
All of this is manipulation. But it’s high-functioning.
When you think about all that drama and all those negative feelings- shame, self-loathing, depressed, angry, hungover, sad, anxious- does that sound like a high bottom?
Sounds pretty awful and low to me.
Your bottom isn’t about how much you drink or how often you drink or how your drinking looks to other people- your bottom is about how awful you feel.
How far down are you willing to let yourself go?
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