Day 28

So I had coffee with Je and feel I can now classify her as a new friend, huzzah. Turns out we're fucked up in similar ways: drinking, obviously, but also volatile relationships with men and insufficient relationship with the self, etc. She says that until a month ago, she'd been drunk for so many years that she isn't really sure quite who she is.

I hadn't been drunk for years when I quit. But I had been buzzed for significant parts of almost every day--except for the first month after I found out I had diabetes; I'd forgotten that till recently--for a number of years.

Funny thing is, I'm not exactly sure how many years or how to assess the impact of that behavior. Until the past week or so, I'd been pretty sure that my problem centered on the last eight months or so. Maybe the last year. I'd thought that prior to that point, I was a moderate drinker with some compulsive/habitual tendencies.

E has suggested that I might be off base there. She doesn't know, of course, but if you look at the patterns of volatility and struggling with my work, we're talking 2004ish. I remember that part of what crushed me about getting diabetes that fall was that I couldn't drink safely by myself anymore; it's not advised for people who take insulin because alcohol can increase the risk of hypoglycemia, which at its extremes can put you in a coma or kill you. (I worked around--i.e., ignored--that precaution once I decided I "knew how to take of myself." Ahem. Yet another reason I'm fortunate to be alive.)

Other factors pertain. I was pretty seriously depressed by January 05--I remember this because I almost started on antidepressants then but instead upped my therapy to twice a week. I wonder now about the relationship between the drinking (which I don't recall disclosing to the therapist; I'm almost certain I didn't) and the depression. It's a chicken/egg question, but surely the two fed on each other.

The reason I'm digging at all this is that I've never fully understood the disintegration of my work ethic over the past 4 years or so, and moreover I've been deathly ashamed about it. Actually, the "ethic" is the same in terms of how I want to work, i.e. responsibly and meaningfully, but the execution went to shit. I don't mean that I didn't do any good work during this time--I actually did some truly outstanding work--but I did a lot of mediocre work as well. And then there's the work that I just never did at all. Years of lost potential, plus the terrible, terrible loss of my sense of competence and sharpness. I've blamed most of it on depression. But I'm starting to recognize that it's possible--E says likely--that the 2-3 evening glasses of wine or cocktails were screwing my ability to concentrate and focus during the workday.

In a sense it doesn't matter; it's the past and I can only affect the present. But it matters a great deal in that I would love to regain belief in myself as capable of a focused, productive career. If alcohol has played a significant role in those issues, maybe sobriety will do the same in reverse.

Hmm, long digression. Where I began was with Je and the idea of not fully knowing oneself as a result of being in an altered state much of the time. I have some o'that myself, I think, though my identity problems go back long before the drinking got weird. Another aspect of not being fully anchored in myself. This is a huge topic, one I'll have to tackle another day. It's definitely not going anywhere, that's for sure.