Alcoholic

My Alcohol Confession Part Two

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 28 Comments

It is currently 2am on Monday the 4th of June and this blog post is due up in a number of hours. Normally I have the blog and picture all prepared almost a week before it is due to go up, but this week I am unprepared because this week I am scared.

All week I have been trying to write yet I have been unable because I am so scared of letting something slip that I should have explained last week and therefore in holding my words back I am unable to say anything at all. You see last week in my post ….. I came clean about a new problem I have, that being the problem of me binge drinking alcohol, but what I did not mention is a consequence that has come from that binge drinking and it is that consequence that I want to talk about today.

 

I am so scared to admit it because it is something that has both been terrifying and upsetting me lately, even though it is nothing to be ashamed of. I feel like a right idiot and hypocrite for being so upset about it considering I would be the first person to tell anyone out there that what I am about to say doesn’t mean anything and doesn’t show how ill or well anyone is, but I cannot help it. 

I am shaking as I am writing this and it is so stupid because it isn’t even a big deal. I am sure all of you out there are going to be thinking that I am about to admit to murdering penguins or something as I am making it out to be such a big and terrible crime, when really it is all going to be incredibly disappointing when I actually get round to spitting it out. Oh God I am practically going delirious with fear and I can’t believe I am actually going to come out with it. Ok, shut up Katie, just get round to the point.

So here goes, here is my confession: I am a healthy weight. 

OH MY GOODNESS! I CANNOT BELIEVE I ADMITTED IT! WHY IS THIS SO HARD, GAH, WHY.

I have just read back all that I have written and good lord it is the biggest amount of codswallop I have ever read. What am I even doing? What is going on? 

Right, time to explain. So like I said last week, I have started binge drinking and I have been binge drinking every day for almost two months now, pretty much ever since my suicide attempt. When I started I was extremely underweight and you all probably think that that is still the case, but in actual fact it is not. You see, before I started binge drinking, I was barely eating anything, but then I got drunk for the first time and in my drunken stupor I started eating. I have heard of other people with eating disorders turning to drink and from several people I have heard that they tend to replace food with alcohol when this happens, but this is not how it has happened with me. You see when I get drunk, I get happy and I don’t care about anything and consequently I eat and that is what I have done for the past two months. “You have eaten food” I hear you cry “what kind of a confession is that?” But when I say I have eaten food I mean I have eaten out of control, drunken quantities of food and because of this I have gained a lot of weight. I don’t want to admit this because I am extremely ashamed but I have gone from being very underweight to being a healthy weight in two months. It has been extremely traumatic and what’s worse is that I cannot seem to stop. Weeks ago I said that I was going to stop drinking so that I could lose all the weight, but I still haven’t managed to do that and so the weight is piling on. Even worse than that is it is all a vicious circle. You see one thing I didn’t mention last week was one of the big reasons why I drink and that reason is that it helps me deal with all this new unexpected and extremely painful weight gain. Problem is, I drink to make myself feel better about the weight and consequently eat which makes me gain more weight, hence this most vicious of vicious circles that I am stuck in. It is like a massive whirlpool from Moby Dick (in actual fact there is no whirlpool in Moby Dick but I just wanted to use this opportunity to drop in a Moby Dick reference to show off the fact that I have read that massive book).

I have decided that from the day I put up this blog I am going to have a new start, no alcohol and I am going to try and lose this weight again because like I said it is making my eating disorder scream louder and making me want to drink alcohol more which I really need to give up. In the interests of losing all this weight again I have joined a gym and come up with a new meal plan to try and help me, but I have no idea how I am going to do it because I cannot seem to give up alcohol and I am scared. I am scared that I will never get sober and that I will gain so much weight I will get overweight .

I guess here is where I should probably take a moment to explain why I think all of this is such a big deal because in actual fact being a healthy weight is not a big deal at all as I have said multiple times. Being a healthy weight doesn’t mean I have recovered from anorexia, far from it, I am so distressed by anorexic thoughts that I have been driven to drink, and I am no less anorexic than I was two months ago, but I worry that all of you reading this will now think that I am not worthy of listening to. It is ridiculous because I would never think that of anyone else, but my brain is just such a mess. 

If anyone else were a healthy weight I would listen to them and hear them as much as anyone but I worry that all of you only read my blog because I am underweight and now I am a healthy weight I am terrified that you won’t like me anymore. Does that make sense? Gah THIS IS SO STUPID! WHY IS THIS HAPPENING? Oh purple pansies I don’t know what else to say because I am so anxious about posting this…maybe I can distract you from all of what is going on…OH MY GOODNESS LOOK A TURTLE!

GAH ok so what is the message of this post? What am I saying? Well, I have no idea and to be honest I am flip flapping all over the place, but basically what I wanted to update you on this week is the fact that I am still struggling to stop drinking alcohol since my suicide attempt and that this alcohol has made me gain a lot of weight which I now need to lose but please don’t stop listening to me because of all this because oh dear no please. Ok, now for me to run away and pray you don’t hate me. Cool…bye! 

Take care everyone x 

Fatty

Why Alcohol Doesn’t Go Well With Mental Health Problems

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 10 Comments

Ketchup goes well with chips. Rhubarb goes well with custard. But do you know what doesn’t go well with mental health problems? Alcohol, and this is a lesson I have learnt fairly recently. 

You see there is something I have been leaving out of my most recent blogs, partly because I didn’t think it was a big deal and partly because I thought it was an issue that would resolve itself fairly quickly, but it turns out that that is not the case. Basically, over the past month I have become dependant on alcohol to get through life with my mental health problems and it is causing a lot of issues. 

It all started five weeks ago on a jolly evening out in a rather sunny April, when I was at a concert by my favourite singer. The concert was brilliant, the music exceptional, but In between each song my favourite singer would pause to talk to the audience and on one of these occasions she stated how much she wanted a drink to help her to relax on stage. Obviously I have known about alcohol before this moment in my life, but as soon as she said about how it would relax her, my anxious brain got all excited and I decided to try drinking myself to see if I could relax too. Cut to today, five weeks later and I have not been able to have a day sober since.

Naturally, I have been trying to stop drinking for multiple reasons. For one thing I know that it is not good to spend your entire life totally off your rocker on vodka, but I can’t help it and it is now that I am realising how silly it was to start drinking in the first place. Obviously I never intended to get addicted to it but come on, we all know I have a rather addictive personality (actually I don’t think I have a personality at all, just a thick blob of addictive in its place) so maybe I should have seen this coming, but I didn’t and now I am left to try and deal with this extra problem on top of all the others and that is why I am writing this blog, to tell people out there with mental health problems that alcohol is not going to be a solution to your issues, rather it will add another issue to the pot. 

It is like making a cake. When you have mental health problems you have all the ingredients of insanity swirling around inside you, anxiety eggs, depressed flour, paranoid sugar and melancholy vanilla extract. Then comes alcohol which you think will wash all of those ingredients away and leave you free of all problems and to be fair, temporarily it does. When I drink alcohol, my anxiety goes way down, I laugh rather than cry and suicidal urges become a thing of the past. For once I am happy, dare I say merry to the point of feeling pure joy. If you could see all the things I have done in the past month you would be shocked at how much I have “achieved” under the spell of alcohol, from touching a door handle to eating out in public and for this reason you may think that alcohol therefore goes well with mental health problems. It takes the pain away so surely it is a great combination? Wrong. Instead, as I have learnt, alcohol only masks the problem by placing a big old blanket on top of all of your mental health ingredients so that you can’t see them, but underneath that blanket things are getting worse. The more you drink the more the mental health problems blend together, the closer they get to the oven and then BOOM! Before you know it you have sobered up and instead of finding your problems gone you find that whilst they were covered up things have got a whole lot worse and you are suddenly left not just with all these nasty ingredients to deal with but a giant three tiered cake covered in icing and cherries, and that is where I am now. 

I think alcohol is very sneaky that way and to be honest I wish I had never started drinking in the first place. It was just so easy to get addicted to it. When you are anxious and depressed all the time and then find a magic potion that takes all that away, why wouldn’t you drink it and then keep going? Even if the relief from your problems is temporary and the potion is actually creating more and more problems, wouldn’t you keep drinking it? Now I am sure some of you out there are reading this and are saying “no Katie, no I wouldn’t” in which case I have to congratulate you for being far more sensible than me! 

Like I said I am trying to give up alcohol right now and I have managed two days sprinkled in amongst the five weeks of drinking, but it is far harder than I ever imagined to go without alcohol, even though I have only been using it as a solution to my problems for five weeks. I don’t think one can become an alcoholic in that time but you can certainly become pretty damn addicted and that is why my team have referred me to alcohol services to try and nip this problem in the bud before it gets any bigger. Alcohol certainly hasn’t solved my problems, it has just added to them and that is why I wanted to write my blog about this today because I fear that other people out there are likely to fall into the same trap as I have, the trap of seeing alcohol as a quick fix to all the nastiness in your head and therefore becoming reliant on it for life, which seems good in the short term but in the long term will only create bigger problems and lead to more addictions and issues than you ever imagined. 

I can’t offer any advice to people like me who have already fallen into this trap, because like I said, I am still in it but what I wanted to do in this blog was to warn about the fact that mental health problems do not go well with alcohol and alcohol is certainly not a solution to your demons, it is instead a new one of them poised and ready to make itself at home with the rest of the insanity family. 

So that is my confession for the week, a jolly one I am sure you will agree! Still, at least in the past five weeks I have learnt something and hopefully in writing this blog maybe I can use that lesson to benefit someone else out there who was maybe on the brink of turning to alcohol but now realises that it is really not a good idea…I can only hope! In the meantime I m going to try and give up alcohol myself before services have to get involved, but considering how hard I have been finding that, who knows how well that is going to go.

Take care everyone x 

NoVodka