I don’t get people who are smokers. I mean, I get it, theoretically, but I don’t truly understand it. I don't understand physical addiction. I smoke. Some periods I smoke every day, some periods I don’t smoke at all, some periods I smoke occassionally, socially or everytime I go out. I’ve just never been addicted to my smoking.
And this is how I am with most things a person can possibly have a physical craving for that they can't control. I don't truly understand. That, however, does not mean I'm not addicted to anything. Like right now, I suspect I’m kinda sorta maybe alittle bit addicted to wine. Not addicted in that way that I drink too much, but in the way that I abuse it a little. I drink alcohol to ward off the waves of melancholy, to loosen up the knots of my antsy, restless mind, to make the acid, anxious thoughts in my head stop for just a few precious hours.
And because of this, I carefully calculate every drop of alcohol I have, every single day. I mark it down in my calendar alongside appointments and lunch-plans, just so I know that I am not drinking more than The Limit - which is no more than 9 glasses of wine a week, the maximum doctor-recommended amount for women to drink - and because trying to know how much you're drinking without actually counting is ridiculously difficult and more often than not people have no clue how much they actually drink. And I make sure I have white days every week where I don’t drink, which I also mark down, even though some of those days all I do is crave those gloriously relaxing glasses of wine.
Yes, I do know how all this sounds (crazy), but for people like me, the obsessive-compulsive kind, this is normal, it's what we do. We need this kind of control, we won’t allow ourselves the luxury to just "go on feeling", and so we carefully calculate every cigarette we smoke and every glass of wine we have and every paracetamol we swallow and so on so we will know exactly how much of it we’re taking.
Don’t get me wrong, people like me might still be taking way too much of whatever it is, but at least we know it. Addiction will never take any of us by surprise.
I know 9 glasses á 15 centiliters of wine a week doesn’t sound like much. I know that there are people who drink twice as much and don’t worry about it. I know I have, and for long periods of time. But that’s not how you measure addiction. I mark down how much I drink every week because I know I want to drink more than I do, and more than I should. Using alcohol as self-medication, no matter how small amount of it, is not healthy drinking behavior. It is, in fact, risky drinking behavior.
Having battled anxiety for a decade, I am completely done being naïve about what it is and what it can do. If there is one thing I have learnt it is that people will do whatever it takes to relieve their anxiety – and if what works is exercise or sex or cocaine or carving up your own skin, people will do it and do it and do it until the pain stops. And even if I know that I don't have a real problem with alcohol at the moment, I know a slippery slope when I see one. For me to not pay attention to my drinking because of some “oh, people drink much more than I do so I must be fine” reason, would be almost unforgivable stupid.
Now, having said all that, the thing about every single one of my almost-could be-addictions is this; they’re psychological, not physical. I've never felt a
physical need to smoke that cigarette or have that drink. I have, however, been
psychologically addicted to my various methods of self-medication over the years, and I’ve never not been able to just stop any one of them from one day to the next, like they never existed at all.
Because compared to the monster that is Depression they're all just insignificant little nuisances. Whenever Big Bad Things start happening in my brain, they overshadow whatever else is going on in there and I just..stop. Stop drinking, stop smoking, stop drinking coffee, stop eating anything sugary, stop eating altogether, stop reading, stop watching TV shows, stop turning on the computer, stop listening to music, definitely stop writing. Depression is my one and only physical addiction. It's under my skin, it's in my blood, it's chemical, and it pushes all other addictions out of my head, teflon-like, the minute it re-emerges from the back of my brain.
