{"id":13084,"date":"2024-09-17T15:05:03","date_gmt":"2024-09-17T15:05:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=13084"},"modified":"2024-09-17T15:26:35","modified_gmt":"2024-09-17T15:26:35","slug":"quitting-drinking-was-easy-learning-how-to-be-myself-around-friends-was-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=13084","title":{"rendered":"Quitting Drinking Was Easy. Learning How to Be Myself Around Friends Was Hard."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Quitting drinking was the easy part. Figuring out how to be myself was harder.<\/p>\n

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About six months after I quit drinking, I sat at a corner table in a candlelit restaurant with one of my closest friends. It was the kind of place where we used to refill each other\u2019s wine glasses all night, sharing appetizers and intimate details of our lives.<\/p>\n

That night, though, it felt more like we were catching up: surface-level conversation you might have with a work acquaintance or when seated next to a distant cousin at a wedding. By the time the entrees came, we\u2019d reached the end of these \u201cso what else is new\u201d updates. I recognized that we were at a threshold \u2014 one I had been unable to cross so far without booze.<\/p>\n

There are studies that confirm<\/a> what I \u2014 and anyone else who has ever made friends with another drunk woman in a bar bathroom \u2014 have always known: Drinking can help build social bonds. It lowers inhibitions and fosters feelings of connection. But what happens when you\u2019ve come to rely on alcohol to establish and reinforce those connections?<\/p>\n

I started drinking when I was 13, skipping class to chug cheap vodka and 40s with friends. We\u2019d sprawl out on park benches or huddle on stoops, laughing about everything and nothing. I liked the sloshy, blurry feeling; the warmth in my cheeks and heaviness in my body. But what I liked most about being drunk was that it made it OK to say how sad I was \u2014 or to just start crying, without saying anything at all.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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By my late teens, a drink in the evening (and then a second and third) to soften the edges of my life seemed normal \u2014 even more so once I became a bartender, tucked away in a nocturnal world that revolved around alcohol. I prided myself on being able to do shots with customers all night and still settle the register correctly at 5 a.m.<\/p>\n

On my nights off, my friends and I went out, often to the same bar where I worked. And though I didn\u2019t loiter on stoops drinking vodka out of the bottle anymore, the end of a night out was ultimately the same: Once I\u2019d had enough to drink, it felt safe to admit to being sad or lonely or unsure.<\/p>\n

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Quitting drinking was the easy part. Figuring out how to be myself was harder.About six months after I quit drinking, I sat at a corner table in a candlelit restaurant with one of my closest friends. It was the kind of place where we used to refill each other\u2019s wine glasses all night, sharing appetizers and intimate details of our lives.That night, though, it felt more like we were catching up: surface-level conversation you might have with a work acquaintance or when seated next to a distant cousin at a wedding. By the time the entrees came, we\u2019d reached the end of these \u201cso what else is new\u201d updates. I recognized that we were at a threshold \u2014 one I had been unable to cross so far without booze.There are studies that confirm what I \u2014 and anyone else who has ever made friends with another drunk woman in a bar bathroom \u2014 have always known: Drinking can help build social bonds. It lowers inhibitions and fosters feelings of connection. But what happens when you\u2019ve come to rely on alcohol to establish and reinforce those connections?I started drinking when I was 13, skipping class to chug cheap vodka and 40s with friends. We\u2019d sprawl out on park benches or huddle on stoops, laughing about everything and nothing. I liked the sloshy, blurry feeling; the warmth in my cheeks and heaviness in my body. But what I liked most about being drunk was that it made it OK to say how sad I was \u2014 or to just start crying, without saying anything at all.By my late teens, a drink in the evening (and then a second and third) to soften the edges of my life seemed normal \u2014 even more so once I became a bartender, tucked away in a nocturnal world that revolved around alcohol. I prided myself on being able to do shots with customers all night and still settle the register correctly at 5 a.m.On my nights off, my friends and I went out, often to the same bar where I worked. And though I didn\u2019t loiter on stoops drinking vodka out of the bottle anymore, the end of a night out was ultimately the same: Once I\u2019d had enough to drink, it felt safe to admit to being sad or lonely or unsure.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13086,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13084"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13087,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13084\/revisions\/13087"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}