It’s My Party and I’ll Hide If I Want To
Social interactions are uncomfortable and impossible.
That’s it. End of blog. Ba-dee, ba-dee, ba-dee, that’s all, folks!
Yeah, right, I wish I knew how not to elaborate…
Maybe for the people who were fine in social situations before they became alcoholics, its not such a big deal post hoc. Before alcoholism, the majority of us were awkward as hell around other people, which is why liquor was applied ad hoc. And it worked so well… it was cheap, it was sedating, it was inhibition resistant, and it was there. All the time. If you dig down to the root of addiction, you’ll find that the cause has little to do with the existence of addictive substances, or that those substances are so addictive, or money-grubbing cartels, or boredom, or the Freudian “death wish,” or rebellion… addiction is existent because people are insecure. They can’t stand it. We can’t stand it. And we’ll do anything to feel—for five seconds—like we belong.
Like Walt Whitman and Michel de Montaigne, I have buried myself in confident contradictions. I say that people can change, and recovering addicts are the proof. I say that people don’t really change, they merely change their bad behaviors. I say that the good parts of a person can remain as they remove the bad traits, but then I also complain that getting sober does not cure all of our ills. It’s not that I’m a hypocrite, addiction is just that complex. That’s why we employ The Serenity Prayer- to change the things we can control, accept the things we cannot control, and stay vigilant about figuring out which is which. Drinking, for instance, is something we can control, even when it feels like we can’t. Not being an asshole is something we can control, and I wish more people would get a handle on it. Mental illness is not something we can control but seeking help and taking our medications properly is within our control. We can’t control the world around us, but we can control how we react to it. Sort of.
When we realize how stressful the world can be (as newly sober people) we are forced to choose one of only two methods for approaching it: We can run off into the woods, throw our phone in a lake, live in a port-a-potty sized cabin, slowly go bonkers, compose a manifesto, and distribute artisanal pipe bombs. Or we can learn to tolerate the intolerable moments in small doses as they come our way. I’m probably the worst drunk to tackle this topic, because I’m weird; the things that most people struggle to deal with, don’t make me flinch even slightly. Public speaking? Awesome. I love it. Needles? I’m 0 positive, take all the plasma and platelets you need. Give me a cookie and some juice and you can drain me until my skin looks like the flag of Greece. Job interviews? Pssh. Watch this! Heights? Fuck ‘em. Small spaces? Fuck those too. Broadcasting sensitive details about my personal struggle with addiction and how it has affected the finer details of my life collectively? Nailed it.
I had to brag about all the things that I easily can do, so I can move on to talk about the one big thing that I cannot do: act like a normal human being and make a decent impression on people in a small social setting.
Cannot. Do. Humiliates. Self. 31. Years. Zero. Improvement.
The older I get, the longer I stay sober, the more successes that come from my hard work get me thinking that I am finally over this strange pattern of behavior, but no. I’m a clown. A pretentious clown. With resting bitch-face. All I want is to be cool, easy-going, funny, and a little charming. Somehow, every time, I turn into “Bobo, the inelegant cunt.” I say all the wrong things, I realize I’m saying all the wrong things, so then I panic and isolate, which makes me seem even less likable and accessible. You’d think I’d be able to prevent the disintegration of my ritual, since I’m aware of it… but no. I try to fight the inevitable, but it’s just that: inevitable. The worst part about it is that it only happens in front of people who I desperately want to impress.
Last Sunday, the story played itself out the same way, yet again. I spent the day at my gentleman-friend’s house, hanging out with his children (two humans who I am also trying/failing to impress, but that’s a different adolescent sack of potatoes for another embarrassing post). That evening, some good friends of his came over with their two kids and it was a low-maintenance, zero-expectations kind of gathering and my deformed little psyche couldn’t take it.
I’m being completely honest when I say that I don’t think about drinking very often. I don’t. In situations like the one I was in on Sunday-- I miss it so goddamn much. Drinking would have immediately, effectively shut down the parts of my brain that were lighting up with panicked thoughts about what to do with my hands, the kinds of jokes it was ok to make, where to look when someone else is talking, curbing any and all revealing facial expressions, and squashing the looming notion that speaking would be superfluous because, unlike the rest of them, I am not a parent, so I’m not a real adult, and that makes me completely irrelevant, albeit still physically present.
At one point I was alone with the male of the couple while he was finishing a cigarette in the driveway (hindsight, I should have partaken—smoking seems to work for most flailing alcoholics) and he read me to filth. In a good way, I think… he noted my tactless body language, dead eyes, lack of reaction, the way I pinballed between seeming arrogantly bored and then salivating for positive attention. He wasn’t rude or hateful about it; in fact, I was glad that someone finally understood that how I want to be perceived and how my mind and body are leading people to perceive me, are in direct conflict with one another.
Battling situational anxiety has led me to trying nearly every FDA approved sedative, anti-psychotic, and mood-stabilizer available. But when it comes to pacifying insecurity, nothing works as well as alcohol. Nothing. It was a miracle elixir. Still is for some people, I guess, but it’s not an option for me. You know what works almost as well, though? Surrendering. Not to the craving for booze-induced easiness—but to the situation. All I had to do to get that relief was be a little bit honest.
I agreed with his assessment of my demeanor. He was correct, after all. Vulnerably, I admitted that I was horribly uncomfortable, fatefully awkward, and embarrassed that I couldn’t do anything about it. Then, even more vulnerably, I told him that the reason for my noticeable writhing was that I cared very much about his and his wife’s opinion and I have always handled such dynamics very poorly. I wanted to be there, even though it seemed like I wanted to claw my own eyes out. I wanted to be liked, even though I reeked of indifference. They were kind, likable, mellow people in a blasé setting, but the setting was high stakes on my end. I was a ball of nerves because I wanted the approval of people who were important to someone who was very important to me.
He already knew all that, but I think he got a kick out of watching me own-up to it.
We started drinking to deal with the things we disliked about ourselves. Some of those traits went away with sobriety and painstakingly constructed self-esteem, but some of those traits are as rooted in our subconscious as latent sexual kinks and the need to scream-sing to “Don’t Stop Believing.” Phobias, fears, and trepidation are there to warn us of potential harm to our bodies and our constitutions. Its not vanity to want to be liked and accepted by people, it’s one of the few instincts for survival that has evolved along with relationships and technology. Homo Habilis had to be likable because they needed to be accepted by a group in order to eat, reproduce, and defend themselves. Homo Sapien wants to be liked in order to be competitive, successful, and to attain or retain the things in their life that they deem valuable and necessary. That can’t be accomplished solitarily. We need to be liked because we need clients, we need lovers, we need people to purchase the app we designed, we need constituents, and we need people to advocate for us in order to solidify that we are good people. Sometimes we need people to like the look of us so they’ll nod and say to an old, trusted friend, “I think she might be good for you.”
Maybe it was Homo Habilis who first began fermenting fruits and grains to make a super-likable poison that quieted the stress of planet earth… if so, its no wonder that artificial comfort has become such an accessible part of society. It almost makes sobriety sound impressive to the point of impossibility—that we would be inches from sipping reassurance, and instead opt to tell the truth and risk being shunned from the tribe in order to be accepted for the right reasons. Then again, it seems impressive to the point of impossibility that anyone can survive in this world, knowing that you can be cast-out at any moment because someone just doesn’t like your outfit or your face. Just because I can’t drink anymore doesn’t mean I don’t understand why other people desperately need to keep drinking.
