It Wasn't My Drinking, I Thought

I brought out the box of old CDs the other day, as we have decided to cut out the TV and replace it with music. I started looking thru them and ended up playing one that I haven't heard in a very long while. It sounded good and comforting. It was a CD that I used to listen to in my early drinking days.

It brought up lots of memories! I was surprised that if felt good. I have stashed my CDs away, along with the old memories. Afraid in same way that they would make me miss those days bad enough that I would want to drink. I know it sounds extreme, doesn't it? But I had such a hard time staying sober I just kept putting away all the things that I thought would give me trouble! I would have probably hid myself if I could have! LOL! 

One of my old PICs

Anyway... Music was a huge part of my mid 20's. Of course this was way before I had an inkling of any alcoholic type trouble. I was a photographer for local bands and I had a VIP access to many shows. Now this is on a city scale, not big time or anything, nevertheless, I thought I was a superstar in my own little world - LoL! - probably like Annie Lebowitz felt when she followed the newly emerging Rolling Stones back in the early seventies, right!? And I both admired her work and wanted to be just like her. So my job seemed perfect; it was fun, and amazing, and booze and drugs were a huge part of it. Strangely enough I never got into drugs, I was actually afraid to try them. Maybe subconsciously I knew that I would have probably developed an instantaneous love affair with them. I don't know. I just believed that alcohol was safe and more acceptable, and it helped that it was legal, so it kept me "clean." So I drank, and I drank freely. I drank how I thought the band members did drugs - it always appeared to me that others were way more trashed than me. But in fact I was getting pretty trashed myself. And my job or the "safety" of my job, or how my clients behaved or how trashed they were, was not the real problem, but my excessive drinking was becoming one. 

One of my old PICs

You probably know the rest of my story here - it was very hard to keep it all together, between business and regular drinking and partying. I started missing appointments and losing clients. I made an ass of myself several times too many. I couldn't make my deadlines. I was unreliable. My photos were not up to par. And slowly I was failing at my job. But I just thought that it was the job itself and the late hours, and the badly behaved clients. It wasn't my drinking. I just needed a change, something that I was probably just better at anyway. So... I left and got a new job, at a bar. Strangely enough I remember that the same thing happened at that new job, though drinking or drugs were not part of it to the extent as the old job. I ended up leaving that job too. many jobs followed and basically, I had new job about every year or two! At the time, I sure did not see this pattern at all. Today, I see it very clearly.

Well, that was an interesting time in my life. Very active in the scene that revolved around alcohol yet totally oblivious to the addictive cycle that I already was in! Somehow, since I believed that others did more drinking or drugging than me, I felt as though was OK. Actually, I don't remember even worrying that my drinking was an issues, I actually felt that life had just dealt me a bad hand or I just had a little bad luck.

Now, listening to the CD, I was really amazed that I no longer had the drinking thoughts and that I no longer had that feeling that I am still missing the party! The party is long gone and well done. This part of my life seems like a very distant memory, yet a true and constant reminder of how much denial I was actually in.