Regrets, Amends, and Healing
How to move on from the shame of your alcoholic past
When I was drinking, the mornings and nights felt the same, an endless cycle of the hazy followed by the all too real. I would wake up hungover, and by the evening, I would be drinking again and often blackout. But although the days seemed the same in character, they were not the same in detail. I was doing and saying things to people around me when I was drinking that would haunt me for years to come. I remembered some of these things the next day, some I had to be reminded of, and many I would never remember. Regardless of the level of murkiness, I rarely connected genuine feelings to these interactions. As soon as I would think about what I had said or done, my mind would quickly shut it down. The embarrassment and shame were so overwhelming that I could not bear to replay it. I would use several tactics like ingredients in a recipe to do this. Denial: “No, that didn’t really happen”, minimizing: “It wasn’t that bad!” and delusion: “Maybe they thought it was funny”. If denial alone was not enough to subdue the humiliation, I would sprinkle a little minimizing on it. I was open to any self-deception that would allow me to continue my destructive behavior.
The Narrator
After a few weeks of sobriety, my sleeping patterns dramatically improved, and I…
