Feeling depressed after drinking is one of the most common problems occurring in case of addiction, predisposing the person in question to several other mental issues, such as anxiety.
Easing depression after drinking is easier than you might think.
OK, you’ve heard that joke about feeling hungry after eating Chinese food. It’s funny, because in the last few years I’ve bought all sorts of Chinese recipe books (you can find my preferred one here!), so I know how to make some kung pao and lo mein that fills you up, but that’s not the point. My point is that there’s a pretty good reason for feeling hungry. It’s not the Chinese-ness of the food. It’s that rice is a simple carb, which your body burns through like water, leaving you hungry. And have you ever read the label on those sauces? Sugar, sugar, and sugar. It’s just that simple, friends.
Drinking to help depression is like eating simple carbs to fight hunger.
What happens to you when you’re drunk? Do you fill out college applications or put money in savings? Or do you make promises you can’t keep, tell people things you shouldn’t, and all that? Years ago, when I was living in Albuquerque (nice city, at the end of the world! check it out!) and trying to run (yes, as an alcoholic) my own heating and cooling business, I got back with an ex-girlfriend while drunk. Do you think that didn’t cause some problems the next day?
So, you cause problems from drinking alcohol which leads you to feel depressed after drinking. Then what do you do? Drink more, to drown the depression? The problem is, you create problems for yourself to solve, and the solution is too similar to the problem. Remember the conversation between the little prince and the tippler?
“Why are you drinking?” demanded the little prince.
“So that I may forget,” replied the tippler.
“Forget what?” inquired the little prince, who already was sorry for him.
“Forget that I am ashamed,” the tippler confessed, hanging his head.
“Ashamed of what?” insisted the little prince, who wanted to help him.
“Ashamed of drinking!” The tipler brought his speech to an end, and shut himself up in an impregnable silence.
— Quotes from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Chapter 12
Needing to be drunk to feel good makes sober life seem unbearable. You start to actual think that the sobriety is the problem. How’s that for logic? Dude, if I’d had a few beers I could handle this a lot better. You know that kind of thinking is? It’s wishful incompleteness. You wish you handled things better when drunk. What you’re remembering is that you feel better when drunk. That doesn’t mean you handle things better. Thus, cutting back has to be the answer. Quitting drinking cold turkey may not be completely possible (you may check the quitting drinking timeline in my another post), so it’s all about the cutback. How to do? You’ll find the best cutback recipe here.
Let me give you a tip about cutting back on the drink. One thing you can do, for starters, is say that you’ll limit yourself to some small amount of alcohol per week while alone, and then just drink a bit with friends. The goal right here isn’t to not drink at all, because that might drive you into some lousy binge. The idea is to make you think differently about drink and its place in the world.
What, do I mean? Well, if you’re drinking with a bud while watching basketball (I’m a Cavs fan, by the way–but enough about me), what does the beer symbolize? It’s just a beer. It’s not exactly health food, or the best thing for you, but it’s just a little thing to do during a game.
It’s a beverage. Now, you’re going to try to go dry eventually, but at this point, you’re breaking the habit of thinking of booze as medicine. Understanding how your habits are formed and how to break out from them is perfectly explained by Charles Duhigg in this book.
Here’s something I figured out. It’s OK that the beer be medicine, as long as you don’t think of it that way. What do I mean? Well, we’re trying to help our depression, right? So, here we are, kicking it on the sofa with one or two beers. We’re watching the Cavs are up by nine, we’re talking a little trash with our buddy Derek. Are we depressed after drinking? No. Therefore, the whole situation is helping us, which could lead to less of a need to get into more drinking, since you won’t have any more bouts of depression.
For easing depression, the key is to understand that what’s helping you out is having a friend and having basketball to watch. You take those two things away and just have you and the bottle, and all sorts of dark thoughts come out.
So, that means that booze is different at different times, right? Once you establish that a bottle of booze out at a bar at 1 a.m. or in your musty apartment is really depression in a bottle, how attractive is it?
We now get into a few tips of a more pragmatic nature, getting deeper into the nitty-gritty. There’s no reason you can’t take shortcuts and do a few things that seem a bit petty here. I personally used Mitadone as an alcohol withdrawal aid, it’s cheap and efficient, it’s cheap and efficient, you can get it from here. You may wish to have a bottle of water around when imbibing–you’ll alternate sips of beer with water, and this will slow you down. Be sure to limit yourself, going to smaller and smaller amounts per week or per day.
There are other little limits, too. You may have success with doing something like drinking only after a certain time of the day. You can see how important this is–I may have gotten in trouble a time or two talking to customers when I’d had a few ounces in me. So not only will you be keeping your quantities down, but you’ll be improving your overall performance in life. This, too, will aid to cut down your depression and make you feel less and feel depressed after drinking. As you can see, all of these things work together in a perfect harmony.
Photo Credit Mac Keer on Flickr
