TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDAL IDEATION
I think it would be existentially immoral if I didn’t do a dry January post. You might have read my Sober October post on why Sober October 2019 was an epic fail for me. Well suspecting reader, Dry January 2019 was a success in that I didn’t drink for the entire month but any momentary pause for celebration should be swiftly eradicated because I replaced alcohol with a different substance instead *blows smoke*.
In January 2019, my reality consisted of begrudgingly traveling from Walthamstow to Aldgate East to work a job where even the scent of the office was boring. The smell of freshly printed nothingness draped over the desks and clung to the clinically sterile walls while the fluorescent lights sluggishly flickered away like someone sleep-flashing morse code for not-so immediate assistance. Mind numbing would be an understatement to describe the tasks associated with this job, but of course I committed because I needed to eat and live in warmth. Great. So from the moment I engaged my core to pull myself from bed in the shadowy mornings of those Mondays to Fridays, and forced my eyes to focus on the numerical inmates shoved into the compact prison cells of spreadsheets from 08:30s to 17:30s, I was thinking of the absolute fatty that would be waiting for me at the end of the day. The peace and tranquility I felt while hotboxing the bathroom, headphones in, was the stuff of dreams I thought. Yes, I smoked my way through January so safe to say it was an incredibly dry January.
Now, I was tipping my toe in the shallow pool of my own self-awareness just enough to know my habitual use of alcohol had been undergoing a wet evolution from ‘this is a bit deep’ to ‘ok, someone needs to throw me a life-jacket right tf now’. So I swapped out the drank for something else. But I couldn’t have NOTHING, I needed SOMETHING. I couldn’t live my reality without being sedated somehow.
In addition to this job I needed but hated - I would literally cry while blending my under-eye concealer in the morning while getting ready - my mental health was an absolute acrobatic, cirque du shitshow. Suicidal ideation was a regular occurrence. Daily thoughts of being too tired to exist anymore and thinking of the calm that would follow an attempt. I couldn’t make it through without feeling some minor sense of euphoria, whether that was drowning myself in dopamine or getting ‘elevated’ every night and all weekend. Reality was too depressing. Too dire to face without intoxication. While January may have been drier than tumbleweed wrapped around an overcooked turkey on stale ciabatta, the rest of the year was absolutely drenched.
I have mixed feelings looking back at this time. A real concoction of thoughts of ‘damn bitch, you were really trying’ and ‘Jeeez, way to perpetuate your own suffering’. I see someone who was deeply depressed but fought to stay by using substances to feel better but really this was a form of self-harm fuelling and fanning the dumpster fire raging on in my head. So misguided but I can see the intention was in the right place because this person realised they needed to quit the drink. It would take a further four years to put out the flames and finally bin the bottle but 2019-me got me to sober-me.
Dry January coincides with the ‘new year, new me’ rhetoric and new year’s resolutions. There’s a clean slate feeling to the new year. A desire to wipe off the dirt of the year before, like a wax strip being ripped off a velcro hairy leg. But given my 2019 experience, I’m not sure how safe it is to drastically, cold-turkey quit the crutch that’s holding you up while you hobble your way through the debilitating struggles the universe keeps pelting you with.
So if dry January is too coarse for absolute course correction, maybe a damp January will suffice. I think any step in the right direction, whether an inch or even a millimeter, is still a step in the right direction.
We have to look after ourselves 🫶🏽
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This is the reality of many depressed people. Not wanting to die, but tired from existing and fighting to stay by self-medicating to numb the pain. I see myself in so many of these words.
Beautifully raw and heartbreaking piece, Tacita.
I’ve been trying to kick my weed habit recently but it’s soooo impossible for me. It’s the only thing I want to do after work. Related to a lot of this!