I've flirted with addiction before ...

Guess it's just an inherent part of my nature. I never do things by halves.

Looking back, I guess my first addiction was love. I was the classic girl who loved too much and gave my love to all the wrong people. Seems like I had a neon sign over my head saying "Take advantage of me". Fuck, maybe on some level I even got off on that - thought it was what I deserved. Why? I don't know.

I wasn't a victim of child abuse or neglect, in fact I was always loved and cherished. Grew up without a father from the age of 9 - I guess that's had some significant impact on my psyche that I just feel better not analysing. I touch on it here and there but I really don't think it explains my current fucked up state.

So love - my first addiction. I won't go in to all the stupid things I did back then, I'll save that for another post. Let's just summise by saying that I was ridiculous and beyond naive. My teenage heart was crushed. It wouldn't be the last time.

Nicotine - my next addiction. Actually, thinking back to my teenage self I realise how sad I really was - although at the time I thought I was incredibly cool. I have to wonder now though, what was so cool about gagging to give my "love" away to some teenage boy whilst smoking a ciggie. Ahem.

My love of the cigarette remains to this day - it's an addiction I revere and fear at the same time. Only another smoker could understand the poisonous lust a Benson and Hedges can satisfy. Ohhh, the hatred I feel for myself with every drag. "Why am I doing this, I don't want to die" - yet at the same time, I must. I must.

Food. Oh how I have flirted with bulimia - I was never strong willed enough to be an anorexic. I admired them though, how strong they were to deny themselves so constantly.

Brilliant genetics meant I never really had to purge 'til I was in my mid 20's. As I leant my head over the toilet that first time, my hand holding my golden locks back, it somehow felt right. As if I had met my destiny so to speak. I always knew the moment would come. It was just a matter of time. Am I the only person who found those teenage anorexic movies strangely appealing and glamourous. *Sighs* Actually, I think I am. I have vague recollections of a scene in a movie where the main character yakked into her pet dogs bowl. Or I am dreaming it? Doesen't matter I guess, but I remember thinking "oh how tragic" yet strangely alluring.

Well, bulimia never got me with both hands - I liked to flirt with it but I never commited fully.

Which brings me to the most insidious addiction I will ever face. The one I'm battling now on a daily basis. The one that consumes my thoughts and gives me moments of delirious, self destructive pleasure.

Alcohol.

Oh Daddy - I bet you would be proud. Thankyou for making me genetically predisposed to your disease. Does it sound like I blame him? I surely don't. I'm not one of those people who spout shit like "Oh my parents are to blame". Quite simply, they're not. At all.

I am.

It was I alone who made the dire decision to pick up a bottle that first time as an adult to intentionally "drown my sorrows".

My marriage had just ended - a marriage I entered into at the tender age of 19 when i thought those sacred words "my husband" would somehow save me. They did for a little while, yet in the end left me with nothing. My own personal Tsunami - wiped out everything I had along with all my dreams and hopes for the future. I'll save that hearwarming story for another post, too.

It's funny 'cos I'd always chided my sister about her social drinking. If she had a wine with her dinner it was always me saying "You're an alcoholic - why do you need wine with dinner?". It was quite frankly beyond me.

My mother never drank, not a drop. I guess being married to an alcoholic for so long had dulled it's appeal. I of course, had done the teenage binge drinking thing from the age of 15 for a few years. However when I met my husband, all that went by the wayside. We were both young and eager, him a world class athlete - our lifestyle was all about health, fitness and being beautiful bodies. We truly were Ken and Barbie personnified.

After it all fell to pieces 13 years and 2 children later, I picked up the bottle again. It was actually at my sister's suggestion - "Just have a couple, it will take the edge off" she said. I was in no position to disagree - I would have done anything at that point to take the pain away. And after all, I knew *I* wasn't the kind of person who whould ever use alcohol as a crutch. Right????

It crept up on me slowly. A memory burned into my mind is entering the bottle shop that first time to buy a 4 pack of Sky Blue Vodka pre mixed drinks. (Side note - that would have gotten me WASTED back then). Oh god, it felt so alien just being in there surrounded by rows and rows and bottles. It felt so "adult" - kind of like a kid must feel venturing into a sex shop for the first time. It all felt so "illicit". Yet kind of good.

Well, this was my new life I thought - may as well try new things. I came out as a lesbian about, ummmm, 3 weeks later. It was something I'd been waiting to do for a while. But this is a post about my addictions, so I won't digress.

My new lady love and I, she was quite familiar with booze I must say - was a regular thing for her - she showed me the way to party. And party we did. Soon it took me 6 Sky Vodkas to get drunk - I was making progress. It wasn't a problem though, I just just letting off some steam, dealing with the end of my marriage, the transition to single motherhood and coming out to a family who were blown out of the water by my disclosures.

The affair between vodka and I was blissful initially. If I'm honest, sometimes it still is. My mind is ticking over even as I sit here typing this - the familiar little niggle "Maybe just a couple of drinks tonight, I won't get drunk, it will just take the edge off". Right??? (Go away, leave me alone, not now, I can make it through tonight without it. Rise above this, for fucks sake).

I never even entertained the thought that I may have a slight dependency problem for a good 18 months. Sky vodkas didn't do it for me anymore, Smirnoff double blacks did though. They were 7% versus 5% - I drank less to get to the same blissfull escape. It was a bonus. So time efficient. Some friends bought down some raspberry Cruisers one weekend. Oh, the excitement of being introduced to a new love. More please. Soon though, all those pre mixed drinks seemed too softcore. I bought a bottle of Absolut and began to mix it with Cranberry.

The thought did cross my mind as I poured that first Absolut and Cranberry years ago now, that things may be getting a little serious. I'd never even lived in a home that had a bottle of vodka stashed away in the cupboard and now I had my very own. The more drinks I poured from it though, the less alien it seemed. In fact, how very convenient to have a little friend in the cupboard that helps you out whenever life gets too hard.

I now understood why people drank. There would be no more chiding my sister if she choose to have a wine with dinner. I got it.

I also got that for someone with an addictive personality like mine, it could start to present an issue. "Nah", I thought "it's cool. I'd never let myself escalate to that kind of problem. I'm a Mother after all, so it's just not an option".

I can't pinpoint the day I admitted to myself I was an alcoholic. Or indeed that day that I become one.

I know it somehow happened though during the course of those fuzzy fun filled days that I don't remember so much about anymore.

If I knew back then what I know now, would I have picked up that first drink to "dull the pain". Unresoundingly, no. I wouldn't.

However I did. It led me to how I feel today. Like I will always have to fight alcohol in some way for the rest of my life. I crave the numbness it gives me. That surreal, floaty, free from pain feeling. I'm embarassed to admit that some days I genuinely do believe that vodka can make everything better. Sometimes it can. It just sucks the way you feel the next day when you try to get out of bed in the morning. And it sucks when you realise that you have to keep drinking to hold on to those feelings of escapism.

I've opened up a lot of cans of worms in this post - and bought up topics that deserve to be delved into and explored in their entirety. I can't do that all in one post. I'm thankful that this blog is anonymous or I wouldn't be able to vent so freely what I ponder when it's the middle of the night.

If anyone actually took the time to read that, I thank you.