I’ve recently shared an interesting topic in a meeting last night about unexpected triggers in sobriety for me. One of them is grocery shopping, which is difficult because the grocery store is not a place I can avoid. I have to eat. There is no way around that. The grocery store has actually been my biggest trigger, in fact. One of the first real tests of my sobriety came around the 100 day mark when I was driving to the store. I was already feeling depressed when I realized, suddenly, that I was daydreaming about whisky. I knew the store I was going to sold a lot of the brands I used to love. Then I became fixated on visiting that specific aisle – the whisky aisle. Soon, I began to daydream about relapsing.
The happy ending to that story is that I didn’t relapse. I ended up bargaining with myself. I gave myself permission to eat sugary foods, which I had also been abstaining from. Around that time I couldn’t go to the store without thinking about booze, but it eventually went away. Well, for the most part. I still find myself “accidentally” in the alcohol section at times. Sometimes I look at the bottles, but never for long.
Triggers in Sobriety: The Dreaded Grocery Store
However, two nights ago I didn’t just happen upon the liquor aisle, I was literally shopping for it in my head. I was in the checkout line and suddenly became fixated on the aisles of clear cases full of booze at the front of the store. I was looking to see what kinds of whiskeys they had. Then I began to shop in my mind. I was picking from their selection as if I was intending to buy them, but I wasn’t just shopping for a bottle, but many bottles. After paying for my goods I then walked up to the liquor aisle and picked out four bottles I would buy if I was still drinking. After picking the four bottles I would buy, I then left the store – went home and didn’t think more of it.
That night, after turning off my reading light and settling in, a conversation I had with someone at a meeting suddenly popped in my head. The person, whom I really like, said something to me that irked me. It didn’t make me mad, it just bothered me a little. The comment, or question, was benign. It was not intended to offend me, but it did. A little bit. All of a sudden I found myself imagining a scenario where this same person were to double down on their remark, but this time they meant to offend me. In my imagination I was being attacked. In my imagination I was the victim. As I laid there having an imaginary confrontation with this person I stopped and thought to myself “you clever bastard.”
The Alcoholic Personality
There is a saying among people in recovery for alcohol abuse disorder that goes something like this: while you’re struggling to not drink, your addiction is doing pushups. It’s the personification of the disease. It’s a reminder that once you cross over into alcoholism, you cannot go back. If you cross over and are lucky enough to eventually stop drinking, that alcoholic inside you does not go away. If you feed it, it comes back, possibly stronger than before.
The clever bastard I was referring to was the many faces of my alcoholic personality. Since I have not been feeding him, he’s had to become more clever in his method. It started with that meeting a few days prior. I had a friendly conversation with a friend and they said something that hurt me more than I realized, though they did not mean to. Two days go by and I am at the store and fixated on the alcohol section literally planning out my relapse. I don’t even realize that’s what I am doing. Then I’m in bed rewriting that same conversation from days prior but this time the person who offended me meant to do it. As I laid there becoming resentful I suddenly became conscious of what had been going on right in front of me. My alcoholic personality was trying to be fed.
Triggers in Sobriety Can Be Subtle
Life had become so busy that I didn’t even notice what was going on. You see, I have many programs in my brain that are designed for me to drink. There are many paths that lead to the same place. The real trigger for me happened long before the grocery store. The store is only the manifestation of the alcoholic personality – a place to be fed from. That day, I had shared with the meeting that I have an autoimmune disease.
The thing about my disease is you can’t tell I have it, as is the case with nearly all autoimmune issues. This person mentioned, or maybe questioned that I did not have any outward appearance of the disease. In the past I always heard that sort of comment as more of an accusation. It was as if I was being accused of seeking empathy under false pretenses. As if their empathy was a form of finite currency. I would often berate the person who had said it. I’d school them on the disease and then I’d use sarcasm to shame them. But this time, it didn’t occur to me that I would get that comment from anyone in the group. The comment pissed me off, but I brushed it aside.
The Creativity of the Alcoholic Personality
In the past, I would have drank. I would not have known why I drank but it would have been three simple steps. I get offended, think about drinking and then drink. Now, it’s different. Since my response was different and I have trained myself to not turn to alcohol at the first sign of discomfort, a new neural pathway was being used. Something in me was festering about the comment just under the surface of my own consciousness. I carried it with me and when I got to the store I saw the solution that I had so often turned to at the whiskey cabinet. Unconsciously, I knew that it would soothe my pain. I went home and then I turned a molehill into a mountain.
Had I not caught onto the process, who knows how far it would have gotten. I know of far better people than I who have relapsed and that is exactly where it was headed for me. In a 12 step program the idea of resentments are stressed upon its members. The reason being that resentments are reasons to drink. Resentment turns you into a victim and a victim has no control over the situation. Being resentful and feeling like you have no control is the perfect environment to relapse.
You Have to Constantly Check in With Yourself: Triggers in Sobriety
Had I followed the narrative in my head that the people I thought liked me did not like me and thought I was a liar, it would have become a belief. That belief would become despair and I would have been seeking comfort. And wouldn’t you know it, I’d already mentally gone shopping for the perfect solution to my despair. This is how tricky my alcoholic personality has become. It was just waiting for the right opportunity to strike.
So, triggers in sobriety are real. I am just over six months sober and as great as I feel, I know I am susceptible to relapse. I am only a few steps away from getting drunk, and planning to buy four bottles of whisky is not a simple a slip up, it was a plan to go on a bender. It was a plan of total annihilation. As the famed but politically divisive professor of psychology, Jordan Peterson said of alcoholism, that it is in fact a personality, and that you “may have to change your entire personality just to corner it.” Though I disagree with Jordan Peterson on many political issues, his studies on addiction I tend to fully agree with. If I do not keep my eyes open and aware of this personality within me, it will be my ruin.
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One response to “Triggers in Sobriety”
[…] of the abstinence of drugs and alcohol. According to the literature, resentments lead to relapse. I have shared in the past how this sentiment is true. My alcoholic personality inside me has gone out of his way to try and conjure up resentments out […]