slippin', tumblin'
clumsy ‘cause i’m ignoring med warning labels
Now, I care. I care about so many things that I didn’t care about before getting sober, and I care more about things I thought I cared enough about but didn’t really. I also care too much about some things that I wish didn’t matter to me, things that didn’t used to be important. A rising tide lifts all boats, maybe.
I care about myself now. This hit me recently when I spilled gasoline on a brand new tattoo. I panicked because I know that tattoos are considered open wounds, so I assumed that there was now gasoline in my bloodstream. I drove home in a panic, washed my hand for longer than I ever have, and called poison control because my duckduckgo searches weren’t giving me the answers I needed. I felt so relieved because a nice lady told me that I was fine and that it’s just an irritant, so all it would probably do to a tattoo is aggravate the skin and maybe make the ink spread some.
The thing is, I would not have cared as much before recovery because I just did not care much about myself or what happened to me. It feels as vulnerable to admit that I didn’t care about myself before as it does to say that I really do now. I told a friend about the gas incident and my health concern and she said, You and I have both done much worse to our bloodstreams. And she’s right! Who knows how high of a blood alcohol content I’ve reached in the past, or how many times I’ve drank too much and gotten sick, or what combination of various drugs and alcohol together has done what to my poor organs. None of that was important to me then — the fun of it is what mattered. The intoxication, the euphoria, the stories, and how cool I thought it was to have a high tolerance. That all felt so good, for a time.
Now though, I thought I might’ve gotten a mixture of dozens of harmful chemicals inside me and I panicked. For years and years I smoked cigarettes despite my asthma, which only worsened my asthma, but now I check the outdoor air quality regularly and avoid exercising outdoors when it’s bad for sensitive groups. That’s me, I’m sensitive! And now I care about what goes into my lungs. Research has come out saying that consuming any amount of alcohol increases one’s cancer risk, and that has me worried now too because of a family history of breast cancer. I like my tits as they are, thank you very much!
For the first six years of trying different psych meds to see what would work for me, one of the most important factors in whether I would stay on one was if I could still drink as much as I wanted and not feel too many negative effects because of the combination. The class of meds that I was shopping around in is one that is especially sensitive to being combined with alcohol though, so I noticed all kinds of weird side effects.
On one medication, when I drank I became dizzy and unbalanced. I felt like the world was slightly spinning when I stood up and would bump into things when I walked around. Drinking on that one made it look like I was drunk before I had even really gotten going. I wanted to believe it was cute that I was clumsy, but I’m sure it was not. Drinking on that med also made me feel like my eyes were too wide open, so I was always self-conscious about how people must’ve been weirded out by my looking at them all bug-eyed.
On another, after only two drinks I would start to brown out — not quite fully blacking out, but slipping in and out of full awareness and presence, and having spotty memories of the period of drinking the next day. I stayed on that med for about two years and it’s no wonder I feel like I can’t remember much of my life then. Just a lot of hungover mornings showing up late with an iced coffee in hand to a job I felt miserable at.
A medication that I ended up sticking with and drinking with didn’t make me woozy and uncoordinated, didn’t make me lose memories, and didn’t have me making weirdo eyes at people. I just felt sleepier than usual once I got past two drinks and more nauseous than normal when I got past my fourth. Those felt like okay tradeoffs, so I stayed on it.
Several months into sobriety, I talked with an alcoholic friend who also drank on that med, and they told me that combining it with any alcohol is really bad for your liver and who knows what else. I knew all the bottles of these different meds said Do Not Drink Alcohol With This Drug, but I didn’t know why. I just took that to mean I should lie to my doctors and say I only had 3-4 drinks a week. Even at that amount though — not even at the recommended weekly drink limit for women (7 drinks, and a suggested limit of only 1 drink per day) — I was told that I should cut back. Nevermind the fact that 3-4 drinks was an average night back then and I was showing great restraint if I took one day off of drinking each week.
Hearing from my friend about the effects of that combination just made me laugh. I was on that med for five years before I got sober, and of course the medication that felt the least bad to drink on was actually even worse to drink on. By that point a few months in, I had also noticed how much better and more stable I felt being sober, and I learned that it was partly because drinking on psych meds reduces their effectiveness and leads to more mental health problems. It turns out that consuming a depressant substance when you have depression… causes more depression. It’s no wonder it felt like none of the meds were really working — I was actively combating the positive effects and exacerbating the negative ones. I never missed a dose though. I might be an alcoholic but I’m a Virgo first and foremost.
These days, I’m channeling that Virgo energy into self-care instead of self-sabotage. My health and well-being are important to me now, and there happen to be a lot of health benefits to sobriety that I’m enjoying. Glowing skin! Better mental health! Improved sleep! My heart doesn’t hurt like it would after drinking too much liquor!
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It’s a Saturday night and I got home a little while ago from an AA meeting. I’m tired from a long, late-summer day of work and time with friends. I have meds I need to take and a six-step skincare routine to do — it’s almost my bedtime.