Drinking in Your Youth
AFF Newsletter on Substack #31
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Boozing young
Drinking heavily in your early teens destroys any youthful innocence you have left.
Gone are the days of purity and joyous fun that you experienced prior to drinking.
In their place, exposure to degeneracy and debauchery long before the mind is ready.
Many people say that alcoholics are the mental age of when they started seriously drinking.
This would answer a lot.
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However, if you think about it, it's more likely that people's emotional growth is stunted by drinking heavily at such a young age.
Those who drank heavily know they used alcohol to mask/suppress their emotions.
But starting so young means your emotional tools are not even fully developed to start with.
Your over-reliance on alcohol to replace the 'experience of emotions' in your teenage years, and even your early-to-mid twenties, means your ability to process even the most basic "feelings" is likely underdeveloped.
Then, as you move into your late twenties, thirties, forties, etc, when you'd expect to be able to express your feelings and emotions healthily, you aren't able to process them without the use of alcohol.
This is a problem.
This is what I experienced with my drinking.
Does this sound familiar?
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Solution
I can speak to this on two levels. One as a father and the other as a recovering alcoholic.
From a fatherhood perspective, I suggest doing your best to steer your children away from alcohol.
Personally, I am going to do this, not by banning him from drinking or stopping him from going out with friends, but instead, by showing him that my life is better without alcohol.
Lead by example.
Normalise not drinking with your actions. Share your experiences with your children and offer them your support when/if they need it so they don’t need to turn to drink.
Let them know you are there to listen to their problems.
Be there for them.
Use your own experiences to look out for signs that your kids might be heading down the unhealthy path of heavy boozing.
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The other solution comes from my perspective as a recovering alcoholic.
If you drank heavily in your youth and used booze as a way of coping with your emotions then you need to use recovery as a way of learning to do the things you didn’t do for all those years.
You need to embrace your emotions in a healthy manner. You need to look at using your recovery to regain control of your life and mature into the person you want to be.
You need to consider the possibility of opening up to others about the experiences you had as an addict in order to work your way through them.
Consider coaching work. Consider going to meetings. Consider signing up for online individual/group work.
You can grow a lot in recovery if you put in the work.
Remember, whether you like to admit it or not, drinking heavily in your youth stunted your growth in some form or another and you now have the chance to fix that through sobriety.
You owe it to yourself to grow. You owe it to your children to help them grow too.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this subject.
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Take care and have a great day,