Anxiety Support Group
Anxiety is a physical condition marked by intense and persistent feelings of distress, fear, angst or dread. General anxiety caused by routine day-to-day stresses usually passes quickly and is experienced by almost everyone at one time or another. However, such feelings that linger over time and are very difficult to cope with, and which lack a clear cause, may indicate...
Hi everyone.
Since I was a child till when I turned 18 (2 years ago), my father was an alcoholic. Whenever he drank, he overdid it. He got angry at my mom and would scream at her the whole night while me and my sister cried the whole night. Somtimes we would drag us into it as well and keep me and my sister up the whole night while he screamed at us too. I had a lot of suicidal thoughts and a lot of self-hatred because of this and made a promise to myself since I was young that I would never be with anyone that drank. Ever.
And then I meet this amazing man. He is so kind and smart and always wants to make me happy. My life honestly just because 10000% better after he came into my life. One problem: he didn't like the fact that he couldn't drink. We became long-distance as he wanted to go to college out of the country -where it was legal for him to drink at his age. The first year, he said he tried his best to not drink even though all his friends were. He eventually told me the summer after that he drank a couple times and lied to me. I told him I would not break up with him and would try to get over this and said it was okay for him to drink as long as he didn't get drunk. So as we start our second year being apart (during the school year), I realize that whenever I think of drinking, I think he is getting absolutely TRASHED. That is the image I get in my head. So when he comes home after hanging out with his friends and I ask him if he drank (and he looks completely fine), I am still furious by the image in my head of him getting drunk.
Why is it that I keep getting these horrible images of him? I know he would NEVER do that but I keep thinking it and it gets me so angry whenever he goes out late with his friends because I'm assuming that is what he is doing.
I recently spoke to him about this and told him I am trying to get over this. I told him I know that he would never act crazy while drinking but it would bother me if he got tipsy. He said, he might get tipsy but never like the "crazy" drunk.
Am I wrong for being upset at that? I mean, I am struggling to be okay with drinking itself so is it wrong for me to be upset if he is okay with allowing himself to get tipsy?
I feel like this post barely had a flow. I would really appreciate anyone's input.
:D
I jest - but I'm actually telling the truth.
I think the problem for you is that you had a father who was mentally severely ill, and who was using alcohol as some kind of tool to feed this illness. So you were seeing Alcohol + mental illness - and you thought you were just seeing alcohol. So you have developed a reaction to what you think is alcohol based on real and horrible experience - and the rest of the world isn't fitting in with that view. It won't fit into that view because your view is inaccurate. It wasn't the alcohol that made your dad psycho. It was mental illness.
Alcohol does not make people behave this way. It provides an excuse to those who already want to, but alcohol itself is merely a relaxant. It removes inhibitions, it doesn't change a person's nature. People who are mentally unwell shouldn't go near it. I don't go near it because of the anxiety disorder, for instance. But your boyfriend drinking normally (a couple or a few over the course of an evening) is something you need to let go of and allow. He isn't going to turn into your father. Your father had other SERIOUS issues that should have been clinically diagnosed and medicated.
What you actually need to do is go get drunk. find out what this substance does. Find out what it is good for or bad for. Stopping your sane boyfriend from social drinking is putting a pressure on him that is probably not necessary or fair. Stopping your nutbag father from drinking was imperative.
I actually have a lot of questions like... what was mum doing? Why did she put you all through it? What had happened to her in her upbringing that she endured it? Sometimes this stuff goes back generations.