Tolerance

So I'm an alcoholic. I've known this for a couple years now. I'm self-aware like that. No one had to tell me I was. Or intervene. Or confront. It just became terriblly apparent.

I'm not a raging alcoholic. I don't drink all day and all night. During the day I drink a few pots of coffee and do my job. Don't even want the stuff then. But 8 or 9 pm rolls around and I want some beer. Sometimes I think it'd be better to be the stereotypical drunk who goes nuts and drinks constantly. Because maybe that would somehow motive me to stop. Eh, Probably not.

I drink four to five beers a night before I get sleepy enough and saunter into bed. When I started drinking back in 2001 two beers got me completely wasted. And I didn't even much like the taste.

It started out as a few beers only on weekends. Isn't that how it always starts out.

I remember back in school, in health class, learning about alcohol and cigarettes and other such bad things. Tolerance. I understood the concept. Your body becomes accustomed to the dosage you're giving it and steadily needs more and more of the same toxin to produce the desired result. I guess it's darwinian. The body strengthens itself against the poisons you're feeding it in an unsolicited, effort to preserve itself. Tolerance has to be the cruelest, most evil of all the natural survival mechanisms built into the human body. It takes something good and makes it bad for you. If not for tolerance I would still be happy with just two beers a night. That I could live with. Unfortunately, tolerance is a very real thing. And two beers has gradually become three, then four, now usually five. And it's not something all that easy to tolerate mentally.