Toxic Cocktail

Sep 27

This is the next blog in my series highlighting the key lessons and takeaways from my book Wholeness Within, and we are diving into Chapter Six, titled Toxic Cocktail.

I titled this chapter Toxic Cocktail because I used a mix of substances to numb the pain at this point in my life.

I got addicted to multiple substances because of a variety of conditions that set me up for it:

Societal conditioning - alcohol being promoted everywhere, having a family from Europe and the UK where drinking is intertwined in the culture
Feeling like I never belonged, an ‘outsider,’ an immigrant, & highly sensitive person
Untreated trauma and anxiety since childhood
Home environment where emotions were not talked about and healthy coping skills weren’t taught

The Beginning

I started drinking in high school, like most kids in the US. Since it wasn’t legal, it led me to seek it out more. I felt rebellious and free when I started drinking, and because I didn’t have much access or many opportunities to drink, I had to make the most of the chances I did.

There was no concept of casual drinking, it was only in excess from the very start.

This is how the addiction was born. It didn’t help that my dad was addicted to alcohol, either.

We can easily become a product of our environment if we’re not careful and intentional. What I knew about drinking, I gleaned from what I saw my family do. From what I saw my friends do. From what I saw on TV programs showing women getting blackout wasted (hello The OC and Gossip Girl!). At an impressionable age, drinking was glamorized to me.

The university experience only amplified it: this pattern to seek external sources to quell internal discomfort. A toxic cocktail started here, as drugs were now introduced to the mix. I started mixing alcohol (downer) with uppers, willing to try almost anything, but the results were awful comedowns. In this experience, I became addicted to this dysregulated state: the high, followed by the inevitable low.

This state was my source of fulfillment. My identity. Yet it was also slowly killing me. I had a void that needed to be filled.

Darkness to Know Light

I know now that I had to experience this darkness to know what light was. I had to see how bad things could really get if I continued down the path of darkness. I started seeing the light and recognizing it.

I got help for my mental health by seeing a therapist, going to meditation, and taking antidepressants. But I still drank. Because I used this toxic cocktail to manage my emotions, when grief from the loss of a parent arrived, drinking only amplified the pain to excruciating levels. The ‘tools’ weren’t working anymore.

I switched to mostly weed at this point, telling myself it was safer, yet I started getting panic attacks, awful anxiety, and it became near impossible to maintain this addiction while working full time. Finally, after one fateful night of debauchery on a week night in August of 2016, I stopped waiting for life to happen to me and made a confident choice.

I would no longer drink alcohol again.

Shortly after, drugs were also removed from the picture.

Now the real inner work could start.

This is the moment when I started truly living for me.

Stay tuned for the next chapter recap of Wholeness Within in PART 2: Rebirth in the next blog!

This was a distillation of Chapter Six: Toxic Cocktail, in my book Wholeness Within: Insights from One Woman’s Journey of Creating a Life & Career in Alignment.

xo Emily Grace