Over the next year, I kept both a job and a boyfriend, and was thus performing normalcy to a dazzling degree that surprised even me. Since the incident and my outpatient therapy, every time I drank and nothing terrible happened I gave myself permission to drink more often and still, nothing catastrophic occurred. I’d broken the system. I’d graduated into what I believed was functional alcoholism, and was perfectly content to stay there indefinitely.
People speak of addiction as progressive, something that gets worse and never better, and though it eventually passed the point of no return, for awhile the progression was far less linear. My pattern was that it would get bad, some incident would happen, like splitting my head open on the kitchen floor, and I would reign it back in to almost normal for someone in their early 20s, figure, OK, I’ve got a handle on this, then increase it bit by bit, seeing what I could ‘get away with,’ until another accident, humiliation, betrayal, meltdown, shitshow, and I’d reign it back in again, to show everyone, and myself. how capable I was of managing life with alcohol.
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Here is a list of suicide crisis hotlines by country:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines
Here are links to support groups with an online presence that can be vital in recovery:
For a comprehensive list of 12 Step Meetings:
https://12step.org/social/online-meetings
Smart Recovery:
https://www.smartrecovery.org/community
Refuge Recovery
https://www.refugerecovery.org
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