Why Do I Drink When There’s Always Guilt The Next Day?

Am I in love with guilt?

Photo by thom masat on Unsplash

Another family wedding reception party. Another night of heavy drinking and conversations with people I wouldn’t even look into the eye for more than a second on a normal day. Another morning filled with enormous guilt and physical weakness!

I am making weird sounds every time my mind gets flashes from last night, which my wife says is me cringing on myself.

Why, Adesh, why?

Why do I drink, when I know it hurts the next morning?

At first glance, things seem something like this:

I don’t have friends so whichever party I go to is a family one. Which means, it is about obligations.

Obligations mean it is something I do not want to do. I do not want to go to such parties because I do not want to socialize. I do not want to meet my extended family members.

Yet, obligations mean I have to go, despite my lack of interest! Which means I need to find a way to make it tolerable and manageable. (I also need to find a reason to tell myself I am beyond obligations and I am doing it out of my free will.)

And what do I lure myself with?

Alcohol!

It becomes the thing that makes the visit tolerable. It becomes the thing that makes me alright.

I drink even though it hurts the next day because I have to make obligatory family parties tolerable for me. And alcohol makes that happen!

Or so I thought before writing this. Because from a slightly different glance, things seem something like this:

If I go to parties for obligations only, why the hell don’t I stay for half-an-hour and leave. I mean, that would be perfect, wouldn’t it? Obligations done ✔ ️Alcohol none❌

But I don’t do that, do I?

In fact, the thought of such an act makes me feel I am missing out on something big. It’s like everyone’s playing outside and I am forced to sleep in my bed with a fever.

And then I discover another reason I go to such parties. A reason that is in contrast to the reason I thought I drank alcohol at such parties:

To have social fun.

I am someone who doesn’t hangout with anyone apart from my immediate family. Even when I do hangout with others, I feel uncomfortable and lost. Which means such parties are the only platforms where I get to be around and talk with other people.

Here, alcohol becomes the thing that makes me comfortable around people by removing the social block. It allows me to enjoy society.

What the hell is going on?

Why Do I Drink When There’s Always Guilt The Next Day?

What happens to me is something that is inherent to human desires: Lack of conviction. I have talked about the relationship between desires and doubts here.

I both do not want to socialize and want to socialize. Just like I both want to be a writer and not-want to be one. Our mind is not sure about things. Especially about the things we want. That’s the way it is. That’s the way it should be. This lack of assurance equips us with that extra perspective without which a lot of us would have ended up in prison or far worse places a long time ago. I digress.

I do not want to be around people apart from family, yet that distance makes me want to be around people on occasions. Parties come up as opportunities for me to finally let loose. Finally express, Finally boast. But my limited interactions with people has made me shy and uncomfortable to an extent that I can hardly utter a word without stammering. And that’s where I use the devil’s favorite drink: ALCOHOL.

A few ounces in and I get to finally be the person in social settings I only imagine myself to be. I express those sentiments eloquently that come to me secretly while I am alone and which I carefully hide under the carpet of my mind. I express those sentiments with people who appear in my dreams and waking-thoughts, whom I normally erase with the magical erasure inside my mind.

Although I seem to interact less and stay alone most of the time, I am never alone inside my mind. There are always people here. The one’s I meet at parties are here, right now too.

I feel guilty the next day because by then the show is over and so is the alcohol’s effect. The guilt is nothing but my day-to-day self feeling embarrassed, regretting whatever the alcohol allowed me to do the night before. Things I wouldn’t have done (been able to do). It’s the other half of my conflicting mind forgetting why I wanted to go to the parties. THE LAW OF DOUBTS!

I have seen a few drinkers who too make a fool out of themselves at such parties, but are calm and composed the next day. I have talked to them. It seemed magical to me how they managed to wake up as if nothing happened. But what I see now in all those drinkers is that they are social people. Ones who have hundreds of conversations each week. A party for them is just another day. Just another group of persons. They making a fool out of themselves is my perspective.

For them, the alcohol must be acting as an enhancer. In my case, it is a reliance. They are ones who might be bored but will still manage to be fine at a party without alcohol, but me — I can’t even imagine at a party without one.

That’s it.

That’s my answer.

I drink when there’s always guilt the next day because alcohol is the only thing that makes me comfortable in a social environment and I have accepted the guilt in bargain for a chance to be around people once in a blue moon!