When I stopped drinking, I felt had been freed from an abusive partner. Alcohol is good at seducing you. It promises excitement and showers you with what you want: instant gratification. Alcohol charms your friends too. You look forward to seeing it every weekend. You believe it is making you happy.
Its influence is potent and far reaching. Insidiously so.
Behind closed doors, things become rocky. Attrition happens little by little. Alcohol is a narcissist and wants it to be all about them. It isolates you and dictates what you do. It feeds off your self-doubt. It manipulates your lack of memory, blackout serving as the golden opportunity to gaslight. You want to get back to how it used to be but that's now impossible.
Here are some red flags I ignored for too long:
Drinking alone
Drinking to change my mood
Drinking in the morning (and not just at the airport)
These things marked out my relationship with alcohol as dysfunctional. The first two don't necessarily mean you have a drink problem, but there is a vast amount of difference in having one glass on a Friday night to three bottles. There is nothing wrong in having a drink to lift your spirits, as long that doesn't require the whole bottle. Lockdown solidified the third. The chalkboard welcome of 'it's happy hour somewhere' morphed into me cracking open a beer regardless of the hour. My drinking had no boundaries, and it's hard to backtrack once patterns become unhealthy.