Teetotalism: A Brief Personal History On Why & How I Chose Sober Over Sizzled
By: Ben Ravetta
Tags: Alcoholism, Positivity, Personal Growth, Alcohol, Life Lessons

Photo by Erik Gazi on Unsplash

tee·​to·​tal·​ism | \ ˈtē-ˈtō-tᵊl-ˌi-zəm , -ˌtō- \ Definition of teetotalism : the principle or practice of complete abstinence from alcoholic drinks

Did you know teetotalism was a word? No, me neither. #everydayisaschoolday. So, I guess I practice teetotalism. But why am I teetotal? And more importantly — how did I become teetotal?

Let me start this story with a little background about me, my life and my relationship with alcohol.

Backstory

I’m currently 30-something. I’m not going to divulge my real age, because I don’t like to remember how old I am — it’s depressing. But I’m in my early 30’s whilst writing this article. When I turned 30, I had major life-anxiety. I don’t know what happened, turning 30 was some sort of psychological doorway for my subconscious. A doorway that, when passed through, triggered all sorts of unwanted and intrusive feelings. “I’m getting old. What have I accomplished in life? I have literally done nothing.” I’d spent the last (at least) 12 years since 18 years old, living an alcohol-fuelled, reckless bachelor life with a total disregard for the law, my health, responsibilities whether I had them or not (I didn’t have many) and most of all — my future. I lived in the fast lane, I put my head in a bottle and my foot on the gas and by the time I looked up, I was turning 30 with nothing physical to show for it. Nothing that I thought I needed to show. You know, the car, the house, the family, the job, the stability, the maturity. None of that. I was still living at home with my mother until I was 28. Still jobless. Still reckless. Still losing. And I hold myself accountable for that. I chose fun and (mostly) freedom over finances and hard-work. But if you can’t do it in your 20’s, when can you? I had jobs here and there, but I never kept them. I racked up debts and was a general piece of shit.

BUT. I. LIVED.

And this is where the problem began for me, I think. During these years, I met hundreds if not thousands of people. In clubs, at house parties, here, there and everywhere. Some of them I’m still friends with to this day. Some of them I will always be friends with. Some of them I had romantic relationships with, but for most of them — it was platonic, because we were like family. I had a lot of criminal friends, we were outlaws, the misfits, the broken and forgotten. We made our own rules. And because of that, the things we went through made our relationships and friendships that much tighter. So, you see the problem. I wasn’t an alcoholic, but alcohol was the glue that stuck it all together. As time wore on, I often looked back at times gone by with a bittersweet fondness, perhaps akin to how I imagine a war veteran feels. I romanticised my memories, and I still do. But as I romanticised my memories, I also romanticised the alcohol.

At points during these years, I experienced traumas beyond that of which others experience. I won’t go into those details here, because I’m not ready to talk about it. But for the sake of this article, we will call that trauma — the ex-girlfriend. More on that later. I mention it now, because it happened now. All my friends I’d met at parties, and the biggest thing we had in common was alcohol and our love for reckless living. I began using alcohol to forget how shitty my real life was. As soon as I hooked up with my mates, bought a few crates of beer, decided on a house party we were going to — that was it. Everything seemed better. I didn’t have to worry about my responsibilities or my terrible life. I’d shut the outside world out and become the person I truly was without fear of judgement. Without the crippling anxiety and panic attacks that I experienced daily when without a drink. I loved a good kitchen party. All crammed into the kitchen, smoking, drinking, having deep conversations about life and discussing conspiracy theories and how aliens must have assembled the pyramids. How George Bush worshipped the devil and attended Bohemian Grove to sacrifice children to Moloch the owl God 😂

All of my friends took drugs, regularly. Heavily. We were all cut from the same cloth. Although, I didn’t take drugs. Aside from alcohol and cigarettes and I even packed the cigs in later on. I was heavily against drugs. I’d smoked weed back in 2007/8 and it had given me anxiety and panic attacks. Since then, I would get anxiety about taking any sort of recreational drugs and that incident probably saved my life. I’d seen friends OD during parties, some of my friends have died from drugs.

But, I digress.

At 27 I had a mental breakdown. I was in a rut. The recklessness got worse. I’d gamble hundreds of pounds away on stupid bets with ridiculous odds, convinced that if I could just win a couple hundred grand, my life would be ok. Of course, I turned further to alcohol, because it’s all I knew. I had sank into depression like it was a memory foam mattress. I had started drinking alone. I’d go for walks at night alone, with a bag full of alcohol and contemplate suicide. Just slipping away in the night somewhere. Nobody would know. “Would anybody care?” It got so bad, that one night, I came home and wrote a suicide note to my Mother before waking her up mid-breakdown. This is really when it hit home for me. Looking back, I was so close to the edge. I never really wanted to die. I just wanted life to stop hurting me. Nobody to this day will know just how painful my life had truly gotten. Thankfully I got help when I needed it. But I wasn’t out of the woods just yet.

One day, I decided I’d had enough of feeling sorry for myself. And I know, depression is so much more than that. But I wanted to be hard on myself for a reason. I needed to be. I needed to find the motivation inside me. I needed to rise up like a phoenix from the ashes, to pull myself up. To say “FUCK YOU” to the world and everybody who had put me in that rut. I was sick of anxiety limiting what I could do. Was I going to let it dictate to me how I lived my life? What, forever? No. Fuck that. Up until this point, I had turned away from any job on offer that I thought would be terrible for me. People facing jobs. Jobs where I needed to talk to people. To deal with people. I was afraid of people. But, I needed to deploy extraordinary courage if I was to get out of this hole I was in. So, I applied for customer facing jobs. All the jobs that I knew I could get, but didn’t want. Customer Assistants, Telesales, Retail workers, etc. I waited and waited. I applied for more. What did I have to lose? Literally, nothing.

Finally, news came back for one job. I had gotten an interview! I went to the interview. I got the job. I battled insecurities and fears and the everyday anxieties of an introvert, to get a job at Tesco stacking Fruit & Veg. A customer facing role. A people facing role. I couldn't believe I had managed to destroy the fears I had, by facing them head on. I worked that job for a year and to this day, it has been the most rewarding role. I made a few friends from that job that I still have to this day. But it changed my life. Just that one decision. I am so thankful to have been given that opportunity, I didn’t realise it at the time but it probably saved my life.

From 27–30 I continued to drink, party and live a reckless life when drunk. Except now, I had developed severe anger issues due to the aforementioned trauma. I internalised everything. No matter how much therapy I had, it still ate me up inside. I was bitter and angry and all in all, an awful person to be around whenever I had an outburst of rage. My temper had gotten worse. My fuse didn’t exist any more. I scared myself at times. Ordinary things would send me into fits of rage. I was frustrated at a major injustice in my life. Whenever I drank, the amount of fucks I gave really started to show. It was like, I could fake it through everyday life without alcohol, but as soon as I had a drink, it would all come to the surface. The depression, the anger, the resentment, the bitterness. The sheer rage scared me. I wanted the world to explode into a trillion pieces. I felt nuclear. Like a bomb, ready to go off. Was this PTSD? Even to this day, I suffer from hyper-arousal. I don’t know if it’s PTSD. I don’t know if it’s “just” anxiety. The only way I can describe it, is as if my adrenaline is surging all the time. I feel like I have to move all the time. I’m always on edge. Some days more than others.

In 2015 I met a friend through a friend on a night out (surprise, surprise) and ended up working with him in telesales. Could you imagine? TELEPHONE SALES. Me. A socially awkward introvert with anxiety. Selling to people over the phone. 5 years previous I could barely answer a phone call, let alone make one. It was around this time I quit smoking. Just cold turkey. Just like that. I had smoked since I was 15 years old. I still struggled and had the occassional smoke when drunk. I moved out into my own place during 2016, with a best-friend I’d known for 10+ years, she’s now my girlfriend. This was liberating, but brought a whole new set of responsibilities. But, I think this grounded me a little bit. I was gifted a Golden Retriever through that telesales job. The owner worked too much and couldn’t keep her. It was blessing. Margo is now 4 years old and she is the best therapy I could have ever asked for.

My girlfriend Hayley, Margo and me — Christmas 2016

My girlfriend has, on many occasions; seen my anger first hand, after I have come home drunk. All of my family members have. I would never hit anybody, I wasn’t abusive in that sort of way. But I was abusive. Not intentionally, but I was. I would break things, and hurt myself by punching walls or floors. I hated who I was. I was really messed up. It wasn’t fair on her or anybody else including me. At 30, something opened my eyes. It was like I had suddenly developed a frightening sense of my own mortality. The hourglass had been trickling away for the past ten years, but it felt like I had only just realised that there was only so much sand left to go — before time ran out.

In March of 2018, for the last time, I went out with a good friend of mine. We drank ourselves through 3 bottles of Jim Beam bourbon that night. It wasn’t until I was alone, in a park, in the dark, trying to look for my phone at 3am in the morning that I realised this needed to end. Screaming the park down because I thought I had lost it (it was in my bag the whole time). It was a wake up call. I had major health anxiety and no wonder. I am thankful that I survived, but it’s a miracle that I did.

This was the last time I touched alcohol.