Community Share

No one intends to drink themselves into alcoholism.

…..pssst, I will be traveling tomorrow for a long weekend celebrating one of our besties getting married, so the Feel Good Studio subscribers will get the newsletter early next week. I hope to share how this wedding goes, considering a ton of people that we used to party with in NYC are now on the NA lifestyle! Oh, how the times have changed :)

Connection starts when we can see ourselves in another person’s story.

Tell us your story. Have you overcome something? Have you quit drinking? Have you discovered something about yourself that amazed you? Have you created something? Have you ever been to the depths of despair and survived? How? What is your hero story? Or are you still in it? What brings you hope? Tell us how you are embracing the aging process. How have friendships changed? How have you changed or stayed the same? Tell us what lights you up, what inspires you, and what makes you feel good. Tell us something good and true.

I knew I wanted you to read Mandy’s story before I even finished reading it. There are so many relatable moments for me, and I feel you may see a lot of your drinking in her story as well. The thing is, we never know where alcohol is going to take us. It could be a great night out with loads of laughs, or it could turn into a nightmare. And it’s fair to say that no one sets out to drink themselves into alcoholism. But we never know if and when it will sneak up on us. I appreciate how Mandy shares how her fun lifestyle with her husband slowly started shifting into something less desirable and the strength it took to stop that trajectory and at the risk of losing her marriage.

XX, M

Hello.

     My name is Mandy Bantican. I am 43 years old. I am married, with two children, two cats, and two dogs. I have what I like to call a healthy obsession with houseplants. I  am also 820 days sober as of today. I would like to share with you my journey with alcohol.

     My relationship with alcohol has always been unhealthy, though it was never recognized as such by anyone other than myself a few years before I got sober. My first drink was on my high school graduation night. I got absolutely hammered on Boones Farm. You would think this would have been a celebration. You would be wrong. It was a terrible day for me. My family skipped the graduation ceremony. I had been kicked out of my house a few months prior to graduation and my relationship with my mother was/is tumultuous. She was/is a controlling, manipulative, and immature person. Getting drunk that night was my first taste of avoiding my feelings about my mother and drowning my sorrows with booze. 

     For the next 18 years I was a champion weekend binge drinker. I occasionally pre-gamed at home before going out, but never really kept alcohol at home or had any desire to drink at home. It was very social drinking, but quite often I would black out. I never understood the concept of moderation, and honestly didn't have any desire to just have a couple of drinks. I didn't see the point of drinking if you weren't going to get hammered. 

     My husband and I met at a bar and fell fast and hard when I was 29. We drank together, we had a lot of fun, and a lot of fights. We were married two years later and had our first child the next year. We have a lot of family that was always willing to watch our son, so we still went out and got drunk quite frequently. 

     Everything changed when I got pregnant with our daughter at 36. We needed to move out of our tiny house. We bought a new home just up the street. It was beautiful, but did need some upgrades. My husband would paint and get the house ready with his buddies after work. I was heavily pregnant and taking care of our toddler. I started noticing him drinking nearly every day, and he started keeping beer in the fridge. I voiced my concerns. He explained that he was just stressed out and dealing with it all the best way that he knew how. I now realize that the friend who helped him is a daily drinker, and my husband has a strong need to fit in. If others are drinking, he feels the urge. That is a huge issue for us now, but we'll get back to that later.

     We have our daughter in 2016, move into the new house, and everything is good. Then, my cousin, who is also one of my husband's best friends, separates from his wife. He came over frequently, armed with a 12 pack and needing comfort and support. We started drinking sporadically through the week when he would visit. We started having people over on the weekends because our new house was set up perfectly for entertaining. Additionally, we were in our late thirties and getting too old for the bar scene.

     I voiced my opinions about the more frequent drinking and the fact that our habits had changed drastically. I would defer to my husband for this, for some reason. My husband would often chalk our drinking up to the stress of having kids. I think I thought that if he thought it was okay, then it must be okay.

     Shortly after our daughter was born my grandmother died. Six months later my Aunt Sandy died suddenly from brain cancer. She was more like a mother to me than my own mother. A year later my grandfather died, and later that same year my father-in-law died. This was a lot. I started drinking more and more through the week. 

     The next year my father's health started declining. The doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong for the longest time. He lost a lot of weight and ended up getting a feeding tube because he couldn't swallow. At the end of 2019 they found cancer in his throat. They  had to do a radical neck dissection. His tongue and voice box were removed, and his neck had to be reconstructed. At this point I was drinking every day. I had transitioned from the social binge drinker to using wine to cope with my life. I was using it to deal with the stress of being my dad's primary caretaker. That Christmas I woke up and realized that I had passed out and failed to wrap the Santa presents. It was one of my lowest points. My dad came home from the hospital in January 2020. 

     I quit smoking cigarettes at this time. I distinctly remember thinking that if I just got drunk enough, I would forget about how much I wanted a cigarette. So, I drank a lot. 

     Then, Covid happened. I remember hearing from someone that businesses were starting to close and I panic bought several CASES of alcohol. I was afraid that the liquor stores would shut down! I work at a food factory so we never shut down, but I did take six weeks off. I home schooled the kids everyday and then promptly started drinking. This is when I realized I no longer had control of the situation and tried a hundred different ways and rules to moderate. Of course, none of them worked. I spoke to my best friend and told her that I was struggling with drinking. She tried to make me feel better about it and convinced me that everything was fine. 

      I was blacking out every night. I woke up (sometimes in my daughter's bed having passed out there with last night's wine still on her bedside table) every day hating myself. I wouldn't know what I fed my kids for dinner the night before, and had no recollection of conversations after 6 pm. I was drunkenly rage texting family and friends. 

     At this point I knew that I was an alcoholic. My favorite activity was being alone with my wine. It was the best day when my husband would take the kids to an activity and I could get drunk by myself. It would always end badly though, usually fighting with my husband about when he was going to be home even though I was the one who sent them away. I sometimes wonder what was going through his mind during this time and I question how he didn't say something about my drinking. He never brought it up to me that he was seeing any red flags or had any concerns. 

     I would drunkenly take those "Are you an alcoholic?" quizzes. But I still didn't really feel like I was at a critical level because I showed up to work on time, and every day. I never called off work because of my drinking. I never drank in the morning. I wasn't a homeless person with a bottle in a paper bag sleeping under a bridge. It's funny what your brain tells you when you're in denial.

     My rock bottom came in July 2020 when I seriously contemplated taking wine to work with me so that I could start drinking after lunch. It was at that point that I knew that alcohol was going to ruin my life. Every day I would wake up and promise myself that I would not drink that day. Inevitably, on the way home from work I couldn't NOT stop at the liquor store that was on the rotation that day for my daily two bottles of pinot. There were three stores that I would rotate so that none of the liquor store clerks would see me two days in a row.

     This struggle went on for months, still trying to moderate, thinking that I could undo the alcoholism and revert back to being a "normal" binge drinker. It obviously did not work. If anything, it was almost as if the harder I tried to moderate, the more I drank. I finally heard about this author Alan Carr. A comedian I follow on Instagram recommended his quit smoking book, and mentioned that he had wrote a book about quitting drinking as well. I ordered the book Quit Drinking Without Willpower.  I started reading it in December of 2020 and it was like a light switch flipped. It absolutely changed my thinking about alcohol and I would say it almost brainwashed me. It took a few tries, but ultimately I took my last drink on January 11th, 2021. 

     This was still during the pandemic, so my only resources for recovery were quit lit and sober Instagram. About 6 months into sobriety I started attending sober women meetings via zoom. I enjoyed the community aspect of this, but found it hard to connect completely due to the meetings not being in person. 

     When I was 18 months sober I started attending in person AA meetings. I did enjoy going to the meetings and being around others who are familiar with and understand my struggles, but I didn't really connect to the program because I am agnostic. I do not have a higher power, and have no desire for one. I have a hard time giving credit to something/someone for all of my hard work and sacrifice. I did all of that. That's mine. I also have a big problem with being anonymous. I want to spread the word. Shout it from the rooftops. Sobriety is amazing, and having a problem with alcohol is nothing to be ashamed of. Shame is deadly. I am not ashamed, I am proud!

     At this point in time I am doing well in my sobriety. I have cravings occasionally of course. I deal with them by sitting with it, and really thinking about what would happen if I gave in to them. They go away. My biggest problem right now is that my husband still drinks. He can't, or doesn't want to, respect my boundaries protecting my sobriety and our kids. He sees my boundaries as me trying to control him. He comes home drunk and I am repulsed by the person he becomes. I am not sure if our marriage will survive this. My sobriety is the most important thing in my life. I am grateful every day for the change in my life that a lot of people struggle with for years, and one that some never overcome. But I also feel like sobriety might be the end of my marriage. 

Warm regards,

Mandy Bantican 

IG- mandy_bantican 

Thank you, Mandy, for sharing your story. And I am honored to share it with this community. Sending you love and strength as you continue to navigate what this lifestyle looks and feels like for you.

XX,

Mia

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XX, M