posted by: audra
another painful monday, yet again. i am functioning on 4 hours of sleep. four hours! i really have no idea how i was able to get myself out of bed this morning…sam & i really tied one on yesterday/last night! and we didn’t even go out; our sunday consisted of sleeping till 1:00, lazing about for a few hours, pounding enough water to cancel out the alcohol from the night before, & then drink commencement. in the drunken cloud of sunday, we managed an embarrassing round of scrabble (embarrassing for me, anyway), the making of this awesome culinary invention, & watching a semi-naughty movie that kept the gusset of my non-existent knickers moist for the entire 90 minutes of the film.
more drinking ensued. still drinking well after midnight, & in anticipation of getting up at 5:30, i started to panic. because i know it sucks to be at work incredibly hungover, tired, nauseated…sigh. this is not new to me. but this going to bed at 1am, drunk, on a sunday night, is.
usually it’s more like midnight, which is entirely different.
so, sam & i like to drink. a lot. so what? we have always stood firmly on the belief that we know we are not alcoholics because of these things:
*we don’t drink to escape. we drink because drinking is fun & makes us more fun to be around. everyone benefits!
*we have concluded that if we really wanted to, we could each stop drinking at any time & not go through withdrawals. we wouldn’t be as fun or social, but it is possible.
*we do not wake up in the morning & start hitting the bottle of ketel one.
*we drink ketel.
*we don’t take shots or drink our vodka straight from a large plastic cup like the poor pathetic addicts on intervention do.
*only champagne causes us to fight, & only once has it resembled a scene out of who’s afraid of virginia woolf?.
*we don’t drink for the sole purpose of getting drunk. although it happens frequently, we just enjoy drinking just for the drinking part.
but then i got to thinking…does all this make us functioning alcoholics?! i wasn’t all that familiar with the term – other than tossing it around with a smirk every now & then – so i did some investigation work.
courtesy of google, a random “medical” website & the help of my vodka-soaked brain, i learned that a high-functioning alcoholic is such:
An HFA (high-functioning alcoholic) is an alcoholic who is able to maintain his or her outside life, such as a job, home, family, and friendships, all while drinking alcoholically. HFAs have the same disease as the stereotypical “skid-row” alcoholic, but it manifests or progresses differently. Many HFAs are not viewed by society as being alcoholic, because they have succeeded and over-achieved throughout their lifetimes. These achievements often lead to an increase in personal denial as well as denial from colleagues and loved ones. HFAs are less apt to feel that they need treatment for their alcoholism and often slide through the cracks of the health care system, both medically and psychologically, because they are not diagnosed.
well? there you go! not even a high-functioning alcoholic! if we had this dreaded disease, clearly we would be in denial. but here i am, putting it out there & evaluating the magnitude of our drinking. just for funsies. or maybe that is the denial part?! shit. ooh, the mind quails! discuss.
xoxo,
martha (& george)
art to choke on 
