The bike and the bottle
I published the following on LinkedIn and wanted to share it with you.
For years I was a functional alcoholic.
Functional, because I was also an athlete.
I commuted by bike five days a week. Thirty-two kilometers a day. Three hundred meters of climbing. Then I drank. More than most people would believe.
I didn't know these two things were connected. I thought one was discipline and the other was a problem.
They were the same engine. The bike was burning something the bottle was feeding. As long as both ran, the house stood.
Then the pandemic came and took the bike.
One pillar gone. The whole load shifted to the other.
The drinking climbed to cover what the riding used to carry, and unbalanced, overloaded, it started doing damage it had never done before.
Somewhere in that year I went to a psychiatrist. I told her I thought I was becoming an alcoholic.
She told me not to worry. Enjoy your one or two glasses of wine a day.
It wasn't one or two glasses. It was more than a bottle.
Later I went to a different one. By then I'd made a plan. I wouldn't drink alone anymore. Only around people, only on weekends. I'd held it a week and I was proud of myself, and I told her so.
She listened. Then she said, that's interesting. Do you think it will work?
If you read this and recognize yourself in it, not the bike, the bottle:
Stopping was the best thing I ever did.
Not the hardest thing I survived.
The best thing I chose.
It's possible. And the person on the other side is glad in a way he couldn't have imagined.