How Alcohol Triggers My PTSD
This weekend I spent a lot of time thinking about PTSD and how it affects people differently depending on what the cause is.
So, Let’s Talk About It
Although there are 5 different types of PTSD all of them are caused by one major factor trauma, and the 5 different types are based off the way your body reacts to that trauma.
I have been diagnosed with PTSD for quite a few years now. Complex PTSD, which basically means there are numerous different traumatic events which cause my PTSD. Typically, people with complex PTSD exhibit behavioral issues such as impulsivity, aggression, substance abuse or sexual impulsivity.
There’s of course a lot of events that have led to me having PTSD, but the major one is my mom’s drinking.
Because of her alcoholism many things in my life have changed.
I suffered from my own alcoholism for a period of time after I got clean from drugs.
Something I never said I would do. But then again, I also said id never do drugs.
And now, I am triggered when people bring alcohol around my kids, when friends drink every day or when people I love have a “cold one” everyday after work.
Obviously, having one beer after work doesn’t make you an alcoholic. As adult, we should be able to do that. But for me, it gives me a sense of anxiety that I cannot escape from.
I don’t allow alcohol in my house, on very rare occasions I will have a single wine cooler in my fridge, and sometimes a beer or bottle of wine to cook with, other than that I don’t. I don’t allow people to consume alcohol in from of my children. Just don’t do it. I will literally go crazy. My children have never seen me drunk nor will they ever see me drunk.
Don’t get me wrong I like to drink, I like to go out once and a while. However, I will only do that outside of my house. I know it sounds crazy and I know I look crazy but something about my children seeing people intoxicated just sets me off. I think the thought of my children growing up thinking that is normal behavior just like I did scares me.
When my mom was alive, she would NOT respect my “don’t drink around my kids” rule, of course how could she though? She was a raging alcoholic, the only memories my children will ever have of her she was drunk, because there wasn’t a time when she wasn’t. They were too little thankfully to understand that she was drunk, but they absolutely know she was an alcoholic, they mention the empties around the house, the boxes of wine she would drink, and my youngest son remembers a time where she fell trying to hug him.
Imagine waking up every day and reliving the worst day of your life over and over and over again. This is what happens when I think about people drinking in front of my kids. It’s like a switch goes off in my brain that plays a reel of every single moment I ever seen my mom drunk and doing something stupid, every time I was screamed at for no reason because she was drunk, every party she threw at my house as a child, every time I had to clean throw up off my floor, every time I needed to tuck my brother into bed. Just on repeat until I can manage to talk myself down from the anxiety attack that I have now been thrown into.
Sometimes I worry that my children will still grow up thinking the life my mother lived was okay, alcoholism is in their DNA, addiction is in their DNA. These are things they cannot escape without just not doing it at all. I know that my overprotective behavior will not shield them from drinking with their friends when they are teens, or having college parties when they leave home. But for some reason, in my head it provides them with a barrier to the life their DNA has predisposed them to live.
Living in fear of what your children will become because of what you are, what their fathers are, what their grandparents are is terrifying.
I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who live like me.
Fearing the worst for their children based on their own shitty decisions.
I just hope that through that fear we teach them to be better than the mistakes we made, the mistakes our parents made, and educate them on how quickly one choice can change everything.
I just hope my children are better than I ever was.
