It’s All an Experiment

At the beginning of 2020, when Covid-19 was rearing its ugly head, the world had suddenly become a much scarier place for me. I wanted to start nursing school in the fall, but I wondered if I would even be able to handle it with such an overwhelming pandemic on the loose. I worried that sharing vents with my apartment neighbors would lead to me being infected even without leaving my home. Life had been following a certain trajectory, and suddenly the rug was pulled out from underneath me. Was this the end of the world as we knew it?

I took a leave of absence from my gas station cashier job. I didn’t love the idea of being in contact with hundreds of people every day, and with the severity of the disease unknown at the time, I didn’t want to risk getting it. With all of my extra free time, I found myself glued to my phone. Every hour it seemed there were new stories, new recommendations from the CDC, new posts from peoples’ personal experience with the illness. I got sucked into the world of doomscrolling. Every waking hour, I was surfing Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, news sites, trying to stay ahead of the game.

On top of concerns about Covid-19, the internet was also reeling with the 2020 election cycle news, as well as police brutality protests. I felt as if I couldn’t escape negativity, bad news. It felt like the world was coming down around me. Everything felt uncertain, and I was scared. I would have conversations with Joshua about what we would do if shit really did hit the fan, which often resulted in us playing into each others’ anxieties.

One regular day began like any other. I woke up and immediately began scrolling through the various social media apps. I found myself in a state of anxiety before I’d even had time to fully wake up. It was then I realized that I needed to find a way to escape the cycle I’d become wrapped up in. Living in a constant state of fear wasn’t getting me anywhere. In fact, it was leaving me frozen on the couch, unable to dedicate energy towards anything else. Something had to give.

It was then that I decided, for my own sanity, to think of life as one big experiment.

I’ve never been certain about my stance on religion. Growing up, my family didn’t go to church. They did, however, entertain the idea of God existing. My step-dad, when asked if he believed in God told me, “If I didn’t have the fear of God in my heart, I would have been dead a long time ago.” My dad viewed attending church as some gold standard he was always trying to achieve. Each Saturday night he would promise me that we would wake the next morning to attend a service. Each Sunday morning would roll around, and he would have changed his mind just as quickly. My mother took a more laid-back approach. She believed in God in a vague sense, but she didn’t feel like you had to do much more than that.

In middle school, I began struggling with my mental health. As time passed, I became more and more estranged with my family. Lacking a support system, I turned to my local church’s youth group. I was hoping to find community, to feel like I finally belonged somewhere. That didn’t quite work out for me, as I still felt very disconnected from my peers. I felt as if they were all living happy, carefree lives and I was trapped in my own despair and dysfunction. Eventually, I pulled away from youth group and began learning about other avenues of spirituality. I was especially intrigued by things like astral projection, intention setting/ manifestation, and this concept that we were all connected by some common life force. At some point, I stumbled upon the idea of reincarnation. As I dug deeper, I even learned that some spiritualists believe that we choose what life we want before we are born, in an effort to learn certain lessons. I really attached to this idea.

In my teen years, I had already experienced and felt so much suffering. It took a lot of weight off of my shoulders when I thought about how I was just here to experience life, the good, the bad, and the ugly. The trauma and heartache didn’t have to mean anything more than my soul trying to learn a lesson. As I’ve grown up, I now see a lot of flaws in telling children that they “chose” this life in which they experience trauma and abuse outside of their control, but at the time, it gave me a sense of purpose.

I suppose in a lot of ways, after the doomscrolling and panic, I needed to gain that sense of control and purpose back. By beginning to think of life as one big experiment, that I am simply here to observe the affects of, it took a lot of the fear and pressure away. Suddenly, I wasn’t worried if this was the end of the world. If it was, then I was merely going to watch it. I am here to experience, not to judge. So I ended my leave of absence, and I enrolled in nursing school. I stopped letting fear hold me back.

Today, I feel like I have a lot to learn from younger me. The past couple of years, I have felt stuck. Stuck in the darkness of my mind and the negativity of the world around me. In some ways, I even feel stuck in the trauma of my teenage years, unable to truly move past my experiences in a meaningful way. I feel stuck in the paths laid out before me, the paths I watched my parents go down. Stuck in unrealistic expectations, both towards myself and those most important to me.

For the past two years, I’ve been struggling with alcoholism. Even typing that out fills me with a sense of overwhelming shame. My brain asks, “How could you allow yourself to get here, after watching what these choices did to your dad?” and that isn’t a helpful question, because it fills me with even more shame. Shame, I’ve come to learn, plays a huge role in our ability (or inability) to connect with others. If you’re filled with shame, you’re unlikely to ever feel as if you belong. I’ve been living in shame for most of my life, and I’m tired.

So I’m turning again to the experimentation mindset. The first step of the scientific method is to ask a question. My question is, what could happen if I stop drinking? I’m attaching no judgment or shame to my question. Instead, I’m approaching it with a curious mind. As if I am an archaeologist, using my tools to uncover the truth, excited to learn whatever there is to learn. My hypothesis is that by removing alcohol from my life, I will notice an improvement in my mental health, physical health, and intimate relationships.

I’m not getting this mindset on my own. I’ve been following along with a program called “The Alcohol Experiment,” from the author of “This Naked Mind,” Annie Grace. It was recommended to me by my therapist when I talked about my struggles with AA meetings. Today, I’m on day 16 of a 30 day experiment. Each day, I strive to pay attention to my thoughts and feelings, especially regarding alcohol cravings and my beliefs surrounding alcohol’s role in my life. The first few days were the most difficult. I craved alcohol nearly every evening, and had to talk myself out of stopping at the liquor store.

As the days have passed, I find myself feeling brighter. I notice the little things just a little bit more. I’ve been enjoying the sunshine lately, despite it still being freezing outside. I have found a little bit of optimism and hope, that up until 16 days ago, I had all but lost. The funny thing is that I kind of knew that all these months of drinking were damaging my mental health. I knew that I was feeling more depressed and anxious because of the way that alcohol acts in your brain. I knew that I was holding myself back from progressing in therapy by continuing to drink. I knew that I needed to stop drinking. Yet, the alcohol itself was keeping me trapped. It made me feel like there was something fundamentally wrong with me. Like, why couldn’t I just stop drinking? It made me feel that the only way out of feeling the way I did was to drink it away. As you can imagine, it made for a nasty cycle.

I’m not so disillusioned that I believe I’ve escaped the wrath of alcohol by abstaining from it for 16 days. I know this is only the beginning. I will likely have to continue making the decision to not drink for many years, if not my whole life. I also know that I have a lot to deal with mentally and emotionally.

The idea of sharing this post with people who know me really freaks me out. Yet, I know that shame keeps me trapped, and the only way through shame is by being authentic and trusting that other people can handle the truth. Alcohol plays on the dopamine centers in your brain. The same ones that activate with drugs, gambling, sex, and any other number of addictions. There’s nothing wrong with me. This is what our brains are literally designed to do. It sucks that I feel I have wasted a lot of potential in the past two years, but I have nothing to be ashamed of. I am a human being who has been through a tremendous amount, often lacking a support system. I am a human being who has a deep desire to connect, love, and be loved. I am a human being who deserves those things.

Besides, if life is all one big experiment, then I’m just here to see what happens if, for once in my life, I lean into authenticity and stop hiding the truth about myself.

I’m just here to see what happens.