Binge Drinking

I’ve been drinking since I was sixteen years old. In high school I quickly learned I liked myself better with a buzz going. I didn’t need peer pressure to pop open a beer, I was sold immediately. I was a shy kid who wasn’t very sure of himself. But after a couple of drinks the confidence would pour in and the insecurity out. Alcohol helped me to do things that intimidated me while sober, like approach girls or speak my mind around my peers. I felt better when I drank, and this carried right along through college.

I went to a big state school – The University of Texas – where the fun I had with high school drinking ratcheted up to another level. No parents and no curfews meant no boundaries. Every social activity—parties, football games, playing cards until the wee hours—all revolved around drinking.

By the time I left college, alcohol defined my social lifestyle. In my 20’s, the black-outs starting happening more often. By the time my 30’s rolled around, I noticed I wanted to drink less when going out but couldn’t stop. The peer pressure during my adult years was stronger than my teens. I didn’t want to feel resented for stopping the party, when in retrospect any projected resentment from a friend likely stemmed from their own insecurities with drinking. But alas, I kept the party going.

Then some big alarm bells started sounding off, like shitting my pants right before passing out, waking up in the middle of the night with my heart racing, or forgetting where I parked my car the morning after a night out. One time I called the police, intending to report my car stolen, only to pass it parked on the street on the way to the police station. Despite the embarrassing episodes and living through 3-day hangovers time after time, no matter how often I told myself “Ok, that’s it, time to throttle the brakes”, I’d dry out the following Friday and tie one on again. I acknowledged to myself that I had a problem, but soon chose to deny it once the next weekend came around.

Then soon after I turned 43, my appendix almost exploded. Two days prior to checking myself into the emergency room, a friend and I opened a bar at 9 am to watch college football. A few margaritas later, we took the celebration to a beach bar all afternoon, then martinis at another watering hole, followed by a hotel where my friend hosted her birthday party that evening. All of this was capped off by drinks at my place until… 3:00 am-ish? Don’t remember exactly but all told I racked up about 18 straight hours of boozing. The following night I woke up sweating with the feeling of a sack of nuts and bolts lodged in my stomach. By morning the pain had moved to my lower abdomen. An hour later, sitting on a medical table, the doctor laughed at me after I asked if I antibiotics will cure appendicitis.

“Uh no, you have to go the emergency room now. Your appendix bursts and you could die.”

The next day while recovering at home from the operation, the self-flagellation kicked in. What the hell is wrong with you? Do you really think you can keep drinking like you’re in college? I didn’t drink for weeks, but I started up again, and soon I was back to having nights where I overdid it. I couldn’t stop.

Then I met San Pedro in February 2020. It was the beginning of now a 3-year journey of working with the plant. San Pedro first associated feelings of guilt and shame with alcohol, and then later it helped me uncover abuse I experienced at a young age. The science behind this isn’t concrete, but there seems to be a correlation between childhood abuse or deep trauma and addictive behavior. Doctors like Gabor Mate claim that early traumas trigger our brains to deplete or cut off dopamine and other chemicals associated with love and attachment. As we mature, we discover “solutions” like alcohol and drugs to replenish those chemicals. Others claim there’s no direct evidence linking abuse and addiction, based on surveys of addicts who don’t report a personal history of abuse. I challenge the truth underlying these surveys, as many of us don’t remember early childhood traumas (as in my case which I’ll get to below.) My friend John Wood, who runs The Rageheart Academy, will tell you abusing substances is a means to rebalance the nervous system (which could also stem from abuse).

Regardless of what’s happening physiologically, for some of us it’s difficult to identify as a victim of abuse. What I do know, for me, is that the trauma I experienced triggered my mind to disconnect from my body as a defense mechanism, a means to survive. I’ve been disconnected from my body for as long as I can remember; ignoring it when I feel it can’t handle another drink is my prime example.

I suppressed my traumatic childhood experiences for decades—I had no idea they happened until San Pedro, as well as ayahuasca, brought them to light. The extreme physical toll required of me to release these suppressed, unexpressed emotions in ceremonies leaves me no doubt that they happened.

After multiple San Pedro ceremonies, thoughts of having a drink didn’t follow with a craving for it. In one ceremony last year, the mere thought of alcohol made me puke. A few months later I had a dream: a woman approached me and offered a shot of rum. I downed the shot then felt something thin and sharp in my mouth: I pulled out a sewing needle, stared at it and then woke up. My relationship with alcohol was on the mend.

My disposition with alcohol today: I feel physically ill at the thought of drinking more than my body is telling me, which is usually 2 beers, tops. Red wine and spirits rarely mesh well with me unless I have a solid meal in my stomach. Overall, I probably average 3-4 drinks per month, when just 3 years ago that was 10-20 drinks over any given weekend. All I want to do is turn up the temperature in the room, not rearrange the furniture (crediting one of my favorite authors, Tom Robbins, for that little metaphor).

And I don’t need it to feel confident anymore or suppress feelings that need to be felt. When I’ve had a shit day, I don’t grab a beer. San Pedro has given me the presence and awareness to sit with and hold space for whatever negative emotions that come up. I haven’t mastered this yet, I still let emotions get the best of me all the time. But they don’t translate into a need to drink alcohol. My gratitude for San Pedro runs deep.

I believe plant medicines like San Pedro are powerful tools for us to use to explore the underlying why of self-destructive habits and addictions. They give me the space to ask hard questions like, “What feelings am I escaping or numbing with drugs and alcohol? What am I seeking or getting from drinking (or any other addictive behaviors - food, pills, sex, porn, etc.) that is missing from my life?” These questions terrified me, but the space the plants held was always compassionate, and the answers that came were free of judgment and full of love.   

If my story resonates with you, I encourage you to look at the research, bring informed questions to your doctors and therapists, ask friends who may have had similar experiences, or reach out to experienced guides who are doing this work, like my teachers Chase and Bernhard. The more we open we are about addictive behavior and consider these plants as effective ways to repair addictive patterns, the better chance we have of increasing access to healing and wholeness for everyone.