this week, i came to the conclusion that i have to go completely sober from alcohol. this is not a choice that i made completely on my own. if it had been a choice that i’d made on my own, i think i'd feel a bit more excited about it. i was forced to make this decision against my own will. let me explain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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So this week, I came to the conclusion that I have to go completely sober from alcohol. Completely sober. Like, no little glass of wine here, tequila soda there. I'm talking completely sober. I'm talking I go to a bar and order a sparkling water with lime. Sober. possibly for the rest of my life. Now, I know what you're thinking. Wow, that's great. That's amazing. That's beautiful.
In a lot of ways, I agree with you. However, this is not a choice that I made completely on my own. If it had been a choice that I had made completely on my own, I think I'd feel a little bit more excited about it. I was forced to make this decision, in some ways, against my own will. Let me explain. It all started in 2021. In the midst of COVID, Emma is drinking a lot of alcohol. Okay?
Emma was drinking a lot of alcohol. I wouldn't say I was abusing it by... I mean... I think maybe a little bit, but I wouldn't say any more than the average college student. It's very common for kids, you know, in their early 20s to drink a little bit too much, right? That's not out of the ordinary. Does it make it right? Does it make it healthy? Absolutely not.
But it's to be expected in a way, right? I was drinking a I mean, when 5 o'clock would hit, I was making a drink. At best. And taking shots at worst. You know, COVID was rough. I think a lot of us were drinking. And so, I was one of them. I was one of them. And I didn't see it as a problem at the time. I saw it as normal. And I still... in a way, see it as normal.
But now hindsight being 2020, I look at it and I'm like, just because everyone else is doing it doesn't mean it's OK for you to do it. Right. Just because everybody else drinks a lot in their 20s, just because everybody else was drinking a lot because it was the pandemic and everybody was feeling nihilistic and confused doesn't mean it's OK that I did it. Not everybody makes that choice.
So I don't give myself a pass because everybody else was doing it. I still see that as problematic and unsustainable behavior. Anyway, I was drinking a lot. 2021. And at a certain point, I started to develop rashes and hives, particularly on my face, whenever I drank. I actually wouldn't say whenever I drank because I was drinking kind of a lot and I wasn't getting rashes every single time.
But I would say 75% of the time when I drank, I would develop hives. And it was really frustrating for me because I'd be drinking and then all of a sudden my face would start to feel really hot. And if I wasn't wearing makeup, you could very quickly start to see red patches all over my face and on my neck. And my face would swell up a little bit.
And not only was it incredibly uncomfortable and hot, like my face just felt hot and swollen, but it looked kind of jarring. Like you'd look at my face and be like, oh, she's definitely not doing well. Like something's going on. And this would happen, you know, after two drinks, right? Yeah. And for a long time, I was perplexed by this because it wasn't happening every single time.
I think if it had been happening every single time I would drink, I would have paid closer attention to it. But at the time, I wasn't in a particularly protective state of mind. Whereas now I'm very protective of myself. When something starts to go wrong or go awry, I immediately am checking in on it. If I feel like something's off in my body, I listen to it.
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