I used to get drunk at work - help

[Loister]

How do I get over the shame? After university I joined a large UK corporation. I know now that I was suffering from generalised anxiety, OCD and social anxiety. My current psychiatrist also suspects I’m autistic. In addition to being very damaged from a very traumatising childhood (sexual and physical abuse). I self medicated and am so ashamed.

Colleagues must have known. I would often over do it and just embarrass myself on the train home from work. I can recall the looks on people’s faces and it sends a shiver me down my spine. I’m so embarrassed and ashamed. The shame is making me ill!

It’s disgusting but I would take a shot in the morning in the bathroom at work to overcome my nerves. And I just took a shot every time my anxiety kicked in. Which it inevitably always did. And the issue just grew from there as my tolerances increased.

I’m no contact with my parents. Just would love some advice from the mums on here.

im doing well now - retrained, switched jobs. I only drink very rarely when I go out to celebrate but never to excess.

I second this

Try and put it in the past. I doubt anyone you worked with gives it a second thought now. You didn’t get sacked so you can’t have been that bad.

I’m 48 and used to work in the advertising industry. We would regularly all come back from lunch with clients pretty drunk (or not come back at all). We had a pub on site where many would go at lunchtime.

It’s obviously all changed now.

Be kind to yourself and move on.
I look back in horror at how I behaved in my 20s but we can’t change that. We can focus on now and our futures.

Through the whole of the 90s everywhere I worked lunchtime drinks were a thing everyday, as were after work drinks. Oh and then there was Friday afternoon drinks. We had one bloke who just a bottle of scotch in his desk at all times. So I was probably not sober a whole week for a decade.

Seriously don’t worry about it, it’s in the past and you’ve retrained and are getting help.

Please don’t beat yourself up. As a PP said there are industries where this is rife, and also involves class A drugs.

Nobody from your past will remember. You weren’t caught and nothing happened to you. Don’t keep traumatising yourself over this.

I’m senior in my org and I can tell you that occasionally I do hear of Facilities staff finding empty bottles of booze in toilet bins etc. A lot of people are struggling.

Well done for turning it around. Be proud of yourself and shut your brain up on the past stuff. You didn’t have the tools to cope at the time so turned to booze, you do now.

I used to have a boss who was regularly drunk in work. Honestly, it just made me sad the company didn’t intervene and help him. Perhaps if he’d been aggressive or put others at risk, I’d feel differently, but he was clearly in a desperate state. If I saw him sober and happy today, I’d be thrilled for him!

You’ve turned it around and should be so proud of the life you’re making. Go to an AA meeting and you’ll hear stories far more extreme than slurring at work…

This thread is shocking. I can’t believe so many people cannot understand the difference between boozy lunches in the 80s or 90s with clients or colleagues and a woman self medicating by secretly downing shots just to cope at work, from first thing in the morning, till she ended up drunk and slurring.

OP, pleased don't let it get to you any more. It sounds as though people would definitely have noticed (and I agree with PPs who say that colleagues being drunk in the morning is definitely not normal) but I bet most of them have forgotten now - literally it was only reading your thread I remembered the fella who used to do coke in his office at my first "grown up" job! And I would think anyone who does remember would be so pleased to hear you're doing so well now.
Most people do some absolutely mortifyingly stupid things when we're younger, and very few have the back story that you do which really do provide some justification.

People can understand the difference.

They're making the point that the OP drank as a coping mechanism. She realised it was unsuccessful, harmful in fact, and found much better ones. Great stuff. However the OP still feels ashamed of herself which she has no need to.

PPs are pointing out that not so very long ago, people would drink with abandon at work regularly as part of the job. No shame at all, in fact it was expected.

Of course they understand the reasons were very different but the OP has stopped now so why feel shame when empirically it is simply alcohol consumed in a very different time? Most lunch boozers have moved on. OP certainly has. We can all look back and learn. No shame required. That's the parallel.

im in two minds whether to respond to this or not. In no circumstances does posts like me and my mates used to go for three pints of a lunch time, or oh I remember the boozy lunches mean people,drank with abandon at work , good god.

if you cannot comprehend what’s being said please do not try to answer. It is simply embarrassing.

I used to work at a place where the manager would run off to the toilet to do a line of cocaine every 15 minutes and then come out with it all around his nose.

Dont beat yourself up about the past, it can't be changed. What matters is today.

Are you coping better nowadays?

What on earth are you on about?

I think you need support to tackle the shame.

My view is you have no need to feel shame. You had a heavy emotional burden and you self-medicated as a response. You then identified this was harmful and you have successfully turned your whole life around.

Good luck, and work on the shame with a good therapist

Comparing the op's situation to social drinking is unhelpful. It is pretty disrespectful to the op as it minimises what she is trying to express.

I’d ignore Rumshots if I were you. She’s trying to start a row and make the OP feel bad for some reason. Not worth it.

The OP is re-traumatising herself. What’s done is done and she’s moved on and doesn’t do it anymore. Telling her how bad she was compared to others isn’t helpful to someone who’s already beating themselves up. She’s not that person anymore so I don’t see the point.

Im not sure it's comparison though really (I haven't read every post but those I have read) I would say it's saying the alcohol is drunk now, the necessary changes have been made. However in and of itself, it may help to see the drinking out of isolation at the time.

I wasn't making this argument myself, I can just see why others were trying to offer another perspective.

I was going through the effects of severe PTSD and CPTSD when I started work. I was sacked so many times and behaved awfully and often just completely bizarrely. It's the OCD rumination that's getting to you. Just remind yourself it's just a symptom.

PS I worked in a very 'work hard play hard' industry and lots of people I worked with also embarrassed themselves. Off their heads at work functions and being inappropriately sexual, throwing up, ranting and raving. Honestly. When it's someone else, people just let it go, and only think about their own embarrassing moments.

Op, self medication and addiction are incredibly difficult things to overcome, I think instead of looking back in shame you should be looking at your distance travelled. How far you've come. How well you're doing now and give a bit of grace to the person in pain who used to knock back shots at work - that person was doing the best they could at the time- you were doing what you needed to do to survive because at that time, you just didn't have the coping skills or support that you needed. Shame and embarrassment and regret are big reasons why many people who self medicate really struggle to stop. It can become a vicious cycle of berating yourself and then feeling guilty and then medicating with alcohol or drugs or whatever it is to block that out a little. Then rinse repeat. You have done extremely well to get yourself out of that vicious cycle - many people never do. If someone came to you and said they were doing that, drinking in work, struggling to cope with the pain of trauma and feeling like they were failing in lots of different ways would you kick them when they were down and tell them they should be ashamed or would you have compassion for them and be proud of them when they worked hard to get to a healthier place in life? I suspect you'd have compassion... so maybe you need to look at past you, like they're seperate from you. They're just a normal person, struggling with pain too heavy to hold alone and in need of love and support and just trying the best they can. Maybe that will help you to be a bit kinder to yourself.

I feel for you. Ask your gp/psychiatrist for beta blockers ie propranolol. You can take them in the same way you would a shot. Blocks the adrenaline and symptoms of high anxiety ie stops you shaking, blushing. Best of luck.

Quite early in my career I worked for the document company in Marlow - we are talking very late 90s. We could buy glasses of wine or beer in the staff canteen at lunchtime - it was the last ‘counter’ you got to before the cashier. And there was a bar in the social club for after work. Madness looking back on it. My boss at the time was definitely an alcoholic - he didn’t feel any shame, but he was caught over the limit driving to to work one day and that was the end of him!

You should be proud you’ve overcome the challenges you faced, and are now a different persons. Be happy with what you’ve achieved and don’t dwell too much on the journey to where you are now :)