Pre-Drinking Is a Warning Sign of Alcoholism

I remember pre-drinking well. I would have plans with a friend that included drinking, but I didn’t want to look like a lush and I knew I would want more to drink than was socially acceptable. The solution? Knock back a few before I left home.

Pre-drinking is a common early sign of a problem with alcohol.  It might start out as  self-medication for social anxiety, but once it becomes the norm almost always other drinking behavior is out of control.   You might not even get “that drunk” when you first start pre-drinking, but something in you knows you drink just a little more than your friends and the  instinct to protect the addiction is kicking in.

I had one particular friend who was a very light drinker – she would nurse one all night long. Even though I always made a point of pre-drinking before meeting her, I still drank enough in her presence to feel uncomfortable.  I was struck by the fact that when I told her I was going to rehab, she said, “Oh really? I never noticed you drinking that much.”   Huh?

I’m sure this was a combination of things – the fact I liquored up before even being in her presence to disguise the amount I drank, and the fact that even when we were suite-mates in college I made a point of hiding my drinking.  The last two years of college I did a lot of isolated drinking to avoid embarrassment (a few incidents served to warn me this might be the way to go).

When I look back at my drinking days, I am acutely aware of how my practice of greasing the skids before going out was a sure sign of a problem with alcohol, but at the time it seemed awfully clever.