Stealing from your future self

What if the choices you make around drinking today are quietly stealing from the person you desire to become?

Most of us make short-term decisions without much thought for how alcohol affects our future. We act on convenience, push through, do what everyone else is doing — rarely stopping to ask what the cumulative effect of those choices might actually look like five, ten or twenty years from now.

What are you really stealing from your future self?

Twenty years ago, if you had asked me what my most valuable assets were, I would have said my house, money in the bank, superannuation and, to a lesser degree, beer in the fridge and wine in the rack. The tangible things.

Today I would say my health. Physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. As long as I have my health, everything else is workable. If I'm physically healthy, I can do the things I love. If I have my mental and emotional health, I can be resilient when problems arise, navigate difficulty without the fight or flight response taking over, and be genuinely present for the people around me. If push came to shove and money became an issue, good health means I could go back to work in some capacity and sort it out.

Alcohol sits directly in the path of all of that.

It's easy to drink when it becomes ingrained. It becomes the thing you do, when you do the things. A short-term decision made without much thought.

But consider the future. In a few hours, if you're out drinking, how are you getting home? Is your judgement impaired enough that you'd get in the car regardless? A poor outcome if there is a crash, an injury, a DUI. Maybe you get home unscathed — many of us do, many times, without much consequence. The next day is usually uncomfortable when trying to piece together how you got home.

But if something does go really wrong, what are you stealing from your future self? A crippling fine, loss of licence, jail time, a criminal record, financial compensation to a victim's family. What does your life look like from then on?

In a few years, what are the effects on your long-term health? Drinking tends to grow over time. Regular drinkers rarely find their consumption naturally decreasing. If it looks like it's becoming an issue, the moderation attempts begin. The rules get made and broken and the trust in yourself erodes. What then?

We know alcohol is a carcinogen and is implicated in seven different types of cancer. We know what it does to the liver over time. We know what happens to a brain that spends years soaked in it. When I was drinking, I didn't know any of these facts — well, maybe the liver one — but it didn't really make a lot of difference, because I never considered the long-term future me.

If you are drinking, more than likely you are not fully available for your family. Your attention is elsewhere, or you are withdrawn into your own head.

You grab a beer from the fridge when you get home from work. You wave the kids off while you settle in front of the news to relax. Mum joins you — it's been a long day for her too. Both parents become unavailable.

Your kids notice. They may not be able to articulate it, but they are forming something in their subconscious from what they observe: that you chose drinking over them. The message that lands, quietly and repeatedly, is this.

I am not enough.

Consider what that does to a child's future self. How it shapes their relationships, their need for approval, their choice of partner. Whether they drift away from you as they get older because you were never quite present enough to build something real with them.

Late nights at the pub on the way home from work. Too rough the next morning to ask them about their day. Hangovers that write off weekends. Kids' sports missed, school functions missed, family time missed. What are they telling themselves each time?

I am not enough.

Our future selves — ninety-nine percent of the time we don't give it a thought. It's only when we remove alcohol from the picture that we get the space to reflect on what it has actually cost us, and what it might cost us still.

The relationships that need rebuilding start with the one we have with ourselves, then extend to the people around us. Both take the same slow work of earning trust back. I wasn't available to myself for longer than I'd like to admit, and it took me a long time to realise that self-trust had to be rebuilt before anything else could follow. This was one of the unexpected costs I discovered after I stopped drinking. It does take time, but it starts with a single decision to stop stealing from the person you desire to be.

So, am I making choices today that will serve my future self? Or am I pushing through the discomfort, keeping alcohol close and hoping it works out regardless of the problems?

It's worth sitting with that question.