How Grief, Trauma & Loss Fed My Addiction

I do not think my alcoholism began with alcohol.

I think it began with grief.

With loss.

With trauma I did not know how to process properly.

I lost two dads in my life.

And when I lost my biological dad at 18, something inside me changed permanently.

Especially because I was never properly told he was dying.

There was no emotional preparation.

No real understanding that the person I loved was about to disappear forever.

One minute life still felt normal.

And then suddenly it didn’t.

It took me several years to truly accept his death.

I think part of me emotionally stayed stuck there for a very long time.

Because when somebody dies — especially somebody you love deeply — your brain almost struggles to catch up with reality.

Part of me kept expecting him to still exist somewhere.

And grief like that changes you quietly.

It changes the way safety feels.

It changes the way attachment feels.

It changes the way you move through life afterwards.

For a long time, I carried guilt around his death in a way that consumed me.

Part of me genuinely believed I was the reason he died.

Grief can make your mind think irrationally.

Especially when you are young and trying to make sense of something unbearable.

I replayed conversations repeatedly in my head.

Things I said.
Things I did not say.
Moments I wished I could change.

And I think that guilt sat inside me long before I understood what it was doing to me psychologically.

For years, I also used my dad’s death as one of the reasons for my drinking.

At the time, it felt justified to me.

Like I had a reason to escape.

A reason to numb myself.

A reason to not fully cope with reality.

I visited his grave so many times drunk.

Putting flowers down.

Sometimes leaving stuffed animal toys there too.

Looking back now, I think I was desperately trying to stay emotionally connected to him somehow while simultaneously trying to numb the pain of losing him.

There were even times I brought dates to his gravestone while completely off my head.

That’s how distorted my life had become.

Grief, alcohol and reality all started blurring together.

And I think part of me wanted the people I was with to understand him somehow. To know he existed. To know the loss existed.

There is something deeply lonely about grief mixed with addiction.

You are mourning somebody while slowly destroying yourself at the same time.

But one thing I feel deeply now is gratitude that my dad never witnessed me in severe alcoholism.

Because alcoholism eventually stripped me of myself in ways I cannot fully explain.

The hidden bottles.

The withdrawals.

The hospital visits.

The panic.

The physical dependency.

The fear of my own body.

I think seeing me like that would have broken his heart.

And even now, that thought affects me deeply.

I think grief changed my nervous system before alcohol ever did.

It created fear inside me.

Fear of abandonment.
Fear of losing people.
Fear of being left.
Fear that nothing safe ever truly stays.

And when you carry that kind of fear around long enough, you eventually start looking for ways to escape yourself emotionally.

For me, alcohol became that escape.

At first it felt like relief.

It quietened things down.

It softened grief temporarily.

It softened anxiety.

It softened loneliness.

And eventually it became the thing I turned to every time I could not emotionally cope with life.

I drank when I felt abandoned.

I drank when I felt anxious.

I drank when I felt empty.

I drank when I wanted to escape my own mind for a while.

And I think that is something people misunderstand about addiction sometimes.

People often think addiction is about pleasure.

But eventually it becomes about emotional survival.

About not wanting to feel what is underneath everything.

Because trauma changes people quietly.

Sometimes trauma does not look dramatic from the outside.

Sometimes it looks like somebody laughing too loudly.

Somebody drinking too much.

Somebody always needing distraction.

Somebody terrified of being alone.

Somebody desperately trying to feel okay.

I think losing people young also changed the way I attached to people emotionally.

I became frightened of abandonment while simultaneously expecting it.

Almost like part of me was always waiting for people to leave eventually.

And alcoholism made all of that worse.

Because addiction creates even more loss.

Lost relationships.

Lost trust.

Lost years.

Lost versions of yourself.

And eventually alcohol stopped numbing grief and started creating new grief constantly.

That is the cruel thing about addiction.

At first it feels like the solution to pain.

And eventually it becomes another source of pain itself.

I think for a long time I believed I was drinking because I loved alcohol.

But looking back now, I think a huge part of me was simply trying to escape grief I never fully healed from.