You Weren't Addicted to Alcohol — You Were Addicted to Relief

You weren't trying to ruin your life. You were trying to make it bearable. You weren't chasing a high. You were chasing off.

That moment — after the first drink — when the noise dims, the pressure fades, and your nervous system finally shuts the fuck up?

That wasn't intoxication.

That was relief.

Addiction doesn't always look like collapse.

Sometimes it looks like achievement. Like promotions. Like productivity. Like holding it all together with a smile and a growing stash in the kitchen drawer.

Most people don't understand why high-functioning professionals drink too much. They assume it's stress. Or rebellion. Or lack of control.

But here's what it actually is:

A regulated nervous system — by force.

Alcohol slows your heart rate. Quietly shuts down the executive brain. Blurs the edges of the shame loop running 24/7 in your head.

You're not addicted to alcohol. You're addicted to the silence that shows up after it.

I didn't drink because I hated my life.

I drank because I didn't know how to rest.

I drank because I didn't know how to turn my mind off at night. Because I was emotionally overstimulated and intellectually stuck on high alert. Because I was successful on the outside and unraveling behind the scenes.

I didn't need a buzz. I needed a break — from my brain, from my patterns, from the endless cycle of masking everything that felt too big to name.

And for a while?

It worked.

Until it didn't.

Until the drink that gave me peace started giving me shame. Until the thing I reached for became the thing that held me down. Until my solution became another problem I couldn't explain to anyone — because I didn't look like someone who needed help.

High-functioning addiction is hard to spot — even when it's you. You still get up. You still perform. You still show up for other people.

But you're exhausted. Fried. Disconnected. You know you're not okay. You just don't know how to not be okay without blowing your whole life up.

The truth no one tells you:

Most addiction isn't about pleasure. It's about regulation. Control. Safety. Escape.

You weren't addicted to alcohol. You were addicted to relief that worked for a little while.

That's why it was hard to quit. Not because you lacked willpower — but because you lacked alternatives.

No one taught you how to feel safe in your body without a substance.

No one told you that your hyper-independence and perfectionism were also trauma responses.

No one gave you tools — they gave you guilt.

So how do you actually heal?

You stop asking, "Why did I drink so much?" And start asking, "What was I trying to stop feeling?"

You stop seeing your past choices as failures. And start seeing them as messages — pointing toward something that needed to be seen, soothed, or dismantled.

You don't fight the behavior. You meet the need beneath it with something sustainable.

That's how I got sober.

Not by punishment. By finally understanding what the alcohol was doing for me — not just what it was doing to me.

So if you're reading this and thinking:

"I don't even know if I was addicted…" Let me ask you something better:

Were you using it to survive something you couldn't name?

That's what this is about.

Relief.

And the reality that we are all, in some way, chasing it — until we realize we can create it ourselves, without destroying ourselves to get there.

You're not broken. You're just done buying peace in bottles.

And you don't need anyone's permission to rebuild that peace from scratch.

—Cody Taymore

More essays, stories, and tools for high-functioners done pretending they’re fine:KillTheSilenceMovement.com