Unhappy hour

I've written before about feeling low-level anxiety and treating it with alcohol. (I don't remember quite where, and I don't feel like hunting just at the moment, so I won't provide a link. I trust you to find such posts pretty easily if you want to.) But I've been drinking a lot less the last month or so, and in the process I've noticed more about it.

Maybe I should explain what I mean by "drinking less." Basically I was finding that once I started drinking at night I couldn't stop until I'd had enough that I really didn't feel good. And I was sure feeling it the next day. So when I finished what was in the apartment, I just didn't replace it. I'm not fanatical about it -- once a week I'll go out for a beer with coworkers at the end of the week, or last week (when I didn't do that) I brought home one of those revolting little cardboard boxes with 500 ml of cheap wine in it. But I've kept it to once a week, and even if I am bringing a drink home I make sure not to bring more than I'm willing to consume all at once. I don't buy a bottle of anything with the idea of stretching it out, because that way I can't decide to drink most of it tonight. (Also I realize I'm a little superstitious that by saying something here I will bring the whole exercise to a crashing halt. I'll try to avoid that.)

I've noticed two things in particular.

One is that as I consume less alcohol, I consume more sweets: ice cream, honey in my tea, jam on my sandwiches … whatever it is. I'm pretty sure I've remarked on this regularity before.

The other is that I can tell the exact hour of the day when my desire for a drink is at its strongest. That is, I can feel like I'd enjoy a drink at this or that time during the day: mid-afternoon, late at night, while I'm blogging … whenever it is. But the time that I really feel like it's important, like I really have to have one now, is always the same. It's at the end of the workday, as I'm preparing to go home. (Or, if I'm working from home, as I'm starting to log out of my work computer.) In other words, Happy Hour.

Why then? There could be many reasons, I guess. I'm going to go with Pavlovian conditioning.

For thirty years, I was afraid to come home from work. This is the data point that first made me start to think there was something abusive about my marriage. That I was afraid to go home. And that was always because I never knew what I was going to be walking into. Was Wife going to be disappointed, critical, angry, depressed? Or was she going to be in a manic phase, gleefully making deranged plans for a future that would never come to pass? Would I have to defend myself against bitter attack, or steer her away from a lunatic enthusiasm, or nursemaid her through a migraine, or talk her slowly out of the suicidal depths of Hell? It might be any of those, or it might be a dozen other possibilities too -- each one wrenching and demanding and terrifying in its own way. And I never knew which it was going to be until I turned the knob and walked through the front door. 

But you know what helps with that kind of fear? Pouring a drink.

As I say, my explanation for why the urge is strongest at exactly that time of day -- and every day it's the same, that's the thing -- is Pavlovian conditioning. Not that I blame Wife for my ever drinking at all. That would be absurd. Clearly the decision whether to drink is on me. But why do I always want it so desperately right around 5:00 pm, as opposed to any other time in the whole day? That, I think, I can leave with her. 

Of course it doesn't really matter, but it interested me to see the connection.