Drinking (or Drugging) Alone

28 January 2023

As regular readers may recall, I take requests!  Late last year a reader asked if I could elaborate on why some people drink in groups and others drug alone.  The last part is the theme of this blog, why some people drink alone.

We’ll begin with what can be recalled on the spot.  First, it was Carl Jung who named two major social groups: introverts and extroverts.  In psychology, we look at this concept once or twice in an honours undergrad (maybe in social and personality psychology) and maybe once or twice, as part of theoretical modes of therapy, in a graduate degree—so, not a lot. 

The essence of the difference between these two types seemed to be about energy.  Extroverts gain energy from social interactions, even loud, crowded, hectic rooms full of networkers while introverts lose energy in such social interactions, having to retreat into solitude to regain equilibrium, or an internal psychic balance.  That stated, introverts gain energy from meaningful one-on-one conversations where they have time to collect their thoughts, listen carefully, and feel heard. 

Think about the opposite state of socializing, that is, not having time to collect your thoughts, not being able to listen due to the distractions around you, and not feeling heard by others.  That vibe is one which causes introverts to run—not walk—toward quiet solitude.  Which is all fine and good if you’re a mature adult, confident in your own being (as an interning therapist, I’m no longer sure such a human being actually exists). But imagine being a school kid again and being an introvert.

You try to hang out in groups with people who accept you, but you just don’t feel it, as the current expression goes.  Instead, you feel out of place, like you’re forcing your smiles and affirmations, and increasingly, as you become aware of this difference, you feel an outsider.  So, you start making excuses and stop trying to be part of those groups.  If you’re lucky, you find other loners who may also be introverts and hopefully you share some interests, and your social life is rescued.

But what about those who aren’t so lucky?  As a young person, you struggle to understand who you are, where you fit, and what direction you want to take your life in.  As an introvert, you mostly struggle alone and that’s hard.  It’s hard because part of human formation (individuation) involves responsiveness.  If you have no one to test identities on, you have no one to fail, succeed, or reminisce with about those trials.  And a shortage of trials means a less rigorously tested identity.  And that means less resilience (https://understandings.ca/2020/05/06/resilience-the-bounce-back-virtue/).

More explicitly, high school and the years immediately following, if you’re from the middle class, is the time to cheaply test roles of all sorts, romantic, career, academic, and cultural.  If you didn’t have the chance to test those, what happens to the parts of your identity that were suppressed in isolation—they almost certainly recur at less opportune stages of life.

Isolation, lack of social opportunities, and a too narrowly tested sense of otherness can actually lead one toward addiction.  Where we’re going here is that introversion may be as much cause as effect when discussing addiction.  In other words, drinking or drugging alone may be more about who you are than about your addictive behaviours.  More simply, you were probably an introvert at birth; you didn’t have addictive behaviours at birth. 

There are two books I first think of when issues of loneliness and introversion arise.  The first is Susan Cain’s (2013) Quiet, and the second is Emily White’s (2010) Lonely.  I can thank the press for the first but reading the second was an inspired choice offered in the first psych course I took when I returned to complete my B.A. at UGuelph offered by Dr. Newby-Clark.  For those who feel odd, uncomfortable, or ashamed of their aloneness, I’ll leave you with Cain’s prefaced Manifesto for Introverts:

1. There’s a word for “people who are in their heads too much”: thinkers.
2. Solitude is a catalyst for innovation.
3. The next generation of quiet kids can and must be raised to know their own strengths.
4. Sometimes it helps to be a pretend extrovert.  There will always be time to be quiet later.
5. But in the long run, staying true to your temperament is key to finding work you love and work that matters.
6. One genuine new relationship is worth a fistful of business cards.
7. It’s OK to cross the street to avoid making small talk.
8. “Quiet leadership” is not an oxymoron.
9. Love is essential; gregariousness is optional.
10. “In a gentle way, you can shake the world.” —Gandhi

Dan Chalykoff is working toward an M.Ed. in Counselling Psychology and accreditation in Professional Addiction Studies.  He works as a supervised psychotherapist at CMHA-Hamilton where his primary focus is trauma.  He writes these blogs to increase (and share) his own evolving understanding of ideas.  Since 2017, he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery.  Please email him (danchalykoff@hotmail.com) to be added to or removed from the Bcc’d emailing list.

References

Cain, S. (2013). Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking.  Broadway Paperbacks.

White, E. (2011). Lonely: Learning to live with solitude.  McClelland & Stewart.