“It’s 5 o’clock somewhere…right?” Coping.
“It’s 5 o’clock somewhere…right?”
Written by Madeline Vann, NCC, M.Ed. at White Cloud Therapeutic Services
I’m sure you’ve seen or heard the jokes and memes online. “Today’s science class based on my wine glass – we’re working on liquid volume and STEM learning.” Or the ever popular “One student at our homeschool has already been expelled, and the teacher got fired for drinking on the job.” And then there is the more blatant – “It’s 5 O’clock somewhere” (at 10 a.m.).
First of all – no judgment. No one signed up for the situation we are in now, and certainly no one signed up to be a homeschool/distance learning educator with literally no break from our offspring, on top of trying to keep the household running and, possibly, working from home or looking for work. I get it.
Maybe you or your spouse also lost your job or been furloughed, or you or someone you love is actually sick right now. Maybe your children and teens are just as bored, frustrated, and lonely as you are — or, possibly, they are actually doing better with homeschooling and distance learning while you are trying to figure out how you can juggle everything and still keep your pretty face on.
I’ve been there. Well, I am there, right now, with an elementary school age child and a middle schooler, trying to keep it real and keep them on track and also do the work I love.
But what I’ve been thinking about lately are the days in my past, when I and my first set of kids, tweens at the time, were living in post-Hurricane Katrina greater New Orleans. We were living with a lot of uncertainty about the future of schooling and work and our communities.
I remember we’d been evacuated for five weeks when we returned home to begin the recovery process. I was still working at home many weeks after we were let back in. At the time, there were all kinds of jokes about the “Katrina 15” (similar to the “Pandemic 15”) and everyone’s new drinking habit. And we were all frantically taking up hobbies such as knitting and crocheting, to stay sane. Sound familiar?
I was definitely drinking more, because why not? When you’re working from home and managing the kids, having a drink (or two) at lunch and a lot more in the evening seems quite reasonable. It’s medicinal, you might say. And haven’t we all joked about how liquor stores are essential services?
So here we are, 17 years after Hurricane Katrina, and I have to say, I see things differently now. I see the jokes out there, but for me personally, not taking a drink today is probably the most important part of surviving this pandemic.
So I want to encourage you to think about whether drinking to cope (or using other substances to cope) is gradually sliding from a funny joke on social media to a pattern of use that takes you away from being the person you want to be?
At what point does drinking to cope stop being something you can control? Because ultimately, the drink that appears to be helping you cope can also be the drink that causes you to snap (or yell, or worse) at your loved ones, that makes it hard to get quality sleep, that harms your liver, that results in late night texts you wish you could take back, that sucks money out of your already tight budget …. that tells you it’s ok to do other things that you would never do or say if you were living your values.
It’s scary to ask for help with these questions. But, please reach out if you would like to learn about other ways to cope right now. There are a number of different approaches to reducing or ending the use of alcohol or other substances to cope.
Perhaps your goal is to be able to just have one drink occasionally. Maybe you want to quit entirely. Maybe you were in recovery, and you’ve relapsed. Whatever the situation, we can start working through it.
Confidential counseling, even a tele therapy session sitting in the car in your driveway, can help you identify other ways to cope with the COVID crisis and everything that goes along with it.
Or maybe you’re not the one who is drinking to cope – maybe you are just trying to live with a partner, teen, or college student who you think is drinking too much. Let’s talk about it. Substance use and alcohol, even seemingly innocent amounts, can have lasting impacts on your children.
It’s worth learning about how better coping and resilience can protect everyone. I can say this is true, really, for all the unhealthy coping strategies we might be using now including overly restricting calories, exercising to excess, gambling, disappearing into video games, or seeking out pornography.
If you or someone you love is struggling, please call. We take most forms of insurance, and they do cover tele therapy.
Call 757-276-7069 or email me or any of the counselors at White Cloud Therapeutic Services, LLC, if you’d like to find out more about how counseling can help you now.
Article was written and sponsored by Resident in Counseling Madeline Vann, NCC, M.Ed. at White Cloud Therapeutic Services
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