The Dark Side Has a Key — And Alcohol Knows Where It Is

There’s a version of you that lives in the quiet. It doesn’t speak often. It doesn't need to. It waits. Observes. It’s the part of you that carries every insult you've swallowed, every moment you felt small, every wound you've wrapped in silence. It’s patient—but it remembers everything.

Some call it the shadow, others just know it as the side of themselves they’d rather pretend isn’t there. The one capable of lashing out, of saying the cruelest thing possible in the exact moment it will land deepest. The one that wants control when it feels powerless. The one that is willing to destroy a bridge just to feel like it has something to hold.

This dark side is not fiction. It lives inside everyone.

We spend our lives managing it. Building structures around it. Logic. Boundaries. Reflection. Apology. Self-awareness. But those structures have a weakness. And that weakness is alcohol.

Alcohol doesn’t make you a different person. That’s a lie we tell ourselves. Alcohol simply opens the door that the rational part of you works so hard to keep locked. It numbs the part of the brain responsible for restraint. It throws a sheet over your empathy and tells your anger it’s the one in charge now.

It breaks the stable doors and sets the bull free.

That bull isn’t new. It’s not “who you are when you drink.” It’s who you already are, under the right conditions—unfiltered, unchecked, and ready to charge. And unless you're willing to see that, to name it, to take ownership of what lives inside you, you'll always find a way to blame something else. The situation. The other person. The stress. The past.

Or the drink.

But drinking doesn’t create cruelty. It reveals it.

Which means responsibility doesn’t disappear just because the bottle is involved. If anything, it becomes more urgent. Because someone who refuses to face their dark side will keep hurting others and keep calling it a mistake. Keep apologizing without changing. Keep insisting they’re “not like that”—while becoming exactly that, again and again.

Not everyone drinks to excess. Not everyone uses alcohol as a key. But when you notice your worst behavior only comes out when drinking, that isn’t a coincidence. It’s a pattern. And patterns are only broken when they're acknowledged.

The truth is: we all have darkness. We all carry things we don’t say out loud. But maturity isn't the absence of those things. It’s the willingness to admit them. It’s knowing when to take a break, when to cut back, when to stop. It's understanding that the line between “okay” and “not okay” isn’t always clear—until you’ve already crossed it.

So the work begins in the mirror. Not in blaming others. Not in minimizing harm with a laugh and a drink of water the next morning. It begins when you ask: Why did I say that? Who was I trying to hurt? What part of me felt the need to strike?

And more than that: What am I willing to do to make sure that next time, I don’t open that door again?

Because if you don’t—if you keep letting alcohol hold the key—you stop being someone who occasionally slips.

You become someone who regularly destroys.

The dark side isn’t evil. It’s human. But left unattended, unaccountable, and unchecked, it doesn't just ruin relationships or reputations. It ruins self-respect.

Eventually, you’re not just breaking others. You’re breaking yourself.

And the worst part is… you won’t even notice until the silence is louder than the shouting ever was.

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Thank you for reading.

Ana.