It has been 18 months.
I haven’t had alcohol in 18 months.
I didn’t start this journey with a goal. I never set a timeline for myself. I just knew that I needed to stop drinking so I did. I had no idea how long this would last or how I would feel. I didn’t even know if I could realistically stop drinking. But I did and here we are 18 months later at a new turning point in my life.
I haven’t had a drink yet. Today is July 2, 2022, and we are still sober. I’m not writing this because I started drinking again. I am writing this because I think it’s ok for me to think about wanting to drink again and to be able to process all of the feelings I’m having while those thoughts are present.
I think talking openly about being sober vs drinking is an important conversation. I think after a year and a half of this lifestyle, I have a pretty good grasp on where I’m at because of it. The good and the bad.
So, let’s get into it.
There have been some bad parts of being sober. The negative does not outweigh the positive for me though and I want to make that clear from the start. My negative issues may not be close to yours and that’s what’s important here. This is my experience and purely taken from what I’ve gone through and felt. I stopped drinking in the first place because I was sad. My dad died suddenly, and I was spiraling. I was trying to keep myself above water and not drown in sadness, sorrow, grief, depression, or uncertainty. Alcohol was becoming something that only amplified all of those feelings for me. I was at my worst when I drank, and I hated it. I think I really started to see a problem with my sobriety was when my reason for not drinking anymore shifted.
I’m not over losing my dad. I’m also not saying I’m no longer sad about it, but there comes a point in life when grief and sadness subside a tiny bit and you are able to move forward in a progressive way. I made it to that point, and I still decided to make the choice to be sober. I do struggle with breaking routines and getting stuck in patterns. If I do something for a long enough time, then I feel like I have to keep going. I walked 4 miles every day for over a year. I do the same morning and night routine every single day. I stayed sober even when I felt significantly better. If I had told myself I was setting out to only not drink for a year, then once that year mark came, I could have easily made the choice to start drinking again or set another goal for myself and continue down that path. I didn’t do that. So, once I noticed that I was feeling better mentally and emotionally, it wasn’t that barrier I needed to break. Physically I couldn’t break the routine I had started.
I don’t know if that makes sense to anyone, but it was really hard to understand and accept that it’s ok to break routines. The world won’t end, and you won’t be considered a failure. These are all things I have to constantly tell myself just to get through the thought of maybe drinking again.
The other part for me that made things tough was the impact that my choice to not drink took on my relationships. I know that me being sober did not end my relationship. However, I also know that me being sober was hard on all of my relationships.
I think I started to shift my mentality a few months ago without even realizing it. I started getting extremely annoyed with anyone that I loved that chose to drink. I was worried all the time that bad choices would be made or that there would be an accident and I would lose someone that I loved all because of alcohol. This worry encompassed everyone in my life that I loved. My brothers got a huge part of my worrying and it was rough. In the past, I had always drank with them and encouraged them to party and have fun and I enjoyed spending that time with them. Now, here I was scolding them, criticizing, and judging them for making the same choices I did when I was their age. I battled them and their need to live their own lives for a long time. I let myself be consumed with the fear that I would lose one of them and it got to the point where I could not handle watching them drink at all. It felt suffocating to worry that much. It was debilitating. I wasn’t sleeping because I had to stay up to make sure I heard them come home, I was attached to my phone in case they needed a ride or there was an emergency. I would watch them drink and have fun with their friends, just like I used to do, just like any twenty-something should, and I would completely breakdown. I would just lay in my bed and cry. I was so beyond consumed with fear that alcohol would lead to me losing one or both of them. Now, this sounds wildly dramatic because it is. When my anxiety is at an unhealthy place, this is where I go. Granted, I have lost a friend to drunk driving, I have seen seizures that were brought on by excessive alcohol consumption, and as a family, we dealt with a scary drunk driving incident that rattled us all. I have my valid reasons to feel the way that I did but that didn’t justify everything else. It took me a long time and a lot of personal reflection to really get to a place where I could let go of my fears. I can’t control other people and the choices they make in their lives. What I can control is the availability of myself as a resource, a friend and a sibling, but that’s it. I had to learn that people really will figure out their lives on their own as we all have and it’s ok. I can’t protect everyone unfortunately. I sleep a lot better now, just an fyi.
When things started shifting in my relationship, alcohol became a huge factor in my perspective. I didn’t mean for that to happen, but it was something I was able to grab ahold of and almost use as a weapon if I needed it. If I needed something to fight about, I always had that. This was not a healthy choice for me. For anyone really. This created a lot of tension and judgement on both ends I’m sure and I think that it ended up opening the door for arguments that maybe would not have happened, had I not been in the negative place I was. There was a point though a few months back where I had made the decision that I was going to start drinking again on my birthday, June 5th. I was going to have a party and surprise my friends and it was going to be great. I ended up telling my boyfriend that I was planning on drinking that day and he was so excited. I think I did that because I knew it would give me fuel to feel the way I wanted to. Which was feeling upset that he didn’t want me to stay sober. He wasn’t reassuring me that me being sober was a good thing or the right choice for me. He instead was genuinely thrilled to have me back in the world that I had left and there was nothing wrong with him feeling that way. I just chose to take it negatively because I could. Why couldn’t he support me when I wasn’t drinking? (He did every single day) Why couldn’t he want to be with me while I’m sober? (He did) I created a false narrative based off his reaction to something I told him I was excited about. I created an expectation for his response to something I didn’t give him full context for. I was mad at him for something he didn’t even know he did. I did that a lot in the last few months of our relationship. I actually just do that a lot in my life regardless and I’m actively working on fixing it. It’s been fun apologizing for it after the fact.
When my relationship ended and my birthday came a month later, I had a choice to make. I could drink because I had said I was going to, or I could do what I wanted which was to not drink. I think that day I really and truly realized that my reason for not drinking had shifted from being too sad to function because of the loss of my dad, to trying to survive a relationship that wasn’t healing, and I couldn’t handle the reality of what was coming. I only told him I would drink as a test to see if our relationship would get better, it did not. I was doing everything for the wrong reasons. So, I didn’t drink on my birthday because I didn’t want to.
I’ve touched on a lot of negative things and even though they are necessary and vitally important to my story I don’t want that to be the takeaway here. I’ve truly never learned more about myself or been able to grow than I have in the last year and a half. Going through life and all the craziness that it throws at you while also choosing every day to not drink is something I will cherish.
I didn’t realize the amount of clarity that sobriety brings. Truly cleansing yourself and opening yourself up to take on whatever is coming with an open mind is kind of a scary thing. I had to face a lot of challenges and tough decisions without being able to ease my nerves with a drink. I had to really look deep inside myself and make choices based on where I really was and what I needed. I think that was something I will really cherish. I got to really get to know myself. It turns out that I like myself a lot. I like myself without the added layer of alcohol and I feel very confident now that when I do start reintroducing it back into my life, I will still be able to find the girl that I’ve grown to love.
I have been able to travel and go to amazing places all over the country with my friends and loved ones and experience things in a new way. I used to plan all of my trips based on where we would be drinking and socializing. Now I focus more on what I want to get out of the trip, what I want to see and where I want to eat. Eating good food is extremely important to me so we prioritize that. I have enjoyed spending time with friends and feeling good while traveling. I’ve learned that there’s more to it than just finding the coolest bars to go to. I mean, that’s still cool but you get what I’m saying.
Going through 2 sober birthdays has been interesting. I’ve been happy and lucky to adjust to this lifestyle so easily and I know that’s not the case for everyone, so I don’t take that lightly. I don’t normally enjoy my birthday for a lot of reasons that aren’t important right now, but I know that this last one, 32, was special. I was sober, single, and happy. And I wasn’t happy because I was single or sober. I just really felt loved and special, and those other things also happen to be true. There was no correlation and I think that is what made it great. I have felt refreshed knowing that I can travel the world, I can celebrate big days and holidays, be around my friends and family and still make the choice, if I want, to be sober. There will always be mocktails, soda waters with lime and Topo Chicos waiting for me.
Fully coming to terms with the thought of drinking again has been harder than I thought. I never anticipated being sober for the rest of my life. I never thought this would last as long as it has. I think now that I’m in a place where I’ve been able to feel balanced and good again, my brain and my heart have opened up to processing what it would look like to introduce alcohol back into my lifestyle. I think once you take something like that out of your everyday life or your main thought process, you realize how easy it is to live without it. I know I will not drink all the time. I know that I will only use alcohol to celebrate moments that really mean something to me. I want it to feel like a special treat that I get to share with friends and people that I love. I know that as much fun as I can have while drinking, I can have the same amount of fun while not. I will still 100% deal with anxiety related to introducing it back into my life. I will never drink and drive. I mean, no one should but let’s be realistic…it’s just not going to be something I’m ever willing to gamble again. I will also be starting small. I can’t just go out and knock back a bunch of shots and cocktails like I used to. I think slowly bringing myself back into it is the easiest way to go. I’m terrified of feeling hungover. Imagine not having a hangover for 18 months, it’s been incredible and I’m almost not sure that’s worth giving up. I think having boundaries and understanding that it’s a process to reintroduce myself to this world is important.
I’ve talked to my therapist about all of this, and I think when you discuss and really go into your issues of why you stopped drinking, why you stayed sober, and why it’s starting to feel like maybe it’s time to come back, you are at the place where it’s ok to come back. This feels like a literal full circle moment for me.
I don’t have a date for when I will be drinking again. I will know the day when it comes, and it will feel right. I will be in a good place, with good people and people that I love. I’m trying my best to focus on what makes me truly happy right now and it’s nice to know that I’m in control of finding that, so I guess I’ll keep you updated.
Cheers!
