While I’ve talked about being sober on my blog, I’ve definitely avoided addressing the reason why I decided to get sober. In the past, thinking about why I decided to stop drinking has felt overwhelming and truthfully, a little too vulnerable to talk about.
The reason I stopped drinking isn’t dramatic. Yes – I definitely put myself in unsafe situations, blacked out too often and acted in ways I wasn’t proud of. I got lectures about not blacking out from my parents. I told my friends that that blackout was the last. I was going to “figure it out.” But most of my drinking was “normal.” It was what I was “supposed to be doing.” I was fun!!
But at the end of every weekend where I inevitably blacked out and made decisions I regret, I would silently pick up the pieces. I would talk to my friends about what made me anxious about the weekend, but unlike my friends, I couldn’t shake it. I always felt like alcohol affected me differently than the people around me. Not just because I couldn’t “handle my alcohol” but because it just wasn’t me. I always felt acutely aware of how isolating alcohol was. In college, I was either busy or drunk – and for a while that worked, it kept me numb. When I was numb, I could ignore the voice in my head telling me there was more to life than this cycle.
I always saw my drinking as my personal issue. I was the one who couldn’t handle it. I needed to figure it out. I was the one who needed to change. Everyone else can drink and like themselves after, I should be able to, too.
Unsurprisingly, however unproductive that thinking was, that’s the thinking I adopted into every part of my life. I don’t need to tell my parents I can’t get myself to eat because I need to figure it out. I don’t need to tell my friends when I’m upset because I need to figure it out.
I never talked about my issues drinking in counseling. I didn’t want to be judged and I didn’t want my drinking to sound worse than it was – I was in college, it was normal. In October 2020, when I finally opened up to my counselor about drinking after a particularly bad weekend. I told her how I haven’t been able to shake the anxiety of the blackout, how I always felt like this and I didn’t know how to fix it. She asked me if I ever considered not drinking. Truthfully, I didn’t know that was an option. I didn’t know anyone who was sober. I knew I wasn’t an alcoholic, so why would I get sober?
After weeks and weeks of trying, and failing, to moderate my drinking and counseling sessions revisiting the same issues and feelings over and over, my counselor challenged me to a week of not drinking. I left her office feeling assured and confident this would be the right decision. One week would be easy, I was excited to go back next week and tell her how it went. And then I went home and drank.
That was the last weekend I drank. Towards the end of my drinking, I would be so anxious to drink because I knew if I blacked out that night, it would further prove that I couldn’t moderate my drinking and I would need to stop. I would get so anxious that I couldn’t eat all day, and then I would drink and *duh* blackout. This specific cycle continued for about three weeks before I finally called it quits.
My experience getting sober was rather painless compared to other stories I know now. I’m grateful I had the support I was able to find and I’m proud of myself for navigating that change without a lot of examples around me.
Mentally, I was destroying myself drinking. All week, I worked so hard. And every weekend I would blackout, make decisions that don’t align with the life I want, trigger more anxiety and more self-criticism and restart every fucking Sunday.
I was worried I would lose so much when I stopped drinking. Up to this point, the defining years of my life had been spent drinking and I wasn’t sure what my life looked like without it. And as I’ve said literally a million times, I was afraid I wouldn’t be fun, my life wouldn’t be fun, I would miss out, I would be miserable and bitter… all because I couldn’t moderate my drinking.
On the outside, nothing really changed when I got sober. On the inside, I slowly became more of myself. It was hard, but I became more confident – I didn’t “need” alcohol to do all the things I thought I needed it for. My life felt more aligned and calm and safe. But never less fun.
I realized it’s actually a lot of fun to remember your night and not wake up on bathroom floors or rooms you don’t know. It’s fun to show up as yourself and feel comfortable in your own skin and feel genuinely happy and not just the one drink in happy. The happiness alcohol provided me was always fleeting.
Now, my life feels genuine. I can trust myself and my emotions and know everything in my life is real and true.
I didn’t have a rock-bottom with drinking. I’m very grateful to say that and I think it says a lot to what I’ve written about in previous posts. We can learn so much from taking a step back and evaluating our relationship with drinking, whether or not we think we have a problem.
Anyway hehe 10 months sober feeling v grateful thx for reading