Hi lovely people
I am 1700 days sober today! That number just seems ridiculous to me. It really doesn’t seem that long in a lot of ways since I was painstakingly inching my way up to my first 100 days. It feels significant though and I wanted to blog, and for my topic I thought I would think of what early sobriety me would have wanted to ask someone several years down the line and then answer those questions, to the best of my ability. So, here we go!
- Do you miss drinking? No not at all. Sometimes I miss having a quick way to numb out or a fast track to not giving a fuck about my responsibilities. But I can see so clearly now what a high price I always, without exception, paid for those moments, and they were coming less and less frequently anyway, while the price I paid on the other hand was getting steeper by the week. So no.
- Do you still feel shame about how you behaved as a drinker? Truly I don’t. One of the greatest gifts my sobriety has given me is the ability to genuinely love myself and have my own back. So now I can look back on those days and all I see is how much I was hurting and how I was doing my best every day to function despite increasingly fragile mental health, a very sensitive nature and a dreadful tendency to look for comfort in all the wrong places. I have nothing but compassion for that brave, lost girl.
- Do you ever get cravings for alcohol? Urgh, no. Honestly, the thought (and smell) of it makes me feel sick.
- Does everyone in your life accept your sobriety? Yes. There’s one friendship which has gone by the wayside but that’s for lots of complicated reasons that are way beyond just my not drinking anymore. And with everyone else booze is just irrelevant to our relationship now as they are either sober or were never that fussed about it in the first place (weirdos, I know!) and without my influence they are quite happy to just have a couple and call it a day. I have awesome friends and we do all sorts of things together that have absolutely nothing to do with ingesting toxic chemicals.
- Does it bother you being around drinkers? Not at all unless they get shit faced, in which case sneaking out and driving home knowing that the best of the night is over anyway and I will wake up feeling fine tomorrow is a quiet joy all of its own.
- What’s been the hardest part of your sober journey so far? The first 50 days. And the slow, tortuous realisation over years 1-2 that my marriage was over, but that would almost certainly have happened anyway, all my sobriety did was give me the strength to do it sooner rather than later (which would have been messier).
- And the best? The friends I’ve made. The self-respect I’ve gained. Every single time I put my children to bed and kissed them goodnight with no wine breath. The career changes it has enabled for me. The creativity it has unlocked. The contentment I have now due to not being in a failing marriage anymore.
- Is there anything about your drinking life that you miss? I miss the freedom of being young and having no responsibilities and my whole life ahead of me sometimes and I literally can’t imagine what twenty-something sober me would have looked like. But alcohol wouldn’t take me back there. And I’m so much happier now so it’s just a classic case of euphoric recall anyway. I was miserable so much more than I was joyful and free in my twenties and thirties and I’m contented so much more than I’m unhappy now.
- What are you proudest of? All those early days when I was hanging on by my fingernails but I just didn’t drink. Being brave enough to meet some strangers off the internet who I now count among my very best friends. Having the strength to end my marriage when I realised it couldn’t be saved. Feeling safe enough in my own skin to come out as bisexual. Running a half marathon. 1700 days of being the mum my daughters deserve.
- Do you honestly enjoy sober nights out? As long as there are things to genuinely enjoy – good company, food, music, whatever – then yes I really do. I can’t wear heels anymore though. And I enjoy sober nights in at least as much.
- Do you still have to think about not drinking every day? No but I choose to think of it often. Partly because some of my income now comes from writing about it but also because I’m just so damn grateful for how it has changed my life.
- How do you unwind on a Friday (and Saturday and Sunday and more often than not Thursday and Monday) night? This is hard to explain but I think I just don’t need to. Not in the way I used to. I think a lot of what I used to think of as life stress was actually mild symptoms of alcohol withdrawal. I love it when 5pm rolls around on a Friday but I don’t feel the need for a dramatic pressure release like I used to when I reached for the wine bottle. Just finishing work for the weekend is enough, and by the time I’ve eaten my tea in front of whatever I’m Netflix-bingeing I’m generally so unwound I’m practically asleep.
- What do you do when you get really stressed? Rant to a friend, go for a run. Do a breathing exercise. Drink coffee (which probably doesn’t help). Sometimes I just go out to the garden in bare feet to feel the ground beneath me. It helps. Alcohol never helped.
- How do you comfort yourself when everything just seems shit? Also rant to a friend, get under my weighted blanket and watch TV. Have a good cry. Eat chocolate. Read something by Matt Haig. Try to remember that it will pass. It always does.
- Have you lost loads of weight? Hahahahahaha. No. I don’t care as much about whether I do or not though (this is v much a work in progress). And I definitely eat more healthily for the most part and move my body more.
- So is your life totally sorted now, or what? LOL, no. But also kind of yes. I have not met the love of my life. I’m not rich, in money terms. Sometimes I get depressed because I have shitty hormones. Sometimes I get anxious because a million reasons, some of which apply to us all in 2021, some of which are particular to me. I’m mid divorce which is about as fun as it sounds. But I’m happy. Most of the time I’m happy. Compared to how I lived before this is nothing short of a miracle.
- Is it worth it? Yes. Yes. A million times yes. I promise. Wait till you get here, you’ll say exactly the same.
Sending lots of love to you all xxx
