I read this phrase recently in Tara Mohr’s excellent book Playing Big and it gave me a bit of a lightbulb moment. Like many people, I suspect, I started my sober journey expecting it to be Very Difficult. Everyone says so after all. If you follow the AA approach you have to work the Twelve Steps, there are mantras like ‘it works if you work it’ and you have to stay constantly vigilant because you are only ever one drink away from disaster. You have to strip your defective personality back to the bones and build yourself up again from scratch. Make yourself all over again but better – less needy, less selfish, less of a problem to everyone around you.
This is what put me off even trying to quit for many years to be honest. It didn’t sound like a whole lot of fun and, although the blackouts, shame, regret, hangxiety and awful gnawing fear that I was literally pissing my life away were also not a lot of fun, they were the devil I knew. And so it went on, and on, and on. For many people it goes on and on like this until tragedy strikes. Jobs lost, drunk-driven cars crashed, families torn apart, lives ruined.
Because alcohol weakens us so much. It tears down our self-respect, erodes our courage with every binge, like waves crashing against rocks. It continually fatigues and drains us. The chemical effect it has on our brain actually does this. Alcohol makes us neurochemically less capable of taking on a long, demanding and mostly dull and thankless project, which is what the prospect of a life of sobriety feels like when you drink.
So is it any wonder really that so many of us get trapped in the drinking loop, spiralling down and down until some awful rock bottom scenario makes it impossible for us to sink any lower? Sobriety seems so unthinkably hard, so much work, that in our weakened state as a heavy drinker, we quite simply don’t think we’re capable of it.
I also think the reason why so many of us become sobriety evangelists once we get to the other side is because from this vantage point it looks so different. The curtain is pulled back, the smoke clears, the illusion vanishes. We realise that we can let it be easy. It might not happen straight away, at first there are cravings to power through, sober toolboxes to build, perhaps relationships and boundaries to be renegotiated. But at some point we realise that we are staying sober, not because of how bad drinking was, but because of how good sobriety is. And that’s a total game-changer.
It’s so much of a game-changer actually that it’s transformed how I live my life in lots of other ways. I have spent most of my adult life putting unnecessary pressure on myself. Striving for perfect in everything I do and believing that if something wasn’t difficult then it wasn’t worth doing at all. And that held me back so much. I convinced myself I didn’t like exercise because I believed that if the exercise I was doing didn’t make me feel like I was about to die then it wasn’t worth doing it at all. I put off following my dream of writing because I thought I’d never find a publisher. I put off training to be a psychotherapist because I thought the only way to do it ‘properly’ was to do years of full time study which my finances did not permit. These are just a few examples but this attitude permeated every aspect of my life. Go big or go home. No pain no gain.
My drinking life taught me that it is entirely possible to have a lot of pain with no gains at all. My sobriety is teaching me (slowly, gently) that it is possible to make enormous gains by choosing to take the less painful path. I don’t drink. I sometimes bail and go home early from nights out. I do exercise which I love and which doesn’t fill me with dread. I have self-published a book. I am studying counselling one afternoon a week at my local community college. I thought I couldn’t do any of these things because they were too hard. I can do them, I am doing them, because I have learned how to let it be easy.
In sobriety this looks like what Holly Whitaker calls ‘extreme self-care’. Talk to yourself with so much kindness. Listen to guided meditations where you put your hand on your own heart and say ‘it’s OK sweetheart’ (the first time you do this you will feel like an almighty tit, but the fifty second time it feels like coming home to yourself). Do whatever brings you the most joy and if that’s binge watching Netflix while eating ice cream in bed then don’t beat yourself up about that. Say no to things you genuinely don’t want to do but learn to tune into your inner ‘hell yeah’ even if something feels a bit scary at first. Be mindful of what gets your inner perfectionist excited and think to yourself How am I making things harder for myself here? How can I let it be easy?
Human beings, all human beings, are designed to thrive without alcohol. Living without alcohol is our natural state and you will recover that natural balance so quickly. And, because we are returning to our natural state, we realise at some point of our journey that sobriety truly is as normal, natural and easy as breathing. As you travel along the sober path you will find yourself tuning into a natural current of growth which sweeps you along to places you could never have even dreamed of. Letting go into that current, when you’ve lived your whole life trying to hold on tight, to control everything, to push yourself until it hurts – it feels really scary I know. But it’s so worth it. Don’t fight. Stop striving. Go with the flow.
This sober journey you are on, it is a path to your best life. And you can stroll gently along that path. It does not have to be a mountain to climb. It does not have to be a life of fighting temptation and feeling deprived. And neither does it have to be a life of exhausting striving to be the best or to meet some kind of externally imposed expectation of what your sobriety should look like. You are on an amazing adventure, with so much joy, peace and discovery ahead. You can let it all come to you in its own time. You can let it be easy.
