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I’m on holiday at the moment and I was sat last night with two of my gorgeous friends (who were both drinking). We were having such a lovely time, laughing and chatting and suddenly one of them said, jokingly: ‘do you know what pisses me off? Tomorrow Julia will be all fresh and we’ll be rough but she’s having just as good a time as us now’. And I smiled (a bit smugly, it has to be said), because I’d just been staring up at the stars and contemplating the exact same thing in one of those moments of beautiful contentment that my sobriety has brought into my life. Because it’s true – if anyone were to ask me why I’m sure I will never drink again I would say that it’s because, in sobriety, I have gained so much, SO much, and lost nothing.
Nothing.
I didn’t believe it at first of course. I thought I was losing pretty much everything. My friends, my fun, my excitement, my relaxation, my social life, my stress relief, my ability to connect with others, my confidence. Because alcohol is a cunning thief. These are some of the things it stole from me.
1. Time
Let’s start with the obvious ones. Sober, you have a lot more time. How much more will depend on how much you drank but basically you will be gaining the mornings without losing the evenings. If you’ve reached the point of even considering quitting the western world’s favourite mind alterer, you were probably spending a fair few mornings in your life feeling as rough as a badger’s arse. I love my mornings now. I love the crisp, sparkly magic of frosty winter mornings. I love the pale light, with the promise of warmth to come, that a summer dawn brings. I love waking up and not having to drag myself around, miserably shaking off the night before, EVER. I love driving to hot yoga at 6am and I love getting out of my class at 8am full to the brim with happy hormones even more. I love sitting before anyone else is up, savouring the peace and a cup of coffee. I love chilling out with my girls in our PJs at the weekend, with toast, laughs and cuddles. I love the feeling of having my actual shit together each and every one of those mornings affords me. And I’ve gained these beautiful mornings without losing one iota of my evenings. Quite the reverse actually, because now I can do whatever the hell I like with my evenings. Sometimes, like last night, I still sit chatting and laughing with some of my favourite people, relaxed and happy with a cold, grown up tasting drink in my hand (Chastity AF gin and hibiscus tonic on that occasion, if anyone’s interested). But I also do so many other things with my evenings. Sometimes I work. Sometimes I write (which I suppose is also kind of work, but doesn’t feel like it). Sometimes I go for a run. Sometimes I get shit sorted at home. I go to yoga. I go to choir. I go wherever I want, finances and childcare permitting. The only things that limit what I do at any time of day now are my desire to not be a total shit to those I love and…
2. Money
Alcohol is bloody expensive, especially in the UK. When I was doing our holiday food shop yesterday I was looking for some AF fizzy wine and must have checked about six bottles thinking they must be AF because of the cost but they were all bloody cava, 11.5%. No thank you. But in the UK where I live, it is insanely expensive. I still can’t quite believe the cost of a night out now, when it used to be £60 cash with me, optimistically, plus any number of crumpled Visa receipts of shame to be extracted from my dirty handbag the next morning (if I even remembered to bring it home with me). And that was over two years ago, in the halcyon days before a gin and tonic cost over a tenner because it’s in a wanky big glass and has some fruit in it. I won’t say I have more money now I’m sober because I don’t. I still have a hideously impulsive, dopamine seeking personality which does not make for a particularly healthy financial situation. But although my bank balance goes up and down I am confident it will all be ok. Because I can rein in the spending when I need to now that I’m not addicted to anything. I always have enough to pay the mortgage and bills and to feed my family. So my finances may ebb and flow but I never have those moments of ‘OMG I’m utterly fucked’ that I used to experience so regularly. I think a bit part of that as well is that I trust myself more. I am so much more to myself in every way in fact…
3. Self-everything.
Self confidence, self belief, self trust, self esteem. All have sky rocketed for me since I stopped drinking. I used to be two people you see, who didn’t like or respect each other very much. Pissed up, give-me-all-the-wine-right-now Julia thought that sober Julia was a boring, self-righteous killjoy out to spoil her fun. Sober Julia, especially remorseful, ashamed, sorry and sick Hungover Julia, thought that Drunk Julia was, to put it mildly, a thoughtless, weak-willed, embarrassing, fucked up dick And it’s very painful to live your life in such a fractured way. Sober, I have been able to put myself back together at last. Now I am one. I trust myself to look after myself. I believe in myself, in my ability to follow my dreams and achieve whatever I want. I like myself. I actually like myself! I can look in the mirror and think ‘I’ve got your back my love’. When I fuck up, which I do, I either know I tried my best or I own where I didn’t, and I’m kind to myself either way. And it makes for a pretty lovely and peaceful life on the whole, compared to my previous miserable experience of constantly being at war with myself.
4. Peace of mind
Peace, in fact, is something I have so much more of generally. I can meditate now and really rest into it. I can let my monkey brain jump up and down until it wears itself out because I’m not scared of anything it might throw at me. I can sit with discomfort without finding it so intolerable I immediately have to do something to change it (excellent for improving your skills at, well, anything really). I have learned the power of my own breath. The inside of my mind is not a place I’m afraid of anymore, full of shadowy denial and unspoken anxieties. I have peace in my mind. Peace in my heart. Peace in my soul.
5. Clarity
Alcohol also stole my clarity. My world used to be a dark and confusing place a lot of the time, inwardly at least. Because I didn’t trust myself fully, I never knew if I was making the right decision about so many things, from big relationships right down to all the micro decisions we make when driving. I was wandering through a fog, winging it and hoping for the best. Now my life is crystal clear all the way through. Every bit of my life makes sense in comparison to every other bit. I can see how it all fits together. I can see what I need. I can see what I’m capable of. I can see what I deserve. And it’s not just inner clarity either. It sounds so cheesy but I’m often taken aback now by the beauty of the world around me, the emotion of a moment with a loved one, the rush of seeing a new place or having a new experience. I feel it as a pure rush of gratitude that I get to enjoy the moment fully, with no anaesthetic, no blurred edges. I get to sit in the realness of it all and just take it in.
6. Choices
When I drank, my choices, big and small were so limited. I was limited in how I spent my time, because if I was attending an event where drinking was an option, driving was not an option. Because I often had to choose between the night before or the day after as I could not have both. Because of the lack of clarity and lack of self trust I’ve already talked about. But most of all, because I was so frightened of being alone, with no distractions, nothing but my thoughts for company. I feared that more than pretty much anything else in the world. Now that fear has gone. I’m not immune to loneliness of course but that visceral fear of being on my own in the world has just evaporated. Which makes my choices pretty much unlimited.
7. Power
And that gives me power. When I am dealing with difficult things in my life now I feel a great range of emotions of course including sadness, fear and anxiety sometimes. But I also feel a bedrock of self confidence under all that, which makes me feel powerful. I felt like such a weak, frightened thing before. I had no notion at all of my own power and possibilities. Sobriety has given them back to me.
8. Creativity
It has also given me back my creativity. The feeling I get when I write is something I lived without for such a long time. To feel that creative spark, to feel something flowing not just from but also through me on to the page, is probably the closest I’ll get, as a non-religious person, to a connection with the divine. I feel so tuned in to the wider world and the things I see, hear and feel often give me flashes of insight which lead to my blog posts. Which in turn feels like putting something back into the world. It enables me to get into that beautiful state of flow, where I become unaware of time passing. It is one of the greatest gifts of sobriety.
9. Freedom
But I think this might be the greatest gift of all. Because of all of the above, I am free. Free in my mind. Free in the world. There are limitations on me of course, like my finances and my responsibilities to my loved ones. But they are choices I make freely too. I could abandon my children and go and travel the world but I choose not to, because I love them with my whole heart and want to be here to guide them, support them and watch them grow into the amazing humans they will become. I could spend less time working and more time resting. But I choose not to, because I want to be able to afford things like this lovely holiday, this moment right now sat on the deck of my holiday home, with my girls content with their breakfasts and kindles, my lovely friends round the corner and a new day stretching out ahead of us. I choose. I am free to choose. I am free.
10. Last but not least, alcohol steals the credit for so many things it has fuck all to do with.
Last night when I got back to our cabin I checked the bottles of tonic I bought to go with my not-gin, because I had such a feeling of relaxed, contented wellbeing that I used to always associate with having had a few drinks. Annie Grace, in her amazing book This Naked Mind, suggests doing an experiment before you stop drinking. She says you should not drink for long enough for all the alcohol to get out of your system, and then sit alone in a room, with no distractions, drink and mindfully notice how each drink makes you feel. I didn’t do it because I’d already decided to quit and had my last drink before I read her book, but I know people who have and they have confirmed what Annie says, which is that so many of the positive feelings we presume are caused by alcohol are actually caused by the things we do at the same time as drinking alcohol. Like talking and laughing with family or good friends, eating, curling up with your favourite blanket and Netflix box set or the euphoric rush of dancing to music you love in a crowd of 100 other people. I never would have believe this before I quit drinking. I never stopped to consider for a second if it might be true, if I might be bigging up my best friend wine a bit too much, letting her take the glory for so much more than she had to give. I did not quit feeling content in the knowledge that I would be gaining so much and giving up so little. But this is been the wonderful surprise of sobriety for me, perhaps the most wonderful one of all. Alcohol stole so many things from me and I kind of knew that all along, at some level. But I always also thought it was giving things back to me, adding things to my life that I was loathe to give up. So I kind of saw it as a fair exchange. OK so I was losing time, money, self respect and peace of mind. But I was gaining fun, excitement, connection with others, relaxation and stress relief. Fair’s fair, right? Wrong! Alcohol did not give me those things either. I know that because I have not had a drink for over two years and I still have all those things in my life in spades. In fact I have more of them.
So there you have it. Alcohol stole so much from me and all it gave me back was lies and illusion. And that is why, although it still feels far too much like tempting fate to say it, I am as sure as I can be about anything that I will never taint my one precious life with that toxic shit ever again. Because I am better without it. Happier without it. 100% more me without it.
