Photo credit Ashley Batz at www.unsplash.com
My sober bestie shared an article with me today which wasn’t actually about sobriety, it was about coming to terms with being alone, but the first point in it gave me one of those moments of ‘oh fuck YES’ that I’ve had on and off throughout this crazy sober journey. It said this:
You are, to a far greater extent than you perhaps realise, already alone. The condition you fear will happen has already happened. To be formally alone would merely mean concretising something that has been your reality for a long time anyway and, paradoxically, would be the first step towards helping you to bring the isolation and agonising frustration to a deserved close.
https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/10-ideas-for-people-afraid-to-exit-a-relationship/
Said sober bestie also wrote a blog on Soberistas today for her three year soberversary, remembering back to that awful moment when she knew she had to stop drinking forever. Not cut down, not rein it in, not ‘moderate’ (whatever that even means). But stop. I had one of those moments too, a true dark night of the soul or, in my case, a dark hungover morning, breastfeeding my 9 month old with milk that probably had the same ABV and about as much nutritional value as blue WKD, silently weeping, my tears dripping down on to her innocent little head (she’s fine now btw, a very robust three year old with an insane zest for life, so I suspect not permanently traumatised by the experience).
And I remember that one of the main things I was crying about was that I knew that this was it. I had reached the point I had most feared, the point where I ‘had’ to stop drinking. All my scheming and planning to try to keep alcohol in my life and somehow still have some kind of a decent, happy life had come to nothing. All the control and rules I had bound my drinking problem up with had, ultimately, failed. I had failed and now I had to walk away from the one thing (so I thought) that made my life fun and light, that soothed my stress and anxiety, that was always there for me when I needed something to lean on.
But let’s go back to that quote: the condition you fear will happen has already happened. On that morning, on 19th February 2017, not a damn thing about my relationship with alcohol, the physical and psychological effects it has on me, changed. Not one thing. I was already in that place, had been for many years. And being in that place was causing me SO much needless stress and misery. What happened on 19th February 2017, day 1 of my new life, was that I finally turned and faced that truth instead of running away. I faced the reality that, when I drink alcohol, I am not entirely in control of how much alcohol I drink. That, as a result of this, the amount I was drinking was seriously affecting my mental health and my ability to show up and be my best self in all sorts of areas of my life. All that was already true. All that was left was for me to accept that it was true. Which, reluctant, terrified, kicking and screaming basically, I finally did on that horrible hungover morning back in February 2017.
What I could never have predicted in a billion years beforehand is that, by facing that truth, I would cause a seismic shift in my life, which would unleash so much good stuff, which now keeps building on itself to give me a life, internally and externally, which is so much BETTER than the life I had before, when I was so desperately trying to hang on to the ability to drink poison. So much better – I can’t even begin to describe how much because it is better at such a fundamental level that to list the outward improvements of more money, more friends, a better social life, or the ‘shopping list’ inner improvements like confidence, self esteem, contentment (although all true) would somehow miss the point. My life is better without booze because I am better without booze. In every way.
Some of us are and it is a sad thing about our society that we have to go through such agonies in order to realise that. It is even sadder that some people never even get the chance to realise that, because their attempts to prove otherwise eventually claim their lives. Because society says, every which way from Sunday, that we should be able to drink alcohol without it negatively impacting our lives. That if we can’t there’s something wrong with us. Which then becomes a state to be feared, a state which I buried under an ocean of denial for a long long time.
But, underneath all that, I was already there. When I look back to my early drinking experiences (which included a near fatal head injury at the age of 18) I think perhaps I was always there (yeah, no shit Sherlock). So, if you are in that place right now, or getting close to it, that dark terrifying place where you just can’t hide from the impact your drinking is having on your life anymore, know this. Nothing will change because you realise you have to stop drinking. You are already there. All you are doing by deciding to stop is saying ‘yes, this is where I am’. You are looking at your map to establish your location. Which, as anyone who has ever been lost will tell you, is the only way to get back to the path you should be on. So be brave and own that location. This is where you are. And don’t be afraid. It’s awesome to know where you are, because now you can get to where you want, and deserve, to be.
