1 Year, 1 Month, 21 days, 3 Hours and 38 Minutes (Jan 2021)
1 year, 1 month and 3 weeks; the time I have been sober. It’s been a strange time for the whole world and people keep commenting on how well I’ve done to stay sober given that we’ve been in lockdown for so much of it. For me though, lockdown has actually helped.
I’ve learnt a lot about myself and I know that sounds a bit airy fairy but really I have. Waking up every morning I get a sense of how I am that day without starting with a self induced happiness deficit. I’ve had the energy and awareness to do yoga and go for walks most days. We all know that yoga and daily walking in fresh air and nature help our mood but for me it’s not just that, they also help me to calibrate my sense of mind and mood each day.
Lockdown has meant we couldn’t go out and socialise and whilst I love our niche social life, it has made abstinence easier without dinner parties, theatre visits and meals out. The thought of never drinking again in the future is much worse for me than the actual not drinking in the moment. When I try and look forward I dread nights out, concerts and holidays without booze but I know that when I do it I get an overwhelming sense of achievement and once I get to a point in the evening where I’m still in control and others aren’t, I realise that I don’t want to relinquish that. When you give up alcohol it’s easy to romanticise your drinking days in the past but there was only ever a happy hour, not always a whole happy evening or day and certainly never any happiness for me when drinking alone.
I can’t say that lockdowns have made me want to drink more, or homeschooling or loneliness or anxiety or any other of the myriad of side effects of a global pandemic. I’ve somehow managed to keep the world outside and my own emotions untangled. Of course I have an underlying worry, a sense of unease when I hear this is all the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we’re experiencing worldwide right now but me raising a glass of wine to my lips or lying in bed worrying about it all won’t change anything. I need to keep connected so I know I’m not alone, I know I’m doing the best I can to get through. Really all we can do is accept the challenge and do what we need to each day.
I do still crave a drink, I still want to drink and I still sometimes find it hard to take my mind away from it. I’ve found that when I’m in elevated mood states I want the sugar and crave a drink more than anything. Of course it’s when I’m up for a good time, chatty and sociable and that’s synonymous with drinking in our long wired drinking brains. Unfortunately I still fix the sugar craving with sweet stuff so my weight is up and down like a yo-yo!
When I’m feeling the cravings really badly, at any time of the day, I imagine a battle and that I can win this battle by not having a drink. It’s easier on an evening because you only have to get through to bed time. The next morning I get up feeling so, so proud that I fought the battle on my own and I won! Distractions can help, I play mindless games on my phone, I colour or crochet, do a jigsaw or have a magazine to flick through. If all else fails I just take myself off for a bath and to bed early. I always end my day with a mug of chocolate ovaltine or a cuppa, I think it’s about changing habits in small steps and still giving something to yourself, especially kindness!
What I find really hard are the constant memes that are about middle aged women drinking to survive and it makes me feel like I’m not normal or not ‘part of the gang’. I’m lucky that one of my best friends has never drank alcohol so at least in the real world I have someone. I’ve also met people through Mental Health Mates who have given up drinking and recently joined a support group. At least then I have somewhere to normalise thoughts and feelings. There are a lot of people out there in the ‘sober community’ that you can connect with and many podcasts.
This battle needs me to be realistic. My life is not better with alcohol. My life is still getting better without it. The world may have gone to shit when I gave up drinking but unless I’m the most powerful person on the planet it’s not down to me and there is nothing I can do to help it get better. For myself I still take it day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute….as my app reminds me. Staying in the moment and remembering why I’m doing this for greater health and greater happiness, however hard that feels some days.
