Saying NO To Booze Means Saying YES To Some Hard (But Worth It!) Stuff!

As many of you know I’ve been working on my sobriety since July 31, 2018.  It feels like yesterday and also really really long ago. It wasn’t even really my idea to stop drinking so I do feel like this whole new amazing tuned in, turned up, turned on life is a gift, albeit one that I’m giving myself every damn day now.  

It was my idea to stay sober after all the signs pointed to my drinking had gotten WAY out of control.  Once I’d put together 30 days sober I realized that I felt better, like WAY fucking better. Before trying sobriety I was suicidal, sweaty, anxious and deeply unhappy with myself (and everyone else if I’m being honest).  I hated everything: my husband, my kids, my business, my mom and sisters, my dead dad, the errands, the chores, the endless tasks of being alive and grown up. I was mad at all of it and I thought drinking was my solution.  I thought it made my life fancy! And fun! And luxurious! I thought it was helping me. I was the queen of the $25 glass of wine (or 3) on date night - hell I’d earned it for putting up with all the bullshit!  

Drinking to relax, unwind, celebrate, commiserate, socialize, agonize, loosen up.  I was drinking for any and every reason I could find and googling “am I an alcoholic?” in the middle of the night after barfing my guts out.  Everything I was doing with my free time had become centered around drinking. All of this to say I needed to stop. I needed to find another way and I have. I’ve realized that saying NO to alcohol has delivered on every lie the promise of alcohol whispered into my willing ears.  I am relaxing, loosening up, tuning in, and I’m able to feel real joy in my bones, and real grief, all of it - sobriety has given me so much more than the booze ever did.  

In the last month or two I’ve started to realize that the deeper I go into sobriety, the more I say NO to things that harm me, the more I’m feeling pulled to say YES to a bunch of other really really difficult (but worth it!) stuff.  I think the basis of it is that I can't lie to myself anymore. Without my escape door (booze) there's nowhere to hide and listening to my needs as it turns out is really really really great.


Saying YES to feeling my feelings.

This has been the BIG one and maybe it is for you too.  Feeling our feelings is super hard. I no longer have the escape door of drinking my face off when the prickly ones pop up.  My stepdad died last June so grief has been a big part of the feelings I’ve been feeling lately. Also, I had a traumatic childhood so stuff comes up out of nowhere sometimes and I can no longer promise myself a bottle of good red at the end of a triggering day.  I have had to learn to promise myself that I will survive the feelings, that I will prioritize my safety and I’m constantly reminding myself that I’m ok, that those hard and suffocating feelings can’t kill me. I have acquired the skills to sit with my feelings and I practice them regularly now.   I know that I will be kind to myself and use true self-care methods to sit in the feelings until they pass (Wine is NOT self-care). I can now trust that I won’t leave my needs for comfort and soothing to the very end of my to-do list anymore. Currently, this looks like pouring a cup of tea, lighting a candle and doing some deep breathing or writing in my journal.  All of which takes more time and effort than cracking that bottle especially with 3 kids with needs that have to be met but there’s no hangover and I’m getting much better at experiencing those tough emotions without burying them down by binging on food or yelling at my loved ones. It’s taken months of practice and forgiving myself constantly for failing but I am finally able to pause before I take all those big emotions out my favourite people or eat all the chips and I can see the change clearly now from before when I was a loose cannon, ready for a fight, eager to throw those nasty feelings back on others, quick to drink the whole bottle.  It was no way to live and the part that still astounds me is that I couldn’t see it when I was in it. I can see it crystal clear now and so there’s also been a lot of letting go, self-forgiveness and being kind to myself because shame isn’t going to help me stay sober but sitting in the feelings and relying on myself to survive them has helped immensely.  


Saying YES to my body.

I have a difficult time talking about my body in relation to food and exercise.  I’ve lived in a bigger body for as long as I can remember and went on my first diet when I was 9.  I have disordered eating and I feel like my soul is being snuffed out when I’m hungry. For many years I was plagued by Monday mornings and the very restrictive food choices I would force upon myself after another weekend of bingeing on food and booze.  Around the same time I gave up booze I gave up the idea that my body needs to be smaller. I think a part of my drinking was a way to mask my discomfort in my body. Booze always made me feel more invincible and more like I was separate from myself and those around me.  Like I could pretend I was someone else entirely and that my body wasn't my body and for most of my life I've ignored my body's needs.  

I am working on embracing my size and shape.  I’m learning to be kind to myself. For a long while this kindness looked a lot like eating all of the cake instead of drinking entire bottles of wine and I've accepted that cake is far better than wine but now a year and a half later I am starting to see that I’m going to have to embrace saying YES to listening to what my body actually wants more of which are healthy foods that keep me full and feeling energetic throughout the day.  It’s going to be baby steps by adding in healthy food and being very careful not to create havoc causing restrictions.


Saying YES to regular exercise.

Now that I don’t suffer with the 4am panics and when I wake up I feel grateful to be alive and sober which means I have embraced walking the dog for 45 minutes every morning.  It’s incredible because I canceled my gym membership a few weeks back after not having gone in over a year (or ever really). In that year of not going to the gym, I got more exercise than my whole life combined in the form of walks around my neighbourhood and in the forest near my home.  I love to hike on the trails in our town and I seek out opportunities to add a walk or hike to my social events. THIS IS NOT NORMAL FOR ME! It’s also not easy to realize that I feel better when I move my body. Acknowledging I need exercise brings up those feelings of shame about my size and shape but I quiet them by letting myself know that it's ok to feel weird about it. I’ve been struggling with a bad knee and a nasty case of plantar fasciitis but still every day I’m out walking which is also totally not me.  Before I would use any excuse possible to avoid exercise but now I crave it and miss it when it doesn’t happen.   


Saying YES to feeling pleasure.

I hate to admit it but sex wasn’t really my jam when I was drinking.  It required a level of focus and activity that seemed inconvenient after 8-10 drinks.  Plus my stomach normally hurt from the booze and food that I’d crammed into it. It definitely interfered with passing out which was my falling to sleep method of choice for so long.  With no buzz in the way now I am able to thoroughly enjoy pleasure within my body and boy oh boy it’s a different world!  

There is shame rolled up in here too.  I was so ashamed of drinking so much that I felt completely physically and emotionally disconnected from my partner that experiencing pleasure felt undeserved or selfish.  I was not an active participant in any part of my life before but definitely not in my sex life and I am so so so grateful to be able to have this part of myself back. I have to say it’s also been hard to communicate my likes and dislikes because saying NO to booze has meant saying YES to being honest about what I need in every area of my life including the bedroom (see below on BOUNDARIES, hello!).  It’s hard to say “I don’t like that” or “please never do that” to the person who has thought you’ve liked that for 21 years! It’s been surprising to both of us what being sober in bed means (there is likely a whole book that could be written about this but my mom likely doesn’t want to hear it).  


Saying YES to boundaries.

The biggest step forward for me in sobriety has been to start implementing boundaries.  Waking up to realize that the way you see the world isn’t how everyone else sees it and that all of the shit you’ve been putting up with never should have been allowed is ASTONISHING.  I used to think that if I just did everything the way other people thought was right and good that I would be a good person, check the box! If I just went along with whatever was required regardless of the cost to my own sanity or that of my family then everyone would love me and think I was a good person.  I can hardly write about what I thought the benefit of ignoring my own needs was. It’s so fucked up that I thought that I could control everything by never acknowledging what I wanted and desperately needed and I’m still unraveling the deep ways this is embedded within me. This is definitely something I will work on until I die and that’s ok!  I see it now and I’m saying a big fat YES to my needs and not signing up for shit I hate, attending things that make me feel terrible, hanging out with people who don’t understand why it’s important that I’m sober. I am not wasting another ounce of energy on thinking that going along with everything everyone else wants or needs is good for anyone or that it makes me more “laid back” or “good”.  When people set boundaries with me now I’m like “hells ya, you’ve made it” which is also part of it. Learning to set boundaries for ourselves means that we have to learn to respect the boundaries that others set too, I’m up for it! Let’s do this and draw a circle around ourselves and realize we control everything that goes in and out. It’s always been ours to own - hooray!

I have seen the light and I’m not going back.  Sometimes I think maybe I can have just one drink, what’s the big deal?  But I know it’s never been just one drink. That was never my jam. I know that over here is better.  I’m a better partner, a better mom, a better me. I am writing in a Starbucks and then meeting a friend for supper without wine. I’ll go home and kiss the heads of my 3 beautiful sleeping children, I’ll crawl into my safe warm bed, next to my supportive partner and I won’t be screaming inside my head that they would all be better off without me.  I’ll be whispering I love you’s to all of them and to myself because I’m saying YES to this life, all of it which means continuing to say NO to booze. This story is to be continued because sobriety has also revealed some bigger moves I need to make in my life but that's a whole other post. Thanks for making it this far! Take care of yourself.