So today day 28 of sobriety. I’ve tried a few times before. Mostly I started doing dry January, then I stopped drinking for several months during a break up, and so and so on. Each time I’ve thought maybe I can go back to drinking in moderation but I realise how I’m not the type of person who does moderation.
l was okay drinking for quite a while but the last few times I really scared myself. I started to self my gums and made them bleed. I flipped into a person my husband didn’t recognise (which I’ve been told by ex partners has happened before) and don’t remember any of it. I remember feeling so ashamed , embarrassed and the pain from hurting my gum was a reminder for days how far I’d gone this time.
I’ve been reading books, listening to pod casts, find accounts from others who are sober online.
Something feels different this time. I’m tired and fed up of always kidding myself that the next time will be different because it never is. That voice in my head that tells me ‘this time you can control it’ is wrong. Time and time again I have proven I can’t. When I look back to my teenager years and early 20s I can hear people saying how I’m the life and soul of the party, and people always have a drunk (or several) story about me. Even years and years later I still feel embarrassed about them, and hated hearing what I was like drunk. Even if people weren’t laughing at me and stating what I was doing and thinking it was fun, I’d hate to hear it and cringe.
I’m mid 30s now, and things arw so different. A lot of my friends have children, I’m a step mum, there isn’t this pressure to drink and even my friends who do drink never frowned on it or judged me. I do remember how when I first went sober, I’d tell people how I hard issues with alcohol and was basically truthful about why I’d quit. It was so bizarre as this suddenly made people say to me how they didn’t have an issue and could just have a few, as though they were justifying their own drinking habits. I do find it insane how alcohol is legal. Something that makes you change completely, and lose all sense of who you are, what you say or do, and then feel awful for days with anxiety. How did our world become revolved so much around drinking?
I remember the months I was sober and I actually had such a good time. I had deeper connections with friends as I could remember what I said to them, and felt good the next day as I didn’t wake up hungover and could enjoy my day.
I think when I moved into my new house away from a toxic ex with a job where I worked from home I just succumbed to the months of not drinking. I drank to start with to celebrate, then it became every day drinking a bottle of wine, then drinking another bottle after that and whiskey. One time I had a meeting around 5 and had whisky in a coffee mug and by the end of the meeting I was hammered. I was completely addicted to drinking.
A colleague of mine told me how their husband was going to AA and she was giving up drinking too. She mentioned how she was having a bottle of wine each night and I remember being horrified how anyone can do that and turn up to work each day with children in their life and seem so together. When I was drinking every night going beyond what she had, I’d think about how horrified I was and laugh at how easily it can happen and the irony.
I hope this is it, and I’m never back to day one. I’m hoping the support of others will help me and realise I’m not alone in this and there are others who are tired of the mind numbing yet anxiety ridden life that comes with drinking.
This girl can x
Just like your coworker husband I went to AA, i can not tell you I surrendered to the design for living they have outlined in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. But eventually I did, and took thr suggestions from thise who have stayed sober longet than me. I have a good life today, meaningful relationships with others, and go to sleep with a peace of mind.