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‘I need alcohol to help get me through the tough days.’
If you’ve been a heavy drinker for years, like I used to be, there’s every chance that after a few weeks of not drinking you’ll start to feel incredibly happy. You may even wonder why you feel like that – I know I did, because I couldn’t understand why I was laughing and smiling so much. It was a weird feeling and one I hadn’t experienced for a long, long time.
This ‘happy’ stage is often referred to as the ‘pink cloud’ period and it feels wonderful; it comes about because we’re returning to our natural baseline of happiness. This is the ‘normal’ amount of happiness we feel continuously through our lives, and the level to which we eventually return whenever we’ve experienced an especially high or low moment. When we drink heavily, alcohol robs us of our happiness and we never manage to return back to our true baseline. Then the more we drink the further we creep away from where our happiness level should be, which is why we can feel sad and depressed when we drink every day. From the Facebook group members that I’ve worked with, it seems the heavier drinkers feel the highest levels of happiness when they quit. The good news is that this happy feeling stays long-term.
So there I was, a couple of months into sobriety, and experiencing levels of joy that I hadn’t known since I was a child. The whole world was tinted with sunshine and sparkles – it was amazing. Then I woke up one morning and the happiness seemed to have vanished. Where had it gone? I felt incredibly sad and low, as if the sun that had been shining into my life had experienced a total eclipse. I just wanted to cry, and ended up sitting in bed in an awful mood questioning everything about my life. It would have been easy to have reached for a drink.
Thankfully, I’d read about the ‘blue day’ blips and was prepared for them. Instead of uncorking a bottle of wine, I weathered the storm and am pleased to report that within 24 hours the sun was back out and shining into my life – my smile had returned.
Post-Acute Withdrawal Symptoms (PAWS)
What I experienced was one of the Post-Acute Withdrawal Symptoms (PAWS). These usually crop up around four to six weeks after quitting drinking, as your brain goes through the healing and rebalancing process. This causes a kind of lag that can make you feel like you’re dancing for joy one minute and sends you crying into your breakfast cereal the next. Common symptoms that I’ve known people to experience include: feelings of depression, anxiety, sleeplessness, lack of concentration, low motivation, memory loss, low energy, and a general feeling of sadness.
However, you can take comfort in the fact that these are only temporary, and are a clear sign that your mind and body are healing. I only experienced a handful of days when I felt really down, and didn’t have any after the first two or three months.
Just by reading this chapter you’re armed and aware. If you experience feelings like this you don’t need to worry, simply ride them out and they should fade away as quickly as they arrived. Take it as a positive that you’re recovering and rebalancing.
As well as PAWS, we have to face up to the fact that normal life can present us with challenges. We can also just feel down without any good reason. Not every day will be sunshine and roses, and it’s worth having some tactics to deal with the bad ones. They always pass, and you’ll find yourself bouncing back to your baseline level of happiness pretty quickly.
Below are five techniques I use if I find myself feeling down, and they each help me to get back in the right frame of mind. It’s worth making a list of the things that work for you, and if you experience a low mood take a moment to pause, look at your list, and deploy your best tactic to combat it.
Ways to deal with blue days
Pause and reflect. Whenever I experience a low mood, I try to acknowledge how I feel, then take a moment to stop, reflect, and question why. The process of pausing and becoming curious about your feelings can lift you back into a place of positivity.
Talk to someone. A problem aired is a problem halved, so talking about your feelings with someone who cares is a fantastic way to get support. We often fuel low feelings with negative self-talk, so by speaking to a friend or loved one, we can gain a more balanced and logical view without the negativity.
Get your journal out. Your journal should become your new best friend because writing down your feelings is such a helpful way of exploring them. Seeing them in black and white allows you to take stock from a new perspective and be curious about them. What’s more, you’ll often find that the process of transferring your negative feelings from inside your head onto the paper makes them start to fade away – it’s like you’ve got everything off your chest.
Disrupt the feelings. If you’re sitting at home feeling down and in a bad mood, I suggest disrupting the feelings by leaving the situation. Get out of the house and take some fresh air; the options are almost endless but my favourites include taking a brisk walk, going for a run, or heading out on my bike into the woods.
Practice gratitude. This is a fantastic way to pause and reflect on the positive things in your life. Write down three to five things you’re grateful for (they don’t have to be expensive or material things). This will show you that nothing is lacking in your life, and you have everything you need. I try and do this at least once a week.
‘Struggling with everything today, feeling down.’
Facebook group post by SB, Melbourne, Australia
‘Just don’t drink!! It will make it worse. Even though that conniving voice tells you otherwise, it’s a liar!! I listened to it too many times. It gets easier. Even sober, we have bad days. It always gets better!!’
Facebook group post by Melissa, USA