I’m amazed to realise it’s now been just over two months since I had my last binge. That’s a decent stint of not-drinking! A good portion of my brain is standing strong and telling me that the world has indeed shifted and my life will never be the same again—that I’m never going back to that boozy nightmare—but there’s another part of my brain that is freaking out and lurching all over the show emotionally. Me and my bloody split personality.
Unfortunately, none of my grey matter appears to be communicating with my body. I’m gutted that I don’t look any different, I’m not a glowing picture of robust health and I haven’t lost any weight. You’d think I’d have lost some bloody weight, given all the calories that are supposedly in wine, wouldn’t you?
I’m still dragging myself to the gym a couple of times a week and forcing myself to do some sort of exercise (not something that comes very easily to me). I have formed a nice new routine of stopping at the store opposite the gym on my way home to get some treat-y supplies. Sober treats. And I refuse to feel guilty about them because of the money I’m saving on wine. Sober treats = fresh flowers, magazines, scented candles, nice soaps, face packs, gourmet cheeses, olives, tasty nuts, crackers, all manner of non-alcoholic drinks and lots of varieties of tea.
I’m a bit surprised, actually, at my growing attraction to flavoured green teas. I’m guzzling them daily like some sort of crazy hippy. My big mugs of milky instant coffee are a thing of the past and I’m now starting and finishing every day with a mug of green tea instead. It’s really easy to drink and makes me feel good.
No alcohol, herbal tea, good sleep, still exercising—you see why I’m pissed off about not looking any different?
Right by the store is a church hall and I’m fairly certain it’s used for AA meetings. I stare at it whenever I drive by and wonder what it would be like to walk into a meeting. The thought freaks me out to be honest; I get nerves in my tummy imagining it. I know that’s stupid. I know everyone who goes there would be super-lovely towards me if I showed up, but I just can’t imagine doing it. Maybe I’m thinking my drinking wasn’t bad enough? Nah, I know they wouldn’t judge me on ‘how bad’ I was. Maybe I’m thinking I don’t want strangers climbing into my life? Maybe I’m just chicken-shit? I look up the meeting times online but I never go.
It is stupid, though, because I’m longing for face-to-face contact with other ex-boozers. I would love to be able to look someone in the eye who knows exactly what I’m going through, who can relate to what I’m experiencing. My friends and family are being really kind about my not-drinking, but they can’t relate no matter how much they try. I’m pretty sure they don’t realise the extent of what I’m going through in trying to live without alcohol: the internal struggles I have at social functions or when I feel some shitty emotion (or frankly on any random weekday at 5 p.m.).
I’m now openly telling people about my big life change. After my slow start at letting out the news (telling another family member or friend every few days), and my strange self-outing at my 40th birthday, I’m comfortable now to say the words more freely. If it feels natural I’ll come out with, ‘I’m not drinking alcohol anymore’, and usually follow up with the blunt truth, ‘I’ve stopped because I can’t control it’. I get a few raised eyebrows and shocked reactions but laying it out so boldly works well to distill any misconceptions most of the time (I think it does, anyway). I’m owning the news, it’s my story and I’ll tell it how I want to. I can’t stop anyone gossiping behind my back, but at least I can front-foot it with the truth. For some strange reason I’m not embarrassed by the truth. Alcohol is bloody addictive, for goodness sake; I’m not ashamed that I got addicted to something that is addictive!
Telling everyone in my ‘real’ life about my blog would, of course, be one easy way for me to reveal more about what I’m going through. I do have a bunch of lovely friends around me in my neighbourhood and lots of friends and family that I’m in regular contact with around the country, but I can’t bring myself to tell them about my blog yet. I’m not nervous about what they’ll think of it (I’m sure they’ll all be interested, impressed and supportive) but I’m nervous about what impact it’ll have on the vibe of my online life. I can’t bear the thought of my blog losing any of its awesomeness. What if telling people prevents me from being so raw and honest online? What if I lost my precious outlet? What if I retreat back into my head and go back to drinking? I don’t want to risk the blog losing its power. It’s my main tool and I need it too much.
I’m telling friends that I’m reading sober blogs but I never let on that I’m writing one myself. Mrs D Is Going Without is just too unbelievably important and precious to me. It’s my special, safe, private place where I can vent, ponder and explore my feelings freely and openly. None of my blog readers know who I really am, they only know me as Mrs D and that anonymity is incredibly comforting and powerful.
Also, without AA or any face-to-face contact with other former boozers, my online community is vitally important. They know what I’m going through. They’re my amazing, wonderful, wise, warm, faceless support group. And there’s no-holds-barred on what we discuss.
Comment from ‘Sunny’
Why won’t you go to AA? Step 1—Admitted we were powerless over alcohol and our lives had become unmanageable. Good luck to you doing it by yourself, but my experience was that I could not do it on willpower alone. By myself I was powerless. I had to go to meetings. I love my meetings and I love the people I have met there. After I went to my first meeting the compulsion left me immediately.
Comment from ‘Anonymous’
AA works for some, not for all. I believe I’m in power—I don’t like the idea of giving up the power to anyone else. The decisions and choices I make always ultimately come back to me . . . There’s nothing wrong with reaching out for support and camaraderie but I will never let anyone else be in charge of my sobriety—that’s for me to do.
Comment from ‘Anonymous’
I am also a non-AA person. It has nothing to do with willpower for me. Instead, it comes from needing to understand myself and what ‘I’ need to keep sober, not what someone else feels I should have or be doing. I do this by reading from a lot of different sources (AA, Women For Sobriety, blogs, books). I really feel I’m getting to choose what works best for me from all these sources and it has been working. I am not ‘white-knuckling’ it, but my eyes are also open that there will be obstacles down the road that will try to veer me off-course. Blogs like yours help remind me there are others that feel the same way.
My eyes are wide open, too. I might not be reading AA literature, following the Twelve Steps or attending meetings, but I am soaking up information wherever else I can. The journalist and the academic in me just wants to research like crazy. It’s that busy brain of mine that needs constant stimulation. I can’t help myself, I’m like a huge sponge when it comes to all matters recovery related. I am still working on my Master’s thesis part-time (now in the data-gathering stage, carrying out interviews and transcribing them), but it often feels like I’m also doing a completely separate thesis all about sobriety.
If I go to the library website and plug in search terms like ‘alcohol’ or ‘sober’ I get directed to books like The Thinking Person’s Guide to Sobriety by Bert Pluymen; Still Waters: Sobriety, Atonement, and Unfolding Enlightenment by William Alexander; John R’s Big Book Unplugged: A Young Person’s Guide to Alcoholics Anonymous. I get them and I read them and sometimes they help and sometimes they annoy. Usually there’s a little nugget of something I gain from each one.
I’ve also grabbed random books like Unhooked: How to Quit Anything by Dr Frederick Woolverton and Susan Shapiro; From Chocolate to Morphine by Andrew Weil; and iWant: My Journey From Addiction and Overconsumption to a Simpler, Honest Life by Jane Velez-Mitchell.
The two books I’m most enjoying are Jason Vale’s Kick the Drink . . . Easily and Allen Carr’s The Easy Way To Stop Drinking. Both of them are really positively influencing my thinking.
I can’t get enough of memoirs written by former boozers and addicts. Already I’ve read books by Augusten Burroughs, Sacha Scobilic, Rob Lowe, Mackenzie Phillips, Steven Tyler, Tom Sykes, Caroline Knapp, Clarissa Dickson-Wright and Jane Lynch.
In addition to all this reading I will often climb into bed with the laptop and watch endless clips on YouTube of former addicts and addiction specialists, and clips of TV programmes like Intervention and Celebrity Rehab.
And on top of all this I am, of course, reading and commenting on heaps of other sober blogs.
I’m so immersed in the world of alcohol addiction, I’m adopting the lingo. Words like sobriety, recovery and journey are tripping off my tongue (and onto my keyboard) with gay abandon. I am familiar with how pink clouds and relapses usually play out. I know that AA is a fellowship for drinkers and Al-Anon is a fellowship for drinkers’ friends and family. I know that NA stands for Narcotics Anonymous. I know that a ‘normie’ is someone who can drink normally; that is, have one beer and leave it at that or walk away from a restaurant table with wine still in their glass (shock!). I know that a ‘dry drunk’ is someone who is considered to be ‘white-knuckling’ their way through the days, not exploring the reasons why they drank, just trying like hell not to do it anymore. My online buddies all seem to be jealous of normies and scathing of dry drunks and I get where they’re coming from.
I am not a dry drunk. I am exploring. I am researching. I am navel-gazing. I am fully ‘going there’ trying to properly analyse my drinking. Why did I booze and how can I now best not-booze? This is key for me: I am determined that I will not face the rest of my life feeling miserable about not-drinking. It is as equal a determination as never returning to being a boozer. I don’t want to miserably booze, and I don’t want to miserably not-booze. I want to be happy and sober. It must be possible to do that. Is it possible to do that?
There’s a passage in one of the books I’m reading that really jumps out at me so I type it up into my blog. It’s from the book From Chocolate To Morphine: Everything you need to know about mind-altering drugs and the authors, Winifred Rosen and Andrew Weil, MD, write:
We think that addiction is a basic human problem whose roots go very deep. Most of us have at some point been wounded, no matter what kind of family we grew up in or what kind of society we live in. We long for a sense of completeness and wholeness and whatever satisfaction we gain from drugs, food, sex, money, and other ‘sources’ of pleasure really comes from inside of us. That is, we project our power onto external substances and activities, allowing them to make us feel better temporarily. This is a very strange sort of magic. We give away our power in exchange for a transient sense of wholeness, then suffer because the object of our craving seems to control us. Addiction can be cured only when we consciously experience this process, reclaim our power, and recognise that our wounds must be healed from within.
I like this passage. I feel like it’s telling me that what I’m trying to do can be done. It’s telling me that I have the power within myself to feel content and whole. It’s telling me that shit happens to everyone; some of us reach for substances to make us feel better but the substances don’t work. They might work temporarily but they don’t properly work (and they can bite you on the bum if you get addicted). So this is what I need to do. The substance has gone; now I have to reclaim the power to manage my feelings myself.