3 months without alcohol

An update on the alcohol thing

In January I got curious about my relationship with alcohol. I didn’t have alcohol. It had me and its grip was starting to feel like a chokehold instead of a cradle.

Here's the thing about alcohol

I didn’t drink for three months, and then last night had my first margarita since.

I’ve found a lot of answers to the questions I posed to myself three months ago. I’ve also found more questions. And if you know me, you know I’m going to give you both. Because I love you.

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Some Answers

Yes, it was hard at first. And then, it wasn’t.

The first week of my sober stint was more difficult than I’d like to admit. Parts of me fought each other. I physically craved a drink. Crying? Please, just one glass of wine. Please. Overthinking? Is there just a little airplane bottle of anything in the cabinet. Please. It's just one and we need it to feel better. I'm looking out for us and this is how I know how to help. PLEASE.

But I soaked myself in compassion instead of alcohol. I felt every inch of my feelings. And not drinking got easier. It started to be a point of pride. I could do this thing that was hard for me. Look at me! I’m so big!

I supplemented presense with other not ideal coping mechanisms: tv, scrolling, sugar, but I resisted shame.You’re doing something hard, it’s okay to have other ways to cope. We can work on those next. You don’t have to do everything at once. Here’s some grace, Sober Stephanie, I made it for you.

The alcohol cravings went away quicker than I thought. Having a “streak” was motivating for me. I liked being able to say I did something for a week, a month, 60 days. On the first few warm days, I pictured having a patio beer, and I randomly craved the taste of my favorite spicy margarita. But I liked how I felt without alcohol. Waking up was easier without a dull headache. I liked remembering the conversations I had with my friends. I liked knowing who I was in every moment. I liked who I was. I like who I am.

Yes I do think my relationship with alcohol had become a problem.

I was addicted. And it was hurting me. I was using alcohol to numb pain in a big way. My heart hurt from a million little cuts that I had poured alcohol into instead of letting them heal. I’m starting to feel very old wounds finally turn into scars. My heart feels whole. And resilient. I know that isn’t just because of the alcohol thing, but I also know it’s part of it.

Yes, my friends still hang out with me

I’m not sure when I wrote the narrative that I needed alcohol to be social, but it was pure propaganda. I don’t need alcohol to talk to people and it feels good to know that.

I am so lucky to have the friends that I do. I told my friends that I wasn’t drinking, but that it didn’t bother me if they did. They provided me with special delicious fizzy drinks at dinner parties while they had wine. They brought seltzer over when we cooked together at my apartment. They chose bars with NA options and send me Instagram posts about new releases I’d like. They offered not to drink around me.

Yes, they still invite me out to bars

And I still go.

I'm more tempted by the ingredients in cocktails than the buzz.

I’ve tried some mocktails, but am frankly irate whenever they cost the same $15. I rediscovered an old flame, the Shirley Temple. Delicious, the price of a soda, and often served in a pint glass. The maraschino cherry was always my favorite part of an Old Fashioned anyway. Sugar sugar, I know. One thing at a time.

I leave a lot of social stuff earlier than I used to. But not because I feel out of place or upset or even tempted to drink; I just feel done and ready to go home sooner.

I feel overstimulated much more easily. A close friend and I went to the bar after finishing a show to celebrate and decompress. It had very few people and very loud music, the most mind boggling but common combination found in shitty NYC bars. I found myself distracted from conversation searching for a spot that didn’t have a speaker pointed directly at it. We only lasted two Shirley Temples instead of our usual five drinks.

I wonder if consuming alcohol has just been allowing me to push on my own internal boundaries - being in super overstimulating places, staying places longer than I really wanted to, not resting as much as I needed to, talking about things longer than I cared to - for years.

I’ve spent less time being social. I’m finding home cozy instead of sad. And more time alone feels like just another wave, my resting era, or maybe my prepping era. I’m discovering the plethora of things to do in this city that I never knew about. I imagine when I finally start doing some of those things instead of just collecting them, I’ll connect with my friends in new ways and also build new community for myself. I feel excited about that.

I also feel more secure. I don’t remember the last time that I spiraled with anxiety on the ride home after a night out, wondering if I was obnoxious or too loud or overstayed my welcome or won’t remember things tomorrow. I don’t miss mornings where I check my Instagram story and text friends cautiously to learn about the night before, dreading.

I even went to a party

A friend brought two full cases of liquor they helped clean out of a dead person's house. It felt like a wink, a challenge, as they pushed bottles on people on their way out the door and all tried one with a weird label about a horse or something, at this, my first party sober. I missed the communal experience but not the gagging.

I drank ginger ale and stayed for three whole hours. It was crowded and I had good conversations tucked into the kitchen and I remember everything we talked about and I went home by 9pm and it felt good.

And I threw a party!

My birthday passed without alcohol. The hours before my friends showed up at my doorstep were full of panic. I felt bad that I didn’t have alcohol and went back and forth about whether I should provide some. Ultimately, I braces the BYO(alcoholic)B label I’d blushed onto the invite and overcompensated with seven different flavors of seltzer (thanks Costco!), sodas that were hardly touched, and snacks. My fridge is still full of cheese and cake almost a month later.

I was more anxious hosting than I had been in the past. A combination of sobriety and reading the Art of Gathering had me worrying that I wasn’t being intentional enough with my favorite people’s time. I wanted to sit with each person but felt my attention constantly flitting to whether everyone else in the room was okay.

I do think alcohol would have calmed that anxiety.

But maybe it's okay that it didn't. Maybe I learned something about who I am and how I want to spend my time. Sometimes discomfort is a trailhead instead of something to overcome.

Yes, it has affected my health

I lost 8 pounds in the first week which was fucking crazy, but it also wasn’t the miracle fix I was expecting.

I expected to never be tired again, to have unending energy.

And while I am more alert, I’ve been napping more. Maybe I’m making up for the decade of 4am bar nights with my 3 hour midday naps now. Maybe it’s the anemia. Who can say.

I expected to never again have a headache or that faint (sometimes not so faint) feeling of a tender tummy that might need to expel everything inside of me at any time.

The first time I woke up with a dull headache, I was so mad. The first time I had an upset stomach. Also mad.

But it happens a lot less. Mostly around my period which is far more trackable than my drinking habits. I don’t spend whole days hungover, unable to move, and that’s a big deal.

I guess I still have to do other things like drink water and eat green things, not just sugar.

Yes and no on being sober being culturally easy.

There are mocktail menus at many bars, there are non-alcoholic beers (Athletic even has sour options that I’m excited to try!), and there's so many probiotic drinks, flavorful seltzers and kombuchas that fill my treat drink cup. There’s also, you know, being hydrated and drinking water instead of alcohol as an option.

I am getting more comfortable asking about non-alcoholic options. I was really uncomfortable about it at first, but no one has made me feel bad about it or even batted an eye. Yesterday at a brewery in Brookyln was the first time there was only one non-alcoholic option in the six page alcohol menu and the bartender was not interested in offering any others, but that’s the most uncomfortable that it’s gotten.

Yes, I have saved money

It’s not totally accurate, but I do have an app that “tracks” my journey. It estimates that I have saved almost $2500.

No, it's not harder to sleep; it's easier.

I used to need alcohol to go to sleep and I thought this was going to be a huge problem for me. It’s not. I go to sleep so easily. I sleep through the night. I wake up less groggy. Frankly, I’ve been sleeping too much.

Yes, I do have a lot more clarity

In skin and in mind. My skin does look better. It’s not flawless, but it’s better.

I remember more. I put sentences together more easily. I don’t stumble over my words and repeat myself as much. I don’t worry that I am. I am figuring out what I want and exploring it more. My brain feels like it has capacity.

Yes, I have more time. And less excuses. I feel more in control

All this time and control leads to a responsibility for my life that I may have been avoiding, drowning. It’s energizing. And also sometimes overwhelming. I have time to be bored. I have time to create. I have time to work on unlearning and growing in therapy instead of just not being depressed. I’m not “too busy” to do… well, anything. Which means I am more obligated to do… something. To make something. To build the things I’ve wanted to. I am so surprised by the number of hours I spent in bars. Or recovering from being in bars. What might I be able to do with ALL THIS TIME?

No, I didn’t slip up and have a drink. I chose to.

I ordered a glass of wine a week ago, but poured it into my friend’s glass two sips later. It tasted like tannins, water, and the threat of a headache.

But that spicy margarita at the place around the corner, that was a taste I missed regularly, fantasized about often.

“The first hit of tajin closely chased by tequila and lime slaps shock on my tongue and soothes calm all the way into my fingers and toes. It feels like something out of Across the Universe.

I have learned my lessons and the margarita is a want instead of a need now. It’s okay to have one.

It didn’t taste like the liquid gold I had remembered. My eyes teared up at the disappointment. But also the relief. I had been thinking about this drink, really only this one, for months.

I still finished it. It still tasted good - mostly the zing of the tajin. But it didn’t feel like it used to. Which feels so dramatic to write but also true. It made me nervous. I was paranoid that I was slurring or acting silly or looking like a drunk. I was worried the friends I was with would think I was drunk, would worry, would see an alcoholic. I took the few steps to the bathroom and hated the floating feeling that I used to love.

I walked home, making sure to take straight steps, like a teenager trying to fool a parent. I was an actor playing at drunk by trying too hard to act sober.

I fell asleep easily, but I couldn’t stay asleep - waking up every few hours, not sure I had been asleep at all. I didn’t realize how well I’ve been sleeping lately until last night when I couldn’t. I woke up feeling like I hadn’t slept at all and laid in bed for hours after waking up. I started thinking about writing this at 5am laying awake in bed.

I feel heavier today. I woke up wanting to spend the whole day on the couch with a hangover as an excuse. I immediately started a mental queue for the shows I wanted to watch. I brushed off any ideas or calendar reminders for the project that was on the docket for today.

Yes, I feel better without alcohol

I like not drinking. I feel more grounded, more present, more at peace. I like counting the days like they're ticks on a todo list. I feel like all of the parts of me are conspiring on a plan for what to do with all of our free time and our health and our focus. And they are joyful over it. I know all of the good I feel is also because of therapy and The Artists Way and x y z other thing I am doing for myself, but I also know getting rid of alcohol was a part of the equation. Am I swearing off of it forever? I don't feel the need to make a hard and fast rule, but I do know alcohol isn't the default anymore.

Because the clarity and the time and the health, all of it is playing a big part in me liking myself and working towards building a life I love with less excuses. I feel like I’m in the drivers seat again. And I am not drinking and driving. I have too much to do. I am too precious.

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More Questions

When I was at the bar last night with two of my close friends, I asked one of them what they thought of an innocuous conversation we had had with someone earlier that day.

“Oh, I hadn’t really thought about it anymore or any deeper since. Have you been thinking about it?”

“Of course she has.”

Seen.

So obviously I am THINKING about all of this sober stuff. A lot. All of my parts have different questions, different answers. But I think they’re enjoying the debate.

Am I missing out?

On what?

I haven’t had any of strangers-at-bars conversations. They’re my favorite thing.

Maybe I can have those conversations in other ways now, without the alcohol.

But I haven’t yet.

Yet. Maybe I need to rest first. Maybe it’s not as easy as it was drunk. But that doesn’t mean it’s not possible. And maybe I’ll remember the details instead of losing them in desperate sloppy journal scrawls. Maybe I’ll do something with them. Maybe they’ll have more impact.

How did I spend five hours chatting in bars with our friends before? What did we talk about? Maybe because I’m sober, I’m not having the deeply interesting conversations I must have been having before.

Am I boring now?

I like my conversations! Leaving the bar after two hours seems pretty reasonable actually!

I also have a lot of other things to do with my time.

Maybe they were always only two hour conversations slurred out into five.

Maybe it wasn’t about the conversation anyway, maybe it was all just an excuse to be in the warm buzz of people I love.

How much sleep am I overdue? How much quiet have I denied myself? How much have I pushed myself farther than I wanted to go because I numbed parts of me.

It was fun!

Would I have kissed him by now if we had both had a drink? Would we slip back into our relationship?

Would it be good because we were finally removing the critic and the breath of inhibitions on our necks? Is lowering our inhibitions good when our inhibitions might be stopping us from doing things we really want?

Or would it be a sloppy mistake?

I had an ex who loved me more when he drank. We always reconciled after a drink. We forgave each other. We stopped fighting. After our first break, he cried over his deep love to me over mimosas until he was vomiting into my toilet while I rubbed his back. I felt like drunk him was the real him because there was vulnerability there instead of a wall.

Am I missing that now? Is lowering our inhibitions good when our inhibitions might be stopping us from doing things we really want?

Is control always such a good thing?

Even if the outcome was ultimately good, wouldn’t it be better if we could make choices without needing alcohol to be what curbs inhibition?

Maybe letting go of a little control and being open handed should be a skill to cultivate without a substance rather than a reason to avoid them.

Can I still go out dancing without a drink?

Am I “cured” or would I have ordered a second margarita last night if I was with different people under different circumstances?

Am I missing out on the things Drunk Stephanie used to write, the space I gave myself at bars with a notebook? Am I locking up a piece of my creativity?

Or am I unlocking it?

Some situations bring me more anxiety without a drink. Maybe it’s good to ease that anxiety.

Maybe anxiety is leading you out of situations you don’t actually need to be in.

What happened to Drunk Stephanie? Is she gone? Or is she just showing up in a different way? Who is she now?

How do I want to spend my time? What do I want to talk about? Who with? What does the life of my dreams look like?

We have so much time. What are we going to do with it?