Unwined: Reflections on 10 months of Chilling While Sober
More than just not drinking, sobriety is proving to be a different experience of being alive
“Your skin looks amazing! You are literally glowing,” said my sweet friend and steadfast supporter of my alcohol breakup journey. We had just finished a gentle hike through a gorgeous forest, enjoying Spring’s earliest stirrings.
There was part of me that reckoned that this type of radiance would likely be true of most people in our circumstances, however as it happened, it was actually the second comment I had received along similar lines that very day. In recent years, I have finally cast aside my reflex to deflect or diminish compliments, and started receiving them as the gifts that they are. Ten months of sobriety and I’m glowing? I’ll take it. It also got me thinking about what other changes have transpired since I finally flipped over my glass, following a years-long quest to terminate a stubborn daily wine habit.
Having said in passing in my first essay about quitting drinking that the benefits of sobriety are a long list, I want to delve deeper, in the form of considering what things were like a year ago, two months before I stopped drinking, and what’s different now.
For some context, I am a 50-something white woman living on unceded Indigenous land on the West Coast of Canada. I live an enviable life by plenty of measures. Not to dismiss my struggles and heartbreaks, but I have resources: a stable home and supportive family, good health, work that I enjoy, and a vast network of friends and colleagues who would happily show up for me at the drop of a hat. If ever I had doubted the latter, the response to my coming out about how my relationship with booze went sour has affirmed this in spades.
Nor do I have a dramatic, crash-and-burn drinking story to tell. My situation of taking steps to address my drinking before it progressed to tearing my life apart is known as ‘high bottom’ (as opposed to ‘rock bottom’) in recovery circles. This preamble is a roundabout way of saying that–other than stopping drinking–I wasn’t looking for huge change. What’s proving to be true is that removing alcohol from the puzzle of my life is having a ripple effect across many of its other pieces in some wonderful and surprising ways.
At a very high level, my observation is that I am not just feeling better because I eliminated something in my life that was not doing me any favours. It’s actually turning out to be about discovering a very different experience of being alive.
A year ago, I was tied in mental knots. Here’s a taste of what the endless loop sounded like in my mind: Am I actually addicted to alcohol? Will I ever be able to quit for good? How will I be able to enjoy myself at dinner parties and celebrations? Or will my friends and family simply not invite a new, less-fun me? What if I can’t quit? Or maybe I’m actually ok and it’s not such a big deal? Should I drink today? Relax! But what if I have a problem? And on and on. Hissing away in the background like the end of a record. It was driving me around the bend.
I did not see my consumption as excessive, and yet was well past the answer being anything other than Yes when I contemplated having an evening glass of wine or two. If I was still a “take it or leave it” drinker, why did I never leave it? And what was it going to take to make that voice shut up?
This brings me to my first favourite thing about sobriety: the voice has stopped. I hardly ever think about drinking anymore. Even when other people around me are doing it. It’s a freaking miracle. Even if I do think about it–typically in the context of being irritated with what I perceive to be disingenuous alcohol marketing–it does not make me want to drink.
Even in moments when I have had it up to here with whatever is going on in life, or in convivial situations where previously I would have enjoyed drinking, I’m now crystal-clear that it would have the opposite effect than what I seek. I no longer go there because I know all too well that it would lead me right back to the place I so desperately wanted to get away from.
The voice–that I am now calling the Winer–and I are no longer on speaking terms. It turns out that all I had to do to make it shut the hell up was–bonus points for obviousness!–not drink. I have now reclaimed my mental real estate for a thousand more pleasurable, interesting and useful things. This is delightful, bordering on miraculous.
Not that I didn’t have cravings in the early days and weeks, but what flipped the switch for me in being able to deal with them was learning to shut down any possibility of drinking in response to whatever was fueling the urge. I still have the desire to do things like mark the end of the workday, congratulate, commiserate, chill out and so on, but now they are just feelings that are no longer automatically linked to having a glass of wine as the response. I get to decide how I want to handle these situations, and am able to choose ways that work better and don’t come at a cost.
As a caveat for readers who may not have read my previous essays, it took me years and multiple attempts to moderate or otherwise control my drinking — getting here was not a ‘one and done’ thing. I had to learn and re-learn that I was no longer able to ‘win’ with booze–it would always have the upper hand as long as I continued to engage with it.
Further to the point about cost, it’s something that has consistently struck me about alcohol: that there’s always a price to pay. The literal cost is just the baseline: others can include things like lost sleep, hangovers, compromised decision-making or undermined health, not to mention the most obvious: the risk of addiction. This cost is not just personal, either–alcohol is an immense social problem, whether you drink or not. Tragically, alcohol is responsible for over 13% of deaths of people ages 20–39, among other alarming realities, according to the World Health Organization.
As I said in the first essay, my final, critical question when it came to alcohol was whether it was taking more than it was giving. It turns out that it was taking more (or giving less? Or both?) that I had realized. I am now getting to reclaim what I was missing. The booze emperor is now fully naked, and not looking his best.
So what happens when I do get stressed? I should note that I did not automatically pour myself a glass of wine in every stressful situation in the past, however it was a common end-of-the-day Winer rationale. Now, instead of fighting it, or seeking a way out, I basically surrender to it. If I’m sad or scared or hurt, I’m just sad or scared or hurt. I now look for ways to support, solve or accept, rather than escape. An interesting thing that I have noticed is that the moments of stress feel less frequent and severe than a year ago, which leads me to wonder whether the Winer was amplifying the drama in order to justify its desired outcome.
Ultimately, I know that drinking would only serve to undermine my ability to self-soothe or get help or let it blow over or whatever might actually be useful. I should add in fairness that I am more liberal with my consumption of things like hot chocolate and ice cream than I was before! But seriously–more obviousness here–drinking never solved anything. It only made me feel worse in the end. I still had to deal with life, only later and struggling through a fog.
Overall, I feel more grounded and chilled-out than before, but–interestingly–feistier and less likely to put up with or stay silent about things that are not working for me. The more chilled-out and grounded awesomeness is directly related to a second critical blessing for me in sobriety, sleep. I’m no longer trying to cope with life from a place of rest deficit. I cannot overstate the importance of this vital upgrade–it underpins everything.
For a bit more context here, by the time I stopped drinking, I was fully over the menopausal hill. Experiencing sudden, body-soaking hot flashes, most notably in the early morning hours, exacerbated an already-challenged situation, sleepwise.
The fact that alcohol degrades quality of sleep is well documented. I had experienced sub-par sleep for years, but written it off as perimenopause, or simply the fact of being a busy, often stressed person juggling a wide variety of responsibilities. Was my modest daily indulgence really making that much of a difference? 10 restful months later, I can testify that it absolutely was.
Part of me knew that the fact that I would almost invariably awake at around 3am and remain that way for an hour or two was not serving me. Quality sleep is a big deal for overall health for everyone–menopause just happens to be a common life stage where it becomes harder to come by. In a weird way, having things exacerbated by this timing was a gift that helped me to get serious about quitting when I might otherwise have kept going.
A year ago, having had the aforementioned disrupted night, I would have dragged myself out of bed with my husband’s morning alarm, not feeling particularly refreshed, and eased my way reluctantly into the day. Everything felt like more of a struggle, and a feeling of low-grade exhaustion never really left me.
Which brings me to another favourite thing about sobriety–waking up in the morning. When I was still drinking, it was a rough moment of truth: how meh was I going to feel? Looking back, I’m astonished that I put up with that as my first thought of the day, often followed with a chaser of self-berating and a twist of regret. Yuck. Never once in the past 10 months have I woken up and thought “Gee, I wish that I had had some wine last night!”
Here’s what sleep looks like for me now. I head to bed with a non-work-related book by 9pm, and effortlessly fall asleep within around 20 minutes. I sleep soundly until 1 or 2, take a bio break and head back to dreamland again until around 5am. It’s rare for me to sleep as late as the 6am alarm. Waking up feels gentle, grateful, clear, curious and exciting, and I pause to take some deep breaths, hydrate and check in with how my body is feeling. There’s a sweet, childlike I wonder what’s going to happen today? quality to it: it’s golden.
I should add that I am also benefiting immensely from the judicious use of hormone supplements, and have done away with the hot flashes, at least at night. In other words, I sleep like a Queen, assuming that Queens almost invariably sleep soundly.
My overall energy has substantially increased, especially on those precious mornings. On weekend mornings, I go to yoga, write, bake or attend to making plans and sorting out life’s details. I no longer feel like I waste any of my time. Which is not to say that I’ve become ‘addicted’ to productivity, just that I’m no longer slowed down by the distraction of the Winer or the aftermath of bending to its will.
I have started doing some new things for myself, and am also giving myself more treats. I took roller skating lessons, y’all! While I’m still leery about taking this activity on in a long-term way, darned if I’m not proud of myself for rising to the challenge.
I have also started donating blood regularly. This may seem like an odd example of an exciting new activity, but the fact of the matter is that I had previously shied away from doing this simple thing because I was ashamed of my alcohol-tinged blood. True story! For folks who are able and do not find giving blood to be terrifying, I cannot recommend it highly enough: you do practically nothing, feel like a hero and get ALL the snacks ;-)
As I’m learning, when we think about recovery, we need to pay attention to why we consumed or acted compulsively, beyond the physical addiction. What trauma, patterns or other unresolved personal issues were we trying to manage with the substance or behaviour? This can be the scariest part of recovery for many people.
What’s changed for me about this fear is that–thanks to thinking of myself as a metaphorical baby bird as I recover–I feel more compassionately curious than freaked out about venturing into my shadowy corners. While I was still contemplating quitting drinking, the idea of letting the Genie out of the emotional bottle was something that definitely gave me pause. As I noted earlier, thanks to the fact that I am not burdened with extensive past abuse or intergenerational trauma to reckon with, this process is able to unfold relatively gently.
Speaking of baby birds, I happened to find the prettiest necklace with a swallow pendant that I now wear as a reminder to take care of my inner baby bird, as well as of my newfound freedom as it learns to fly.
A huge part of my recovery has been writing these essays and telling my story. A year ago I was definitely edging out of the closet in terms of telling very close friends and family members, however the idea of going internet-public about my struggle would have been a no-go. As I related in the first essay, in the end it was the shame and the silence that turned out to be more toxic for me than alcohol. Sharing about my process of working through this whole thing has been one of the most rewarding things that I have ever done for myself.
Do I miss the ‘good’ things about alcohol? Sure, I sort of miss my end-of-the-week-you’ve-earned-it wine, but I sure as heck don’t miss the sluggish, I-feel-like-garbage weekend mornings. I now see that the proverbial ‘edge’ that I had sought to ‘take off’ with drinking is dual, in other words that when I reached for a glass of wine as a response to a negative trigger, my capacity to experience pleasure, joy and general aliveness also dimmed. Whether I was buzzed or suffering the consequences, I was less present mentally and emotionally. I was less energized, less creative, less joyful, less everything.
So how do I relax and ‘unwind’ without the wine? It’s actually relatively easy. I have become a huge fan of non-alcoholic beer, and typically pour myself one when I would previously have had a glass of wine. On weekend nights, for something a bit fancier I have discovered a delicious ginger-based non-alcoholic spirit that is surprisingly satisfying — it truly has an alcohol-like ‘bite’ taste-wise. I cook, garden, read, chat with my family, watch movies, surf social media, go for a walk, call a friend, check out a podcast, hug my kid, kiss my husband or–these days–do some writing. Life is feeling more technicolour than I would have anticipated. I am definitely not bored, and don’t feel like I’m missing out on something.
To my grateful amazement, my well-rested body and Winer-free mind seem to know how to chill out and have a good time all on their own. No wonder I’m glowing ;-)
