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4 Things I’ve Learned From A Year of Sobriety
If you’re considering ditching drinking read this first
I want to set the record straight before I begin. I’m not anti-alcohol or planning to never have a drink again. I enjoy an ice-cold cocktail while sunbathing or sitting on the beach while on holiday. By the time this is published, I will have had my first drink since August 2020.
I believe there is a societal norm around drinking culture. It is expected of you as a person in their 20s to be binge drinking, getting drunk and partying every weekend. I can’t speak of other countries but this seems to be the case in the UK and Scotland.
I won’t deny the fact that I adhered to drinking culture when I was in my late teens and early years of my 20s. The first night you get really drunk and your parents see is almost viewed as a right of passage. Very rarely does this lead to the individual reflecting on the experience and choosing not to repeat it. More often than not it becomes an experience that happens again and again.
Alcohol is a drug. It is classified as a central nervous system depressant. This is often experienced as the anxious feeling when waking up after a night of heavy drinking. In Scotland, this is commonly known as “the fear”.
