I wish I could take a day off from sobriety

Most of the time I’m glad I stopped drinking. But occasionally, I wish I could have a day off from being sober.

I’m almost two months into my life as a non-drinker.

After the initial high of deciding to stop, the “good on yous” and “wish I could do thats” from friends and the novelty of waking up hangover free on a Sunday morning (hell, any morning really), I’m now at the business end of sobriety. And let me tell you, sometimes it sucks.

Today is one of those sucky days, when I wish I could just temporarily stop the clock on the non-drinking and take some furlough.

I went away with my good friend G this weekend over here in the US. Bar culture here isn’t like pub culture back home in the UK. You can get away with going to the pub and not drinking back home, because the primary purpose of pubs is social really. Bars over here? They’re for getting drunk in. Non-drinkers don’t belong.

I badly wished on Friday night that I could have just had a pleasant drink or two with my mate, chewed the fat for a little bit, got a little buzz and just felt, well, normal.

I really wished I hadn’t had to explain to G’s friend whose alcohol cabinet is probably as extensive as my shoe cupboard that the reason I don’t drink is because I have a drinking problem, since he wasn’t taking my vague explanation about “not really being a drinker”.

I haven’t particularly worried about how people perceive me up to this point, because I was just busy doing my thing. I’ve not socialised with new people much. In fact, scratch that, I haven’t socialised much at all lately. I’m a writer, so I’m naturally a solitary and somewhat antisocial creature, but I wonder if the non-drinking has given me even more of an excuse for it, as well as my packed work schedule.

I’m not boring, honest…

I started to wonder what it was like from G’s point of view to hang out with me . I was suddenly rather painfully self-conscious about my non-drinking, and I got kinda paranoid if he was also suddenly thinking to himself, great, I’m out with a recovering drunk who’s sober in a bar on a Friday night when I could be mainlining vodka tonics and chatting up half-dressed drunk birds. I wondered if he was embarrassed about introducing me to his alcohol-loving friend. Let’s face it, that was never going to go down well. I had to make a decision between coming across as a dull, judgemental square (because most drinkers always think non-drinkers are secretly judging them — I know I did) or being truthful about having a drinking problem, and I chose the latter because actually I’d rather be “so-and-so’s alcoholic friend” than “so-and-so’s boring friend”. And that’s what it comes down to — at least then people know I haven’t always been a dullard.

I guess maybe I haven’t changed as much as I thought after all — one of the reasons I was always up for another drink was because I never, ever wanted to be boring. But I’ve realised that now I don’t drink, probably a lot of people are going to think that about me — and I may well even start thinking it about myself. I’m not as socially confident when I’m not drinking — fact. I’m a lot quieter these days. I don’t have as much to say, because I’m not removing the filters on a regular basis any more.

I know I was a complete ass when I was drinking and I was never as funny as I thought I was, but I’d give anything just to be able to loosen the inhibitions once in a while. Just to have a day off from the fucking everyday grind that is getting through every day without having any means to obliterate all the shit that’s bothering you from your brain. I still smoke weed (hey, it’s the one vice I have left), which does take the edge off it somewhat, but nothing like the mind-numbing effect of booze that somehow locks you in the present moment, no care for what you were thinking about an hour ago that seemed so important and even less care for what might happen an hour later.

But we all know that when you’re a problem drinker it doesn’t work like that. You don’t get to have a day off from being sober. There is no furlough, no leave of absence, no vacation. Even your vacations are sober.

I realise I should probably round this off with something positive. I know there are lots of good things about not drinking and I’ve achieved things in my life that I never could have done while I was still busy getting wasted, but today I just needed to sound off about how hard it is sometimes. I’ve spent most of my life feeling like an outsider and sobriety isn’t doing anything for that particular hangup/source of anxiety.

The solution isn’t really in being able to take a ‘day off’ from it, however. The solution lies somewhere between my current place of grudging resignation and what I hope will be a future peaceful acceptance, at which point I might hopefully have fewer fucks to give for anyone who might think I’m “boring” without actually knowing anything about me.

Until then, I’ll be white-knuckling it (and probably writing angst-filled blogs about it too).

Photo credit: David Kenny, Creative Commons 2.0