7 lessons from 7 sober years

What I've learned

TW: addiction

The other day, I was thinking about the last time I had a drink, and I realized that I’ve been sober for about seven years. I don’t have an official date for it, I just know that I stopped sometime in May. I don’t do an annual celebration, and I don’t think about it too much. I wonder if it’s because I don’t really identify or even feel worthy of using the word “sober.” I find that our society’s use of the word often implies that you had a rampant issue with substances, or hit a level of rock-bottom addiction. Does that have to be true? Or can sobriety simply be a way of living — a practice?

Growing up with addiction in my household, I was acutely aware of substances, and their damaging impact, from a young age. I remember being in high school and asking my mom if I could go to a party, and in her nightgown, she (lovingly) cornered me in the kitchen and said, if you use drugs and get caught, you’ll go to jail!

As early as six, I was consciously aware that addiction lived in our house. It smothered the air, and I witnessed in my dad the very thing my mom warned me of.

Healing doesn’t mean we’re going to be perfect partners, friends and parents. Perfection is never the goal. If I’m able to become a mother one day, I’m inevitably going to fuck up in some ways. But if I can break the cycle of addiction for my future family, and if not drinking/using prevents them from seeing some of the things I saw, that feels like generational healing to me.

Using the word “sober” kinda makes me feel like a phony because I don’t think I ever hit a point of categorical addiction — but I could certainly see a world in which I could have, if I hadn’t gotten a horrible concussion in college, had to step back from drinking, and began my healing journey when I did.

I officially stopped using substances when I was 23, just two years after it was legal to do so in the United States. In college, it’s not weird to get drunk three times a week. It’s not weird to rip shots at 2pm on a Saturday. Did I struggle with it? I don’t know. I struggled to not get drunk when I was drinking, but I stopped before the context in which I was drinking was no longer socially acceptable. And I never really got into drugs (please refer back to the scene of my mom cornering me in the kitchen), so alcohol was my accessible vice.

I write this not because I think everyone should or needs to stop using substances. Yes, I think that for some people, they can be used in balanced ways without second thought. But for me, it feels more complex.

For me, sobriety has been a huge supporter in coming back to myself. But coming back to ourselves will look different for each of us because we are all different. That is the beauty of it! These are merely my reflections about my own personal relationship to substances, and I’m sharing them with you instead of keeping them tucked away in my journal:

7 lessons from 7 sober years

1. I’m more of an introvert than I realized. You can absolutely do all the things you did drunk, but sober. You can still go to concerts. You can still stay out late. But if I’m being honest with myself, I find that my stamina for those things is lower when I’m not under the influence. It’s become clear to me how much I recharge in quiet, in nature, how I love being in bed at 9pm, how I love waking up with the sun. There’s a part of me that feels shame for that, a voice that says, you’re young! Get out there and snort something! But over the last 7 years, as I’ve refrained from substances, that period of time has coincided with deep, dense healing work. And it feels like the ‘reward’ for that ongoing work is reclaiming myself, knowing myself intimately, and accepting this person that I’m meeting. Who I am, and who you are, isn’t fixed. I don’t cling to the term “introvert” because what I want today will be different from what I want tomorrow. Rather, it’s a daily practice of meeting who we are right now — and accepting who that person is.

2. I’m not supposed to be for everyone. What? Noooooo! says the fawner part of me, the part that has historically found safety through appeasing. By not drinking and being firm in that stance, there’s no room for morphing myself to be liked by someone who feels agitated by my not drinking. It’s just not going to happen. Not drinking has confronted me with many moments of disappointing people (but not as many moments as I would’ve thought. More on that in a sec). When we’re on the path of healing the people-pleasing-pattern and owning the true essence of who we are, we’re naturally going to shed relationships, habits, jobs and choices that were in alignment with the older version of ourselves, and no longer align with this version. Not because those things were bad, just different. We’re creating space for what this new version, this true version, wants and envisions. When we’re living from a place of self-knowing, safety is no longer exclusively coming from external sources and validation. It’s coming from within, so there’s less of a need to please.

3. Sobriety is a mindfulness practice. I think of mindfulness as the practice of seeing things clearly. It’s not escaping the moment, but being with it. There’s a misconception that mindfulness means being passive, that we are just accepting the moment and doing nothing about it. But mindfulness is seeing clearly so we can know what we need to do, what we can do, and also knowing when there’s nothing to be done. Mindfulness doesn’t mean things will always feel good. For me, sobriety is the same. It’s being with what is. It’s having a clear mind so that I can evaluate my life, my relationships, my choices, this moment, with equanimity.

   

4. “Fun” is self-defined. My favorite part of drinking was dancing, and I realized I can still do that! I’m the drunkest sober girl on the dance floor and no one can tame me when Lip Gloss by Lil Mama starts playing (I probably requested it). Moreover, my definition of “fun” has evolved over time, and has become quite simple. I feel the most myself when I’m moving my body, when I’m being sucked into a page-turning book, when I’m with friends that make me piss myself from laughter, when candles are lit and I’m trying out a new recipe with nostalgic Christmas music humming in the background. What feels fun and fulfilling to me, is naturally going to look different from what someone else, my age or not, finds fun and fulfilling. I’m the one waking up in my body, living my life, going through my day. No one else. I’d rather enjoy my life from the inside out, instead of focusing on whether someone thinks it’s lame from the outside, looking in.

5. People aren’t thinking about me as much as I think they are. When I first stopped drinking, I was still at the age when it was kind of weird to not. Is she pregnant? Is she an addict? were the questions I assumed people were thinking. But what I soon began to realize is that people didn’t really care as much as I thought they would. What I’ve observed is that if people know you to drink and you say, “I’m not drinking tonight,” they’re more likely to nudge you and try to change your mind. But if people know you to not drink, it’s less of a thing. They know that about you, they expect it, and are prepared for it. What this really reveals is: we like what we know. I think that people’s tendency to pressure often derives from a discomfort of you deviating from the person they know you to be. As humans, we find comfort in predictability. We like consistency. And we are also fully focused on ourselves, our lives, and no one is paying attention or cares as much as you might think. Even if someone makes a passing comment about you not drinking, that doesn’t mean they’re spending their whole night thinking why isn’t she drinking???. We have tens of thousands of thoughts a day. That was probably just one of them.

6. I can survive hard emotions. One particularly drunken night in college, I remember feeling doomed about this stats test I had on Monday, and cheers-ing a shot of tequila to the upcoming test. Beneath the shrill CHEEEEEEEEERS was utter panic and anxiety, but it felt easier to drink and push it away, than to sit with the discomfort of it. This was a theme for me. When I stopped, I was forced to sit with the uncomfortable emotions that had been there my whole life, bubbling beneath the surface. I just never learned how to work with them. Going into new social situations, it would be so much easier to just pick up a drink to soothe social anxiety. After losing my dad in January, it would’ve been temporarily relieving to push the grief away by getting lost in a bottle. And let’s be clear: I sometimes numb in other ways, like doom-scrolling or eating more sugar than my body preferred. Being with our emotions is not a practice of perfection. When we do numb, that’s just another thing to notice. It feels empowering to practice (key word: practice) witnessing a challenging emotion arise, be with the agitation of that emotion to be best of my ability, and to then notice how it passes. The greatest irony is that by resisting our hard emotions, we prolong them. The past seven years have taught me that I can survive hard emotions that make me want to leave my body and I can survive thought loops that make my stomach sink because all of those things are fleeting, and already on their way out.

7. Truly, deeply, knowing myself is the exhilaration that I’m after. With anything, I notice that the mind creates this fantasy about what could’ve happened if we had chosen something else. If I had just taken that job instead of this one, my life would be perfect. If I had left ten minutes earlier, I wouldn’t have hit all this traffic. We create suffering around our decisions by assuming the other path would’ve been better, but we don’t really know that. We can’t know that. It’s just a thought. And the same is true for negative outcomes: I can’t know what life would’ve looked like if I had kept drinking. I can’t know if I would’ve gone down a different path. Would I not have become a therapist? Would I not have been able to finish my 3000 hours of practicum? Would I not have been able to wake up early on Sunday mornings to write my book? I just can’t know. Maybe I would’ve been able to balance it all! But what I do know is that coming back to myself (not-drinking just being a slice of that pie) has been the most exhilarating, liberating feeling. Like anything, that feeling comes and goes. But what has changed is my ability to trust that I can navigate the changes because the constant is me, my body, and my breath.

Thank you for receiving my reflections, and remember: this is just what feels true for me, right now. Whatever you’re currently navigating on your journey to self-reclamation, give yourself the grace and ease of knowing that you’re doing enough.

Affirmations for whatever season you’re in:

It is safe to honor what feels right to me.

I don’t need to explain my choices to be proud of them.

It is safe to change.

I am allowed to outgrow what once felt familiar.

I celebrate my evolution, even when others don’t understand it.

I deserve a life that feels good on the inside.

P.S. if you’re looking for a book recommendation on examining your relationship with alcohol and sobriety, Quit Like a Woman is a must.

Holly Whitaker

is amazing and so is her book.

Until next time,

♡ Meg