Here are some reasons why it’s like this for me:
1. After my separation in 2012, basically all sexual activity was precipitated by drinking. And all those relationships have been pretty traumatic in their own way.
2. Most of my arguments while in those relationships happened after drinking
3. The post-divorce guys I was dating were like the heaviest drinkers I had ever hung with and I held my own.
4. Several of these guys were actually making me sick.
5. Since my earliest romantic relationship was also largely tied up with drinking, I think I was just repeating that pattern.
So the short answer is, for me right now not drinking is like a charm keeping the toxos away. My worst relationship events all happened around drinking, and none of those people (even my never-drinker exhusband) were at all supportive of anything. So being sober and single is like a gift I’m giving to myself honestly.
Without getting too deep into ~autobiographical narrative~ I started wanting to cut back while I was still working at the museum (2014 was a year I was trying to scale back I think) but it was hard to impossible for many reasons including extremely toxic working environment and buckets of free alcohol at events. Also that was when I definitely needed to be out of the house post divorce which always meant drinking. Also like 200 breweries opened in my town that year.
At some point I stopped day drinking bc the hangover seemed to be 3x as long and when I was working at the museum I needed to not waste my days off feeling as bad as I was. I mean without alcohol I didn’t feel good, but at least I wasn’t actively sick.
At some other point I stopped drinking liquor. I don’t remember when that was, but I know why was because I needed the filling feeling of beer to act as a throttle. I could drink cocktails all night; I could not drink beer all night.
And at some third point I stopped drinking at Shuffleboard league bc I realized that I liked to win and I win a lot more often when I’m not drinking. I think this was a big breakthrough re: being able to be social and not drink. Because I had a better reason to be sober on Wednesday nights than to drink.
More recently, in late 2017 I stopped drinking for a while when I started drinking kratom instead. It made me not crave alcohol and I got a nice little euphoric bump from that with no hangover. So for almost a year I didn’t drink alcohol and had no desire to.
Then kratom started making me feel nauseous so I switched back to beer and wine but like, the effect had changed. I don’t know if it was physiological or psychological but it just didn’t make me feel the usual “good” effects of alcohol!
So for about another year I’d half heartedly have a drink or two when everyone else was but it just never seemed to do anything. Except fuck up my sleep and make me hungover. When I finally decided to just quit altogether, in August 2019, it was bc even one drink was giving me a massive headache the next day. So it was easy to stop at that point bc there was no good only bad.
Typing all that out and seeing how many negotiations I tried to keep drinking *something* is like eye opening.
This gradual stopping also coincided with intense therapy that I was doing to like end the jw brain bits that I still had. So working on the inside stuff was lessening the need to cope via poison.
So to get back to how it is being single and sober. It’s great! For me I can still be around my friends when they drink so I don’t have to fully sequester myself. I just find that I get bored more quickly. I’ll still go to happy hour occasionally it’s just far less frequently, and usually just for an hour instead of like 6.
I made a point to tell my friends that I wasn’t drinking so they’d know to have fizzies or soda on hand. At that point I didn’t know if it was going to be something that was just for a week or for 90 years. One time I joked “one day at a time” and then I was like “oh. Yeah.”
Also I was telling my friends so they’d know that I might say no thanks to unstructured time at a bar, but that I wasn’t saying no to hanging out and that we’d just have to be more imaginative. Which has been great! I’ve given up most art events and like that’s also a very positive change.
This may have been the start of Plant Saturdays with my friend Carrie bc I started hanging out a lot more during the day and actually making plans that involved activities instead of sitting at a brewery all day. Lunch plans more often, little field trips, outside stuff, witch stuff.
My mornings weren’t constantly ruined so I got a good morning routine going, and I was sleeping better so I got a good evening routine going and that felt so good that I wouldn’t dare mess it up.
It all seemed to happen really organically for me. But I think that was bc other healing things were happening that just made it VERY clear that alcohol was only making me sick. There was no way to veil that anymore.
There was a lot of figuring out how to pass the time at first—to get me past the happy hour urge. So I just started new rituals. I’d take a shower or work in the garden in the late afternoon. Just to spend enough time to span that happy hour window. Nap or reading for an hour worked too. At home at night when I wanted wine, I’d have tea instead. Bath, facials, manicures, going to the movies. All the stuff I used to do as a teenager before I started drinking lol.
Is it a coincidence that all the external stuff in my life did an entire 180 right around the time I stopped drinking? Probably not.
Looking back (post deprogramming, obvi) drinking helped me keep myself small. I drank the most when someone was trying to control me.
I was still very newly sober when I experienced a devistating conflict with a housemate and I remember feeling very proud of myself for feeling all those awful feelings without drinking. Move negotiations happened very soon after that implosion that resulted when I created 1 boundary. Now I live at the beach.
