500 days … but still a ‘drinker’

Well howdy doody to everyone. I have absolutely nothing mind blowing or deep to say and my life has been pretty much working, yoga, some meditation and house jobs. A little like Groundhog Day but I’m ok plodding on right now. We lost out guineapig Toffee a few weeks back. It was actually really sad. The boys were very upset and I felt like it was the end of an era! The photo is the graves of our first two guineapigs. Pretty eh? We have a new addition to keep the lone guineapig company. He’s called Scruff. I’m not sure he and Biscuit are overly happy with each other but time will tell.

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SCRUFF

I noticed on my ‘giving up drinking’ app I started on my first day sober that I am approaching 500 days. I really can’t believe it. I was so addicted to alcohol and wine I had never managed 2 days, let alone a dry Jan. I know my whole relationship with booze has changed beyond belief which is brilliant but I also recognise there are still fundamental aspects of my personality that mean if I tried a glass of wine again, I’d be right back where I started. That’s really hard to come to terms with and I still haven’t accepted it fully.

Don’t get me wrong, I know this is an amazing accomplishment. Not drinking in an evening, not having ‘at home’ drinks … that’s huge for me. I loved both at home and social drinking. Breaking the habit of sitting on the sofa relaxing with wine, or cooking dinner, singing to alexa’s playlist and glugging glass after glass … that was tough. Those cravings have all but disappeared now. The social side of drinking is however still to be addressed. I haven’t really done that. I’ve been out socially (whilst not in lockdown) and met up with friends … but I have ‘suffered’ these occasions and not enjoyed them. I am not at the same comfortable place as my ‘at home’ sobriety. I haven’t had as much experience due to the pandemic. I have anxieties about it.

I also still can’t say ‘forever’. I don’t know why. I realise I’m holding on to some fantasy of moderation. A glass of lovely red on my 50th birthday, celebratory glass of champagne at some fabulous event … you get the picture. 500 days is awesome but I don’t feel 💯 secure in my sobriety even after all this time, maybe I never will!

Claire x

Sober thoughts

Now I have been sober for a year, I am starting to feel a little like I did when I gave up smoking in my early 30s. Giving up smoking was difficult but I did it initially by ‘cutting down’ when I met my husband at 27. He has never smoked and so I didn’t smoke when I was with him. He came to live with me around a year later which meant I smoked even less, tending to only have a cigarette when I went out with friends and when I was drinking (which I’m sure you can guess, was a fair amount of the time!). When I found out I was pregnant at 31, I gave up entirely and never touched a cigarette again.

If asked if I was a smoker I said ‘yes’ for a few years after I gave up. I always felt like a smoker and at that stage I still had cravings for them, particularly when out socialising and drinking. I therefore considered myself a ‘smoker’ but just choosing to not smoke. At some point this changed. I can’t tell you when or why, but I realised I didn’t want to smoke, never had a craving and the thought of putting a cigarette in my mouth made me feel physically ill. That’s when I became a ‘non-smoker’.

How does this apply to alcohol? Right now I feel like I am still a ‘drinker’ but I just choose not to drink. The cravings are less but I still like the idea of having a drink at times. I don’t ‘need’ it or rely on it like I used to. Similarly, I stopped ‘needing’ cigarettes after I gave them up but I still felt like I was a smoker for a while. I wonder if, in time, I will come to view myself as a non-drinker in the same way. Whether the thought of drinking alcohol will turn my stomach the same way considering smoking does now. Having a cigarette no longer crosses my mind, yet I thought about it all the time in my 20s. I could never have imagined not smoking but now I can’t imagine what it’s like to smoke. Does that happen with sobriety and giving up booze? Will I forget drinking in the same way? I hope I do. I’d like it to have absolutely no place in my life or my thoughts. I suspect it won’t be quite the same experience though. There is more social acceptance, and even encouragement, regarding drinking. It’s hard to get away from it sometimes. Adverts, films, greeting cards, comments on social media, tv …. alcohol surrounds us. Maybe this means it’s harder to move on from being a ‘drinker’ than it is from being a ‘smoker’.

I’ll give it a damn good try though.

Claire x