500 days of sober

An honest look at anxiety, motherhood, and the surprising liberation of stepping away from alcohol.

On the 24th of July 2023, I decided to give up alcohol for a month. It was an experiment in an attempt to tackle my anxiety which was becoming debilitating. With the benefit of hindsight it’s possible that I was suffering from undiagnosed postpartum anxiety, but either way I was grasping at straws to find a solution to help calm the mental turbulence and soothe the intrusive thoughts.

I have always been a heavy drinker, I’m embarrassed to say since my teens. It’s so baked into British culture that it never struck me as excessive, just the typical thing to do socially. I come from a family of heavy drinkers and consuming alcohol on a daily basis is considered quite normal. Honestly, I have had moments of concern with my drinking. I actually took myself off to a few AA meetings about 10 years ago but decided that I couldn’t be an alcoholic because I had not destroyed my life catastrophically and I could stop drinking pretty easily. So I stopped going to meetings and started drinking again. There have been a few occasions when I could feel myself spiralling, but I’ve always been able to bring myself back and convince myself that I was in control. I’ll come back to this somewhat unrealistic image of myself I had.

When I was pregnant I decided to stop completely, because it was easier for me to do that than moderate.

In the summer of 2023, I had stopped breastfeeding and had been drinking more than usual, buying into the idea that alcohol is a cure all elixir that I deserved as a treat after a long hard day. But I found myself constantly having to moderate. A continuous inner monologue fretting over having a little bit more. It wasn’t easy for me to have just one drink and it was exhausting. Mornings were getting harder and I could see myself becoming the kind of parent/partner/friend I don’t want to be. But above all, my mental health was suffering in a way I had never experienced and I needed to do something. Just the thought of going alcohol free was daunting, which convinced me it was even more important that I should quit for a month. If I was able to do that it would prove that I didn’t have a problem. Right?! I thought that I would give it a month to see if it made any difference at all to my mood swings of epic highs and devastating lows. I was also secretly hoping that I might be able to shift some of the excess weight I was still carrying since giving birth.

That first week wasn’t easy. I found myself thinking about alcohol all the time. I set a countdown on my phone and I was looking forward to celebrating at the end of the month with a drink!

The second week was easier, I was beginning to get into the swing of it. I found myself over explaining why I wasn’t drinking and it was something that a few people in my life found it difficult to accept. That was interesting to me. I was starting to unpack my true relationship with alcohol and the strict societal constructs we have created around its consumption. For example it’s often thought of as a social activity but if you drink alone you do so alone and have no more than one or two. If you’re with a friend either you’re both drinking or neither are. These constructs began to feel bizarre to me, especially when I could see the visible annoyance when I said I wasn’t going to have a drink because that dictated that my companion couldn’t drink, or at least would feel self conscious about doing so.

By week three I realized that my anxiety had all but gone. The tearful walks while my daughter buggy napped, the agoraphobic dread of the supermarket, intrusive thoughts and engulfing stress was still there, but it became manageable. It actually surprised me at how quickly that happened. I began to notice how much easier it was to get up in the mornings and I felt more rested. I started to feel healthier in my body too. The scale was starting to shift a little in the right direction. It was funny because I soon found myself dreading the end of the month. I thought that if I felt so much better after such a short time how would I feel if I extended it a little. So I decided to go till Christmas. That felt like a decent amount of time to hopefully see some change, but I couldn’t imagine not drinking at Christmas so it felt like a good time to stop! Anyway, the longer I didn’t drink, the less I missed it. I enjoyed meeting up with friends, spending no money and not losing the next day. I discovered that I didn’t need the social lubricant alcohol provides, I’m perfectly capable of a sober good time. I also started to realise that perhaps I had been projecting a little and there was in fact a lot less judgment than I initially thought. There’s definitely a point in the evening that I’m no longer on the same wavelength as my friends and that’s just my signal to go home. I was struggling to find any downside to this experiment.

And then with more distance I began to scrutinise my true relationship with alcohol and realised that it was a lot darker than I’d ever really wanted to admit. It was an abusive relationship that somehow had me thinking that I wanted and needed it. I thought about the jobs I’d been fired from for not showing up, about the choices I’d made, the money I’d spent. All in pursuit of something that never really came to be. Chasing the illusive relief alcohol promised me. Don’t get me wrong, I had fun - lots of it. But it’s the fun I tend to remember and not the nights crying at dark thoughts or the substance fuelled arguments endlessly chasing and losing the point. It’s easy to gloss over the belongings lost, knees scraped, people let down. Counting days between drinks, clock watching to a reasonable time to drink. The exhausting attempts to moderate.

I love drinking, and it was hard for me to admit that I don’t have the relationship with alcohol that I wish I did. It was an abusive relationship, one that kept me wanting more based on false promises. I’d managed to shield myself from the person I can become when I drink; careless, boundaryless, confrontational, quick to anger, self-centered or thoughtless. Of course I wasn’t always any or all of these things, there were some positives to losing inhibitions and I have had some amazing times. But the more I thought about it I could see that alcohol wasn’t needed for a good time but when I drank the chance of a bad time increased.

I didn’t consider myself to be an alcoholic in the sense that I understood. Which was to hit your version of ‘rock bottom’, have your life ruined and not be able to stop easily. There have been times in my life where I have seen a clear path to a perceived rock bottom and I have steered myself away from it. I’ve stopped drinking before and it’s never been too difficult for me to do so. Perhaps I didn’t need a label to understand that my relationship was unhealthy. I hadn’t destroyed my life, but alcohol was contributing to a lot of the negativity in it. If alcohol was a person and treated me this way I would draw clear boundaries. If I was on edge while I was around a person for all the wrong reasons I would stop seeing them. If that person charged me money then made me do stupid things and then feel terrible the next day I doubt I would keep going back for more, so why should this be any different? Alcohol gets a free pass because it’s legal and socially acceptable. I began to move away from this idea that if you didn’t drink there had to be some dramatic reason not to, such as alcoholism or illness and started to realise that it was ok and enough to just prefer the feeling of having no alcohol in my system. I’m not sworn off alcohol forever, and I’m not completely teetotal (I had a glass of champagne to toast a wedding I attended recently) but my relationship with alcohol has changed.

When Christmas 2023 came about, I didn’t want to drink. So I didn’t. I took the end date off the experiment and have decided that this is my current reality. I’ve learned that alcohol has such a negative impact on my mental health, physical weight and financial health. For now, at least, my drinking days are done.