A Revelation Inside - 6 Months Of …
Sobriety
It’s big and it’s edgy (my heart is beating and I’m a tiny bit weepy).
So here it is…
I have been sober*/Alcohol-free* for 6 months.
It is the best and worst thing I have ever done.
I have not had a single drink since October 23rd, my 10th business anniversary celebration. And here is a very very long post about how it’s going for and what I’ve learned.
Read on for 6 things I have learned from this….
*deep breath*
So here we go…
CONTENT WARNING - alcohol, addiction, blackout
This past week I was reminded, on a social media platform’s memory service, that one year ago I got together a group of maybe 10 friends for a specially-priced stay at a beautiful 5-star hotel following an event that was being held there. I organised it. This place has the most incredible views, fitness area, baths and pool and breakfast.
I drank too much.
I missed it all.
I feel sadness about that. And shame.
I am also reminded that I had a pre-drink in my room, and discussed how I was a bit concerned about my drinking habit to a trusted friend who visited me that afternoon after I had checked in. That night I drank so much I blacked out, crashed into my beautiful 5-star room at some stupid time in the morning, and woke up 30 minutes before check out, having missed a series of messages and calls from friends. I had missed breakfast, all facilities, had to rush to get ready through the worst of all hangovers and had a nagging sense of shame about what had gone down.
Blackouts are not good.
Ever.
I remember reading about Samuel L Jackson’s sobriety - he said that he had been blacking out and that once you start blacking out that is time to stop. I thought; ‘That’s me’
That was over 20 years ago.
Slow learner.
Actually I really am a slow learner.
Most people are when it comes to matters of gratification or habit.
I mean let’s be real here, blacking out is almost a badge of honour in British drinking culture; yet, I have come to learn, is a signifier of far far worse things happening in the background and in your physiology.
You lose your short term memory - which is why drunk people tend to talk on a loop and repeat things. And why they remember some parts of the night or have flashes, and don’t remember other parts. People in black out can appear completely normal or coherent. Or aggressive and slurring. It’s unpredictable what you’re going to get in blackout. Blackout is bad.
Gawd, I love fun drunk people but at about drink 3 we enter different zones! It’s not dreadful but I can’t keep up with you! I miss those deep, drunk, looping conversations.
I’m having deep sober conversations now - they are different. I still love all the conversations.
Shortly after the 5-star hotel incident I headed back to England to spend May there and thus started my journey to alcohol-free life in earnest.
For the celebration we were having, there in England, a party in the woods to celebrate dear friends’ 50ths, I enlisted the help of some trusted friends to talk about my fears for my drinking and recent incidents where I felt I couldn’t control the outcome when drinking. I got a short-term plan in place for the party.
My buddy told me I did amazingly well. Having decided to only tell the truth I disclosed that I had in fact been at the bar as it closed, ordering a large vodka. I had drunk sensibly all night but wanted that panic buzz for the taxi-ride home, but the bar had thankfully already closed. I had done well. But I had tipped into night cap mode. FFS. This is good information about the drinking tipping point.
I continued really watching and monitoring myself over the coming months.
Then the final straw was a fall. At a bachelorette party I fell and hit my head. I am assured by friends that I was not a stumbling mess, and that I had simply lost my footing and not been able to right myself, but it was a wake up call where I knew that it could have been serious. Also a mature professional woman falling over in Tokyo is NOT A GOOD LOOK.
I looked back on that night and assessed, where would I have had to exit that evening to not have fallen over. And I realised; after the first glass of wine, there was no guarantee. Things were getting very very real.
So here we are:
6 months, 6 things to say.
Today. (these change day by day - sobriety is an ever-changing ever-revealing, ever course-correcting experience - I decided not to share my 3-month post - thank God, it was quite ragey and quite real, which I love, yet appreciate that not everyone does).
1. I set a date
I had a big wedding to attend and then the day after my 10 year anniversary party on October 23rd, I booked my first discovery call with my alcohol mindset coach and started to really tell the truth about my drinking. 35 years worth of truth.
I knew I would drink a lot at my party so I wanted to show up hungover and start talking to my coach about my plans…
2. I got a coach & read some books
After the fall I googled 'alcohol coach’.
And scrolled past a lot of meet-god-feel-joy in sobriety coaches until I landed on my coach.
I liked her because she’s an Aussie and Brits and Aussies have similar drinking cultures; there was NO god speak or virtue in her offers; she is the same generation as me; she asked a series of questions about binge-drinking; she made no promises but to be a coach and that she had been there. I booked a call and checked her offers - all clear. No culty vibes, no good vibes only vibes, nice intro video and clear offers.
It is not easy going alcohol free. You feel like you don’t fit in your own skin. You have deep dark and desperate feelings. Having someone to be in your corner is useful - someone to tell you it is all normal, what is happening. I am lucky enough to have had the resources to hire a coach for the first 5 months. When you are a baby sober, as I am at just 6 months, it’s a great idea to have support. (you are always a baby sober - never not I think).
I opted not to do AA as a preference - people with very severe problems find a great deal of benefit, yet my initial goal was not to stop drinking altogether - it was to learn to drink sensibly. Also one of the reasons I drink is a bit of awkwardness and social anxiety so the group element of AA didn’t appeal to me. But basically it didn’t feel like a fit. But through my first conversations with my coach and telling the ABSOLUTE TRUTH (which was the one non-negotiable condition I gave myself) we soon realised that this is not an option available to me.
Telling the truth meant she received an email from me with a long list of bullet points of ALL the things I could remember that happened to me while drunk or drinking that were less than ideal.
It also meant that if I went to the sessions feeling like I wanted her to like me or was trying to mentally draft my message to her, pitch to her, I also told her that, then said in raw form what I was going to say. She was brilliant - she held it all but brought me back always to her area of expertise - alcohol-free life.
I will paint with broad strokes here but there are 2 types of dysfunctional drinking.
The classic alcoholic - little by little their drinking creeps earlier into the day. Until they are completely dependent on it. Morning noon and night. I have tremendous respect for these drinkers - it is a commitment and an all-consuming habit that is filled with danger and risks.
A heavy drinker, I now understand, is just one step, then another, then another, away from this.
The second is the ‘no such thing as one drink’ drinker. Or a binge drinker.
Drinking is a one-way trip to get drunk.
Always.
This is also a consuming habit.
A week is woven around drinking, hangovers and recovery.
Stopping this kind of binge-drinking cycle is hard and upsetting as so much of our personal identity is wound up in drinking culture. And my coach would tell me that what I was experiencing and am experiencing is normal in alcohol-free life, that I’m doing well but am still early on in the alcohol-free lifestyle.
What my coach helped me to realise is I must always be cautious when it comes to alcohol. And to celebrate small wins. And acknowledge how hard and upsetting this complete change in lifestyle is.
My coach sent me three books:
Blackout by Sarah Hepola
Alcohol Explained by William Porter
The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober by Catherine Gray
I started with Blackout (Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget) because it was a story-based tome, and a memoir of sorts and I wanted to ease myself in.
I felt absolutely no joy in being sober. Still don’t really. So reading a book about the joy of sobriety - nope. No. Nah. I actually hid it.
Then over Christmas I read Alcohol Explained - a lay-person’s walk through the science and physiology of what is going on when you drink. A little bit and to excess. It was really good to know what was going on for me as I spent Christmas FEELING EVERY GODDAMN FEELING SINCE I WAS IN MY TEENS. And my first sober stay at my childhood home since the 80s. It sucked. Thanks for asking. But with this book, and weekly coaching, where I basically cried for an hour at a time it was… a, a, erm, a process? Upsetting might be the word.
Then one day after about 5 months my hand moved towards the Unexpected Joy of being sober.
It says ‘Going sober will make you happier, healthier, wealthier, slimmer and sexier. Despite all of these upsides, it's easier said than done’.
YEAH F%&K THAT. That’s great - I am none of those 6 months in. I have spent a lot less due to not being a drunk billionaire and not buying endless glasses and bottles of wine at events and I’m likely healthier. Most definitely. But I have made decisions in my business that are in line with a huge reset and mean in the short term at least - I am not wealthier. I must be healthier, I’ll give myself that.
This was my least favourite of the books - I loved the stories of her descent and the path to full blown day-drinking alcoholism as that is relatable but some of the recovery stuff was a bit wellnessy, but it still painted a picture of how excessive drinking ruins lives, health and relationships and how recovery can be amazing.
She dropped weight and became super full of energy and maintained her career throughout and I have not found this. My body is the same shape and my career has changed. My coaching has changed. What I want to do has changed. I sleep brilliantly - I’ve not been a poor sleeper typically, but it’s much better now. But I cannot report a sudden slimming, bursts of energy or productivity. I have no interest in productivity anyway so there’s that.
3. No hangovers
Ever
No hangovers.
This is bloody brilliant and this post could have been this alone.
4. I’m sorry & other people
Not everyone is coming with you in sobriety or alcohol free life.
My coach tells me this is usual.
I have had to slow down and lean into this new life.
And I mean really slow down.
Not make habitual decisions or moves that come from 6 months ago style.
I have absolutely no relief from every feeling I feel.
From every social anxiety.
From any discomfort.
There’s no Dutch Courage.
And the radar has adjusted.
It’s a very strange and new feeling - unlike anything I’ve felt before.
Perhaps like imagining what it’s like to have a baby, then having one.
Or grief.
This is not only about drinking - I can go to boozy events and have terrific fun but the ability to put up with or tolerate things I don’t like or feels out of integrity is really low. I can’t have a drink and make it OK or lessen it or find relief or temporarily forget it.
I’m sorry if our relationship has changed and I have hurt your feelings.
Please bear with me.
Or not.
Other people
There are so many things people have said when I tell them I’m not drinking or spot me drinking zero-alcohol from asking about weight to, feeling they should stop drinking to saying ‘good for you’, to telling me they stopped for a few months once, to being proud of me, to absolute neutrality, to being bored of hearing me talk about it, to saying they have a friend who recently did it, to shouting at me I need to go to AA.
The best way for me to meet all of this is exactly the same.
There are a handful of people who know the full picture just how different and difficult it is.
People will always make it about themselves.
I was cautioned by one of my collaborators that by disclosing my alcohol-free life, I may lose business, invites and friendships. I appreciate that so much. And I’m willing to take it. Integrity is everything.
Only my coach gets everything.
And her guidance and input is the compass point.
No mine is.
Also my husband has been brilliant - of course this has a big impact on our social life and our life together, but he has been great. I had to educate him a bit about it as he wasn’t getting the full picture of how major sobriety is, but he’s not complained at all.
This is a popular question; have you lost weight?
It’s fine - I have to consider all comments as equal - no matter what and meet them with the same grace for myself and for the other person. I feel the sting of course integrity allows me grace for myself and the other person. It’s all just information. It’s just words. People are extremely curious and relate it back to themselves very often - this is understood and I have great compassion for people on their own stories with alcohol - their curiosity is their story. I think essentially people know if they have a problem. Meeting someone who was a drinker who has stopped drinking can be confronting and ignite curiosity. I have no mission to convince anybody of anything. In fact I 10/10 do not recommend giving up drinking unless you are ready for a test of your resilience and integrity that you will never have imagined.
5. Feeling everything
I have to feel everything - eugh. I’m so tired. I’m discovering different ways to switch it off. I think. I’m not sure. I’m baby sober.
In the early months it was super intense.
I’d love to tell you that I’ve found meditation or prayer or walks in nature.
I kind of have - I feel like I’m in a real transition and I can only keep pulling back, pulling back and pulling back and not trying to overdo things. It’s pretty wild. Following my wild nature.
35+ years worth of feeling and all the feelings that I was turning the volume down on, came before that being felt again in blissful amplification. And by blissful I mean horrifying.
FEELINGS and EMOTIONS all the feelings.
Shit - I’m resilient. This is some next level resilience.
PAIN - actual physical bodily pain.
In the first month a lot of pain began to come through, once I had exited the drink - hangover - recover - drink cycle, I began to truly feel my body. And there is some specific pain that was revealed. So I’ve been to the doctor and been getting regular physiotherapy for the pain that came through and support for my hands. They had been painful but post-sober were unbearable. Sweet Jesus drinking was masking a lot.
I do yoga every week with lovely Lindsey at Setagaya Yoga studio - 8am every Tuesday and have no problem getting to it as I never have a hangover, and I can also, without chaos or drama, say when I don’t feel like it and I choose to go slow instead. I love it. When I’m doing I’m really in the moment with it, just getting on with the positions without over-thinking or trying to over-achieve. God the freedom of that - can you imagine? I didn’t know that this would surface in sobriety.
Speaking of masking - it was in my podcast with ADHD educator Kate Kamoshita that she was talking about pregnancy alcoholic and pregnancy sober. In both cases, she hadn’t drunk throughout pregnancy but it was different not drinking in the first one to being sober in the second. Also she had said that a lot of people with undiagnosed ADHD tend to self-medicate to give some relief from the condition or the PTSD from having the condition. This was, what I believe people call an AHA moment - I felt something shift in me.
BODY SHAPE WEIGHT AND SIZE and ENERGY
No change - I have not suddenly lost a lot of weight.
I don’t leap out of bed feeling energised, clear and clean. I’m repeating myself here - but I want to be clear about it. I feel consistently better and maybe in the next 6 months I’ll put some habits in place to encourage more of this, maybe not. I just enjoy the peace.
Although I do have a new sense of clarity. And calm.
6. Integrity
It has been near impossible to not be in integrity. As my body lines up with my mind, which has nowhere to hide - I mean nowhere to take refuge besides sleep, food, genuine, loving relationships, integrity has emerged as my word of the year.
I mean I’m not perfect and I’m still a bullshitter sometimes and do things I’m not proud of, but I can’t even. I’m baby sober and I think the next 6 months - no I KNOW the next 6 months will reveal more.
A friend said - you seem to have more clarity. But it’s not clarity - it’s integrity. Integrity feels like a pull, a force, an essence, that comes gently like a gentle well-spring. I’m going slow and while my over-achiever wants to jump up and start taking action on all of the ideas that have been bubbling up to the surface, I know that resetting and allowing myself some time to just be here with my clients, my adjustments and whatever this is is going to be essential in how I lay the foundations for the Autumn and Winter of this life.
Also I’m super proud of me. Here’s some sober milestones:
British Business Awards (2 weeks after quitting! And I did enjoy our hotel room and I did enjoy breakfast that day!)
Christmas with the family - yup. An entire Christmas with family and friends. Good God. Non-alcoholic Marks and Spencer’s wine. Oooh Marksies.
Refugee Empowerment International Gala
Friend’s 50th birthday party
Drag Shows
Gatherings with friends
Sayonara of a friend
Park birthdays
An art opening
Dinners, drinks and house guests who love to drink - I have loved hosting and drinking zero alcohol beer as they imbibe!
What I haven’t done:
Gone to events I didn’t want to.
Had a hangover.
Hustled hard.
Continued coaching programmes that didn’t feel right, in spite of taking a financial hit.
Taken fast action on ideas - I need to let this new life settle in.
Done a wild sales drive - really following my intuition.
Will I drink again?
I don’t think so. Before I do that, I have to be guaranteed that I won’t blackout and I won’t get drunk. And having read about it, and learned about it and been coached around it - I don’t think that is an option. Physiologically, psychologically or habitually. The research suggests not, the evidence suggests not and the books I read suggests not.
Yet I love the joy of imbibing together - then again good grown up non-al drinks can be really satisfying and fun is not booze-dependent!
How have I been?
It’s hard. I have a tight group of close friends who hear everything. Whom I have invited into where I am, how I feel and what’s happening and they have been able to hold me in this. It’s pretty remarkable really because there have been a lot of big waves of energy, upset and sadness and they have been here and held it and not made it about them or made it weird by not drinking around me or fussing - and also sometimes joining me in the non-al beverages. I’m extremely protective of myself - necessarily so perhaps. I’m sad a lot. Upset a lot. But I keep pulling back and going slow and trusting in the future. Because it’s not just this past 6 months, it’s the 6 months, and years prior that were all part of this. It can be quite isolating because it’s a LOT and I must protect myself sweet sensitive self. It’s a lot. It’s tiring and relationships change and adjust around it. Lots of stuff comes up - stuff that was getting forgotten through lovely delicious booze.
Oh how I miss it.
And not.
There’s no virtue attached to this - it’s not a moral or ethical decision.
It is an inevitable one.
Life has changed and I hope by reading this that you are able to understand the process that some people go through to end a destructive or dangerous drinking or other habit.
If you have read to the end of this - thank you. It is long and took a lot of writing and revision and cutting and thought and I appreciate it. I respectfully don’t care if you judge me - everybody is judging everybody always but I truly appreciate you letting my words into your eyes. If there has been a micron of interest or usefulness - I’m happy but not attached. But now you know.
*I’m using alcohol-free and sober interchangeably - often using sober indicates being in some kind of programme - I am not but I think that sober has the right nuance. My coach uses alcohol-free. So I’m using them interchangeably.
I’m alcohol-free.
Sober.
Changed.
And I’ll let you know what happens next. It’s interesting. It’s curious. It might be useful.
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