One year sober!!!

Yesterday was my 365th day in a row without booze. By now it's a habit, of course, just as drinking far too much was a habit for so long. A year ago yesterday,  I woke up early and planned to quit that day. But I had a day off, and instead I went for a long walk and bought wine, and came home and drank some. Nothing dramatic happened. I'd quit the previous summer, and then tried drinking again after four months away, and it was obvious to me that it mostly wasn't working. Nothing terrible was happening to me. Still, I was miserable. And I knew I'd felt better when I wasn't drinking, before that siren song called me back yet again. The next day, I woke up with the same idea. And that day, a year ago, I really did quit. It stared out as a modest plan: one week, no booze. But I'm still here and I'm staying.

These days booze has no appeal for me. I can't stand the smell any more. I have no interest in the fuzzy mind I know I'd have if I drank. I've figured out how to make interesting drinks that are so good, sometimes the drinkers wan to try one instead of having wine or beer. At this point, no one could convince me that drinking was a good idea. No matter what.

When I was thinking about quitting, I strongly resisted the idea that I had been somehow escaping from life by drinking. Now I see that I was. And I resisted the received wisdom that I would find myself changing once I quit, that without booze, I would change emotionally. But I did. I wasn't interested in most of what people had to say about recovery, and I was always ready to rail against talk about "alcoholism" or "addiction." But I've found that some of it applies to me, and some of it is helpful, and the rest just doesn't bother me any more.

I used to do too much of my thinking about quitting in the abstract, impersonal mode. Eventually, I found that didn't help me much. Instead, this time, I paid attention to myself--what worked for me, what didn't, how I felt, what I thought might help me get through the next minute or hour or day. Mostly I read lots and wrote lots and walked in the park and rode my bike and talked to my partner way, way too much about how it was all going. I fulfilled my school and work obligations, but for the first few months, I wasn't exactly a star in either domain. It didn't matter. When I started to feel stronger, I was able to do more, but I took my time.

A lot of the advice people gave didn't work for me. I tried the whole "treats" thing that gets talked about, but I never did get the hang of it. I did buy myself a lot of books, but only when I saw one I thought I might read, never as a reward for anything. I developed a fondness for the gluten-free carrot cake at the local bakery, and had to put myself on rations on that score. (Once a week is fine. Twice if I'm on a big deadline. Any more than that, I figure I'm just escaping into cake instead of booze, and I eat some yoghurt with honey instead. Which isn't so bad, you know!)

This was supposed to be a big happy celebratory post about how happy I am to be sober, and here I am writing about what didn't work for me! What gives? The thing is, I am happy. I feel a whole lot better without booze in my life. My mental health is better (and it was really pretty darn bad a year ago). I avoid doctors, but I think I'm physically healthier. (I hardly ever get colds now, and I didn't get my annual December bronchitis, but winter isn't done yet!) I used to be pretty twisted up with anxiety, but these days I feel so much more clear and calm, and even when I do get anxious, I work it out without spiralling into the Pit of Despair. It's not all perfect all of a sudden, and it's been a lot of work. But I am figuring out how to live in the world, and I sometimes even feel at home here. That's new to me, and I'm holding onto it.

I guess what I wanted to say was that most of what I thought about getting sober was wrong, and a lot of what I believed about it when I started didn't much matter. But I was able to figure it out as I went, day to day, by being attentive to myself, and listening to others, and by leaning very hard on the support of the fine folks online who read and comment and write their own stories about getting sober, or trying to get sober. We're all in this together, and what a beautiful thing that is. Just a whole lot of people who used to drink too much, finding a better way to live without booze. Thanks for all your help and support and humour and friendship. I'm deeply grateful for it all, and for my life. It's been a great year. Tough, but worthwhile, and often wonderful.

Peace and joy to you. And many thanks. xo

Cranky note to self: Sometimes this is hard.

Tonight work was a bit of a disaster. I'm going to leave out most of the details. But on three separate occasions, people blew up and yelled and swore at me and had to be escorted out by security. One person threw something at me before he went. And in between, patrons asked me why I wasn't smiling, or whether I was tired, or why I was being so serious. I don't know, I'm just not always all that cheery after being told to go #$%% myself. There are lots of reasons for the work crap--I work in a poor part of town where an extremely high proportion of the population has mental health and addiction problems. (And I'm not even talking about the staff!) On Saturday night, we are one of the few places open, and everyone is welcome as long as they are not obviously drunk or high and can keep it together enough not to swear or throw things and so on, but lots of people can only do that for a while before they blow, often because they really want to be drunk or high but they've already spent the cash, or they just have really bad stuff going on and one more irritation is more than they can cope with. Hell, I get it. But sometimes I just don't feel able to withstand the barrage of abuse that happens on a regular basis. All the advice to breathe and not take it personally and let it wash over you and so on is fine, and it helps, but I am the person who is working and being yelled at and sworn at and so on, and I don't know if there's really any way around finding it upsetting sometimes.

It wasn't all bad. I did not swear back at anyone, much as I wanted to. I didn't throw anything. I didn't even cry until after I'd biked home. And no, I did not buy wine and drink it when I got home, which was my standard go-to solution for a night like this. I know it won't help. I feel raw enough already, and I know this not drinking gig is moving things in the right direction. The kettle is just boiled, so I will pour myself a cup of herbal tea and go read the Pema Chodron book I have on the go--Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves From Old Habits and Fears. Free. That's the right direction.

Tonight I feel like the edges of my nerves are exposed. And it's hard. Not having a way out of feeling is sometimes just plain tough to deal with. I am hoping, because I'm listening to the people who have done this already, that the raw edges smooth out a bit after a while. At 54 days sober, they sure are still a bit ragged sometimes. Anyway, for now, tea will help.

Peace and joy to you, and to those troubled folk who blew up at me tonight, if they can find some. Maybe there's enough of that going around that I can have some, too.

Round 2, Day 28: Building new habits, plucking out weeds.

No great angst or earth-shaking tremors here today. I'm just pleased that 4 weeks ago,  I walked through the park to the good wine store, not the one right around the corner, and everything except that walk in the park felt wrong, and then, despite the full bottle of one of my favourite wines still in the cupboard, the next morning I announced to my partner that I was starting another Spa Week. I knew at the time I was probably quitting for a lot longer than that, or for good, but starting with the week is just easier for me. I'm so glad I did that. The four weeks haven't been easy, but I think I'm heading in the right direction.

This time around, I'm noticing a strange contradiction in my experience. In any given instance, not drinking is, for me, not so difficult. I know how to do that. But theoretically, not drinking is a huge challenge. The reasons why I should drink, when I can again, why it's OK now, how in some circumstances it might be the best thing, all those bits of mental chatter carry on in the background a lot of the time. It's like living in a nice, quiet apartment right next door to party central. I want to bang on the door and yell, "Can't you just be quiet in there for a while?" but there is no door to bang on. There's just me, both sides of the imaginary door, and me yelling at me isn't going to quiet anything down. Some time early this morning, before I'd even got out of bed, I found myself calmly thinking that the language of addiction was just too draconian for me to accept, and I would probably go ahead and have a glass of champagne when I finish my degree. I mean, honestly. Anticipating celebrating the end of a degree that I haven't even finished yet, and putting distance between myself and what I know to be working for me at the same time, all before the day even starts!

The thing is, I'm paying attention to these thoughts. I'm trying to use the infamous zen advice about unwanted thoughts: weed early and weed often. Right now I'm reading a lot about the psychology of habit. Despite our emphasis on our bad habits here in the online sober (or-trying-to-be-sober) world, we are all built up out of our habits. Some are good and some not, and we can change them bit by bit, but habits are what we are to a large extent. So even though it's not that hard for me to not drink today, in one sense that's only the surface of the habit. The rest of it is all that submerged, semi-conscious way of living that associates booze with celebration, and that hates (hates! hates!) admitting that I have any kind of problem that I can't just wish away. I want so much to not have a problem with drinking, to be able to just will it away. I can spend far too much time living as if the mental were the world, but that's a false picture of life. I'm starting, learning, to have a healthy respect for the body. Maybe that's what the advice "just don't drink today" means. Just doing that, day after day, maybe that's the training camp for the new habit. Maybe, after a while, after I keep on not drinking day after day after day, and after I keep on offering a calm, "No, we don't do that anymore" to the chattering party-mind that's looking to the future champagne, the new habit will be more solid, and I'll have fewer of those thoughts. I'm pretty sure I can't will my problem away, no matter how strong-willed I am. But I can change what I do, and make room for the newer thoughts that support it. That's how I'm building a new habit, and that seems like good work to be doing.

I'm not at all sure that makes sense to anyone besides me. But this will: this time around, I decided to open a new bank account. For every day I didn't drink, I would put $10 in it--a modest estimate of what I would  have been spending on booze, but it's an easy number to calculate. I'm not sure what I will do with it, but I don't even get to decide until my first goal (3 months, or 13 weeks) is up. As of today, I really do have a growing little fund of $280 (and ten cents interest!), money taken away from something I know is certainly not good for me, to put toward some future thing that is. Hooray for that!

If you're still here, thanks for reading along. Good luck feeding your new habits and weeding out bits that remain of the ones you don't want anymore. Peace and joy and big Monday sunshine to you!

T