Flowers> drinking

I am 2 months sober today.

It feels like it has been forever but yet two months is no time at all.

I am so proud of myself. I never wanted to be sober before nor did I think it was possible for me. If I'm being honest, I likely haven't gone two months without alcohol since I first started drinking around 16.

Back then it would be the occasional one-off that was guaranteed to end in oblivion. I didn’t get to “let loose” often so when the opportunity arose, I felt I had to “make the most of it”. AKA slam shots until I couldn’t feel my face. At the beginning of my drinking career, I drank to party and be social.

Then I got a little older and I still drank to be social and party but also to chill, watch a movie, enjoy sports, play games, cook, eat, and any and every excuse else.

I had a lot of fun with my friend, Alcohol and I'd say I regret none of it.

I look back fondly on the nights I spent dancing away to bands and DJs when that last shot would make everything numb and fuzzy, and I'm not sure how my body was deciding how to move next but it felt good. Belting along to karaoke with not a lick of inhibition felt good. Drinking and partying felt like being young, stupid, and free in the best way.

Drinking was a centerpiece of life.

It went along with everything- happy, sad, stressed, celebrating, bored, hating your company, enjoying your company, there’s not really a situation where I’d say hm I’d rather not have a drink.

And I don’t think this made me unique in our society. Look around, drinking is so intensely normal and suffocatingly around us which is why it takes work to be a non-drinker.

I also married perfectly in a hundred different ways. One was the amount of fun we had together and our shared appreciation of alcohol.

It was certainly nice to have a partner who enjoyed bar hopping, brewery chilling, and even got into pairing wines with our dinners (it sounds more sophisticated when you call it pairing and not just picking the cheapest yet highest shelf wine at the grocery store).

I guess I lied earlier, I’ve gone 9 months sober twice in life because of pregnancy but this hardly counts, because it was out of requirement and not discipline. Some might disagree but not drinking while pregnant is pretty easy. Biologically, for the most part, I didn’t want it.

But with both kids, as soon as they exited the womb I quickly reintroduced alcohol to my system. Slowly at first. Tiny glasses of wine. A single beer. I’ve never been much on liquor or mixed drink unless it was a true party and blackout night. The problem is in the build-up of tolerance.

This is my drinking story, not Matt’s, but I will add that we found out we were pregnant with Lincoln on our 2nd wedding anniversary, August 3rd, 2021. At that celebratory dinner, Matt had his last drink. He then had a pregnant wife as a sober companion and we had lots of conversations about what life would look like after I gave birth.

I had no interest in being sober. I didn’t see a problem with my drinking or alcohol in general. Being sober is an incredibly personal choice. I was super proud of Matt and supported him, but was not ready to make that choice for myself. He agreed, just because he chose it didn’t mean I had to too.

I didn’t.

I don’t think I actually drank every single day after Lincoln was born, but the days I didn’t probably don’t even fill two hands.

In Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, the patient with a drinking problem who didn’t realize she had a drinking problem hit too close to home. Lori Gottlieb said whatever a drinker admits to drinking, take that and multiply it by two. This patient said she drank a glass of wine or two a night to relax and unwind. I uttered this same statement many times since having kids. It was true at one point but it became another lie I told. What used to be a glass or two, commonly became an entire bottle of wine.

I was drinking whole bottles of wine multiple times a week. It was easy. It was habitual. I did it without thinking because it was just what I did. I knew it was becoming problematic when I kept finding reasons to crack the bottle earlier and earlier in the day too. Gottlieb recommends trying to go a week without examining your relationship with alcohol, if it’s hard maybe you need AA. I don’t necessarily agree with that. AA isn’t for me. But I was up to the challenge.

4 days after my 29th birthday, November 16th, 2022, I had my last drink. My original goal was to make it to the new year. Just to show me I could.

Embarrassingly, I felt sick the first week of not drinking. I couldn’t believe I was a person who drank enough to suffer any type of withdrawal. I felt groggy, grumpy, and low energy. I had headaches. I wasn’t having any fun. I also craved a drink constantly, especially at night. I needed help.

I found that solace in This Naked Mind. In this book, Annie Grace unpacks all the reasons we drink (hint media and society groom us and normalizes it). Then she takes every reason and negates it using liminal thinking. Liminal thinking is a way to create change by understanding, shaping, and reframing beliefs. I won’t preach all the things I learned because again, choosing to be sober is an incredibly personal decision. Me spewing facts isn’t going to change a mind that isn’t ready to make a change. But for anyone interested in changing their life and becoming sober, this book is such a tool.

Grace uses an analogy of drinking being like a pitcher plant. This plant smells so alluring to bugs. They land to drink the nectar but the slope down is so steep. They go so far down that they end up stuck before they even know what’s happening. She poses the question, when did drinking become something you did not something you chose? That one stung. I knew I was in the pitcher plant. The slope only becomes more slippery. Alcohol is a highly addictive drug. I wanted out.

I went from hoping to make it to the new year to being confident I’ll never be a drinker again.

I posted about my sobriety on Facebook after the new year and other than that, I didn’t talk much about it to anyone. When I saw my Nanny, this is what I call my grandma on my mom’s side, after the post, she said “Michelle, I didn’t realize you had a drinking problem”. For the longest time, I didn’t either. Reframing what a drinking problem is and what it can look like was a part of the journey. I think I will forever be resistant to the term alcoholic because of the mental picture it brings to mind. But that’s the issue with labels. We attach certain looks and meanings to them when they can actually look a million different ways. A person doesn’t have to be homeless, jobless, and functionless to be an alcoholic. An alcoholic can be a lonely stay-at-home mom who drinks a bottle of wine every night to dull the feelings of stuckness.

Earlier I called alcohol a friend. She was a friend, but like that shitty friend we’ve all had that you have a lot of fun making bad decisions with but they weren’t there for the things that mattered. The friend that was jealous of your successes and would rather you stay stuck doing the same old shit every night with the same ole people. Misery loves company, alcohol never loved me.

Miley Cyrus’ new song Flowers is a self-love anthem. In the video, she stomps and dances around by herself, for herself. I join her. I dance and celebrate myself, clear-minded and clear-spirited.

Dear self, you are able to relax, socialize, have fun, and sit with all of your feelings without alcohol. I can love me better than you (alcohol) can.

Thanks, Miley ♥️