Sober Thoughts
When I was young I remember my dad would say “alcohol is poison” and I would roll my eyes, thinking yeah, okay dad. Fast forward to today. We have both taken a pause on drinking. Forever? Only time will tell. He is almost at his one month mark and I am almost nine months sober.
I won’t blame parenting or society for my life choices but from age 15 to 29 I thought alcohol was the answer. Stressed out? Drink. Sad? Drink. Celebrating? Drink. (This sounds like the beginning of Swimming Pools by Kendrick Lamar, a classic.)
I remember the first time I got drunk like it was yesterday, I was in Ocean City, Maryland in the winter. I went with a group of my girl friends for one of my friends' birthdays. It was sophomore year and we took a limo there. As I type this I am thinking it’s kind of wild our parents let us do this. A bunch of unchaperoned 15 year olds in a condo in a beach town.. in the winter. What could possibly go wrong?!
When we got to the condo we immediately set up a game of beer pong. I remember being hesitant at first, thinking “alcohol is poison” but I had a lot going on in my personal life that I wanted to escape from. I remember the more I drank the lighter I felt. Suddenly I wasn’t sad about my parents divorce or the toxic relationship I was in at the time. I remember feeling silly and the encouragement from my friends as I got more and more intoxicated.
By the end of the night I had snapped my LG EnV phone in half, threw it in a decorative pot and sobbed about everything that was going wrong. Fun at first, followed by darkness. A pattern I would experience with alcohol for the next 15 years.
From a scientific standpoint alcohol floods your brain with dopamine and then once this fun part is over, it’s all downhill. There is a more scientific way to explain this but that’s my interpretation from what I have learned. I am typing this from my high horse, can you tell? Anyways, A fun trick I like to use now when I want to drink, I say to myself “plus 5, minus 10” meaning that my life will be 5X more fun for a little but then 10X worse once the initial false dopamine spike is over. It really helps ground me and reset when I need it.
So far I have overall enjoyed my sobriety. It feels like I am seeing clearly for the first time. For the first time I am asking questions I never asked. I am forced to sit with my emotions instead of run from them with a glass (or 5) of wine. I am being forced to ask myself what I enjoy and who I like spending time with. No more “oops” hookups or wondering if I like someone or not. Suddenly when you stop drinking you have a birds eye view that you didn’t have before.
This isn’t funny, I usually like to make these quick and fun reads but whatever. It feels good to be real and share this.
Here are 5 things I have learned so far from sobriety…
If it’s not fun sober.. It’s not fun. (Hot take I KNOW but you shouldn’t have to poison yourself to make something enjoyable).
You can do hard things sober, alcohol doesn’t actually help (I used alcohol to get on stage the first 50 times I did standup..it wasn’t the best tactic)
You will never regret not drinking (sure I have had my moments of wondering, would that have been better drunk? But then I wake up in my own bed without a hangover).
I use my time more wisely when I am sober. Being sober makes you intentional.
I am now a rigid bitch. JK I definitely have moments of missing the wild times but for now this feels right.
Thank you for reading, I appreciate you. If you got this far and liked this please feel free to message me or if you didn’t like it then I am flattered you got to the end.
See you next Sunday!