Shot of tequila anyone? To give up alcohol, or not to give up alcohol

As a result of the December festivities, which were cluttered with brunches, Christmas parties, birthday celebrations and Christmas itself, I found myself fatigued by the socialisation of alcohol. As someone who loves any opportunity to have a good time and celebrate life in the face of the cards dealt to us, even I had had enough. Excessive drinking plagued my days with hangovers in the form of a pounding headache. Pretty soon, I became a shell of my former self. As I chose to spend my days recovering from the previous day of excessive drinking, I became an unreliable friend and by my standards, an unproductive individual. Can I even say that my cancelling on friends was because I was putting my health first when I would repeat the same habit a few days later, meaning that I had no real rest? I think not. I developed an enmity for becoming someone incapable of sticking to their word and ultimately, I was morphing into a version of myself that I did not recognise. And this version was sticking around a little too long for my liking. So, a few days before the new year began, I made a pact with myself to prioritise drinking less in 2024.

Because I started this journey before the unspoken ‘new year, new me’ marker (January 1st ), initially, I hadn’t fully considered how I would measure an [almost] alcohol free year. Did I want a dry January? Or was I aiming for something a little more long term? In the end, I decided not to fixate on the titular milestone of a dry January and opted to just be realistic with myself — taking things a day at a time and simply seeing how long I could go without drinking alcohol.

I’ve always had a difficult relationship with discipline; certain childhood events shaped my view of this word and I saw it to be interchangeable with punishment. This is one of the reasons why I had never participated in a dry January before. Why would I want to deprive myself of the buzz that exudes from within after a few glasses of wine at dinner or when having brunch with my friends? Why would I want to get rid of this [albeit temporary] feeling that ‘I love my life!’ permanently? Alas, with all things come balance, as such, my word of the year is discipline. And this time, I’m being intentional about it.

The clarity being sober has given me has been one that I had lost years ago. With it came better decisions and improved productivity. Those health experts were not lying! On that note about having clarity over your decisions, I’ve been on a journey since late 2022 to trust myself and my choices better with little to no outside influence. Though it can be good to gain external perspectives now and again (to do otherwise would be to live a sheltered life), one thing my 20s have taught me is that excessive advice seeking can be stagnant. You can find yourself with analysis paralysis and the growth you desire for yourself can be thwarted — at least, this was the case for me. At first I thought trusting myself more would look like me refraining from asking my friends their opinions on my life choices so I gradually stopped doing this. But the funny thing about this thing we call life is, everything is interconnected one way or another. When you’re periodically blacking out on your nights out, you’re going to need your friends to fill in the gaps for you since you can’t trust your own memory. And even when I wasn’t blacking out, I was still making poor decisions like wasting my days away to ‘recover’ the next day and repeat. So while I stopped constantly seeking advice, I wasn’t seeing the change I wanted in myself because it took me a while to realise how much the outcome that I wanted was interdependent on the small habits.

In hindsight, thinking I could cope with weekends of heavy drinking and resume with my pre planned commitments of working out, meeting with friends, fulfilling my ‘To Do’ lists work was a pipe dream. I can no longer bounce back the way I did between 18 and 20 and it was time for me to accept this reality. It’s no wonder my routine collapsed and if there’s one thing being sober has made me realise, it’s that I didn’t need motivation to do the things that would better me, I needed a solid routine. I kind of knew this last year though. 2023 set the foundation for me as I had developed a decent routine that I enjoyed and was proud of at the start of the year. Yet whilst I prioritised fitness, there was still something missing — surprisingly, it wasn’t sobriety, it was balance. Working a 9 to 5, working out 3 to 5 days a week and socialising Friday to Sunday (which often involved heavy drinking each day) was unfulfilling and unsustainable to me. So of course I still berated myself for this routine despite the fact that I was still moving my body and doing my best.

Throughout last year, I found myself looking up testimonies of people who had given up drinking either for good or temporarily. Thus, I flirted with the idea of what life would be like for me if I did the same. I know myself well enough to understand that it’s worse for me to jump into the deep end of something (going cold turkey) because the outcome could be that I would relapse and develop an even worse drinking habit than I already had, which isn’t a path I wanted to go down. Whilst Shloer has been my go to when I felt like having a drink over these past two months, especially after a stressful day at work, I was forced to interrogate why my go-to action to destress was to have a drink in the first place. The normalisation of alcohol in society was not a good enough excuse for me.

This period of sobriety has encouraged me to learn new ways to destress, and unlearn the need for escapism by alcohol. Furthermore, it became apparent that if I needed to escape my life this way, I had more work to do. It hasn’t been easy, facing myself each day and the problems I was hiding from, but it has been necessary for clarity and better decisions. Therapy has been a useful tool in helping me decimate this habit. Though costly, I have had to prioritise this within my budget instead of big nights out that would end up amounting to the same price as one therapy session — this in turn has enabled me to increase the regularity of my sessions and bridge the gap in my journey to bettering myself and falling in love with the person I am again.

Additionally, I have prioritised healing both my inner child and inner teen during this time. Reading books was a hobby that I used to indulge in when I was younger, funnily enough, that was my form of escapism at the time. Since 2021 I have made a conscious effort to read again in spite of my busy schedule; in the past year specifically, I have found joy in books, which resulted in me reading 35 books last year and I plan to increase that number this year. I say this to say that instead of fixating on my withdrawal from alcohol these past two months, simply picking up a book and having a glass of Shloer on my bedside (to pander to the illusion of having a glass of wine) whilst I read has been useful in keeping me going. Not to mention, for all the perks that social media has, the endless scrolling and imprudent insight we have into people’s lives can be a flaw. I surprised myself by not experiencing as much FOMO (fear of missing out) as I thought I would when watching my friends’ stories and seeing them on night outs, but this isn’t to say that there haven’t been a couple of weekends where I have craved being in that environment. This is yet another reason why it became important for me to find new ways to curb this mimetic desire to drink. As such, I’ve become addicted to runners’ high and this week will mark 8 weeks of running consistently again. This has allowed me to interrogate what more I want for myself in life and how I can achieve this. It’s exactly why I’ve signed up to run for my preferred charity this coming Spring!

Equally, it’s important that I stress that one’s decision to stop drinking shouldn’t mean that their social life should come to a halt and it’s harmful to suggest otherwise. Granted, temptations can be everywhere, but if anything, this could be a real opportunity to assert your boundaries with people and allow them to respect your decision not to have a drink whilst you are out. You may learn a lot about the company you keep and yourself. It can also be an opportunity to try out new activities with friends that aren’t centred around the socialisation of alcohol. Your life shouldn’t stop just because you choose to be sober and if your friends are normal, they won’t treat you any differently for doing so.

There have been many more benefits to this journey, including the money I have saved from buying alcohol, takeaways to cure my hangovers and Ubers I really didn’t need to take but had to because I was too drunk to get home, nevertheless I won’t be expanding on these aspects because then this article would be never ending. This week marks 8 weeks of no drinking for me and I’m proud of myself for not only making it this far but also having more insight into what I need to do to maintain a balanced lifestyle. I’ve decided I won’t be giving up alcohol forever (at least not yet!), in fact, I have a bottomless brunch booked for next weekend which I am quite looking forward to. I will be incorporating what I’ve learnt during this time to reduce how much I drink throughout the year. This includes not drinking to curb boredom or stress, simply drinking every time I socialise and having months that are alcohol free. Life is for living and my definition of living will be different from the next person’s, but that’s okay as long as we all do what works for us.