Of all the steps that I’ve taken, including: journaling, meditation, impulsively signing on for a couple of creative projects, learning about trauma, etc., one of the biggest steps was cutting alcohol out of my diet and out of my life.
Preparing to get sober
Getting sober was another big step I took over the summer of 2020. I read two books before I took my last drink. One was This Naked Mind by Annie Grace, which helped to reframe what alcohol represented to me. The other was Cold Turkey by Mishka Shubaly. I listened to it multiple times. I found it particularly good for walking me through the stages of the first several weeks without alcohol. It allowed me to create a structured program without joining AA. Luckily, I didn’t contend with physical withdrawals. But without the ability to use alcohol as a mood regulator, I suddenly had to face my tough personal issues without numbing.
The boozy backstory
A lot of my family history is pretty thoroughly soaked in booze. According to my father, most of his relatives are alcoholics. I believe he had about five uncles, all of whom were heavy drinkers, though his mother (my grandmother) and his father were not. I never knew my biological grandfather on my mother’s side. Even my own mother didn’t really know him, as he was a hopeless, homeless drunk who died young on the streets–drinking himself to death. My maternal grandmother with an alcoholic, as was my mother, who used alcohol and hard drugs. She also started sharing alcohol and drugs with me when I was a young adult, buying me substances and keeping the family pattern of enmeshment and codependency going through chemical means.
I myself went out nightly and partied through most of my 20s and early 30s. Even after I eventually got over the clubbing and partying phase, I was a pretty steady drinker. Binge drinking was common when I got together with friends for a long time. Even after that, I don’t know how many years it was that, although I didn’t binge drink anymore, a few drinks each night were a staple of my life for years. Every so often I’d think about quitting, or quit for a while, but would go back to it. My alcohol issues weren’t quite bad enough to force me into any kind of rock bottom, but they were bad enough that I couldn’t stop drinking.
And you know when you’re googling “am I an alcoholic” the answer is that you have a problem.
Early sobriety
After so many decades of drinking, I carefully monitored myself for the first month or so of sobriety (according to Shubaly’s week-by-week account of what to expect in early sobriety). After that, I didn’t make any special efforts. I occasionally dealt with a craving or an urge but even those faded after a while. It’s shocking how something that was such a big part of my daily life for so long can quickly turn into something I never even think about.
But this is the issue with self-medicating via substance abuse. It’s not really about the addiction. It’s about what comes up when you don’t have the substances to numb with. Or as Gabor mate puts it, “Don’t ask why the addiction. Ask why the pain.”
The issue behind addiction
Luckily, after learning about trauma, I now understand that the true challenge is emotional regulation. Alcohol, at least in its immediate effects, is an absolutely phenomenal anxiolytic. Disinhibition (another immediate effect of alcohol) is a wildly heady and powerful feeling when you are someone who is beset and crushed by constant anxieties and tension and anger and fear and resentment. But it also prevents clear thinking, and I went a long time without ever even understanding that this emotional reactivity was the issue. I didn’t even understand that there was a name for it (emotional dysregulation), or that not everyone was walking around in the same tortured emotional state that I was.
Alcohol was my mood stabilizer. Not that, of course, drinking keeps things smooth and even overall, but it is a way to take some sort of immediate control over you moods. But without my chemical regulator, the next issue was revealed as the real challenge. How do I regulate my moods without chemicals?
The answer is a very complex and ongoing effort. But it’s just crazy how that thing I couldn’t do for so long (quit drinking) became the thing that was no big deal. During my first 30 days of sobriety, I realized just exactly how alcohol was not doing me any favors. At the same time, even though I often didn’t crave alcohol, what I needed was a way regulate my emotions. So quitting drinking definitely improved my life. Did it fix me or solve my problems? Nope.
But it gave me a start. It removed the thing that was allowing me to put off facing my demons.