I have been sober for seven months.
Before anyone thinks I am super-human, this is only something I was ready to try after the two-year anniversary of J’s suicide. I should also add that drinking isn’t a coping mechanism I employed consistently in my grief. In the days or weeks (I can’t remember) following his death, I didn’t want to drink at all. Initially I could barely eat and the idea of drinking made my body recoil. I was surviving on tonic water and fruit. My stomach was clenched into a knot so tight I felt that anything else would be instantly ejected.
A side note here: an unexpected side-effect to this was that I started weighing myself every morning. I found a (slightly worrying) satisfaction in seeing my weight decrease with each day, as I essentially fasted. Perhaps a sense of control after a traumatic event that snatched away life as I’d known it and spat out a new, terrifying and unrecognisable version?
Thankfully, even as I was doing it I knew it wasn’t a healthy practice. My love of food eventually returned. With it, came my desire for alcohol. My drinking went back to ‘normal’ levels. Is there truly such a thing? I found myself having a glass or two of red wine, by myself, most evenings.
There are so many reasons I am trying to give up now. I realise I am writing in my own weasel-words in case I fail. Trying to give up, rather than a decisive: I have given up alcohol. That sounds so… final.
Seven months in and I am still struggling to frame this as a permanent decision. Though the concept is becoming easier over time. I still haven’t said out loud to anyone: “I don’t drink.” I have tended to favour the more wishy-washy: “I’m not drinking, at the moment.”
Alcohol is so embedded in our culture, and in my own social (or, more accurately, not so social) life. I feel better, my sleep has improved and I have more energy. I clear up the kitchen before going to bed, who knew that was a thing? Yet, I still find myself thinking: “Maybe once I have given up for eight/ twelve/ eighteen – delete depending on how determined I am feeling – months, I can go back to having an occasional glass of wine?”
I have downloaded an app called “I Am Sober,” it encourages me to pledge daily that I won’t drink. It means I look at my reasons for doing it every single day, and those reasons can broadly be summarised as: “I can’t put the kids through anything else.” I also find the progress report (including money and time saved) mildly addictive. It’s helpful to look back at the days where it was a bit harder to resist the urge for a glass of wine, and to see how I was feeling on that day and appreciate that I didn’t falter. After all, that would ruin my streak.
When I started suffering from the Atrial Flutter and I was waiting for the cardiologist to get back to me, cutting out alcohol was the one contributing factor in my control. It’s a known trigger: even small amounts hincrease the chances of having an episode.
The Atrial Flutter in itself isn’t a life-threatening condition, but how many times do I need to be reminded that life is fleeting? After J died, the boys were suddenly very aware of this. I assured them that I’m going to stick around and annoy them for as long as I can. So giving up booze seems like a small sacrifice to make.
I read somewhere that it takes your body a full year to heal itself from the ravages of drinking. I’m not sure I ever drank consistently enough to have caused that much damage, though maybe I’m kidding myself as there were some quite formidable binge-drinking times during University and certainly in my twenties and thirties. I had a blast, I have no regrets. So maybe now is the new chapter, where I have a blast without alcohol. Though I just noticed the sneaky ‘maybe’ in that sentence.
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