Thirteen years ago, I was in a bad place. I was so immersed in the toxic effects of alcohol that I could not see the truth - that alcohol was keeping me locked in a prison of restriction, low self-esteem, poor expectations, self-destruction, misery, and anxiety.
For a few hours every evening, I would submerge myself in a state of semi-consciousness, which would temporarily eliminate all of the above. And so, understandably, that period of respite became the thing I looked forward to the most each day - the time when I would stop feeling. The time when I would get a break from all of the tortuous thoughts in my head.
But what was really going on was that every time I drank, I was taking away the opportunity to feel my pain, see the prison walls, recognize what I was doing to myself, and work out how my life had to change if I was ever going to stop living such a dismal existence.
Events eventually conspired to inflict that decision upon me - out of pure fear over what alcohol did to me on the last night I drank in 2011, I quit. It was hard at first, I missed it like an ex-boyfriend who had dumped me out of the blue. I wondered what had happened, why our relationship had gone so wrong. I asked what I had done to deserve this treatment when I could see other people having such fun with drinking. Why couldn't I be like that? What was wrong with me, for that fun drinking to have turned into a nightmare of epic proportions, a nightmare that saw me lying unconscious on the pavement throwing up and on the brink of death (had my friend not found me and called an ambulance)?
In the years since 2011, there has been a massive explosion of sober influencers sharing their stories and spreading the word that sobriety is amazing, a pink cloud of loveliness that replaces tenfold all of the awfulness that alcohol once wreaked on their lives. There is a sober influencer for every person's story, a different experience in each social media post that speaks to someone, somewhere, about alcohol, sobriety, and why we are always so much better without the demon drink in our lives.
But sometimes, these stories focus so much on the wonderful repercussions of quitting alcohol that I can't help wondering about the people who might see them who are still drinking, still locked in that prison. The ones who have not yet seen with clarity that alcohol is ruining their lives; people who still lean into that nightly escape valve because of its powerful ability to provide respite from the emotional pain they are living with every day.
When I was in that place, I would not have been inspired by someone telling me that their life was amazing, sparkly, easy, and so much better now they were living alcohol-free. I would not have wanted to know how happy they were, how fabulous it was to be sober. I was full of anger and resentment, both aimed at myself and the world. I felt unseen, unvalidated, unimportant, forgotten. I felt invisible.
My message in this blog is to those people. The ones who are not yet able to climb on board the sobriety wagon and leave behind all the alcohol-induced depression, sadness, and self-loathing.
I want to tell those people this: I know how you feel. And it IS the alcohol that's making you feel that way. You don't have to wait until the rock bottom moment nearly steals your life, and you don't need to endure this sadness any longer. You might not want to go to AA, and you might not even want to admit to yourself at this moment that you are alcohol-dependent, that it's causing you massive problems. You might not even see that, never mind be able to articulate it verbally. (From the day I stopped drinking, it took me almost 18 months to be able to speak to anyone about it because the tears always took hold and I couldn't bear the pain.)
But read this, written from my heart: deep down, you know that alcohol can't be a good thing. Even if you don't yet see the extent to which it is stealing your happiness and authenticity, you know it can't be a positive. And that is your first step. You may not see the amazing pink clouds yet, or believe that they are out there. You may be terrified of what lies beyond that nightly respite from your feelings - in fact, you almost certainly are. But take that first step. Because after that first painful step comes the second one, and it's ever so slightly easier. Then comes the third, and the fourth, and the fifth, each of them getting easier and easier.
One day, you too will get to the top of the staircase and look back at that first step, as I did, and wonder who that person was. How did she live that way for so long, unable to see that life was so much better on the other side? What a fighter, what a survivor, for going through all of that and still being here.
You will be grateful to your younger self that, on one special day, she had the realisation that she deserved better, even if she had no clue what better looked like. And you will know, with absolute conviction, that it was the alcohol that constituted the problem and not you.
You were always perfect, just as you are.
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