Sobriety is a deeply personal and often sensitive topic. The decision to embrace sobriety can be for many reasons: health, emotional healing, and often a combination of both. The reasons are unique to each individual and are determined by their lived experiences. When someone chooses sobriety, it can trigger emotions in other people who may be struggling with their relationship with alcohol.
Every sobriety story is valid. I share my thoughts on my own journey, fully aware that my path may not look anything like yours. My experience does not define sobriety as a whole, nor does it diminish or invalidate yours.
Data show that alcohol consumption in the United States is change. At the beginning of the year, a new health notice A report was issued linking alcohol consumption to an increased risk of cancer. Culturally, our relationship with sobriety is expanding. This is what my sobriety looks like today.
My relationship with alcohol
I’m eighteen years old and I’m at my first house party. It’s my last year in high school. My friends and I got along well with a group of kids who were entering their third year. I’m standing at the other end of a swampy beer pong table, gingerly holding my red mug. Frightened and liberated, I gulp down a keg of warm beer, the first taste of the kind of freedom college would bring me. No one was there to monitor or judge except me.
I grew up afraid of drinking alcohol, my parents and long-time boyfriend demonized it. I rarely saw my parents drink, other than my father’s late-night beer, a marked departure from the drinking culture I observed in my Irish dance community. There drinking was synonymous with everything. During my trips to Ireland as a pre-teen in the ’90s, I watched kids my age with a Guinness, sitting at the bar with their parents.
There are also memories of my grandparents: drinking Miller Light or a buttered chardonnay, eating tortilla chips, and playing cards. Her laugh is synonymous with my happy childhood, a kind of togetherness that is rare and good and worth stopping to admire. Today that smell of hops and salty chips brings it all back home.
At the end of my 18th summer, beer meant a different kind of togetherness. A beer in my hand was connection, security and trust. It was a key into places I had yet to access and a gateway to the tranquility that had alluded me throughout my life.
I entered adulthood and couldn’t imagine a future without her.
My relationship with alcohol was murky. At 25, I fell over the edge and fainted frequently in the month before my first marriage. However, I always had an “off” switch. I never worried about forgetting when enough was enough.
There were times when I was in my 30s when the pull to drink was irresistible. We bought wine in bulk during the pandemic and during our first few years as parents. Wine was a daily ritual.
Much of my social life has revolved around alcohol. Wine as an activity. Wine as a unifier. While Joe and I fell in love over drinks and didn’t think twice about having a midweek martini, I had friends who decided to get sober. With this came a feeling of worry about losing contact. Fortunately, sobriety has not lost any friends.
I heard stories of those who found themselves outside of once-close friendships, separated and not offered a seat at the table, hurt by the fragility of a friendship built around alcohol. When I asked questions about life without alcohol, they opened my eyes to a world that is as rich in connection and flavor as all the heightened sensations I’ve come to associate with both alcohol and my relationships.
Beer in hand was no longer an entry ticket. Sobriety offered a way to access a deeper connection.
Why I decided to stop drinking
This is also shady. There were health reasons to quit smoking. Then, there were deeper subconscious reasons. When I stopped drinking in November, I did so unceremoniously, without warning, and motivated by something I didn’t really fully understand at the time. I was drinking less than ever, so I felt like nothing had happened.
It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I realized that the motivation came from the desire to strip life of its needs. I wanted to exclude myself from things I didn’t know how to exclude myself from. Putting the external things that made up my life on the back burner for a while and learning to be with the parts of me that I didn’t like.
This was all about making space to experience the full range of human emotions, without obstacles or distractions. As I mark one year into my renewed therapeutic journey, I am finally taking big steps forward instead of unraveling the past. I can see my patterns and process them clearly.
I want to give the change the best chance possible.
It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I realized that the motivation came from the desire to strip life of its needs. . . . This was all about making space to experience the full range of human emotions, without obstacles or distractions.
How has it felt to not drink?
Many people have a complex relationship with drinking and I too have had to face what not drinking does to others. I try to be compassionate. In certain friendships, drinking has historically been a big part of how we socialize and I worry about not being invited to certain things. But I like being sober and still surrounded by alcohol; For me, it doesn’t have to be so black and white.
The ritual of having a drink is what I miss the most and that is fulfilled with a beer or a cocktail N/A. The best part has been finding so many great alcohol-free options. I have been enjoying Athletic Brewing, Ghia, dry witand Heineken 0.0.
What the future looks like
I didn’t have an end date in mind for quitting drinking, other than wanting to spend the holidays sober.
After Christmas, I shared a glass of wine with friends and a few drinks while in Mexico. Entering this gray area seemed premature to me. Just one drink caused a slight buzz of brain fog and irritability the next day, and it was more than I wanted to experience. In this trial, it became clear that not drinking worked better than drinking just “a little.”
And that’s why I continued not drinking.
I realize that this period of sobriety is helping me reconcile my relationship with distraction and avoidance. I don’t imagine I’ll abstain from alcohol indefinitely, but when I decide not to drink, I’m strengthening a kind of self-respect that I’ve been losing for a while.
In time, I’ll decide to go back to having a glass of wine and maybe not drink for a few weeks. I most likely identify with drinking “sometimes.” But I’m not thinking about the future. No matter what happens, I let my body and intuition take the lead. We will see what the future holds for us.
Kate is the founder of Wit & Delight. He is currently learning to play tennis and is always testing the limits of his creative muscle. Follow her on Instagram at @witanddelight_.
