Sign #3 that you might have a drinking problem

Do you find the idea of doing anything away from home, especially at night, dreadful? I remember being very concerned that an evening class would interfere with my Thursday night ritual of drinking and watching Survivor. This was probably close to 20 years ago, but the idea of not being able to sit in my lounge wear, drinking a few “Tom Collins” and watching reality television was upsetting to me.

Fast forward a few years, any invitation in the evening would mean I would have to alter my routine of drinking, especially if I had to drive. I would sit through the meeting, etc and think of how late I would get home and if it would still be possible to have a drink when I got home. I resented having to do anything that would interfere with my drinking. Sadly, this included going to my kid’s concerts and assemblies. I hated dealing with anxiety without the use of my only coping mechanism.

If you find yourself avoiding invitations or activities that interfere with your evening ritual of drinking until you are muddled, then you might have a drinking problem.

For me, my quiet slide into daily drinking was a way to provide space for myself, quiet the noise in my head. It became very isolating. Since I have stopped drinking, I am much happier to talk to people and be social.

Today marks 3 weeks sober for me. I remember a time when I did the hard things without needing a drink. Now, I am proud to be in a position to help someone any time of day or night. I am not losing anything, only gaining.

I imagine that when I am older and grayer I will still be able to catch up on the drinking I am “missing” if I choose to in the future. I will never get these years back with my family or even with the neighbors I have been avoiding.

Do I have a drinking problem? Sign #2

If you avoiding eating food so you you can get a better buzz from alcohol, you might have a drinking problem.

I hated the nights I would come home from work and dinner was ready.

Does this sound like a rational or reasonable feeling? What person wouldn’t, after a long day at work and an even longer commute want to come home to a hot meal already on the table? Someone with a drinking problem.

My husband is not very organized in the kitchen, I preferred the nights when I could get a few drinks in while “helping” finish dinner. It was even better when nobody was home and I could drink and cook in peace and qiuet.

In my drinking days, dessert was something I could pass on. Now that I am consuming hundreds fewer liquid empty calories, I have room for dessert!

Since I have quit drinking, dinner is a welcome sight at the end of the day. When I am driving home, I bring an extra snack or two in my lunch to keep me from being tempted by the “empty stomach faster buzz” bug.

If you find yourself avoiding food in order to drink alcohol, if you prefer alcohol to dessert, you might have a drinking problem.

Do I have a drinking problem? Sign #1

If you look at the ABV (alchohol by volume) and select your beverage of choice primarily by what has the highest amount of alcohol. You might have a drinking problem.

I can tell you which beers/ciders/wines have the most alcohol. I stopped drinking liquor a few years ago after it became too obvious that I was going through gallons size jugs of gin and tequila more quickly than “normal.”

Craft brews and ciders were my favorite. Almost always they were higher in alcohol, plus you are supporting a local business, yay! At at a tasting room, I would proclaim my disdain for sweet drinks, preferring dry ciders or bitter beers. Ironically, both of these preferences usually align with a higher alcohol content.

During my years of “moderation” and bargaining with myself, I would promise myself that I would only drink one drink a night. Of course, I needed to make this count so I avoided buying anything under 6% ABV, trying to find 7-8% was preferable. If you are reading this blog, I probably don’t have to tell you that the one drink a night promise didn’t last long.

If you find yourself eschewing a low-alcohol option so you don’t fill up on some weak sauce, you might have a drinking problem.

When you quit drinking you will have more energy. Energy can feel like panic.

“Get busy living, or get busy dying”

The Shawshank redemption is a great movie and a great Stephen King short story. This quote has played periodically in my mind for years, usually when I am afraid to do something new. Humans are cursed/blessed with a sense of mortality. There is no way to sugar coat it, each day, we are closer to death.

Now that we have cheered things up a bit let’s see how this plays into our plan to live each day better than the last. To start, being aware or your surroundings is helpful. You can’t change things if you are not aware of them. Numbing your brain either means you are not allowing yourself to truly feel joy or that you are avoiding discomfort.

Energy is not an infinite resource and the more you drink, the less energy you have. I used to think a drink or two would perk me up. The immediate sugar rush would rev me up but the crash was soon behind. I have never “fallen asleep” on a night I did not drink. You may think you have great ideas and plans but they all end when the action stops. When you quit drinking you will have more energy.

Sometimes more energy is a scary thing. The numbing and dulling you have been using to cope with harfd things can make dealing with reality tough. This energy can make you feel and think uncomfortable things. Maybe you don’t like your job. Maybe you feel lonely. Energy can feel like panic. Learn to make friends with this new energy. Like a puppy that is not yet trained, there will be some messiness. Put down some newspapers and get to work!

Continuing to drink is not helping you live. Make a choice today to be an active participant in your life, not an observer to your slow demise.

How do you stop drinking? Let’s get stopped

Stop Drinking

The first step is obvious, don’t drink. Find something else to put in your glass. Treat yourself. I like the fancy San Pellegrino seltzer. Add a dash of tart cherry or lime juice. This will hydrate you and fill you up, making the idea of a drink less appealing.

Remove alcohol from your home

I have found that removing alcohol from your house is very helpful. Too often I would justify a (good day, bad day, rainy day) reason to drink if there was something cold and readily available. Even a really gross cider that sat in my garage fridge (despite it’s relatively high APV, more on that later) became palatable if I mixed it with something else. Add wine and viola! Sangria.

Truly disgusting.

Disrupt your routine

Go for a walk as soon as you get home. Better yet, don’t go straight home after work, find an alternative. Humans are creatures of habit. Drinking alcohol has become a habit. Habits follow routines, break one and break the other. Excercise!

Find a podcast to motivate you

I am partial to the Bubble Hour, especially the years hosted by Jean. There is something so soothing yet stern in her voice. She is strong and living her best life. You can too. There are a lot of sober podcasts out there, find something that motivates and resonates with you.

Be accountable

There are many Facebook groups and online groups that focus on a cooperative approach to sobriety. I found that helping someone in an earlier stage or in a pre-stage of quitting motivated me to stay the course. On the flip side, I found that too many people relapsing and talking constantly about drinking actually weakened my resolve after a few months. It can be disheartening to see the same people make the same mistakes and it is easy to justify your own “slips.”

Use a calculator

As simple creatures craving rewards for behavior, somthing as simple as setting a streak can provide a mood boost and some dopamine. There are many free tracking aps available for your phone. I prefer a simple ap with a strong visual showing your continuity of your “chain.”

Read

I find this one a little tricky. The “quit lit” was useful to me during the years I needed to identify my drinking issues. When I actually became sober, I found the repetative romanticizing and the constant reminders of drinking to be distracting.

Analyze

This is the tough one, one you might not be able to deal with yet. We all know that this drinking is a result of something else. The “why” of our drinking is messy and hard and the reason we have avoided dealing with our issues. Journaling, therapy and talking to loved ones will help you make sense of the journey.

Be nice to yourself

Go to bed early, eat healthy meals, get plenty of exercise and sleep. Treat yourself the way you would treat and ailing loved one. Self care doesn’t have to be about bubble baths and facials (but it can if that’s your thing!), it can be simple kindness. I bought fancier coffee than the Costco vat I usually consume and imported seltzer (ooh la la.) Simple but it made me feel special and cared for.

It’s never too late to be a better person.

People are drinking too much because of the Coronavirus

In February, I had successfully made it through the holidays without drinking. I wasn’t making any, “I will never drink again!” proclamations but had found peace in my alcohol sabbatical. All of this came to a screeching halt when the reality of Covid-19 hit. I am not alone. All I see on Facebook now are memes about drinking to make the “New Normal” palatable. Virtual learning has become an excuse for happy hour all day. Can you imagine if your teenage children told you they were going to drink all day to get through virtual learning?

A little background, I have Mormon blood in me, though my mother left the church a decade before I was born. Doomsday prepping seems to be in my blood, a genetic memory of preparing for hard times. The fear of a zombie apocolypse sent my anxiety and prepping into high gear. I knew when school was “cancelled” for 2 weeks that this was going to change everything. I am a healthcare professional and our industry was shut down. When the world around you collapses and your feeble brain is trying to create order out of chaos, sonething has to give. In this case, it was my sobriety.

I was not getting plastered, I gave that up when I stopped drinking liquor several years back. I was numbing. Numbing the crazy voices in my head telling me things like, “you better go to all of the Dollar Generals and buy pounds of salt so you can cure the squirrel meat your family will need to live on once the supply chain collapses!” I also thought I would be able to barter with spices so I bought all of the cinnamon, garlic powder and pepper I could find. I saved every jar and bottle because they might not make anymore.

Seriously, I have pounds of salt and no remaining pantry space. Looking back, I can see my crazy brain was trying to create a logical path to survival. I probably have some sort of manic disorder and the coronavirus landscape pushed me over the edge. How did I quiet my brain? Drinking, of course!

Drinking daily quickly became my routine again. Drinking at home had always been my preference so the fact that bars were closed didn’t matter to me. We have a close knit family and spend most of our free time together but I am also an introvert and need my alone time. Alone time does not exist in the “New Normal.” Drinking became a way for me to carve out my “alone time” while being surrounded (smothered) by my loved ones. I tried to slow my roll by mixing with cider with seltzer to trick my brain into drinking less. I still managed drink more than I wanted to.

This is the key point. By some people’s standards, I wasn’t really drinking that much. I definitely used to drink more, though according to new research about cancer, it’s all too much. I was drinking more than I wanted to, more than I told myself I would and I kept making promises to myself that I couldn’t keep.

Alcohol is addictive, more to some people than others, there is strong science around a dopamine reward system gone awry that I won’t go into here. Anne Grace’s book, “This Naked Mind” goes in depth into the physiological and psychological nature of substance addiction.

All I knew was that I had happily gone for months without drinking and was back to unhappily drinking every day and I needed to change. This is where the practice makes perfect philosophy of quitting comes in. I had “quit” a few times before and knew what to expect.

The first 2-3 days of not drinking alcohol are the hardest by far. Whether this is due to a chemical or mental addiction, the craving are real, the sense of loss is huge and the emotions run high. Get through those first few days. You will be a moody asshole, you will be sad, just get throught them.

Making dinner was a huge trigger for me to drink. “I deserve this drink because I am a sophisticated woman cooking a healthy meal for my family.” Avoid this trigger during the first week. Order take out, make frozen pizzas (served with a salad, because you know, health.) Any trigger. If your trigger is watching TV, go camping. I usually run in the morning, if I switch this up and run in the evening my routine is disrupted and the cycle is interrupted.

The first week of not drinking alcohol is the hardest, the first 3 days are miserable. It gets better. Much better.

I have news for all of you, “New Normal” is now just called normal. Drinking won’t make it go away. Drinking will only make it harder for you to adapt and grow to meet the challenges of the “New Normal.” We only have this one life and I want to be present not pickled. Even if that means eating salt-cured squirrel.

What happens when you stop drinking alcohol?

I can’t remember exactly when I realized my drinking had stopped become an occasional social event and when it became the main event. I know that like many of you, the slide was gradual. What was once a way to have fun had become my primary coping mechanism, a substitute for feeling sadness and joy. Though my kindle shows that I have been looking at “sober lit” for close to 10 years, it wasn’t until 4 years ago, just before my 40th birthday, that I consciously tried to stop, not just moderate my drinking. I have had some starts and stops since then but like all things, practice makes perfect. And life is not perfect.

So what happens when you stop drinking alcohol? You get sober. Sober has a lot of baggage, both the word and the condition.

I hate the word sober. It’s too close to somber, serious, stone cold. I prefer to think of myself as awakening, renewing, rediscovering. It’s about what you are gaining, not about what you are stopping. Notice I didn’t say losing, because avoiding feeling like shit is not losing.