Sobriety is a deeply personal and often sensitive subject. The decision to embrace sobriety can come from many reasons – rooted in health, in emotional healing and often a mixture of the two. The reasons are specific to each individual and shaped by their lived experiences. When someone chooses sobriety, this can evoke emotions in other people who can have difficulty with their relationship with alcohol.
Each sobriety story is valid. I share my thoughts on my own trip, fully aware that my path may not look like yours. My experience does not define sobriety as a whole, and it does not decrease or invalidate yours.
The data show that alcohol consumption in America is change. At the start of the year, New health advice has been published connecting alcohol consumption to the increase in the risk of cancer. Culturally, our relationship with sobriety is extended. This is what my sobriety looks like today.
My relationship with alcohol
I am eighteen and during my first party at home. This is my last year in high school. My friends and I hit a group of guys entering their junior year. I stand at the end of a marshy pong table, gently holding my red cup. Fear and released, I ride a lukewarm barrel, the first taste of the type of freedom that college would provide. No one was there to monitor or judge except myself.
I had grown up drinking alcohol, my parents and my long -term boyfriend demonizing him. I have rarely seen my parents drink apart from my father's night beer, a brutal gap of a culture of alcohol consumption that I observed in my Irish dance community. There, drinking was synonymous with everything. During trips to Ireland as a pre -adolescent in the 90s, I looked at the children my age with a Guinness, sitting at the bar with their parents.
There are also memories of my grandparents: sip Miller Light or a butter Chardonnay, eat tortilla croustilles and play cards. Their laugh is synonymous with my happy childhood, a kind of rare and good conviviality and which is worth stopping to marvel. Today, this smell of hops and savory crisits brings everything home.
At the end of my 18th summer, beer meant another type of conviviality. A beer in my hand was connection, security and confidence. It was a key inside the places I had still accessed and a bridge of relaxed ease that had alluded to me a lifetime.
Enter adulthood and I could not imagine a future without him.
My relationship with alcohol was troubled. At 25, I tilted on the edge, blackening often in the previous month My first marriage. However, I have always had an “off” switch. I was never worried that I would forget when it was enough.
There were times in the thirties when the draw was irresistible. We bought loose wine during the pandemic and during our first years of parenting. Wine was a daily ritual.
A large part of my social life has revolved around alcohol. Wine as an activity. Wine as unifious. As Joe and I fell in love On drinks and I did not think twice a week martini, I had friends who decided to go sober. With that, he came a feeling of concern, we would lose contact. Fortunately, no friendship was lost because of sobriety.
I listened to stories from those who found themselves outside of once narrow friendshipsAnother and not offered a seat at the dinner table, injured by the fragility of a friendship built around alcohol. While I asked questions about alcohol -free life, they opened my eyes to a world that is just as rich in relationships and flavor as all the increased sensations that I came to associate with both alcohol and my relationships.
Beer in hand was no longer a ticket to enter. Sobriety has offered a way to access a deeper connection.
Why did I decided to stop drinking
This is also troubled. There were health reasons to stop. Then there were deeper subconscious reasons. When I stopped drinking in November, he was without ceremony, unexpectedly and led by something that I really did not understand very well at the time. I was drinking less than I had never had it, so it was like a non-event.
It was only a few weeks after I understood that motivation came from a desire to withdraw life from its necessities. I wanted to withdraw things that I did not know how to withdraw. To put external things a little that invented my life on the rear burner and learn to be with the parts of myself, I did not like.
All of this was to make space to live the full range of human emotions, without shock absorber or distraction. While I score a year in my renewed therapeutic journeyI finally take great strides rather than relaxing the past. I can see my models and treat them clearly.
I want to give change the best chances possible.
It was only a few weeks after I understood that motivation came from a desire to withdraw life from its necessities. . . . All of this was to make space to live the full range of human emotions, without shock absorber or distraction.
How not to drink to feel
Many people have a complex relationship with alcohol consumption, and I also had to face what alcohol consumption evokes in others. I try to be compassionate. In some friendships, alcohol consumption has historically been a large part of the way we socialize, and I worry not to be invited to things. But I like to be sober and always be around alcohol – for me, it doesn't need to be so black and white.
The ritual of a drink is what I miss most, the one that is accomplished with a N / A beer or a cocktail. The best part was to find as much Large non -alcoholic options. I appreciated Athletic brewing,, Ghia,, SpiritAnd Heineken 0.0.
What the future looks like
I had no end date when I stopped drinking, except wanting to spend the sober holidays.
After Christmas, I shared a glass of wine with friends and a few glasses in Mexico. Entering this gray area was premature. A single drink spoke of a weak buzzing brain fog and irritability the next day, and it was more than I wanted to live. In this test, it was clear that not drinking was better than the consumption of alcohol “a little”.
And that's why I continued not to drink.
I realize that this period of sobriety helps me to reconcile my relationship with distraction and avoidance. I do not imagine that I will abstain from drinking alcohol indefinitely, but when I choose not to drink, I strengthen a kind of self -respect that I have been missing for a while.
Finally, I will decide to take a glass of wine again, then may not drink for a few weeks after that. I most likely be identified with the “sometimes” consumption of alcohol. But I don't think about the future. Whatever happens, I leave my body and intuition Take the lead. We will see what awaits us.
Kate is the founder of Wit & Delight. She is currently learning to play tennis and is forever Test the limits of his creative muscle. Follow her on Instagram at @WitandDeLight_.
