Hey Guys! I hope you are all doing well!
So I am now 19 months into my sober life and rarely consider alcohol anymore even if I am in a restaurant, socialising or when I am stressed. Its taken a LONG time to get here – for the longest time I always thought of it as that’s all my brain knew. But these days not so much. I posted not long ago about visiting Mexico next year and I was worried I would feel like I was missing out not having that beach cocktail to celebrate that holiday feeling. A few months have passed again and I no longer feel that way. I now feel very sure that alcohol gave me nothing except for the fact it numbed difficult feelings, numbed my stresses and dampened my awkwardness when socialising (which by the way – I don’t really have sober…. Weird huh!) . That’s it. It just numbed me.
I have had to learn how to sit with difficult feelings and stresses and that has been super hard – but I have learnt that by sitting with those feelings and tolerating them they dissipate so MUCH quicker than hiding them behind alcohol and feeling 10 X worse the next day. Emotions and hormones all over the place and still feeling stressed anyway.
Now I have become that person who goes on walks when I am stressed, has early nights, and try’s to listen to my body. It’s a learning curve but gosh I feel so much more free, energetic, in tune with myself and balanced. Don’t get me wrong I still lose my mind under stress – I just walk it off haha!
I am now hiking 10-14 miles at weekends and 4-7 miles a day and not struggling with it! I have lost 28kg since quitting alcohol over the 19 months and my awareness and moods have increased so much! And I am almost out of debt!
I realised the other day how much life I have now that alcohol has gone. It took up SO MUCH space in my head, in my life, my bank balance, everything! I know 100% even with 19 months of sobriety behind me I could NEVER have a “take it or leave it” relationship with alcohol. I know that if I had one drink it would create this grey area in my life of maybe I can drink sometimes and honestly – I don’t want it.
I don’t want alcohol taking space in my life anymore. I don’t want to use one further drop of energy on thoughts, feelings about alcohol and drinking alcohol again in my life.
All that has happened since quitting alcohol is my life is better, brighter, bigger, healthier, freeer and more balanced. Its not easy all the time because that’s just life right? But it’s a MILLION times easier than when I was drinking every weekend and every night I was stressed / happy / anything else. I would never risk losing what I have now for one glass of something that’s not good for me anyway.
I am sharing this as a huge thank you to all of you that have supported me through this from the very start but also as a reminder to anyone starting out that it gets so much easier and its better than you could imagine. I found the first 6 months very hard, I felt unwell, depressed and just rubbish most of the time but I am so glad I kept going. I think for me, I knew what a life of alcohol looked like and it wasn’t enough. I wanted to see what a sober life looked like and I am so glad I did! Sharing some photos of my recent hikes! Because everyone knows how much I love the outdoors! The outdoors and nature has become my everything! Where as before - wine and Prosecco was
So my advice to myself before I stopped drinking if I could go back In time would have been to find something I love as the outdoors and hiking has become that for me
Sorry for the essay (Those that know me, know I can never keep it short!) sending you all lots of love! x
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