Love will keep you strong (&sober)

This week has been difficult.

Firstly I got sick, then the weather got reeeally cold and my job has been hectic and stressful. Last night as my partner (who still drinks) sat glugging his cold beer – I reeeeeallly wanted to have one too.

My partner in his acceptance that I don’t drink totally trust’s me around alcohol. He got up to get something from the kitchen, as he passed by, he put his beer bottle down on the table right infront of me. For a minute or two it was just me and the beer bottle having a face-off across the coffee table. All the old alcoholic thoughts came rushing into my head; “I could have a sip. He wouldn’t know.”, “I could drink it and say that it was just this once.”

However, in my moment of doubt when I was looking for false-reassurance from booze I realised that I could not do this to my partner and my family again. OH MY GOD I really did want to drink, but it was how dissapointed my partner would be that stopped me. I didn’t want to face that again. In that split second where I felt at my weakest I knew that I couldn’t let the people who love me down. Their love stopped me from picking up the bottle again, because if I couldn’t stay sober for me then I bloody well could for them.

My biggest lesson about this whole incident is that I should have confided in my partner about my feelings. This week I replaced drinking away difficult feelings in a bottle, by keeping them bottled up inside my head instead. Which is a really stressful, exhausting and isolative experience similar to a hangover.  I got sober to improve my life and to not EVER experience a hangover again! So I am going to learn from this experience and try to let people know when I’m struggling and share my feelings more.

Sorry for the distance

I am still sober. I am still strong.

Sorry I haven’t written anything for a while. I think I wanted to distance myself from my drinking and my recent past of drinking. Which again is something I have done in the past when i have successfully stopped drinking booze. This is perhaps because in situations when I am offered alcohol I just tell people firmly that “I don’t drink”. I don’t offer explanations and people don’t ask for them. Because I am assertive, I don’t say it apologetically or with hesitation, people just accept it and move on. This suits them and this suits me, as I don’t have to disclose or deal with the reasons why i stopped drinking and to be honest I’m not sure everyone would want to hear them anyway.

I think writing this blog took me firmly out of my comfort zone because it forced me to discuss why I drank. I had to allow myself to be vulnerable and explain why i had decided to stop and what lead me to make this decission. So for a few weeks I have run off and not posted anything because this scared me – but I am back.

I still don’t feel totally comfortable talking about why I don’t drink because it’s uncomfortable revealing myself on such a public platform – the world wide web. This again conveys one of the main reasons many people drink because they want to mask their real emotions. I know this is one of the reasons I would abuse booze because I didn’t want people to see how vulnerable I really am.  In short these are the three top reasons I stopped.

1)I am a bad drunk – I make bad choices, I offend people, I act so out of character I often hurt the people I love

2) Booze causes me to suffer – the regrets, the anxiety following black-outs where I struggle to recall what I did the night before. Also the physical symptoms of alcohol withdrawl cause such anxiety that I can’t function properly. To put it bluntly It-is-just-not-worth-it.

3) I am happier sober. I lead a healthier life, I deal with any uncomfertable emotions life throw’s at me better and feel stronger for it. Alcohol is not a medicine – for me it is a poison.

If you are reading this blog and still making that decision whether to stop. I can honestly say give it a go. I have stopped drinking for approximately 2 months now and I do not miss booze in anyway. I have no regrets and feel that I am in control of my life for the first time in a long time.

If you have any questions or have any advice please comment below. (Also I apologise for all the spelling mistakes, this is caused by dyslexia not booze brain!)