Alcohol Free Life: How to Create a New (Sober) Normal

Alcohol Free Life: How to Create a New (Sober) Normal

I was driving home this evening and I started thinking about how different my alcohol free life is compared to my drinking days.

Today I got up about 8, headed to the pub to clean & then taught my yoga class (the same as every Sunday) and then headed to the yoga workshop. Now I’m sat in bed, with Margot (the dog) running around my bedroom super excited as she’s not normally allowed upstairs, writing this blog post.

Three years ago, a typical Sunday would have included waking up at 8, groaning at my hangover, cancelling the yoga class I’d booked with good intentions, going back to sleep till 11, eventually getting up and eating some stodge to try and cure my hangover before going to the pub for dinner (chicken salad) and a couple of glasses of wine to ease myself back into Monday.

What got me from there to here? I embraced the benefits of an alcohol free life and I reprogrammed myself to a new sober normal.

When I was drinking, my life felt a little bit like groundhog day.

Work. Drink. Sleep. Guilt. Work. Drink. Sleep. Shame. Work. Sleep. Work. Drink. Sleep. Guilt. Work. Drink. Sleep. Shame. Weekend. More Drink. Sleep. Guilt.

I didn’t drink every day, so interspersed with those times was the occasional feeling of virtuousness. And not every drink ended in disaster so there were some fun times in there too. But it is a pattern that I lived through for some years (albeit when I was at university there was a lot less work and a lot more sleep).

When I began to try and stop drinking, I found I had a lot of time that I wasn’t sure what to do with. In putting down the booze, I removed a major component from the structure of my life.

Drinking to socialise, celebrate, commiserate, let my hair down, relax, had been my life for so long that I didn’t know what to do instead. I didn’t know how to date without drinking, or to hang out with my friends, or even how to dance.

I felt like an alien, turning away from everything I knew on planet drink in search of a new sober reality. I was terrified.

This fear pushed me back to planet drink a fair few times. In fact, it took 18 months of running back to planet drink to realise that I couldn’t live there anymore and my sobriety finally stuck. What changed over those 18 months? I embedded in my psyche that sobriety was ok, it was something people chose to do and I discovered that they lived better lives because of it. I made sobriety my new normal.

I read books, and blogs, I joined Facebook groups, and started to try and make sober friends, I posted in forums when I was struggling, or when I had slipped and I reaffirmed that I would try again. Eventually, I had put enough sober time together – a month, two months, a 70 day streak at one point – to know that I liked who I was on planet sober and I could see the opportunities that were offered over there.

On my last few drinking days, I couldn’t escape my own psycho-analysis. I could now tell when I was drinking to avoid a feeling, or when I was drinking because I was sad, I could feel myself getting fuzzier with each drink. And I didn’t enjoy it. I knew I needed to be sober.

Creating a new sober normal is a two-pronged attack:

1. Re-educate yourself on alcohol

Alcohol’s not good for you. Who knew? Deglamourise booze in your head. Write down your “never drinking again” moments. Keep adding to the list. You’ve had years of lapping up the alcohol marketing, of associating champagne with celebration and football matches with beer. Read up on how harmful alcohol is to your health. Keep this information close.

2. Focus on finding, and doing, things you enjoy

If your idea of a good time is drinking, then sobriety is inevitably a shock. If you’ve relied on booze to relax, celebrate and blow off steam, then you need to find other ways of doing this. I got even more into yoga, and Netflix, and dog walks. But you might want to paint, try all the non-alcoholic beers you can find, or start singing. It doesn’t need to be wholesome or instagrammable – it just needs to be activities that appeal to YOU. (I’ve found screaming in my car also good for releasing anger – and ripping up pieces of paper).

Letting go of booze isn’t a punishment. It’s an invitation to dig deep, find out who you really are and discover what lights you up. Making sobriety your new normal, and embracing an alcohol free life, will show you that.

Ps. I’ve been using this two-pronged attack recently to stop myself wanting to be thin (and to put down the diets), it’s working.

Enjoyed this post? Keep reading:

Remembering I don’t Need To Drink Alcohol To Have Fun

Willpower Isn’t Enough: How Habits Can Help You Stop Drinking

How to Stop Drinking? 7 Things That Might Help