Giving up alcohol: A journey of bingeing and boredom to finding passion and purpose
I have mixed feelings as I reflect on giving up alcohol.
It’s been 2.5 years without my beloved Sav Blanc to help soothe my anxiety (little did I know it was causing it), distract me from uncomfortable feelings, de-stress after a long day and offer me my reward for surviving another day of parenting, working, cooking, cleaning…
How do I know if I’m drinking too much?
That’s the question, right? For me, I was drinking consistently (not every day but enough to take 2-3 days to recover from). I was binge drinking at weekends and using alcohol as my one and only tool to deal with life’s challenges – stress, anxiety, overwhelm, boredom, loneliness, fatigue, connection. I found a way that alcohol could be the legitimate solution to every problem. It was the only way I knew how to deal with any adversity in my life.
What followed was a journey I could never have predicted. One of riding the big Daddy of emotional roller coasters, self-discovery, self-connection, discovering my true passion and calling in life, studying, changing career and developing a level of resilience and self-awareness I didn’t know I was capable of….
Binge drinking was part of life
I was always a big binge drinker through university. My role models were women who drank whisky neat from the bottle while talking about girl power and women being able to have it all, do it all. I lapped it up and lived the hedonistic lifestyle of a young, single woman finding her feet in this new world of feminine equality in a city that never slept. Weekends started at 5pm on a Friday and finished at midnight on a Sunday with snatched hours of sleep in between when we could manage it.
The early 2000’s saw me pack in my London job and head off around the world with nothing but the clothes on my back and a passion for adventure that has never left. At the end of that year I met my husband Angus and we returned to London for eight more years of partying, burning the candle at both ends and wanting to hang onto our youth for as long as possible, shirking all grown-up responsibility.
We married at the end of 2006 and my yearning for a baby kicked in hard. But my body had other ideas. Perhaps the first sign my drinking was taking it’s toll? I did everything I could to try and conceive – boiled herbs and drank disgusting tea, stuck needles in my tummy, lay with my legs up the wall for hours after sex, reflexology, supplements, yoga, vegetarian, no caffeine. But never did it occur to me that my drinking had to stop…
Having a baby didn’t stop the drinking
Eventually we conceived with the help of medical assistance and finally I welcomed my beautiful baby boy. Early motherhood was bliss. I had never felt so whole, or complete. My best friend was on maternity leave too and we walked for hours each day with our babies in our Bugaboos, stopping for wine in the trendy bars on the London streets along the way.
But then came the decision to leave London, my family and my close-knit group of girlfriends and move to the other side of the world. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. My baby boy was only 9 months old, yet we fell pregnant again within a few weeks of being in Perth. Before I knew it I was home with a 19-month old energetic boy and a newborn baby girl who cried and screamed whenever I tried to put her down. I would count down the hours till Angus came home from work. I would stand at the end of the driveway with a baby in my arms and a toddler at my feet with tears streaming down my face. I would hand them to him with no words to say and I would pour myself a wine. It made it all stop.
What followed were years of steady drinking
I built a life in Perth, I made friends, I set up my own business and I carried on living this life of two extremes with kale and yoga at one end and wine and cigarettes at the other. As long as I kept busy and kept drinking I could ignore the feelings of discontentment, anxiety, shame and ongoing loneliness. Or so I thought. That’s the thing about anxiety. It creeps up insidiously and you don’t realise it’s there until it’s fully settled in. For me, it showed up through the negative talk in my head causing me to always doubt and second-guess every decision I made and every sentence I uttered. Alcohol started impacting me in so many other ways. My hormones, my motivation, my energy, my weight, my mental clarity (there was none) and when it reached a point where I was thinking about drinking the morning after a heavy night, I knew it had to change.
I felt like a shadow of myself
In April 2017, I took a 3-month break. It confirmed everything. Alcohol was taking more than it was giving. Alcohol was stealing my confidence, my energy, my positivity, my zest, my passion and my soul. In that three months of sobriety, I can remember feeling the happiest I had ever felt in my adult life. On the outside no one would have noticed. But inside I felt a deep, deep sense of peace. The inner critic disappeared and was replaced by a voice that whispered words of hope, positivity and happiness. She showed me how much joy had been under my nose all along, I had just been too pissed or hungover to even see it.
At the end of those 3 months, I thought ‘I can moderate my alcohol now’
I did moderate my drinking – for two weeks. That was all it took to slowly creep back up and hijack my thoughts, my motivation, my zest and my positivity. What followed was two years of soul searching, trying to moderate my alcohol, failing to moderate, heavy binge drinking, making rules and breaking rules. I was high or I was low. The highs were manic and the lows were devastating.
On April 28 in 2019 I had my last drink and then the work really began. I embarked on a year of intense therapy to make sense of all that had happened in my life and the defining moments that had impacted me. And I began to heal. I learnt to sit with my emotions and for the first time in my adult life I learnt to acknowledge them, welcome them and wait for them to pass without immediately distracting.
At the age of 43, I finally started to grow up.
I devoured every book, every podcast, I immersed myself in online sober groups and I dared to believe that a life of sobriety would be a happy one. And more than that, I dared to believe it would be better.
And is it better? You bet! But I have worked bloody hard to create this life. It hasn’t always been easy. At times I’ve still felt lonely, sad, resentful, bored and angry. Sobriety has taught me we have to be intentional and disciplined with creating a life that is fulfilling, fun, interesting, exciting and purposeful. And when we do that, the rewards are endless.
I now work as an accredited ‘Grey Area Drinking’ coach working with women all over the world to change their relationship with alcohol. I run two thriving Facebook communities ‘The Women’s Wellbeing Collective’ and ‘Perth Sober Socials’ (a meet up group for women to socialize without alcohol). I speak at corporate events across the country.
My advice to anyone starting out in the early days of giving up alcohol? Be kind to yourself, reward yourself with treats and activities and people that inspire and lift you. Do something for YOU each and every day. Just developing that one small habit will create a life you never want to numb from again.
Much love,
Sarah xx
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