sober-ish

The How, the Why, and What's Next

I’ve decided that one of the characters in Emily Henry’s latest delightful summery rom com, Happy Place, is based on me.

Sure, Cleo (the character in question) and I are very different people. But we have three key things in common: 1) we both left city life behind for a new one and are much happier for it, 2) we both typically get up at 5 a.m. to embrace said new life, and 3) we’re both happily, casually sober.

I’m sorry to bury the lede, but alcohol is one of those topics that’s better sidled up to; I’ve learned that people can take it personally when you opt for something sparkling instead of a glass of wine, and that’s not my intention with writing this newsletter. Instead, I hope my perspective lets you think about your relationship with alcohol, or social media, or TV, or coffee, or whatever substance is filling your time and taking your attention and consider whether you want to make any adjustments.

How?

It is low-key embarrassing how easy it was for me to phase out alcohol, given my devotion to it in my mid-20s. (My personal peak was the two years or so where I couldn’t make it through one day and get to the next without a glass of red wine at the end of the day.) I can’t overstate how lucky I feel to be someone who could walk away one step at a time and then realize one day I didn’t need that particular substance to be part of my life anymore. It barely makes for an interesting story.

I started cutting back on alcohol when the pandemic started and coasted on 1-2 drinks a week for a while. After I met my partner, I went even longer stretches without having a drink. Last year, I started figure skating as a hobby, and because I never wanted to have a drink the night before I was going to be on the ice the next day and I frequently skated 3 days a week, I began going a few weeks at a time without alcohol. I felt better and better and better and better, until I realized that having even one drink would throw off that good feeling. Until I realized that I didn’t want the interruption anymore.

Why?

Cutting back on alcohol happened almost unintentionally, as I thought each time about the physical effects and whether I wanted them at that moment. But I also realized how much I didn’t want it influencing my mental health and creativity anymore. My alcohol consumption peaked at the worst times of my life, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

For me, alcohol promised for a long time to be the safety net in place to catch me when the tightrope of life became too difficult to balance; it took me years to realize that it was, instead, an optical illusion that made me believe I was so much higher up than I was. Once I started experiencing my emotions the way they really are, not distorted and heightened or deadened and numbed by two glasses of wine, they were so much easier to navigate.

Alcohol promises to be exciting and new every time, but it’s not. To steal a line from Daisy Jones, it got … boring. I knew how I’d feel with the first sip of the drink and the exact buzz I’d reach with the last, I knew how brief the high would be and how disoriented and flat I’d feel in the comedown after, I knew the way I’d feel a little out of it, a little less in touch with myself and the world, the next day. And none of it was interesting anymore.

What’s next?

I kept one drink, once in a while, in my life for a long time because I didn’t think I could reach a specific feeling without alcohol. For me, the biggest appeal of a drink was the way alcohol pulled me into a world. It made me feel joyous and glamorous and sophisticated and interesting, as if I were living in a movie, and I thought I couldn’t find that feeling without it.

Spoiler alert: I can. That’s how I feel when I’m happiest in my writing; when my person and I share some inside household joke that would make absolutely zero sense to someone else; when I’m driving and daydreaming while I listen to music and an Idea hits me and I’m so excited to see where it goes. My life is joyous and interesting, occasionally glamorous, and OK, perhaps it’s less sophisticated now that I’m not the girl drinking a bourbon neat at your party, but who cares?

I think it’s safe to say I’m done with using alcohol as a way of escape and I’m definitely through with it as a daily or weekly or even monthly habit. When I started experimenting with sobriety, the “ish” in this newsletter’s subject line was the space I personally needed to tell myself “I’m just not drinking for now,” or “I’m taking a break to see how I feel.” It was never a drastic moment of life or death, and it’s not a dramatic story (again, it’s barely interesting!) to tell you now.

The “ish” now is me not saying I’m 100% sober. I don’t think communion wine once a week counts (pretty sure there’s a Bible verse about that, and grape juice tastes fake, so no thank you), but I assume some people would disagree. I’ll probably have a few sips of the Chianti a friend brought back from Italy when my parents visit over the holidays and we open it. I’m not saying I would never try a real glass of Champagne when my partner and I take that trip to Paris someday that I’ve been dreaming about for years. The “ish” gives me the wiggle room that works for me.

If you have specific questions or would like to share your own stories of flirtations with sobriety, please do reach out to me by replying directly to this newsletter. I hope you’ve found, as I did, that the worlds in your own head are more interesting than anything you could find at the bottom of a glass.