Unexpected Goodness

 

The evening breeze is sharp and cool as we drive along Highway 25. I lift my hands above my head while my hair whips wildly around my face. Half my body hangs out the passenger side window of the vehicle. My friends screech and giggle in the backseat, begging me to sit back down.

“I’m Britney Spears!!!”, I shout into the night.

I feel a tug on my sweatshirt and plop unsteadily back into my seat, grinning at our driver who has one hand on the steering wheel while the other hovers close to me, ready to grab my sweatshirt again to prevent me from diving out the passenger window a second time.

“That was fun”, I slur, my words feeling jumbled in my mouth, slow to escape my lips.

Arriving at the party a few hours earlier had been like an initiation of sorts. People were quick to grab beers from the cooler and pass them around. My friends and I stood around in a circle and stared at one another while we sipped from our beers, feeling the slight thrill one does when doing something you’re not supposed to be doing. As I forced down cans of Milwaukee’s Best and took pulls from bottle of red liquid that tasted like cinnamon and left a burning sensation in my chest, I started to feel calm, like I’d been taken out of myself. Somewhere during that second beer, the switch flipped. I felt a warm, light sensation trickle throughout my body, and it was as if permission arrived in a glass, freeing me from my anxious mind, allowing me to be whoever I wanted. 

****

It’s been almost two years since I cut alcohol out of my life, and I feel like I’ve learned a lot about myself along the way. Good things mostly - one being that it feels important to continue being open and honest about my journey. I think there are a lot of “normal” drinkers out there like me who suddenly wonder why this thing that was once so fun now feels wrong. 

My first year without alcohol, much of my focus was on counting the number of days I hadn’t had a drink - 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, six months - I’d watch the days go by on the calendar and pat myself on the back. I was zoned in on making it one year alcohol free. 

Then one year arrived, and I was like now what?

I started drinking when I was fifteen. As a shy, self-conscious teen, I liked the way it made me feel, its ability to shift my focus away from my insecurities and onto something else, something less uncomfortable than my own feelings. I loved the companionship that came from drinking with others, the rituals, that warm tingly feeling as the initial buzz set in, the courage it gave me.

I think many of us buy into the idea that there is some ill-defined line between “alcoholics” and “normal drinkers”. I’ve done a lot of reading on the topic over the last couple years. One of the interesting things I’ve observed is that most resist – understandably – adopting the word “alcoholic”, which is not a medical diagnosis or the official name of any disorder. The clinical diagnosis, Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD), is characterized by disordered drinking and can be mild, moderate, or severe. Like many things, it’s not black and white, and I suspect that we’d all benefit from a deeper understanding of AUD in order to have comfortable, non-judgmental conversations about alcohol in general. 

The 2021 National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) Releases (samhsa.gov) showed 28.6 million adults ages 18 and older had an alcohol use disorder in the past year. In our modern world, drinking often occurs in a social vacuum, or worse, alone in our homes (and the pandemic certainly didn’t help). Most people have access to alcohol pretty much whenever and wherever they want it. In comparison to our ancestors, it’s an unprecedented lifestyle that we may not be evolutionarily equipped to deal with. 

What I wish we’d spend more time doing is scrutinizing the substance in our glasses instead of the people drinking them. Alcohol is addictive. And like most addictive substances, it’s insidious. It will creep into every part of your life the more you engage with it. 

Science tells us a lot of interesting things about the chemical impacts of alcohol. Fundamentally, it floods your brain with artificial levels of dopamine, levels that are hard to replicate quickly by natural means. Our brains prefer to maintain a state of homeostasis. To counteract all of this dopamine flooding in, it sends a bunch of adrenaline and cortisol into our systems to counteract it. But that initial dopamine hit only lasts about 25-30 minutes, leaving extra adrenaline and cortisol in its wake, eventually negatively altering your day-to-day baseline. More drinks affect the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that helps with decision making. Remember promising yourself that you’d only have one drink at dinner but suddenly find yourself on number three? Yep. Your PFC took a vacation once the booze got involved. 

And the more you continue to drink, the worse it gets. It’ll start to depress your nervous system leading to lots of stumbling and slurred words, and even a couple drinks will significantly impact the quality of sleep which is why you probably feel foggy and out of sorts the next morning. 

In a nutshell, alcohol hijacks your brain. And, of course, it tells you that more alcohol is the solution. 

One of the hurdles for me pre-decision to quit was social in nature. Much of our established social environment revolves around alcohol, or at least includes it as a significant component. I did worry about missing out.  Once I was able to be honest with myself that drinking wasn’t doing me any favors, I felt a profound sense of relief. 

So what happens after you stop drinking alcohol?

The term sobriety gets tossed around a lot, and I’ll be honest, I don’t like the word sober. Maybe it’s because it reminds me of the word somber, and somber people make me think of funerals. Or maybe it’s because I feel like I’m being put in a box - the box of dreadfully dull sober people. “Sober” feels like it wants to be an identity, and that’s just not how I think about it. I like to think of myself as someone who simply prefers not to drink. I also prefer not to eat liver pate. It’s just not my jam.

But sometimes it is awfully boring being the only sober one in the room. I envy my friends who casually sip a mimosa over brunch. I do miss a glass of sauvignon blanc on a hot summer day. I wish I could share a flight of beer with friends. It was nice being blissfully unaware of how incredibly annoying drunk conversations can be. 

But as I continue on this journey, it is becoming clearer every day that, for me, the benefits of not drinking are vastly outweighing anything I previously perceived as a cost. The greatest benefit of all for me was reaching a point at which it wasn’t even really a question or something I had to spend energy thinking about.

About a month after I cut out alcohol, it felt like I’d crawled out of some sort of strange daze back into the land of the living. I’d been completely unaware how much casual drinking had dulled my senses, making a lot of my experiences feel unmemorable and monotonous. It’s not just that I’m happier, but I feel a profound sense of joy about life that was missing when I drank. I have newfound confidence that allows me to take risks, try new things, live bigger, and be better. 

I love not waking up hungover. Sometimes I’ll spontaneously hug myself and apologize to my body for having to endure my 20s, sluggish on Sundays, clinging to my cup of coffee. When your body doesn’t have to spend all day working overtime to get rid of the poison you fed it the night before, it turns out that you have a lot more energy and motivation.

I feel inspired again - to write, to take a painting class, or run hundreds of miles in a van full of strangers. I’m delighted anytime I discover a new NA beverage. The market for non-alcoholic drinks has significantly expanded since the days of O'Doul's making it a lot easier to navigate social situations without having to engage in all of the mental gymnastics that moderation requires. 

If you look at the studies around happiness, one of the most common factors among those who were the least happy was alcohol. Annie Grace, author of This Naked Mind, writes:

Alcohol creates an appetite for alcohol. It gets upset when you don’t feed it, and you feel relieved when you do. The feeling of relief is a huge contributor to the illusion of happiness. 

We all have things we could do a little less of, or a little more of, to try and be better. When it comes to living a focused life at its fullest, it’s just not something alcohol is conducive to.

I try to avoid saying I’ll never drink again because I’m not sure if that’s true. Saying never feels like you’re inviting karma to prove you wrong. But for the most part, I don’t want to drink. And that feels good.

I wrote about my original decision to quit drinking in an earlier post. Click here to read more.