I am still off the bevy and still feel that my switch is flicked too. That did take a long time, I have been stopping and starting for 25 years. Life does feel so much easier and I can feel confident that I can go out, get home, get up the next day and be well. Relief!
I first started stopping drinking when I was 30… I remember going to two weddings in two days when I had just stopped and being so delighted (and surprised) that I could have a good time and nobody actually cared. All through my 20s alcohol was a big part of life. I’m planning a trip to the UK in mid-July, and am spending almost a week with old uni pals and MUST NOT revert to who I was then. I think that might actually be a tricky time but will prepare.
I stopped and started with the pregnancies and the little kids years and drinking only started ramping up when life got easier. But with more drinking came more mental torture, the craving, the beating myself up.
Anyway, now, finally, I do think I am done. I cannot convince myself there’s any way of being a moderator… and in some ways I quite like being a non-moderator… I do love some of the quit lit I read, I can relate a lot.
Meanwhile, my nice psychologist has instructed me to deal with my ADHD personality… she thinks I should get to a psychiatrist and trial a large dose of stimulants ASAP. But rushing around at top speed is who I am… except I am exhausted by who I am… it is all intertwined.
So now I don’t know who I am or what I am supposed to be doing with my life. Again.
When I stopped drinking for a year in 2013, I had to deal with all sorts of difficult emotions… mainly about my 20s and what I had done and how I had sabotaged myself so much, especially career-wise… and a lot about my Dad and his alcoholism. I went to AA a lot then but never related as much as I’d like to. The sober curious and not-alcoholic AF people are my tribe, but all that wasn’t around then.
This time I haven’t been so upset about the past… but I do want to make some life changes and slow down a bit and try to be a bit more effective in what I do… though, this year, I might aim to do not much. I just turned 56 and Paul is retired and we can live daily simply and manage fine, it’s a very privileged position to be in. My natural urge is to rush around and find a new thing to occupy me but am resisting. Just trying to get outside a lot, be there for all the kids and Paul and myself and not rush around like a maniac.
In AA, people talk about stopping the alcohol and then having to deal with all the -isms in their life. I think I am there.
