Tuned to a new frequency
When you stop drinking, you wonder how you'll ever have fun again. What in the world could possibly feel as incredible as the blissful release of glass two? What'll replace the intimacy of friends leaning in to share dreams like stolen kisses? Will you ever laugh again like you did at the memes of those magnesium-bright nights? And just how will you explain your behaviour if you don't have the convenient excuse of “Sorry, I was really drunk...”
What you don't realise is, in the words of the prophet David, you're always crashing in the same car.
And in the words of the prophet Fay, sooner or later it's going to steal you away, so please stop doing this to yourself, you beautiful, lost creature...
Changing the channel
If you're anything like me, you'll find it hard to adjust at first, because you're still tuned to the old frequency – the station where blackout all-nighters are the norm, days are lost to your body's desperate purge, and in the time spent not drinking your mind is (unbeknownst to you) horrifically blunted by the poison you cling to so dearly. You innately think that drinking is how fun is had, and anything else seems like...not fun. No matter how resolutely you may decide to ditch drinking Up Top, changing your own mind Deep Down doesn't happen as instantly.
It takes a little while to sift through the noise and tune in to a new wavelength of fun – and to get your head around actively choosing to do so. Once you find the station that plays your new music, life changes in positive ways that you couldn't even conceive of before.
But it doesn't happen straight away.
And the things that led to you drinking don't simply – poof! – vanish.
When I'm alone, I'm in bad company
I'm utterly unlovable.
Everyone will grow tired of me, sooner or later.
I must be perfect in everything I do, or it's not worth doing.
When I speak, sometimes stupid sentences come out – ones that I can roll over and over in my mind for days, weeks even years.
I will always be second choice.
And I don't even have being easy on the eyes to make up for all my sins.
My anxiety and depression lies, you see. Man, does she talk some nonsense.
She's not cheerleading for this painfully honest, authentic, charming(ish), pretty-in-my-own-way woman. Her arms and voice don't raise raise for kind, thoughtful, emotionally-intelligent me. She's cheering for comparisons and finding me wanting. She has an impressive, carefully-choreographed routine to hype up literally everyone else. She overlooks all my positives, and nitpicks at my failings.
She tells me that human beings will let me down. And sadly, they usually do.
My anxiety and depression doesn't have my best interests at heart. It's not tough love; it's not telling it like it is; it's the backbreaking emotional labour of living in a mind that will whisper lies and sadness in your ear. Or take a beautiful day and blot it out with nothing. My judgement in other areas is pretty much spot on (thanks scientific, objective brain!) but when it comes to how I conduct affairs with my sense of self, the liar is often the dominant voice In Here.
In times of loss and stress, my anxiety grabs a megaphone, and wakes me up at night. For months, and years.
It shut the hell up when I drank though. For a little while.
Alcohol delivered a loosening of the fist I used on myself. It was a temporary release from the tyranny of feeling awful (damn you, anxiety!), or not feeling anything at all (damn you, depression!) which became – despite all the many, many downsides – a reliable and much-needed method to Feel Differently.
Shutting them down, to just not feel those feelings, or to feel something else, was an effective ongoing method of survival.
Not one I recommend, because my method of survival very nearly killed me.
Alcohol is a highly addictive drug, and as we all know with drugs, as time goes on you need more of it to get the same effect as before. In the later stages of addiction, it's really easy to overload your body with a truly atrocious amount of the stuff, without realising that you're putting your life in danger.
The absence of a drug
I haven't drunk alcohol for well over a year now.
I didn't suffer any withdrawal. My addiction wasn't a physical one. There were no shakes here. No physical need. My prison was made entirely of my own thoughts and choices.
Once the first few days of the bad part of the hangover were done, and the several days after that of the not-so-bad-part, the rebuilding began.
Models to visualise addiction
Let's run away with some metaphors shall we?
1) The Matrix
Being addicted to alcohol is like The Matrix. Nobody in the system sees the harm, or understands your journey. When you step outside though, the mind-boggling hoodwink on society becomes painfully clear.
Inside the system is all PVC and Armani priestcoats, bright and high-contrast, and looking slick with sick ninja moves in bullet time. Outside is cold and creaky, with a muted palette, and jumpers with sort-of-sexy holes in them that signify poverty. It's not as readily, or immediately attractive. It's not supposed to be.
And just like in The Matrix, you're better out than in, but you have to struggle to find your own way to the Xanadu grubby-rave, metaphorically speaking. The Xanadu grubby-rave is so, so worth it all though.
2) The middle-man
To look at it another way, alcohol skips the middle-man – it's the equivalent of that joke about Step 1) Do thing. Step 2) ???? Step 3) Profit!
For a little while, alcohol allowed me to enjoy Step 1) Take drug. Cut straight to Step 3) Feel different and so, better!
When you stop drinking, that becomes Step 1) Stop drinking alcohol. Step 2) ??? Step 3) ??? Better...?
Without alcohol in the mix, you now have to slot Step 2 into that equation, and coax Step 3 into a more definitive mood. Yes! Better than before! Because what's better than good? Good enough.
3) Life stages reversion
If you're a lucky child, the inputs are simple: all you need to worry about is which exciting play activity will fill your spare time. You're not scared of getting older, in fact, you can't wait for that to happen so you can be the boss of you.
When you grow up, you become cognisant of the weird, baroque, multi-levered layers of meaning that time and existence take on. Getting older is what you don't want, because life is fleeting...and you still aren't truly the boss of you. You worry that you're wasting your time, or your life, on the things you do.
When you drink, you stop experiencing via the adult thought system: all those concerns shut down for a bit and your mind reverts back to the kid paradigm, without the weight of time and life pressing on your shoulders. That pleasant feeling of safety from the stresses of the world can be all-too attractive to step into, repeatedly, and often. I took that option, repeatedly and often.
And then I stopped.
The truth of the matter
Since I stopped drinking, I've become acutely aware that a shortcut doesn't exist. There isn't a method of skipping the middle man that doesn't result in me becoming further away (in the long term) from my initial desires. And I know that I don't want to look back on my life and realise I spent valuable years drunk, drowning my worry at the passage of time by ensuring I did absolutely nothing with it.
But it's a hard choice, because if you're like me, you don't emerge from a life-changing addiction into a safe space. The rehab centres that the movies sell are for the middle class and up, and for people in crisis states. I'm neither. There's no support group to bolster my needs and deeds. My narrative of recovery doesn't fit anywhere I've found. The 12 Steps are definitely not for me. The leading sites and message boards (even the specialist subscription ones) where people share their struggles, aren't for me. There's no place for me there because (as per usual) I can't be stuffed into any of the neat little available boxes.
The only place I've ever found anything that helped my journey has since been closed. It was a blog, a bit like this, but hers was inspiring, practical and full of straightforward wisdom. During that days-long hangover after I'd nearly died, I read it all again from the very first post, and it helped. But – as is the aim with recovery, and as should be the case – the woman writing it moved on in her life. She didn't want to write about all that any more.
Good for her. Not so great for me.
So I write.
I write for myself as a therapeutic exercise, for clarity, and in the hopes that what I'm experiencing might help someone else. Just like that single blog, adrift in a sea of fucking useless 'support' helped me.
While I may write about sober living regularly, I try to do so in a way that encourages success in sobriety, distance from how I used to act, and compassion for my past self. I want to concentrate on the positives of life without the drug that I was killing myself with. I aim to gently, kindly shake my head at past me, while taking lessons from myself into the future.
One day I may find it's not a subject I want to expound on any more. I hope so. But I'll never find out if I don't write anything. Right now it's but one of many subjects that I feel passionate writing about.
So I write.
Coming full circle on creativity
Creativity is a wonderful web of subtle influences and kind guidance. When your imagination is unfettered, it's a sponge for things that can spark ideas, or spark joy. When my mind was dulled by alcohol, it's like I wasn't capable of hearing the gentle harmony of ideas. Only a baseball bat of an influence would do. My mental antenna (if you will) wasn't sensitive enough to detect the signals I needed. Plus, I was tuned to the wrong frequency. Now I'm tuned to a different frequency.
If I'd stayed where I was...
I'd never have set up this website, and I'd never have liberated something I love doing from my work life.
Or taken up photography.
Or started reading again.
Or started painting again.
I would never have persevered with learning the ukulele...and gotten as good(ish) as I have in the time I've been playing.
Or started my own YouTube channel, where I play and sing.
Or begun writing my own songs, properly. (I'm positive one of them is actually really good!)
I would never have been able to emotionally step away from the bullies. (People I sadly am still required to have regular contact with.)
I would never have gone to Rome and taken about a thousand beautiful photos.
I'd never have fostered a rudimentary understanding of image manipulation, colour grading, or video editing.
I'd never have appreciated the peace of mind that comes from a tidy, organised house.
I would never have transformed my home into such a nurturing, cosy, loving place to be.
I'd never have understood in hindsight just how blunt my edge had become, in ways I simply didn't have the capacity to understand at the time.
I'd never have redefined myself in the positive terms I use these days.
I would never have quieted the liar In Here. It talks, but some days it's quieter, some days it's like listening to a story not my own, and some days I can accept it, and watch it dispassionately. There are bad times, but they're not all the time now.
I would never have revolutionised what I do for entertainment, and how I feel about it. Instead of frittering away my hours drinking, all I need to worry about is which play activity will fill my spare time. That kid paradigm from when I drank? I found it while sober, and all I had to do was...stay sober. (I'm still fairly scared about getting older, but at least I can enjoy the present moment once more.)
I would never have appreciated the simple perfection of mornings of sound mind.
No longer crashing in the same car
If you're going through what I was going through, I recommend that you:
Stop drinking.
Keep on with the not drinking.
Wait for your mind to catch up.
Give yourself time.
Experiment to find what you love now.
In days: I felt the good effects, a general feeling of well-being coming back. A flash of clarity here and there. Yeah, and massive downs, don't get me wrong, but some good creeping through the cracks.
In weeks: I had...lost that good feeling, and worried that things weren't getting better because choosing to do something other than drink took some effort. Effort to think of things to do. Effort to pass the time not drinking. Keep on with it. You got this.
Over months: not drinking became my mental default. The new normal was good! Great! I was sleeping through the night, properly. Small points of mental alacrity started to surprise and delight me. A few months into my sobriety, I started to find my new frequency: I stopped existing and started wanting to do stuff. That's when I began this site. (Sorry not sorry.)
After a year: I started to see what I could become again. I started allowing myself to dream big. I looked at my life, decided where I want to go, and I'm taking steps to get there. I didn't lose tons of weight – yet! – but my skin is awesome, my mind is back, and I sleep through the night.
As you open up to the concept that drinking is no longer a feasible pastime, other possibilities naturally find their way to fill your time. All you have to do is be open to them.
I don't miss drinking. Sometimes though, I do find myself saying out loud to my Kind-Eyed-Boy, “God, I'm glad we don't drink any more.”
I could never have imagined that I'd be moved to say that so often, and for it to be true. But it is.
Love always,
Fay
xXx