What it was really like to quit drinking
Spoiler: like drinking from a firehose of your own feelings
There are exactly 5 years and a thousand lifetimes between these 2 photos.
It seems so obvious now that I was walking through life wearing someone else’s shoes, trying not to wince through blisters with every step. All I could sense was constant, creeping discomfort, and it shows in those dead eyes and that half smile that I held like a stick of dynamite.
Then on February 29th, 2016, I chose to initiate a semi-controlled demolition. I was tired of feeling tired, I was sick of myself and self-imposed sluggishness. I felt like I was living with the handbrake on. I pinpointed alcohol as a primary source of my despair and I quit drinking with the intention of going 30 days. It might have been the first choice I ever really made, and the blast radius was enormous.
After 30 days, my competitive spirit kicked in. Could I go 30 more? At day 60 I felt superhuman. I hadn’t lost my phone or sprained my ankle in weeks. Waking up felt good. I was sleeping like a goddamn champion. I kept going.
As my blood sugar and circadian rhythms began to normalize, I thought the anxiety that plagued my days would subside. It didn’t. I still felt anxious, and now I had nowhere to run. My moods elevated, but underneath the joy of feeling good, I felt the low rumble of the feelings I drank to suppress. They felt like the butterflies before a middle school dance, but with wings laden with heavy metal. I felt like a teenager again, excited but uncomfortable. Curious but nervous that I still wasn’t cool enough, that I still needed to be something else to exist in the world. I returned to the scene of the crime where I first learned I could silence that inner critic with intoxication.
I had to re-learn how to be a person. I used therapy and travel and tarot cards like training wheels as I wobbled around in my new awareness. I took hard looks at emotions I’d shoved into the dark recesses of my mind. Echoes of old unfelt pain ricocheted off my bones. The anxiety that I hoped would recede in sobriety bubbled up with a vengeance and I had nowhere to go. I had to just let it wash over me and see what was on the other side.
Through those first months, I stumbled on Bambi legs to untether myself from the old ways of thinking and being that got baked in early in life. Some habits died hard, some were fun to replace. I swapped out booze for ice cream and hikes took the place of hangovers. Those good changes kept me going - my bank account inflated, I felt better, I lost weight. I started recognizing that harsh inner voice, gave her a name and called her out when she berated me. I began to hear the sadness behind her snide remarks and let her know I heard her but wasn’t going to let her run the show anymore. I was showing up for myself for the first time.
Everything started to unravel.
Decades of repressed emotions welled up to the surface like a violent tsunami. Wave after inundating wave of previously unfelt feelings hit me all at once. I spent every Tuesday morning crying old tears in a therapist’s office, re-processing memories through EMDR, and giving myself permission to finally sense the pain that I didn’t let myself feel before. I met the scared little girl that needed to be held and reassured that she was safe during a thunderstorm. I met the adventurous kid that ran off into the woods because she thought she belonged by herself. I met the tenacious pre-teen that wanted so badly to fit in but struggled because fitting in meant staying small.
I left those appointments exhausted. Clearing the backlog was heavy work. That’s what they don’t tell you about new sobriety - anything you ran away from comes running right back.
Eventually though, the floodwaters began to recede and I sensed a completely new feeling - lightness. On the other side of all those buckets of tears was proof that I wasn’t going to abandon myself again. I let that little girl crawl into my lap to be held. And I felt peace. I walked into the woods with that muddy kneed kid and listened to CDs with the pre-teen and let her know she was cool even if other kids couldn’t see it. And I felt brave. Beyond panic, I found trust and the courage to look life squarely in the eye, if even for just a second.
On the other side of shame, I discovered absolution and finally allowed myself to acknowledge that, even in the darkest, ugliest, meanest moments, I was always just doing the best I could. Forgiving myself for the ways I showed up when I didn’t know any better was my first real taste of freedom.
Aligned with that shifting inner world, my outer life transformed almost effortlessly. I kept stacking chocolate wrappers instead of beer cans, spent NFL Sundays with the lions at the Wild Animal Sanctuary, traded buffalo wings for bulletproof coffee. I used the money I wasn’t spending on bar tabs to travel, which was so much easier when you skip the hotel room hangover. Clear-headed, I noticed that even as I traveled and transformed my life, I was consistently showing up as the same person. Those wishy-washy people-pleasing personality traits gave way to a true expression of self, acknowledged and given permission to just be. I wasn’t wearing some fabricated identity like a paper doll dress taped to the front of me, hoping no one would notice the backside was just tape and wishful thinking anymore.
Quitting drinking wasn’t a cure, but it was a portal. Stepping through meant abandoning the apathy I used to wear like armor, and recognizing the potential of every bright-eyed morning as a fresh canvas. (That sounds empowering but actually feels so intimidating that it still reminds me why it used to feel good to numb out and run.) The price of accountability, I learned, is to feel the weight of my own potential in every moment, and to recognize it not as a burden, but as an honor.
Every ugly cry was proof I was living instead of hiding. Every obstacle was an opportunity to rewrite history by choosing to expand, not bail. Feeling fully present and responsible for myself is scary, but I sealed off my escape hatch for a reason and I’m here, now.
So, five years and countless breakthroughs later, I feel grounded, grateful, and so, so, so f***ing proud of myself.
Thanks for reading.
Whitney
Wise words
Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
Viktor Frankl
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ICYMI
Last time, I wrote about stillness, self-inflicted chaos, and the magic of dying in savasana. This was one of my favorite pieces, so please check it out if you haven’t.