3 Ways Not Drinking Has Affected My Writing

It’s not what you’d expect

I spent part of my teens and most of my 20s as a heavy drinker.

The “have a glass of wine daily” and “binge drink until I made myself sick on the weekends” type of drinker.

I made the decision to quit drinking about three years ago. The “why” doesn’t matter as much as the impact that not drinking has had on my life.

I’ve been a writer my entire life. I did not know what would come from me not drinking, but I was willing to brace myself for the journey.

Early morning and weekend writer

The quickest result I saw was that I suddenly had all this time to write.

I went from busy Monday through Friday with work and busy on the weekend with all my social endeavors, to pacing around the house Monday through Friday and pacing around the house on the weekends trying to find something to do.

At first, I didn’t know what to do with this time. It took a few weeks for me to adapt and learn to do other things when alcohol was no longer available.

After I’d paced enough, my wife suggested I try to sit down and write all these things that were troubling me. So I did.

The adaptation was painful. I finally sat down and started to write.

The writing was painful, too, because I wanted to create what was perfect from the beginning.

So I set out to write during the times when I felt most anxious; early morning before work and on the weekends.

This helped tremendously because not only was I able to curb my anxiety by writing my thoughts down on paper (or the screen), but I was writing! I had spent several years avoiding writing, avoiding myself, that I couldn’t believe I had re-kindled my habit of writing after being so hard on myself.

Forget the over-analysis

The initial hump was the hardest.

Any hump after that has been manageable and tolerable.

When I started writing sober, I was having this strong feeling of anger come up. My ego, my mind, my sense of “this has to be absolutely perfect” was tormenting me.

Any other writers out there know this is the existential crisis of being a writer; the uphill battle of fighting the good enough-ism of the self.

The biggest obstacle to becoming a writer is overcoming the self.

Anyone that can put the self aside and just speak. Tell the truth. Write straight from the bottom of their heart and the pit of their stomach — that’s the goal. Anyone that can do that can be a writer.

So, I kept at it. I kept writing and trying to break past this voice. It took several months. Months that felt like years. If you’ve ever sat several minutes self loathing, you’d understand that several months of it feels like diving straight to the lowest parts of hell.

But finally, I got to a place where I was writing without feeling overwhelmed by my critical voice. I just wrote. It flowed and even though it didn’t make sense at times while I was writing, I’d go back later and realize it was the most sense I’d ever made.

Access to inner guidance

I didn’t realize as I spent all those years drinking that it was taking a significant toll on my inner guidance.

I was lost. I was a zombie going to work Monday through Friday and getting drunk on the weekend. I was never really there.

Without really being there, how can you have any sense of who you even are?

The practice of tuning into the inner voice is a lifelong journey and I’m no expert, but removing alcohol has been the first step to clearing my mind enough to even realize there’s a whisper waiting for me to listen.

After several months of sobriety, I heard a whisper. It was faint, but I knew exactly what it was. It sent a feeling throughout my body. It was chills and a knowing that this was my voice, that I had tapped into an aspect of myself that I had hidden away.

Since then, I’ve allowed myself the space to experience this and to keep searching for it.

Writing is divine when it’s coming from someone who is in touch with themselves.

That’s when storytelling has the power to change the world.

That’s the freedom that not drinking has given me.