Five Things You Need to Know Before You Get Sober

If you’re sick of the booze loop but scared of life without alcohol then this post is for you.

I debated quitting drinking for years and failed to successfully moderate my intake for decades, but at the time of writing this, I have been sober for over three and a half years.

It took me a long time to take the leap into abstinence but it’s easily one of the wisest decisions I’ve ever made. Sobriety’s positive implications continue to reverberate throughout my life.

If you are considering sobriety or fighting your way towards it, here are some of the things I wish I’d known before I took the plunge.

1. Life might get worse before it gets better. And then it might get worse again.

The first weeks of sobriety were a breeze for me because I was in denial about my whole situation. I knew I had a drinking problem but I didn’t think it was that bad plus I didn’t think I was quitting forever.

I might as well have turned up at the sober support meetings with an expensive camera hanging around my neck and a bumbag full of banknotes; I had absolutely no intention of sticking around.

This delusion helped me out (that’s denial’s purpose, after all.) It allowed me to get to a place where I could begin to learn about why I was struggling in the ways that I was.

It wasn’t easy, but relatively speaking I had it easy. I was living in my own flat, and I wasn’t physically addicted yet. I even had some savings, I think. Looking back at that time, it seems a little like being on holiday.

I went to meetings, found new ways to fill my ever-expanding field of time and listened to podcasts about addiction. And I felt better.

I made more changes: ending a relationship that wasn’t working, getting a kitten, learning to bake. I joined a choir and signed up for a course in permaculture. Things were going great! Rainbow dreamland, here I come!

And then I met a block.

The pain of the past, all the reasons that I’d drunk, the trauma and self-loathing caught up with me. And I no longer had alcohol to numb them. The denial I’d enjoyed that first year began to lift, and I saw with a terrible clarity, all the ways in which my messed up relationship with alcohol had impacted my life. I also began to understand that I really couldn’t drink again.

Naturally, this made me want to drink.

Suddenly, my year of sobriety, in which I’d been so happy and capable, seemed like a terrible mistake. I pleaded with myself.

I was just trying to leave that unhealthy relationship!

I didn’t really mean I had a problem with alcohol!

But it was too late. I had seen through my own bullshit. There was no going back.

I felt trapped.

But I used the tools I’d learned and I didn’t drink. I got through it, and things changed again. Life got better.

If you stop drinking, things will get better and things will get worse, ut for all of the people I’ve gotten sober with, the curve is moving generally upwards. Sometimes it slows down. Sometimes it dives. But, overall, the direction is positive, if you just keep going.

2. Tolerating things you don’t like will become a lot more difficult.

Suppressing natural feelings is pretty much alcohol’s unique selling point. It used to be one of my most damaging super skills, to stay in situations that were bad for me.

Now I’m booze-free, I have no easy way of numbing the feelings I’d prefer not to experience. This is good sometimes, bad others.

Good: I’m getting better at speaking up for myself and asking for what I want, and I no longer tolerate narcissistic types or enable alcoholics.

Not so good: I struggle to really enjoy socializing in group settings.

Being around people makes me a little anxious, even when I adore them, and my nervous system works so hard without alcohol to take the edge off that I’m knackered after thirty minutes. Generally, I’m about ready to go home after this.

Unfortunately, this means that I’m only present for the warm-up chat, and I miss the main act where the lols and in-jokes are created. But it’s so hard to stay.

Even when I go to a concert, and I’m mostly enjoying myself, I find myself wanting to go home halfway through. Alcohol often made me lose the ability to leave places until the very end. Without it, I have lost the ability to stay.

But when I get home — early, as it tends to be — I can do the things I love. Read a book or hang out with my boyfriend or write. And that feeling of still being as capable, when I get home, as when I left is something I’ve come to count on.

3. You might not dance as much.

To be honest, dancing and fun were pretty far off at the end of my drinking years. It was more wine at home or smoking in beer gardens than dancing and high-jinks.

But I miss the mania of those rare drunken danceathons. When all the stars aligned and you could let loose to music you loved with wild abandon.

And I have to be careful here of euphoric recall — remembering the booze years with rose-tinted glasses — because the last time I danced that way was years before my last drink.

But without booze to lift my mood and give me that surge of energy and euphoria, I am pretty much never in the mood to party. I’ve managed it a few times in sobriety, and it’s been even better than when drinking because I can’t believe I got free. Dancing and enjoyment was often what I was chasing with beer, but rarely what I got.

Experience has shown me that things get easier if I just stick to this path, and I hope it will be the same for fun too.

4. Sober sex is nervewracking and then stressful and then beautiful.

My god, English people don’t have sex sober. It’s against our religion, which includes not talking about our feelings, loving carbohydrates and fearing our own naked bodies.

Imagine my horror then when I had to attempt physical intimacy without wine or beer. Terrifying. To save a gentleman’s honor, I won’t say much, but the previous rule applies: things got better, then I started to overthink it and they got worse, then they got much much better again.

Suffice to say, if I had known how this aspect of my life would improve I would have gotten sober years earlier.

This point alone is evidence enough for me that I must never drink again. (Now all I have to do is remember that, in every moment, for the rest of my life.)

5. The pub is not such a charmed place if you’re not drinking beer.

It’s hard to explain how much I used to love pubs. Before I grew to hate them, because of their associations with my powerlessness, they were a hallowed, holy place to me. Growing up, I spent hours in pub gardens with my dad, and I couldn’t wait to get inside.

As a teenager, I spent hours in pubs drinking my face off with friends. To sit at a bar and watch your own perfectly cold and golden pint being poured is a thing of wonder when you are in love with alcohol.

Immediately after I quit, pubs seemed dangerous and sordid and sad. They made my throat ache with thirst and made me want to throw away my stupid hard-earned sobriety to be in their embrace forever.

Sitting in them, with a drink of pop, I felt rigid and awkward and angry that I had taken my favorite toy away from myself. Whhhhhhhhhhy?

These days I can go to pubs, but if I’m honest, so far I haven’t entirely loved it. So many experiences have improved with the removal of lager, but the pub is absolutely not one of them.

Lately, this seems to be changing, too. So long as people aren’t drinking to get wasted, I quite like sitting around, wasting time and joking about. It’s hard to drink six ginger beers, mind. So far, my record is three. There’s definitely still a gap in the market for non-alcoholic drinks.

Getting sober is about choosing something different and shifting priorities.

It isn’t easy and it certainly isn’t a sure ticket to non-stop fun, but since I quit, I have been able to build a life that suits me, and relationships that make me feel safe, appreciated and cherished (yuck, sorry.)

I’ve stopped throwing money at something that makes me feel terrible and I’ve worked on finding coping skills that better serve me.

Life, which used to seem pointless and cruel, now, often (not always) feels precious and beautiful, and that makes this process well worth it.

If you’re ready to try something different, try my alcohol experiment. Do whatever it takes to stay sober for 30 days: go to your doctor, try Smart or AA or Hip Sobriety or Soberistas. Read beautiful hangover. Listen to Recovery Elevator and SHAIR podcasts. Read This Naked Mind. Try Moderation Management.

There is a whole community of people just waiting to help you. Reach out. Something better is waiting for you.

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Chelsey Flood is a novelist, lecturer and truth-seeker. She writes stories about freedom, nature and love.