I Have Loved Being Sober for 2 Years

You don’t need to numb your pain, or look for an escape with alcohol. You can simply heal.

Two years of drinking lemon water has been a blast.

I could have been sober for longer if I hadn’t ruined by winning streak. Temptation got the best of me. An espresso martini found it’s way into my mouth and coated my heart with caffeine goodyness. If it weren’t for one or two occasions then my breakup with alcohol could have been six years ago.

The thing is, giving up alcohol isn’t a perfect process. Sometimes you have to try several times until your temptations get the message.

It has been two years since my last alcoholic drink. I’ve never felt better.

Alcohol and me had a rough time. I was an out of control drunk for many years. I was secretly battling mental illness in my head and had no idea what was going on.

My thoughts hurt. Alcohol made my thoughts feel better, but it didn’t make those thoughts make sense. Alcohol was a way to escape reality. I was socially awkward. I found it hard to talk to girls.

Alcohol made being uncomfortable easier.

I chose not to face up to the inadequacies of my life. Alcohol filled the void.

But covering up darkness only makes it harder to see later on. Eventually I got really lost. I had no idea what the heck I was doing. I would drive to work like a zombie in a BMW, and crank loud music to drown out my thoughts. Pete Tong’s “Essential Mix” was the magic trick.

When I hit the dating scene again several women decided not to see me for a second date. When I grilled them like a hostage negotiator it always came back to alcohol.

“You were fun at the start of the night. Then you just became a mess. I don’t want to participate in your late-night adventures, followed by the clean up in the morning.”

I was heartbroken. Every date I went on always ended badly. Alcohol was to blame. No… I was to blame.

I had to give up the love affair with alcohol. “Just one last drink,” I’d say.

It was never one last drink. The drinks always seemed to keep on magically being poured into my empty cup of a life.

I reached breaking point. It wasn’t some grandiose revelation; it just became clear alcohol wasn’t doing me any favors. I was better not running on alcohol.

This meant the hard work of working on myself had to begin. So for the umpteenth time, I gave up alcohol yet again (who’s counting).

This is what happened to me when I decided to be sober.

It Was Strange at First

I suddenly wasn’t part of the cool kids club anymore. Everybody else at work was numbing away their 9–5 pain. I wasn’t. This made me uncool on Friday nights after work.

People who liked me at work suddenly thought I was weird. I was given the name “teetotaller.” I had to Google it’s meaning to understand the insult being hurled in my direction. At first, I head the word “toddler,” which is kind of funny. I wasn’t an adult baby. I felt quite the opposite because of my decision to quit alcohol.

People got used to me not drinking. Friends and work colleagues started buying me non-alcoholic drinks without me asking. I was just as much fun sober. I was just different than before. I was myself for once — and it turns out people like you when you act like yourself. Wanting to be somebody else is a goal you can never achieve, even with alcohol.

Strange became the new normal.

Everyone was okay with my decision to be sober when they managed to slot the idea into their way of life.

The Chubby Cheeks Went

I’d become a little porky during my alcohol drinking days. As soon as I gave up the drink it became easier to lose the potbelly. Maybe it was coincidence.

The first comment people made when comparing photos of me before and after alcohol was “oh your cheeks aren’t so chubby.” So, again, I was being compared to a toddler.

Losing weight is a nice feature of sobriety.

The Mornings Came Back

The mornings on the weekend were spent in recovery from the night before. Hangovers were a pain in the ass. I’d drink myself stupid and then not be able to wake up the next day and face the day.

As a result, I lost a lot of my weekend to hangovers.

When the hangovers were gone I had time to create again. So I started writing a lot more and publishing stories online. This was a subtle change that shaped my writing habit and made me feel productive again.

With all the extra time saved from enduring the hangover blues, I could live my life on my terms — not alcohol’s terms.

When you quit alcohol you buy back extra time.

I Stopped Risking My Life

When I first got my driver’s license I thought I was invincible. This led me to drive drunk on many occasions. I knew it was wrong but I still did it. There were a few close calls.

I remember one night driving my girlfriend’s friend home. It was a one hour drive. I was angry at my girlfriend because she was flirting with another boy (she ended up cheating on me with him).

Instead of expressing my anger I let her know I was angry by driving recklessly. I drove very fast during the middle of a bad storm. The roads were flooded. I drove around corners like I was Superman with nine lives and unlimited car insurance cover. There were several times the car nearly spun off the cliff. But it didn’t.

My friends were scared and told me to stop being a maniac. I didn’t listen. I let the alcohol and my anger determine my actions. Alcohol could have killed me and my friends.

While we survived, the location where I drove drunk became the place a friend drowned and another friend drove like a lunatic and straight into a truck, costing him his life.

My male friend in the car with me that night went on to become a nurse and saved many lives.

Alcohol makes you think you’re invincible. You’re definitely not. You might just be a temporarily lucky drunk.

Alcohol is a quick solution to any problem, but actual solutions take time, patience and continuous effort — Benjamin Davis

At the age of 34 there are two types of people in my life: 1) Parents who are obsessed with their kids and don’t drink 2) Single people in their 30s, who still act like they’re in their 20s and drink a lot.

Alcohol can turn your life into a fantasy. Where you’re the recurring joke and you don’t know it. I lived like that for years. At 34, I’m glad I stopped being everybody’s favorite comedian by the way I lived my life.

This is how I remain sober:

I work on my psychology

If my mind becomes weak then I give in to temptation. This is why I study psychology and am obsessed with self-improvement.

When you learn about how you think you can rewire your brain.

You can rewrite your mind’s software and remove alcohol from its defective lines of code.

I stopped letting other people decide what to order at the bar

Many times it wasn’t me ordering the alcohol.

People around me would order the drinks so they didn’t have to listen to my excuses. The cost of the drink they bought me was supposed to guilt me into being grateful and force me to drink the devil’s poison. I made it a habit to order the first drink all by myself. Then the drinks that followed.

When you place your drink order, you choose the substance that gives you life or takes it away.

I made lemon water cool again

It became part of my brand, you might say. I became known at Meetups and after-work networking events as the guy that would order lemon water.

It was unintentional, but I lived up to it. Making the idea of being sober cool is a tiny strategy to justify to yourself why you’re doing it.

I kept trying to be sober (again and again)

I had the willpower of a moron. Each time in my life when I’ve managed to become sober again, I’ve pissed it all away.

The difference is I kept starting the process over and over again until it stuck. The first time you set a goal to give up alcohol you probably won’t succeed. It’s pretty normal from what I’ve seen, hanging around alcoholics for most of my life and working in nightclubs as a DJ.

Giving up alcohol is similar to meditation, where you keep returning to the breath when your mind wanders.

Your mind will wander on alcohol and you just keep bringing it back. Back to what? Back to why you want to give up alcohol.

I gave myself a compelling reason to become sober

“Have a why” is such cliche advice. And cliche advice works which is why it’s cliche. The reason I wanted to give up alcohol was multifaceted.

Alcohol was preventing me from falling in love
Alcohol was stealing my time away
Alcohol was making me do dangerous things
Alcohol was creating more pain
Alcohol was a distraction for what I wanted to do with my life
Alcohol made me feel worse about myself
Alcohol was plain bad for me

Once I had enough reasons to give up alcohol all I did was remind myself of those reasons. Losing my Saturday morning to a night out on alcohol became less appealing than waking up early to write.

There is a path out of alcoholism. You can escape the drink and take your life back. It won’t be easy. You’ll have to try several times. You’ll need enough good reasons to give up alcohol.

But when you give up alcohol you realize you don’t need it. You realize you can drink non-alcoholic drinks and have more time, energy, friends and ways to find joy in your life from the work you do.

Alcohol could have made my life a never-ending nightmare. After 2 years of being sober, giving up alcohol is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

Try being sober and see if it can change your life.