Is It Normal To Grieve Alcohol?

No one told me I’d cry this much.

I had to quit drinking. I never really wanted to, but I had to. I wrote down my ‘why’ as a reminder. Your ‘why’ will look different, but mine was:

“Alcohol is pouring fuel on the fire of my depression. It’s getting so bad that I can’t differentiate suicidal fantasies from actual goals to take action upon. My mental health is so low, I can’t even remember the last time I liked myself. When I drink, I wake up the next day and wonder who that person was from the night before. I hate the way alcohol makes me feel the next day, every single time I drink.”

There are a lot of emotions you feel when you quit drinking, especially during the first year of sobriety. Your emotions are likely all over the place. You have good days and bad, and take them one day at a time like everyone tells you to.

You discover a lot about yourself when you eliminate alcohol from your life. You’ll find hobbies you forgot about years ago and new ones you never thought would interest you. You discover old and new wounds placed on your soul by trauma that you managed to bury long ago by tipping back the bottle. Once alcohol is removed, those wounds begin to surface until you actually do the work to heal them.

You find new ways to cope and notice that one day you’re fine, and the next you’re angry that you can’t drink, or sad that you’re missing another get-together with people you thought were your friends.

You read all the quit-lit and all the articles about people who have quit drinking and finally succeeded in never picking up the bottle again. Although, if we’re being honest here — I was always looking for the one sentence that told me I didn’t have to quit. I wanted to hear that if I quit, it wouldn’t actually improve my life and that I didn’t have a problem.

Engulfed In Sorrow

One emotion that struck me as a surprise was the overwhelming grief I felt for a substance slowly killing me. One day during the first 6 months of getting sober, I cried. Okay, I cried many days, but this particular day, I cried because I felt like I lost someone extremely close to me.

What I lost was my security blanket, my love, and my best friend. I felt like I lost an actual person from my life. The grief hit me like a ton of bricks. It felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest and my insides were tied into knots I’d never untangle. I couldn’t hold the tears back if I wanted to.

I’m well aware of how dramatic it sounds. It was unexpected and threw me for a loop. Why was I grieving an inanimate object? It’s just alcohol… right? Is this normal?

Saying Goodbye Is Hard

When I realized my whole entire life would never be the same again, it was soul-crushing. I wondered what kind of person I was becoming. The only life I knew was one with booze. And now everything was changing and I couldn’t turn to it anymore. So, I grieved it.

I grieved the loss of alcohol from ever touching my lips again, that first sip of an ice-cold beer on a hot summer day. I grieved the drunken nights I’ll never have again with friends I knew for 20 years. I grieved for the woman that didn’t want to face herself in the mirror for many years after a sexual assault.

I grieved for the girl who worked in a liquor store for 8 years and the many people she met because of alcohol. I grieved the woman who wouldn’t be drinking at her future wedding, nor celebrating with champagne at midnight every new year.

Past and future intertwining, I grieved for someone I didn’t know anymore and for a future I could no longer see.

My slate was clean — it wasn’t muddied with shame, guilt, and lies from nights I don’t remember. What do I do with a clean slate and do I even deserve this new life? I couldn’t picture it. I couldn’t imagine a life without my crutch.

How can I look forward to something I can’t even picture in my head?

Embracing Grief and Letting Go

Alcohol has likely played a significant role in your life for a long time. Even when I was just a “kid being a kid’ and partying as a high-school/college kid does, it shaped my habits that followed me into adulthood.

Change can be hard and scary. Alcohol was a crutch I had from the time I was 16 years old until I was 34. Of course, I am going to grieve something I had in my life for 18 years.

It was how I coped with everything. It was what I turned to for all the good things in my life from weddings, birthdays, and job offers to all the bad; funerals, break-ups, and rejection.

Over time, the grief has minimized significantly. There are fleeting moments where I wish I could have just one. But, thankfully they’re fleeting and not all-consuming, as it felt like they were in the beginning.

It’s okay to grieve alcohol. It was a big piece of your life and you’re allowed to feel all of your feelings right now. As annoying as it can be to hear in your first year, things will get a little easier over time. But, you gotta put the hard work in.

You have to sit with those feelings and talk through them, exercise through them, craft through them — whatever helps you get through it. The only way is through.

Grieve, but don’t let it become all-consuming, there’s so much life to live right here in the present.