MUSINGS
The Stages of Sobriety No One Talks About
The ups and downs of consistent sobriety, according to a sober fledgling.
At the beginning of 2018, I was afraid to look down over my sneakily expanding belly at the numbers on the scale.
I was standing right there. I knew the scary numbers I so desperately wanted to ignore were blinking up at me from their digital home. I knew they would soon flash away and I’d miss them, and I would have to repeat the process of stepping on the scale to find out the damage I’d done to myself.
I finally looked.
At the beginning of 2018, I was carrying a whopping 202 pounds on my 5 foot 7 frame. At the beginning of 2018, I was carrying the weight of my alcoholism like a sandwich board, telling the world that I hated myself.
And I really, really did.
Now, the scale shows a healthy weight and the mirror reflects a happy, fulfilled wife and mother of two. Now, nearly 3 years into my sobriety, I no longer hate myself.
I don’t even recognize the old me.
Sobriety is not only the reason I got healthy again, but it’s the reason I’m alive. Also, my story might just be your story —in fact, knowing that I wasn’t alone was a major lifeline in my recovery. Why we drink is personal, but choosing not to solidifies us as one seriously mighty group of people who refused to be beaten, and that, to me, is powerful.
What happens when you get sober, though? There are five well-known stages of recovery in anyone’s sobriety journey:
- Precontemplation
- Contemplation
- Preparation
- Action
- Maintenance
For those who aren’t aware of these, let me do a quick recap. Also, I should note that while these clinical stages vary in name and number (in some circles, the stages are Treatment Initiation, Early Abstinence, Maintaining Abstinence, and Advanced Recovery) they all encompass the same basic principles and guidelines.
Precontemplation refers to the stage of addiction in which you deny, vehemently, that you have any kind of addiction — or, if you do, that it isn’t having a negative impact on your life.
This is the static stage of addiction — the stage we are stuck in until we can even consider making changes.
Contemplation is the realization that there really is a problem, but you may not be ready to tackle it yet. With good reason, too — depending on the severity of your addiction, quitting might seem like the most daunting, frightening task you’ll ever undertake.
Preparation is the stage that really starts to get you somewhere — it’s the step before the first step to recovery! At this stage, you might at least consider going to AA or calling up a counselor to discuss your addiction. This is a great stage, even though you’re still partaking in your addiction because it’s a clear declaration that you have a problem that needs to be addressed.
The next stage, action, is a tough one. It involves detoxification, generally, and needs to be tackled with caution. Detoxification can be deadly if you suddenly stop drinking if you drank in extreme excess before. In this case, the best step would be a treatment program. This is the stage in which you start to recover, abstaining from the substance you are addicted to, and living a sober lifestyle.
Maintenance is the final stage — for the most part. Many addicts maintain their sobriety for years and then relapse, so in many circles, maintenance is the next to last step.
Those are the typical stages — the clinical ones, anyway — that most of us know about.
But I don’t want to talk about those.
I want to talk about what happens after you’ve plodded along and you find yourself in the maintenance stage. Shouldn’t there be rainbows and unicorns and sparkling water that doesn’t take like fizzy nothingness? Isn’t this the end goal?
If so, why is it so hard?
The maintenance stage is the one in which I am currently bobbing along in my lifeboat, and I’ve discovered that it’s full of a whole mess of other stages. What a whirlwind!
What most people (and by most people, I mean people who aren’t addicts) think about sobriety is wrong. They think it’s a simple few steps from being addicted to being free of addiction, when in reality, addiction and recovery are multifaceted processes that are as personal as they are numerous.
For me, there are a number of different, never-talked-about stages that take place post-sobriety; some are good, some are bad, and they all come and go.
And some of these phases were some serious humdingers.
Euphoria
When you first find yourself free(ish) of the addiction that has ruled your life for, well…probably the entirety of that life, you might feel a freeing sense of what I can only describe as euphoria.
This feeling lasted for a relatively long time, in my case. I felt euphoric about so many things at once — I wasn’t drunk all the time, and therefore didn’t have mind-numbing hangovers every day. I could think clearly, and I was in a great place in my life, having somehow kept the people I loved most near to me during my early days of sobriety. Remember the rainbows and unicorns I was expecting? This was as close as it got to that kind of paradise.
I felt like I’d won the lottery.
This feeling is also called the sober honeymoon period, which is an apt description — and like most honeymoon periods, it will end. The end of this phase can, and often does, hurl addicts back into addiction, because once the euphoria has worn off, they now have to deal with those pesky feelings that were constantly silenced previously, thanks to their substance abuse.
Feelings are a bitch.
Purging
I am not talking about an eating disorder here — although that is something that sometimes takes place among many recovering addicts. Often addiction gives way to other addictions as a coping mechanism.
We’re a lucky bunch.
Purging is literally purging of junk; of unwanted, unloved things (sometimes even people, which is okay if they’re a negative force in your sober life) as you navigate your new, clean life.
In my case, I got rid of a lot of things. Ditto people. I got rid of half my clothing, a bunch of photos, gifts, and so on because they all reminded me of the person I used to be.
The drunk person. The sloppy person. The fat person. The angry person.
The person I hated.
If you find yourself in this phase, try to remember that it’s good to be kind to the person you used to be — they were sick, that’s all. And they got better.
They definitely aren’t trash to throw away.
Obsession
Naturally, addicts can be quite obsessive while still in the throes of their addictions. For instance, when I was drinking, I was paranoid about the idea of not having wine in my house.
Seriously paranoid.
I needed to make sure I kept an excess “just in case.” I didn’t want to go to the liquor store more than once per day, because I was obsessed with keeping up the appearance of not being an addict, so I made sure that I always bought more than I needed in my single trip.
My daily trip.
I don’t think I need to explain to you how disordered that kind of thinking is.
The obsessive nature of addiction doesn’t just fade away with the end of the addictive behaviour. I feel like there is a lot of transference going on in sobriety — you might transfer one obsessive behaviour, such as always having a glass of wine in your hands, to another, like always having a full glass of water there, instead.
Or you might throw yourself into a project or hobby in an obsessive way to get your mind off of your addiction, like knitting or painting — both of which are great activities to keep your mind off of the act of drinking, of course. Just don’t let it become a new obsession.
Being mindful of your propensity for obsessiveness is a good thing, because by merely transferring your obsession from one thing to another — even if the new obsession is something healthy — you could potentially relapse. Isn’t that insane? It’s true, though, because you aren’t actually dealing with the addictive behaviour; you’re just transferring the obsession from one fixation to another.
Try to slow down and live in the moment, even if you find the moment painful without a drink. Remember that old reliable AA mantra?
One day at a time.
Superiority
After stumbling through all the other phases, I felt like I’d come out on top. So much so, in fact, that I felt like I was somehow better than other people — especially those who still drank, whether they drank healthy amounts or not.
Obviously, this is so spectacularly wrong.
Feeling superior is, in a way, feeling like you’ve beaten the unbeatable, that you’ve surmounted the insurmountable. You have done something that so many people could not — it makes sense that you might feel superior.
The thing is, this feeling of superiority is just your mind’s way of rationalizing everything you’ve done, of convincing yourself that all that hard work was worth it.
That isn’t to say that it wasn’t worth it — sobriety is 1000% worth every single tough moment.
But the truth is, you’ll never be “finished.” You’ll never really beat the addiction — even if you never touch another drop, you can’t allow yourself to feel as though you’re perfect and infallible.
You could slip up. Even decades later — you could fail.
You are just another human being, after all, bumbling your way through life like everyone else. You just happen to be a sober human.
That’s it.
Your sobriety doesn’t make you a superhero, even if sometimes you feel like you are. You’ve done something bloody amazing, yes — but keep a level head, or you might trip over your own ego.
Anxiety-driven F.O.M.O.
After all those misplaced feelings of superiority, I finally came hurtling back down to square one — anxiety. Fear. Lacking direction and purpose. Self-loathing.
What a downer.
I found myself wondering what the purpose of it all was. After everything I had accomplished, I hated that there was one thing I couldn’t do — drink.
I couldn’t allow myself one lousy drink.
The funny thing is, I probably could, at this point in my recovery. I’ve gained so much through my sobriety that if I had one, measly drink, I don’t believe I would spiral back into addiction.
But that’s not the point.
The point is that if I did have that one drink, I couldn’t honestly say the absolutely beautiful words “I’ve been sober for nearly three years.”
It would be a bald-faced lie if I had that one, tiny drink.
Ironically, knowing that I could (probably?) have a drink makes me want to ignore that drink even more. But then I think I’m missing out on some kind of integral piece of society by not having it. It’s a weird, mind-boggling roller coaster that I can’t quite get myself off of entirely. It rears its ugly head around the holidays when I used to gorge on cookies and rum-saturated eggnog all season.
Or in the summer, when everyone I know is sipping on chilled cocktails or frosted pints of beer.
Or on a Tuesday evening when there’s nothing to do but drink. (Rationalizing at its finest.)
It took me a long time to realize that this fear of missing out and the anxiety that surrounds it is actually something extremely, terrifyingly real:
It’s my addiction.
It’s out to get me. It wants me to fail.
I must be vigilant.
Calm
The truth is, these phases actually all come and go in varying order. In between them, and for lengthening periods of time, is a sense of calm.
Most of the time, I feel pretty relaxed about my sobriety. Most of the time, I can tell myself that it’s okay; I’m just a person who struggles with alcohol addiction. For some people, it’s smoking. For others, it’s cake.
For me, it’s alcohol. And that’s okay.
Calm is the state I strive to be in for the majority of the time, and as time goes on, that tends to be the case. It just takes time.
One day at a time.
Are you a sober fledgling, too? What are your stages of sobriety? I’d love to know!
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