What to Do When You Miss Drinking Wine

Without booze, I have no choice but to move through my feelings.

Lately, I’ve been fantasizing about drinking red wine. How bitter and sour and sweet and heavy it is! How it melts your body’s tension. It’s been over three and a half years since I had a single sip, and sometimes the idea of never again falling into that soma dip feels like a prison sentence.

The funny thing about not drinking when you feel like it is that you get to see what is underneath that thirst. As my first sober coach taught me, “You don’t want a drink, you want to change the way you feel.”

She’s right, of course. God damn self-knowledge. I’ve never been able to un-know it since.

Without that magic liquid, I’m left with my infuriating thoughts and fears, with my intense, not easily-articulated feelings. And I have no choice but to move through them.

Since I haven’t given in to the urge to drink, though it’s been lingering a while now, I thought I’d reflect on what I am doing instead, in case it is useful to anyone else (as well as me).

1. Move.

Usually, when I get cravings for wine I am feeling tired out and lazy. I want to turn my brain off and relax, without having to make any effort. Since alcohol is off the menu this dream is sadly no longer possible. The truth is I have to work harder to transition out of whatever my emotional state is (often at least mild anxiety) and into something a little more comfortable.

This evening, I recognized a certain restlessness in my skeleton, and I had the idea of walking on the beach. The problem was that the wind was blowing and Cornwall was doing it’s ever-present mist-drizzle thing. Before I could dissuade myself I put my walking boots on, grabbed my warmest hooded coat, and headed outside.

It’s dark early here now (hello Seasonal Affective Disorder) and the sky was already deep grey. It was cold too, but the roar of the sea felt just right. The white frills of surf followed each other onto the beach, and rain dusted my cheeks.

2. Connect

The next thing I noticed, on examining the feelings underneath my strong desire to neck wine was that I’m lonely. And a little laugh-starved. How long has it been since I spoke to my friends? Stomping along the coast path, I call one of them.

It’s a friend I got sober with, and she’s feeling the same as me.

“Restless, irritable and discontent, eh?” she says. This is what they call the feeling that leads to drinking in AA.

We complain about having responsibility and wonder what the point of all of this life malarkey is, and complain about the weather and the dark and our annoying brains.

Gently we begin to guide each other towards positivity. We remind each other how far we’ve come and point out the ways in which the other is succeeding. We point out how many struggles we’ve come through the other side of. I hang up feeling a little better.

I keep marching, at the point of the headland by now, sea bashing rocks below. I don’t want to go home yet. I call another friend.

No answer. No answer. No answer.

I call another friend, vaguely conscious of how lucky I am to know so many excellent, kind and funny people.

Another beloved friend answers the phone. It’s lunchtime where she is, and she sounds chipper and happy to hear from me, and we catch each other up on our news. We laugh at how hard it is to manage your life and emotions without alcohol and other unhealthy behaviors.

“We’re fucked!” she says, laughing, and instead of making me feel worse, it makes me feel better.

She tells me about a breakthrough she had in therapy, and asks what I can do to add more fun into my life (good fucking question) and tells me how when she’s feeling miserable she writes a list of things that make her happy and starts making more effort to put them in her daily routine.

By now I have missed calls from the other friends I tried, and so I call them back. My hood is damp, but I don’t mind. I walk into the darkness of the coast path, dodging black, glinting puddles, looking out at the break over the reef.

“Hello my friend!” my pal says daftly, and the sound of her beautiful silly voice starts me laughing with happiness. I listen to some of her news and tell her some of mine, and I’m having fun now. I’ve forgotten whatever it was I was so miserable about.

3. Eat

Continuing to witter on to my friend, I make something healthy for dinner. My conversations have reminded me that I need to take care of myself today. Not tomorrow or next week, but now.

Staying sober is about taking good care of yourself, and that includes feeding yourself properly. Just because you are eating alone doesn’t mean you don’t deserve good food. I try to put as much effort in as if I had a friend for dinner.

By now, it’s nine o’clock. I watch half an hour of telly and go to talk to my boyfriend before bed. The restlessness and irritability is entirely gone.

Moving, connecting and eating works!

The truth is, it isn’t always easy, staying off the vino. Life is hard. Worse than that, somehow — in spite of our existence being a moment of light flaring in an eternity of blackness — it can be boring. (How do we ephemeral mortals manage to be bored with this miraculous state of affairs?). But it turns out, drinking isn’t the only way to solve that.

If you’re struggling with your drinking, know that you aren’t alone.

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.