The one word that kept me drinking for YEARS but then got me sober

Oct 5

3 min read

Doing just about anything forever is overwhelming, let alone something that you aren’t even 100% sure that you want to do in the first place. Which is why the idea of stopping drinking forever can feel completely counter productive, I mean if you are wondering how you might get through the end of the week without a glass of tinto, then forever is just too big of an ask.

Forever is the sort of word that means you start something in a sense of panic, already believing it is impossible, white knuckling until you inevitably hit the fuck it button exclaiming "Forever can start TOMORROW” – I know what I’m talking about, I’m a sobriety coach who tried to stop drinking about 25,000 times whilst working onboard as a Chief Stew.

So why was FOREVER the one word that ended up making sobriety feel easier?

The answer is threefold and the third one was the game changer.

When you make the decision that drinking is no longer on your radar, it removes the exhaustion of the constant mental gymnastics that goes into deciding what to drink, what not to drink, how to drink but not drink too much. Removing drinking as an option altogether changes something, that definitive statement makes a big difference.

Forever is a decision you only have to make once. You then go about tackling it day by day, but there is liberation in making the decision once and for all.

Forever means letting go of who you were and figuring out who you want to be. Nearly anyone can ‘survive’ a month of Dry January, counting down the days until February 1^st. But surviving a dry stint is NOT the same as living sober. Living sober means taking a bloody good look at your life and figuring out what is working, what isn’t and what you need to change to make your life one that you ACTUALLY WANT.

For me, at the very end of my drinking – my world started to feel small. I was a yachtie who grew up on a sailing yacht as a kid, travelled most of her life, read voraciously, took care of herself and loved being outdoors.

When I was at the end of my drinking, I was none of those things.

I was at home.

I wasn’t travelling.

I wasn’t reading.

I wasn’t taking care of myself.

I was barely outdoors.

My life and my world was shrinking, My idea of adventure was trying a new bottle of wine. My life wasn’t one I wanted any more and my mental health was in the gutter and so simply removing something wasn’t going to be enough to make me stick at it. I had to figure out how to make my life feel like my own again. How could I make my world feel bigger, brighter and more colourful again?

If I decided that this was a temporary decision, I could’ve kept my identity as the wine gal, as the one who always turned up with two bottles, who made the strongest cocktails and was ALWAYS up for a drink.

By deciding that I was quitting FOREVER, I had to let go of that identity and figure out a new one. Figure out who I was without the drink. Was it easy? No but it wasn’t really that hard either. Was it overnight? No, but she was there just waiting to be set free honestly.