Friday, May 3, 2013

Happy in Sober-Land

I'm going through all my old posts organising them into new pages - one page full of posts for every month of the first year of my sobriety. It's so interesting to go back and be reminded about all the things I don't miss about being a boozer. It's so easy to forget as time passes and the new sober way of living becomes the norm.

I don't miss having painkillers dotted all around the house. Most important was the packet I kept in my top bedside drawer. I'd reach out in the dark at 3am to grab a couple and swallow them down with the water I always made sure to take to bed (in my sloppy state). Sometimes I wonder how our bedroom must have smelled in the mornings after a binge. Often I wonder how my kids must have smelt wine on my breath all the time.

I don't miss that panicky feeling when the wine had almost run out.

I certainly don't miss staring at the back of the toilet door thinking 'I'm boozed again'. I don't miss sitting on the sofa late at night by myself full of wine, feeling like a dead weight, watching tele I would forget .. too sluggish to get up and go to bed. I do not miss the 3am wake-up. Head pounding, mouth dry, bladder full, feeling so guilty and dysfunctional. I don't miss hungover mornings, feeling like my kids are screaming loudly through breakfast on purpose (as if they knew I had a hangover and couldn't deal with any noise).

I don't miss any of that bloody boozy bollocks.

I love getting into bed sober now. I love my morning mug of green tea. I love when tiredness can be assessed simply as 'not enough sleep' or 'crazy busy day' rather than 'that bottle of wine last night can't have helped'.

My clever friend the nurse thinks the world is on the cusp of a big turnaround with regard to alcohol. That slowly but surely societies around the globe are going to start turning on booze as we have on cigarettes. 'It's a poison' she said to me simply. Alcohol is a poison.

Check out this article about an expert in global health at the University of Copenhagen. They say about alcohol "this isn't a harmless staple of living. This isn't bread or water. This is ethyl alcohol, or ethanol. We know it can be addictive, we know it's harmful to our health and we know it causes an enormous burden to our society. The alcohol industry may spend large sums to help us resist questioning our relationship with alcohol, but lets be honest - this relationship is truly bizarre."

It's a big-ass ship to turn around though.. but maybe alcohol's time will be up soon. And if that's the case I'll be happily standing on the sober shoreline waving to all the drinkers on their boozy boats going; "Come on over guys! It's fine over here in sober-land, really!"

Love, Mrs D xxx

10 comments:

  1. Great post, I too wonder at the turnaround it's got to happen surely...alcoHELL puts massive strain on just about everything here in the uk. Drunk getting wasted stoned or whatever s so yesterday , 40 years ago it may have been rebellious and cool to do this , now I think it's rebellious and cool to be sober , I really do. When I walk past pubs bars I now feel sorry for drinkers , can't help myself from thinking this way , they just all look so sheep like standing there pouring Poisen down their throats all following each other. I really try not to be smug and judgemental but the whole thing is so absurd when you stand back and actually look at it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. A couple of years ago I would have though that alcohol is too big a part of Western social history for anything to change. But recently I've been reading up on the huge reversal and turn-around on consumption of refined sugar, the heath risks found there (soaring rates for diabetes) that have given everyone a wake-up call.

    If that changes, then patterns of drinking might change too. Heavy -- never mind excessive -- consumption of alcohol has so many health and safety problems.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I've wondered too if more people will get sober, mainly because everytime I'm on social media I see people trying to laugh off a drinking problem. I remember how I used to joke about needing a drink like it was something normal. I'll be curious to see if the statistics change over the next few years. Maybe more people got into trouble with drinking more quickly than they would have otherwise. Maybe there are more 'high bottom' drunks than before. It's all fascinating to me too, and I love the thought that we're early adopters as I'm never on the cutting edge of anything. I also like where you're headed with your blog. Great post!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Mrs D, good luck with all the organizing--I think that's a great idea, I've been thinking of doing some spring cleaning too. It's interesting going back and reading old posts sometimes, isn't it? Reminds how far we've really come. Sometimes we just can't see it.
    Lots of love, xx, Christy

    ReplyDelete
  5. I think time must be running out for the generation of us who use the kids as an excuse to get together and get hammered. Weekend parties, BBQ's, pizza night and tea time play dates, that is where most of the booze flowed through my life (and afterwards, in my kitchen :-(. )
    The kids I am around are already frowning at us drinkers and alcohol in the same way they do smoking. It doesn't mean they won't try it, but they don't think it's uber cool.
    Fingers crossed for a shift in how it is perceived. I plan to educate my kids anyway.
    Good luck with the blog tweak x

    ReplyDelete
  6. I told a few people about my blog and I've regretted it, it made me worry too much about what they were thinking when I was writing it. After I told my older brother who is a recovered alcoholic about it I had to go back and remove all references to my nephew, his son, whom, unbeknownst to him, the rest of the family refers to as "weasel".

    But now I think I could go public, I just couldn't say shitty things about other people anymore, and that's not a bad thing.

    I don't know about the alcohol turn around, we already tried that over here during the Prohibition era and that didn't go to well. I'm not against others drinking, I just think that most people don't admit to the problems that alcohol causes in their lives.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi thanks for following me. Just catching up great post indeed life in soberville is far better!

    ReplyDelete
  8. And as we turn this Big Ass Boat around, Mrs D will be leaning over the prow, arms spread, shouting "I'm the Queen of the World!"

    And she'll be right... ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  9. Great post Mrs D.....good luck with all the organising. Just read an article written by Marian Keyes (the irish author) about her journey to sobriety. Good stuff xx

    ReplyDelete
  10. great post mrs D!

    ReplyDelete