Why mummy gave up drinking

Day 355. This time last year, I was just about to quit drinking for good; little did I know at the time. I certainly wasn’t expecting to navigate the holiday season sober at that point – I just knew I had a really big problem with drinking and something had to give. So why did I choose to quit before the holidays? Why did I buck the trend of ‘I can’t remember November’ and choose to quit at arguably, the worst possible time?

My decision to give up drinking was made on an uneventful Thursday morning after drinking a bottle of red wine on my own at home the night before. I had completed five days sober and I was trying to ‘cut back.’ But five days in, the voice of ‘Sarah’ whispered to me to reach for the red wine – because I was utterly bored. I’ve recently decided to name my voice of addiction, having read that this is something people can do to separate the voice of reason, from the 5pm provoking little bitch who likes to come and visit every now and then. I’ve chosen the name ‘Sarah’ because when I was 9 years old – a girl at school with the same name was so nasty to me, that I would fake sickness just to avoid going into class. She was a horrible piece of work and made me feel like total shit. So, it seems fitting that ‘Sarah’ is now my ‘addictive bitch voice’.

On this particularly Wednesday, for whatever reason, I decided to journal about why I had picked up a glass of red, whilst I was drinking. I started to read ‘quit lit’ and it seemed to be a good suggestion to document any feelings whilst I was drunk, because I rarely recalled them in the morning. I know this to be true having drunken-messaged many an ex-boyfriend in my time, only to wake up with that horrific realisation that ‘Sarah’ had taken over my brain and apparently, my phone.

So, when I woke up on this uneventful Thursday, dog tired, banging head and with horrendous heart palpitations, I looked over to my nightstand and saw my journal open, containing some just about legible scrawl that I did not recall writing towards the end.

This is what my journal entry said:

“5 days sober. Opened the wine – because it’s there, I’m home and I’m bored – that’s it. Started drinking and just feel dull, sick and sluggish. Tastes terrible. No feeling of relief. Just guilt. Incredulous with myself. Quitting is definitely the answer. Feels like forcing myself to feel numb. But I don’t need to feel numb anymore. Life is good!

Second glass – I feel disgusting. Tastes awful. Feel sick. Disappointed. Slight numbing sensation – doesn’t even feel like a benefit.

1 bottle down. I feel a little sick, sad and general discontent. This does not feel good.”

I must have re-read that entry a thousand times. And for whatever reason, that Thursday was the day I decided to quit for good. No rock-bottom. No car-crash. I was just sick and tired of feeling sick and tired, and after five lovely sober days, I felt like a train-wreck that Thursday morning.

I quickly immersed myself in quit lit. I devoured books and articles on sobriety like my life depended on it. Very quickly, within the first week or so, I started to have huge revelations around all of the myths I’d believed about alcohol my entire life. When I thought about all the upcoming Christmas events, I suddenly realised something – I didn’t care that I wasn’t going to be able to drink through them. I didn’t want to. I was just starting to learn about what alcohol really is, what it does and something magical occurred to me – I wasn’t giving up anything at all.

I get it. It’s a bold statement, and hard to believe if you’ve just started trying to quit and you’re panicking about how to be sober during all the festivities. What you have to do, is to focus on all of the benefits of sobriety, but more than that, the reality of what it really feels like to drink during the holidays. We have a habit of romanticising the past and forgetting the truly awful stuff. Why? Our brains are extremely clever and they allow us to move on. It’s our very own in-built survival mechanism. They say time is a healer – it’s true. If it wasn’t, there isn’t a woman alive that would have a second child, having gone through labour the first time. My labour with my first son was particularly traumatic, involved multiple surgeries and several months of inexplicable physical agony – but after a couple of years had passed – I couldn’t feel how I felt at that time. I know it was awful. I remember – but I can’t actually feel that level of pain I was in simply by just trying to imagine it. It’s gone. Over time, I decided I wanted a second child because my brain had done an incredible job of minimising the trauma.

The same goes when we look back at our drunken holiday antics – we remember the good bits. The funny stories. We don’t remember the drama. The arguments. The hangovers. The memories lost to black-outs. The inevitable self-hatred. How many times have you been on a night out and made the claim the next morning ‘I had a great night. I don’t remember any of it!’ I have said this so many times. How can I possibly have had such amazing times if I have zero memory of most of them?

Now I think of all the lost Christmases. All of the lovely events that I spoiled with alcohol. The days spent hanging out of my arse and unable to get out of bed. The ruined nights because I said something stupid or passed-out early. The forgotten years.

My first sober Christmas wasn’t all singing and all dancing. I found myself utterly exhausted in early sobriety and I had to sleep a lot just to function. But even with exhaustion, I still did more lovely things than I ever would have done drinking, and the best part, is I remember all of them. Baking biscuits with friends and our children, trips to the garden centre to choose decorations and a Christmas tree, cooking up a storm on several occasions and inviting family and friends over for mocktails, taking my kids to the theatre…the list just went on and on.

This year I’m even more excited. Heading into my second year sober I now have my energy back so I’ll basically be like an elf on Acid! I fully expect to turn my home into some sort of grotto that looks like a team of fairies had a glitter fight and then set-up camp on the Christmas tree. I can’t wait for the Christmas markets and the hot chocolate. The Christmas plays – professional I mean – not the school one. Fuck me – they’re not cute and they’re not clever. Vote me for Prime Minister and I’ll abolish them completely.

I look forward to making up my boys Christmas stockings and being sober so I won’t mix anything up. I can’t wait to see Arthur and Alfie’s little faces when they come running in to my room to tell me that Santa has been – and I will be smiling – rather than thinking ‘fuck off!! I’ve got a hangover! Give me one more bloody hour!’ I can’t wait to see my dad, my sister, my Italian and have my dear friends come over for Christmas lunch – because I now love a house full of madness when I’m sober and frankly, the more the merrier.

For me, Christmas is all about doing the nicest activities with the people you love. I am a far better friend, daughter, sister and mother when I’m present. There is so much more joy to be had in savouring these wonderful moments with the people who make your life special.

A lot of people choose to quit drinking on 1^st January because they want to drink during the Christmas period and think it will be easier to stop once the festivities are out of the way. The danger with this is that you’re essentially telling your brain that alcohol is something you have to give up. That there is a benefit to drinking. That you don’t want to ‘miss out’ over the holidays, when in reality, alcohol will only ensure you feel like shit the whole time and you’ll enter January in a fog of self-hatred, lost memories and a deep-rooted sense of misery. Most people do not stay sober when they try to give up for January – because they are still held tightly in the clutches of addiction and truly making it far harder by convincing themselves there is any benefit to drinking alcohol over the holidays.

Quitting alcohol in November was the best decision I made for myself. I have only had one sober Christmas since I was 15 years old. One adult Christmas where I remember everything. There were no arguments. No dramas. No hangovers. No self-hatred. Just a wave of delightful experiences I will forever cherish. For my second sober Christmas and for all the ones to come, I have nothing but joy and excitement for the future wonderful memories to be collected. I hope you do too.

How do you survive the holidays sober? You don’t. You survive the holidays when you’re drinking. When you’re sober – you just enjoy them.

Much love dear readers. Happy Holidays! x

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