5 things I learned from not drinking alcohol in 2020
In 2019, I decided to evaluate my relationship with alcohol and to stop over-drinking. I had no plans to completely break with alcohol, but after cutting back was so easy I couldn’t come up with a reason to not cut it out entirely. (Mind you I had no idea there would be a pandemic when I made my resolution to not drink in 2020). I should tell you that I did have one drink in February of 2020 after a day of meetings. (Wait, I thought your title said you didn’t drink alcohol!?) Yeah, it did. Instead of beating myself up, I decided to learn from it.
What did I learn?
You do not need to “have a problem” to decide to make a change. For me, I knew over-drinking was not something I wanted in my life for the long term. Everyone has different definitions of what a “problem” is, and for me, it is anything I wouldn’t choose to have in my future.
I drank to escape feelings - stress, overwhelm, anxiety, sadness, boredom, etc. There were a lot of all of those feelings in 2020. I thought not having that ability to buffer after a “hard” day was going to be horrible. I thought it would just swallow me up. But I found that learning how to just feel those feelings turned out to be much better than dealing with the feelings I had from over-drinking.
I became a lot less tolerant of ignoring the dreams that were inside of me when I wasn’t able to escape that desire inside of me. I had so many ideas.
I can have fun and experience things without alcohol. Choosing to celebrate things and just being present without needing alcohol to have fun was something that was new to me and yet incredible. (Besides when I was pregnant or breastfeeding)
People have a lot of thoughts about alcohol. When I was choosing not to drink people would often tell me how they could never do that.
Getting to this point where I don’t care if I drink anymore was certainly a process, but completely worth it. I was out for dinner with a group this weekend at a bar and restaurant. Everyone was drinking alcohol but it was easy for me to order club soda and lime. I had a great time and honestly never even thought “I would really like a drink”.
Now if you find yourself asking “How in the world did she do that?” You should know that I had a great coach that taught me this process.
I got curious about why I wanted to drink.
I decided how much I wanted to drink ahead of time.
I learned to feel the craving to drink and allow it without acting on it. I used those times to unlearn the thoughts that were leading to that craving.
For some people it is not alcohol; it’s overworking, over-eating, unintended Netflix binges, or being over-critical of significant others. All of these are real issues clients bring to me and the common feeling is shame. How can I be so smart and not be able to figure this out?
Do you want to quit over-drinking? I can help. It is not just you. There is not something wrong with you.
