This is my proudest moment yet in my journey with mental health. Not because I’ve defeated it – I don’t believe that’s realistic – but because I’m learning how to live with it. I’m learning to ride the emotional roller coaster without letting the carriage fly off the rails, without crashing and burning.
For the first time, I feel like I’m holding on with strength, balance, and a little more grace.
It was around 2018/2019, I’d been ‘up and down’ a few months prior to this and I got to the stage where I’d just had enough – not in a suicidal way, but just sick of things getting on top of me when deep down, I knew there was so much I could try and do to counteract these feelings.
“It was like a delayed car crash in my mind.”
From an early age, alcohol was something which sent me on a downward spiral, I wasn’t an alcoholic, before your mind naturally wonders – I would just go out drinking with friends a normal amount. What did hit me like a train though, was when I consumed Vodka. Alcohol is a depressant by it’s very nature, but this clear, near-tasteless liquid ‘goodness’ was sending me down a path my brain didn’t like.
Imagine walking into a place you never wanted to return to — a place you hated, a place that tightened your chest with anxiety before you’d even arrived. A place that kept you awake at night, worrying.
A place some might describe as hell.
A place so heavy with negative memories and connotations that you avoided it completely, as if staying away could erase what it represented.
And yet… you went anyway. Your mind dragged you to this place whether you were onboard or not.
It was like a delayed car crash in my mind. I could almost foresee the events to come but was so happy in the moment I didn’t bat an eyelid.
This is what Vodka was doing to me.
“The Black Stuff” – Somewhere in Wales
After a good night out, where various drinks were consumed, I used to have anxiety and apprehension about the next few days because I knew what feelings were about it me. I used to hate it, the roller coaster had taken me from pure euphoric moments with friends and feeling so free, to being locked in a cage in my own mind in a matter of days.
It was all too much.
It was an endless cycle of mental pain.
Time to change
Whether it was my age or something else, something in my mind just shifted, like a switch had been flipped. I decided to stop – once and for all, or at least for the foreseeable future.
The first few attempts were failures, genuinely because when I was going out with friends in my new found-sobriety, I actually forgot about it. I used to get annoyed after a couple of weeks of no drinking, then simply forgetting because I was in the moment.
“365 days of alcoholic abstinence. Pure euphoria.”
Nevertheless, I never gave up trying – which is ironic, because for those who know me, I give up most things in life!
One thing I remember doing very clearly, was telling people I was stopping drinking, and this, now I look back in hindsight, was for 2 main reasons:
To hold myself accountable and put a little pressure on myself to ensure I stick with it.
To try and mitigate the effects of people offering me drinks when they knew I was trying so hard to quit.
Days, weeks and months went past, and I hit so many milestones along the way. The first month was a big one, looking back, it’s not such a long time, but when you’ve formed a habit of drinking alcohol almost every weekend for over 15 years, it’s hard to kick it into touch, so I was really proud even at only 30 days.
Three, six, and nine months passed, and I was beginning to feel invincible. The biggest milestone, of course, was the 12-month mark – 365 days of complete abstinence from alcohol. Pure euphoria. I could hardly believe I’d done it, and neither could my close friends or family.
“… a complete commitment to sobriety.”
The number of times I had to turn down an alcoholic drink over the course of that year – whether at a wedding, funeral, a friend’s house, or some other gathering – was staggering. People just didn’t understand why I had stopped and kept wanting me to drink with them, I suspect it was down to educational reasons and they had no idea of the effect it was having on me when I did drink.
After the first year, I took a huge leap of faith and decided to give up for good – a complete commitment to sobriety. I figured that if I could give up something I loved for an entire year, I could do it for the rest of my life. Easy.
I eventually got to circa 20 months, or 612 days to be exact, and I remember that time explicitly because I had broken up with my girlfriend at the time. I spoke to my father about the whole relationship and decided it best accompanied with a glass of Jack Daniels.
“Are you sure, Sam?” he asked.
“Yes.” I replied.
Down the hatch it went.
After 5 minutes I felt drunk. My body was in shock, it was like being born again!
The life lesson at this stage in my life was hugely significant. Really eye-opening. First, I had proven to myself that I could abstain from something so powerful and controlling for such a long time. Despite several failed attempts early on, the fact that I believed in myself and had the ability to achieve such greatness was empowering.
Second, a life event – the relationship break-up – was powerful enough to make me want to drink for the first time in 612 days. I had control of what I was doing, but I just decided it was time for a drink with the old man, a moment of nostalgia was created on that day in the past because it’s still so very vivid in my mind.
That’s my story of alcoholic abstinence.
These days I rarely drink, in moderation is perfect for me, especially at the ripe old age of 38.
What are your thoughts?