The thing that helped in my first year of sobriety
Finding delight in abstinence
“I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew.”
— Herman Hesse
I’m talking to a good friend about my first sober-versary when she tells me she admires my discipline.
Discipline, I ponder. Is that what helped me get here? Or was it the realisation that my relationship to alcohol had reached a point where drinking had become harder than not drinking?
Before I stopped, hangovers would be intolerable days-long events. Next-day cringes over things I did or said became insurmountable. Regrets piled up.
I’ve long known my issue. It wasn’t solely a substance problem so much as a knowing-when-enough-is-enough problem—I never know when it’s enough wine, enough chocolate, enough words of affirmation.
That’s the thing about my particular tendency—it’s a problem with limits. Over the past year, well-meaning people have asked me why I need to give up drinking entirely? Why can’t I just have one occasionally, or drink in moderation? But that’s precisely why I can’t drink—because I rarely, if ever, just have one. One creates a void within, or maybe it makes an existing void known, and the focus then becomes about filling that void—with wine, too many martinis—and it’s never enough.
This limitless feedback loop had long made things unpredictable for me when it came to drinking—if I had a drink, I never knew how many would follow.
So if it wasn’t necessarily discipline that helped me navigate my first year of sobriety, what was it?
Part of it, as I’ve mentioned, was that it was becoming harder to keep drinking. As
wrote, “I've never seen any life transformation that didn't begin with the person in question finally getting tired of their own bullshit.”I was tired. And I was ready to stop doing the thing that was not serving me.
When I consciously decided that a bottle of red wine on December 30, 2022 would be my last, I was prepared. All my previous flirtations with sobriety, all the reading and research on addiction, and all of the internal reflections had transformed me into the person who could be sober with ease. Like the late poet John O’Donohue said:
“I always think the secret of change is that there are huge gestations and fermentations going on in us that we are not even aware of. And then, sometimes, when we come to a threshold, crossing over, which we need to become different, we’ll be able to be different, because secret work has been done in us, of which we’ve had no inkling.”
We often underestimate the shifts that are happening within us with every misstep, mistake or experience. But I was eventually able to become different because of previous so-called failures.
It wasn’t just about such readiness, however. So often we frame such changes as giving up—we are giving up drinking, or giving up sugar. But from the outset, the frame I had for not drinking was about what I was gaining.
Sobriety, for me, brings more possibility in life, not less. Without hangovers, I was gaining more time. Without nights out at bars, I was saving more money. Without the blur of alcohol, I had more clarity about what I want.
Upon reflection, taking delight in my life without alcohol has been my biggest aid.
In my book, I Didn’t Do The Thing Today, I write about delightful-discipline—that is, finding motivation for things simply by making it more appealing to do them.
It’s simple, really: we keep doing the things we find enjoyable, and this was fundamental to my not drinking. I actively cultivated ways to make it more enjoyable to be sober.
Having given up alcohol previously, I already knew that I enjoyed the positive domino effect on my days—I slept well, woke up fresher, had more energy for exercise.
Encounters with people, be it a catch up with a good friend or a first date, became more vivid too. I was seeing people clearly and allowing them to see me.
Feelings came into clearer focus, and I had to learn constructive—and more delightful—ways of approaching them. Now, if I feel sad, I cry, I run, I call a friend, I look for something new to try or learn.
Even for difficult things, we can find a way to make them more delightful. Sometimes that means making something easier. This was the frame I placed on my sobriety—it’s easier for me not to drink. I no longer sit at dinner parties watching everyone else’s glasses and waiting for an appropriate moment to fill up my own. It’s a delightful thing to be able to focus my attention elsewhere.
And that happened across my life. I kept witnessing how it was not a punishment to abstain, but rather an opening to delight, pleasure, and fascination.
This isn’t to say that my first year of sobriety was completely without challenges. There was a sense of ease, but still bumps.
I still experience cravings and doubts. In these moments I have various tools and reminders—which I delve further into below for my paid subscribers—but more broadly I had to inspect the source of such yearnings.
I realised my cravings for alcohol were a craving for a past self, but when I inspected that self further, I realised she belonged in a life I no longer wanted. As I wrote about in my reflections on embracing a daytime season, sensual self-indulgence doesn’t have to come in the form of booze—there are countless versions of pleasure that we can explore and even invent for ourselves.
There have also been times when a sense of pointlessness sets in. Sometimes it feels as if I’m starting back at zero navigating things like anxiety or embarrassment, and I begin to wonder if being sober is even improving things. But then I realise that’s what we are always doing as humans—we are navigating new challenges and experiences all the time. It might feel like zero, but it’s actually an entirely new level that we’ve unlocked.
And it’s not discipline that allows us to navigate new challenges and experiences, but openness, curiosity, and getting better at recognising what expands and what contracts possibilities in life.
Sometimes that might look like abstaining, or setting a limit, or starting over—but in any approach, we can take delight in the things we have learned and the things we are still yet to learn.
Sobriety and addiction is a highly personal thing to navigate, and different resources, definitions, and programs will assist different people.
Below I’ve compiled a list of the books, podcasts, articles, tidbits and quotes for my paid subscribers that helped me prepare to stop drinking.
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Things that helped during my first year of not drinking
This compilation is by no means intended as advice, but a way to share more personal things that I wish I had known sooner.