surviving one year sober

my experiences and living alcohol free 🍻

As I write this, I am celebrating one year of total sobriety. When I first tentatively dipped my toe into the world sans alcohol in the summer of 2022, I did so with the hopes that this might be the key to unlocking a stronger, happier and all-around more refined version of myself.

This has turned out to be both true and untrue.

In the two years that have followed, I’ve started and stopped drinking several times. With each ‘relapse¹’ the decision to abstain has been reaffirmed. These periods acted as microcosms of my life before sobriety.

One month into a half-year backpacking trip, I drank a beer. It was following my first 6-month stint of booze-free living. The first sips tasted bitter and all-around underwhelming, but I’d felt compelled to drink to fully participate in the once-in-a-lifetime experience I’d found myself in (staying in a remote jungle cabin with a random assortment of people in northern Thailand). Half a can of chang beer later I decided that it wasn’t adding to the moment, so I binned the remainder.

From that point onwards I didn’t throw myself headfirst back into drinking again. I enjoyed the odd beer here or there but avoided lethally strong happy water on the ha giang loop. I felt pretty much fine about the whole thing.

I made friends with more people in Laos (aka, the lovely legends anna & billy <3) and later met up with them in the Philippines — We had the best time drinking on the beach until the early hours of the morning, after which I woke with a hangover but no regrets.

Unfortunately, this got the ball rolling again — I remembered how fun and social boozing could be and my drinking picked up speed. I couldn’t have one or two drinks without wanting more. The excited carefree extrovert wanted to be released.

me circa 2021 ??

The sick excitement I feel after a few beverages sparks something deep within me.

It’s an internal chase, like when a dog sees a squirrel, the bubbling energy inside me needs to sprint towards the black abyss and dive into it head first. In doing so, I’ll crash into people, breaking things and feelings recklessly with careless abandon.

My anxieties are alleviated and I feel infinite, my thousands of ideas, opinions and judgements spew out uncontrollably. It ends the same most nights though. Eyes closed in bed, head spinning or heart racing, sat at the bottom of the metaphorical black hole looking around and thinking ‘There’s nothing here for me’.

I wake up the morning after, dripping in shame and riddled by anxieties and regret (which colleague did I insult, which friend did I hurt) £100 poorer and with nothing to show for it.

It wasn’t until the death of my uncle when I drank too much in grief and embarrassed myself in front of my family that I thought ‘Enough’s enough’. At some point, I’ve got to grow up and look at the situation for what it is.

I don’t like myself.

I’m never going to like myself if I do things that I am ashamed of week in, and week out. It’s a fake facade of me, the girl who acts like she’s confident and careless after a few drinks is painfully insecure.

Each pub trip I’d tell myself ‘I’m only having two pints’ yet would end up at somebody’s flat until 3am reinforces the fact: I am not somebody that I can trust.

In extension, how can I expect my friends to have faith in me? How could somebody love me or be in a relationship with me? Or how can I trust myself to finish a project that I start? Or stick to fitness goals? Or advocate for myself?

So when people ask me: Do you miss drinking? I say no, but not because of the money or headaches or late nights. Those things, although unpleasant, were not life-ruining.

I am happy to be sober because I can accept myself. My actions and decisions are all truly mine: Not the cocky Becca’s after four glasses of wine, or hysterically crying Becca’s after three bottles. If I say that I’ll be somewhere at 9PM, I’ll be there. When I say I’ll leave early, I’ll leave. My mistakes can’t be blamed away on a drunken alter-ego.

Sobriety is not sparky and exciting. It hasn’t magically made me thinner or richer. But it levels life out, eliminating some of those nasty peaks and troughs.

And when there is so little I can control in this world, I question why I’d let something as insignificant as a pint of beer dictate how I live my life.

By becca mae x

1. I use this a bit tongue in cheek as I am not an addict — I don’t think my drinking ever went far beyond the British norm. However, that in itself is not normal.