April is Alcohol Awareness Month in the United States. Alcohol awareness is not something that I ever had a deficit of. What I wasn’t aware of was the possibility of loving living alcohol-free.
How aware of alcohol are you? I don’t mean how aware are you of alcohol’s adverse health effects or the cost to society of heavy drinking. I mean, literally, how aware are you that you are in the same room with alcohol? Or how aware are you that it is across the street from you while sitting at a stop light near a liquor store? To put it another way, does booze make your Spidey Sense tingle?
If you’re anything like me, chances are that the answer to that last question is, “Yes.”
As I sit here writing this, I’m trying to pinpoint the exact time that I became so very aware of alcohol. If I’m honest, I think I probably always was. Even when I was only 22 or 23, I always knew where the closest liquor store was. I always knew exactly how much alcohol I had, or how much was available at the party I was at. More than that, I was always anxious about running out.
Many years ago, when I first became uncomfortable with my drinking, I was browsing internet articles about alcohol abuse. I came across an article written by someone in recovery who stated that if you are worried about your own drinking, one of the best tests you can do is to pay attention to the way you feel when you think about running out of alcohol. That scared the crap out of me. Even back then, when I was usually able to stop drinking before I either blacked out or passed out, I didn’t like the idea of running out of booze. It made me very, very nervous.
What I was totally unaware of, while being so very aware of alcohol, was how great it would feel to live alcohol-free. I simply could not imagine life without alcohol. I could check all the boxes on my alcohol awareness when it came to the dangers of drinking but there just seemed to be something to extreme about choosing sobriety.
There was a period of time where I was trying to moderate my alcohol consumption by limiting the ABV of the beer I drank. I figured drinking six beers a night wasn’t so bad if it was “only” 5% ABV (as opposed to the 8% or higher I preferred). I would get to the end of the six pack and be incredibly sad that I was out of beer. I would have to give myself a little pep talk that went, “It’s okay that the beer is gone, you can have more tomorrow,” or “Beer runs out, and that’s okay.” I was trying to condition myself to accept that running out of alcohol before I was completely hammered was a normal thing. I never managed to do that.
I got to the point where I would go to the liquor store and walk up and down the aisles, simultaneously not wanting to drink at all while trying to decide how much alcohol was “enough” for the night. I didn’t want to buy so much I’d get too wasted to get up in the morning, but I was terrified that I would buy too little and end up needing to go back for more later. It was so awful.
It took me a long time to accept that thinking about alcohol like that is not healthy. I knew it, but I couldn’t accept it. I knew there was a whole world full of people out there who didn’t struggle constantly with the idea of running out of alcohol, or even really care if they had any booze or not. I knew people who could buy a six-pack, drink one beer, and then let the rest sit in the fridge until the end of frigging time itself without batting an eye. I don’t have the words to convey how desperately I wanted to be one of those people, or how disappointed I was in myself that I was not one of them.
Ultimately, no matter what I tried to become one of those people (and I tried A LOT of strategies) the only thing that worked was to get alcohol out of my life all together. It didn’t happen overnight, of course. I thought about alcohol all the time in my early days sober, and my Spidey Sense tingled every time I knew I was in proximity to it. Now, though, after nearly two years Alcohol-Free, I am not nearly as aware of booze as I used to be. I can hang around in bars at happy hour with friends and, sure, I notice that they’re drinking, but I don’t keep a constant eye on all of their glasses. I’m not always aware of the liquor stores I pass, and even though I know we have some AF wine in the pantry for cooking, I couldn’t tell you how many bottles are in there. After so many years being hyper-aware of alcohol, I am finally able to relax. What a relief!
There was a time when I thought I would never be able to stop thinking about alcohol. Now I almost never think about it. If you’re still in that place and wondering if it will ever end, please know that it will. It doesn’t happen all at once, and it takes a lot of hard work, but it is possible. Hang in there, keep posting, and remember that we’re all here for you.
WHO ARE WE?
Online Community Support to Stop Drinking – BOOM!
April is Alcohol Awareness Month so I’m going to focus every day on offering our shared keys to Freedom
We can share
The Truth About How Alcohol Damages Your Brain
and warn
But in the end, it’s all about being aware of how great life can be alcohol-free !
Is Sobriety a Drag or is it the Ultimate Freedom?
Alcohol-Free is a Truly Amazing Way to Live
You can do this. Join us this April for Alcohol Awareness Month. We’ll turn it upside down and make it all about awareness of loving living alcohol-free!
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