It’s my birthday this weekend, and we’re in lockdown, so the celebration plans so far involve takeaway, homemade cake and rewatching Hackers for the millionth time. Which, y’know. Pretty good. Here’s another thing: this will be the second birthday I’ve spent sober.

Just last week, I hit the milestone of 500 days since my last alcoholic drink. And you’d think it’d be easier with all social goings-on suspended, but weirdly I’ve been more conscious of it during the pandemic. Maybe because time in general seems so elastic during this thing, or because the milestones get further apart the further down the sober road you go. Either way, I’ve been doing a lot of reflection on it, including reading Laura McKowen’s memoir, We Are The Luckiest. This passage especially really resonated:
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The thing is: it’s about drinking, but it’s about so much more than drinking. It’s about feeling comfortable; it’s about distancing ourselves from moments and people and feelings we don’t want to experience, and bringing closer the ones we do; it’s about self-medication; it’s about belonging; it’s about taking a little edge off a thousands kinds of discomfort; it’s about status and appearance and sophistication; it’s about sex and desire; it’s about filling in the spaces we don’t know how to otherwise fill. It’s about having something to do with your damn hands.

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When I stopped drinking, it was an experiment. I didn’t know it would be long-term. But it had a totally unexpected consequence: it completely transformed my confidence, for the better. Not to start with; to start with I was hyper-aware of everything in that list above, and probably a ton more on top. But as time went on, I slowly felt more secure in social situations. I trusted myself.

As someone who started drinking hard in their early teens, I had more experience of being in social situations with booze than without it. So engaging in those social situations without my usual comfort blanket initially felt all too bright, brittle, awkward, raw, self-conscious and uncertain. And yet as time went on, I adjusted. I felt more comfortable being in my body than numb. When drinking, I’d be somehow both hyper-vigilant and out-of-control. Letting go of both of those took some time, and some trust. Slowly, I developed trust in my tolerance to those situations without anything to make me more relaxed, fun, confident or adventurous. I can be all those things without alcohol now. That’s a return on the original experiment I never anticipated.

Originally sent as part of my newsletter in November 2020