My Sober Story
**This blog post has been sitting in my draft folder for weeks. When I created this website and subsequent blog, one of my goals was to share more openly and honestly about my life in the hopes that someone who reads this may connect with my story and feel more at ease with theirs. I want to help people by sharing my story. But, sharing so openly is never very easy and honestly, scares me. This is probably why people only post the highlight reel on social media, but unfortunately doing so can lead people to feel worse when they compare their real life to someone’s positive reel. I’m sharing my truth today to break that cycle and help end the comparison game.
If you know me personally, you already know that I have not drank alcohol for about a year and a half. If you don’t know me, well now you know! Recently I’ve been getting more questions about my sobriety and my decision not to drink. Most of the time I respond with “oh, it’s just not a good time for me” or “alcohol and I are just not friends”. I don’t tend to get into the details because I want to move on to the next subject and not dwell on my decision not to drink alcohol. Usually when I share that I don’t drink with people I get the response of “wow I could never do that, good for you!” or I’ll get “I need to drink less too”. Those responses help validate my decision, but it’s hard when I hear “oh you used to be soooo much fun when you drank!” or get questions about “how long is this ‘not drinking thing’ going to last? When are you drinking again?” Not only are those responses/questions hurtful to me, but they make it seem like I didn’t have a problem and that I can go back to my old habits (which I assure you I should not).
Now, I’m not sharing this story in response to those negative comments or to get them to stop, but I’m sharing my sober story to others who may be in a similar boat as me and needs someone who understands.
Unlike some, I didn’t drink alcohol until college. Not because I didn’t want to, but just because my friends in high school didn’t drink, so I had no reason to. Alcohol and I had an amazing time in college though! We partied together, celebrated together, and sometimes cried together. Honestly, I didn’t think I had any kind of problem with alcohol because “it was college and everybody drinks”. It wasn’t until I was out of college and in the real world when I started to see patterns that I didn’t like.
I didn’t drink everyday nor did I feel the need to drink everyday. Sure, I would have a glass of red wine every now and then after a particularly bad day, but who doesn’t? The problem for me was that once I started drinking, I didn’t know how to stop or where that limit was. It was not uncommon for me to forget parts of the night or forget the evening entirely. Throwing up that night/next morning was pretty much a given. Of course that didn’t happen every single time that I drank, but I almost always drank more than I needed to. I would wake up the next morning full of regret and anxiety over something I said or did. It got to the point where even if nothing bad happened that night, I would wake up the next day feeling anxious because my body was just used to that feeling after a night of drinking.
I started to recognize that not everyone felt that way after drinking/while they were drinking, so I decided that I should try to limit how much I drank when I went out. But, that never worked. I would say “alright Kaitlin, you can have 3 drinks tonight” and I would break that limit every time. I could always convince myself to have one more drink or two more drinks.
Now you may be thinking, “well that’s not too bad, you don’t need to quit drinking all together”. The part that I don’t regularly share is the reckless behavior that accompanied my drinking and the relationships that were hurt because of it. Honestly, I’m shocked that I made it out of a few different situations unharmed. I was a fun drunk, until I wasn’t. I was great to party with, until I decided to ditch the party and create my own party. I put myself in harms way and others as well. I definitely was not “fun”.
About a year and a half ago, I decided to take a “break” from alcohol. I had every intention of continuing to drink further down the road, but I had just started new medication and didn’t want to drink with it until I knew how it affected me. Honestly, thank goodness for that new medication because I don’t think I would have made the decision to end my relationship with alcohol. I don’t think that I was mentally strong enough to get ride of my crutch at that point. During this “break” I was able to blame the new medication for my reason for not drinking. It wasn’t my choice, it was the medication’s choice. I was still unwilling to accept that I was in a toxic relationship with alcohol.
With time and with therapy (which I ironically started in part due to the anxiety that post-drinking gave me) I came to understand that taking a “break” from alcohol was the best choice that I’ve made for myself in YEARS! I didn’t have any intentions of continuing this break longer than a month, but here I am almost a year and a half later, still sober. I’ve learned that I was using alcohol as a band-aid for things in my life that I was refusing to deal with. I was numbing out any negative pain that I had with vodka and rum. I just wanted to feel better and instead of actually taking steps to change what was causing me pain, I was turning to alcohol for support. Looking back, I don’t see myself consciously saying, “I want to feel nothing at all so I’m going to drink until I blackout”. It was more of the fact that I felt better when I drank and that any stress seemed to dull to a quiet whisper when I was drunk. I just wanted to continue to feel good, so I continued to drink. Fun fact: You can still feel good without having an ounce of alcohol in your body.
I’m not writing this to say that drinking alcohol is bad and that you should never do it. I’m just saying that the reasons that I drank and the negative behavior that followed my drinking were not okay. I don’t want to go back to the life of blackouts and hungover apologies. I know that there are many people who can have a few drinks with friends and be completely in control, I just don’t happen to be one of those people. I still go out to clubs and parties, I just choose a Coke now instead of a rum and Coke. I’m still the fun Kaitlin that people knew me as, I just have a clearer head. I will continue to share my story post-alcohol, but now you know why continuing to stay sober has been a game changer for my life.
Feel free to reach out to me with any questions you may have surrounding my sober story, I’m an open book! If you are relating to any of my decisions not to drink or have struggled in the past, I want you to know that it’s okay to ask for help. It doesn’t make you weak. If anything it makes you stronger than your negative thoughts.
