My diary entry from 9 Jan 2017: "I lay in bed at 01:00, sweating and unable to sleep. I turned on the light and stayed up for an hour reading articles on giving up the booze. My head was pounding and I took two headache tablets. I read about a middle-aged woman who had not been an alcoholic, but had drunk too much too regularly. She said she was “a million times more productive” without alcohol. I am going to give up the booze. I have had enough."
I was never an alcoholic, had a huge job (vice president at a software company responsible for a team of over 350 people), lovely family, great home life - but felt stuck on the treadmill of regularly (not always) drinking too much. It was never a huge problem but annoying more than anything.
After the diary entry above I decided to NOT take the usual route of counting days sober. This approach had never worked before and seemed so BORING. It also challenged my perfectionist tendencies. It was inevitable I'd be back at day 1 sometime or another.
So I tackled it a different way. I decided I wanted to NOT WANT the drink. Because if you don't want something it's easy to not partake of that thing. Much like cigarettes for me. Or sprouts. Or steak and kidney pudding. Or ice cream.
It took months of trial and error. But I figured it out. These days I don't call myself sober or teetotal or any of those labels (which rank right up there with labels like 'spinster' in my opinion), but choose not to drink. I reserve the right to have a drink if ever I feel like it - but I rarely do because I just don't want it. Truly don't want it.
This change came from within me - not through resisting drink or using willpower or counting days or using af drinks as a crutch (though I do rather like the Peroni af beer) or being nasty to myself or declaring myself powerless to the drink. But from kindness and commitment.
I say this to show it is entirely possible to unpick decades-long drinking patterns. That you don't have to "go sober" if you don't want to. That it is totally possible to live surrounded by alcohol and navigate people's judgements as to why aren't you drinking (which I STILL get!)
Ending this struggle was so transformational I quit my job, distilled what I learned down into a process that moves people from drinking to not wanting to drink in 90 days (though often earlier) and I now spend my days working with people to help them achieve this for themselves.
I'm here to say yes you can do it. Yes you can do it being kind to yourself. Yes you have it within yourself to make the change.
Because when you get to the point where you no longer desire alcohol it really does come easily.
Sorry for the long post but want to shine the light of what's possible.x