Essay 1
By: Isabel Hamilton
Tags: Alcohol, Lifestyle, Sobriety, Alcohol Addiction, Quitting

I have been sober for one year.

I started playing around with the idea of sobriety a few years before I stopped drinking. It felt like an unattainable fantasy, but I longed for the day when I could leave crippling shame, anxiety, and bad decision-making behind me.

Two years before I stopped, my fiance and I did a Dry January, and while it felt like a relief to drink the first beer after 31 days, I couldn’t shake how blissfully calm I had felt for a whole month. I loved waking up and going to work without a throbbing hangover, shaky hands, and a pit of shame in my stomach. I loved how much I enjoyed dinner, exercise, and talking to my partner. I didn’t have to think about my next drink, and exercise didn’t feel like penance for the 6 pack I had consumed the night before.

Quickly though, I fell straight back in and didn’t pursue sobriety again for about a year and a half. Then, and only after several embarrassing alcohol-fueled incidents, did I try for something more like permanent sobriety. I read Annie Grace’s This Naked Mind, and felt completely resistant to the changes I needed to make. I would read the words, while actively trying not to listen to them. I wanted sobriety, but I wanted to drink my way through it.

I did about a month of sobriety, before deciding that I could handle a few drinks, and I wouldn’t let it get as bad as before (you may be surprised to hear that it did, actually, get worse than before). I completed this cycle 2 more times before December 2019.

I was recovering from a cold, and desperately wanted to make it to a holiday party, so I took some DayQuil. I had never mixed cold medication with alcohol, and did not know that you definitely should not do that.

The night was a bit of a disaster, and I woke up the next day full of loathing self-hatred. I wished I could scrub it all away, that night and the preceding nights, going back to, I don’t know, 10th grade? I felt like a failure, an embarrassment, a total asshole.

The following weekend I picked out a wedding dress (it feels crazy to me that we can have so much going on that feels bad, out of control, and devastating, and still be making progress, good decisions, and being totally in love). After having a glass of champagne to celebrate with friends, I went out to meet my fiance and have a few more drinks. The whole night I was plotting my sobriety. I was drinking, but not in my usual way, and I woke up the next day without the usual shame and self-loathing.

I had started following some sobriety Instagram accounts in the preceding months, and knew that a new book was coming out on December 31, Quit Like a Woman by Holly Whitaker. I felt that if I could make it to then, I knew this book would be the key. It was December 21. I pre-ordered it, and ordered a few other books that would arrive sooner including Allen Carr’s Easy Way for Women to Quit Drinking. I was desperate for a how-to, I didn’t care if it was easy or hard, I just needed someone to show me what to do.

Before Holly’s book arrived, I read the following books:

Easy Way for Women to Quit Drinking by Allen Carr Easy Way to Quit Smoking by Allen Carr This Naked Mind by Annie Grace

When Holly’s book arrived, I felt that I had layed a strong groundwork for long term sobriety. I worried that I was rushing, that I felt too confident, that I was weak and didn’t even deserve this new path. But, I also knew in my heart that sobriety was attainable, managable, and the thing I needed above anything else in the world. Quit Like A Woman changed everything for me, it helped me see that I deserved sobriety, I deserved love, forgiveness, and a chance. It was the key to giving me the strength I needed to continue my sobreity.

Soon after finishing Holly’s book, which combines research with personal narrative, I found Quit Lit. The books I have mentioned were instrumental in getting to the point of not drinking, and Quit Lit has been instrumental in sustaining my own sobriety. This genre is filled with personal tales of alcoholism and other addictions. The best authors hold nothing back. I think reading their stories, and experiencing their vulnerability and pain second-hand, helped me to understand my own sobriety, pain, and alcohol use. I tried not to measure my alcohol use against their’s, but it does help to know where your own experience fits in, and how you relate to others’ experiences.

Some of my most treasured Quit Lit books:

Dry by Augusten Burroughs We are the Luckiest by Laura McKowen Blackout by Sarah Hepola Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp

Now, one year in, I feel confident, deserving of this new path, and grateful for the experiences that led me here. I plan to continue writing about my sobriety, for myself and for anyone who would like to read it.