Going Sober Again — A Lesson About Ending My Year of Sobriety
By: Kelly Tompkins
Tags: Self-awareness, Productivity, Sobriety, Life Lessons, Addiction

If you don’t already know, I went a full year without drinking a single drop of alcohol. I won’t lie and tell you it was easy, there were a lot of sleepless nights and tears. The one thing that kept me going was that I started to see that I was a much better person sober than I was drunk. Learning to live with being restless and bored took almost half of a year but after that, I relished the feeling. Turns out what you do when you’re restless and can’t drink really helps you grow as a person.

There were so many benefits when I quit:

Better sleep ( slept through the night )

Spent more time working on my career

Got a job in the field I wanted ( Automation Engineer )

Got a puppy

Had more meaningful conversations with my partner

Cooked better food

Had more money

Lost weight

etc etc ETC

Then I hit a year and my addict brain started to rationalize with me. If I could handle being sober for a year, then I could handle reintroducing alcohol back into my life, right? New year, new me!

Looking back on this article, I cringe. How self-righteous did I sound?

An entire year, down the drain

Once I hit my year, I celebrated the fact that alcohol no longer had a hold over me and I felt confident. I felt confident that I had beaten my addiction, alcohol meant nothing to me and it felt great. Feels bad to admit, but I even felt pity for those that still felt the need to drink. Can’t they see that someone like me is doing so great without alcohol?

If everything was so great, why did I go back to drinking?

Slipping back into drinking didn’t start with a bender or going back into old habits right away, it was so deceptively slow that I was almost back at a year ago without even realizing. It started with tasting beers or cocktails that my boyfriend was drinking to getting my own beer once a week just “as a treat”. I mean it was only one right? I had stopped drinking before the hard seltzers were popular, especially White Claw so I jumped at the chance to try one when I could.

You all know this story and how it plays out. I would drink one and feel fine, even proud of myself for stopping after a single drink.

Then next week, I would drink two and be proud after stopping. Then three, and most recently a whopping four.

Starting at zero, again

I thought for a while that I was still fine because I didn’t drink beer every night and I stayed away from liquor. My addict brain told me that I couldn’t slip back into old habits if I didn’t pick up vodka again. There was no way I could be having an issue with alcohol again if I wasn’t buying a six pack of beer every night. I wasn’t missing workouts and I made it to work on time every day so there was a lie I kept telling myself- I had a handle on it this time. This time is different. New year, new me…right brain?

But all of the signs were there:

Stopped going to bed early

Woke up several times and would sleep in to catch up

Ate junk food more often and stopped wanting to cook

No motivation to do any of the activities I loved

Gained weight again

My performance at work was steadily declining

Stopped reading

Was getting agitated by everything

Watched the clock until it was an acceptable time to drink

I want to blame Covid-19 and the whole pandemic. Alcohol sales have gone up since Covid-19 and everyone is struggling. Being stuck at home and dealing with isolation has pushed a lot of people into drinking heavily and it really shows on social media especially. I used all of that and the fact that I, a former alcoholic, went a whole year without alcohol to tear down all of the progress that I made and started drinking again. As silly as it sounds, the original reason I tried drinking again was because I started doing happy hours with my friends over Zoom and felt like not drinking was distancing myself. Months had gone by without me seeing another person and I was aching for closeness. But even though I did it to feel close to my friends, I was really using alcohol to push down the loneliness I had been feeling.

I don’t think it’s all negative, though. Even though it had been a full year, I easily slipped back into those old bad habits and it finally proved to me that I can’t have alcohol in my life at all. It’s in my nature to want a distraction and to be terrified of being bored. It was all too familiar to tell myself that I could only feel emotions when I was drinking and I would dwell on negative emotions. My addict brain forgot about an entire year where I tried new hobbies, lost weight, and felt happiness again. It forgot how much more I was reading and how well I would sleep at night. It forgot how much more me I was without alcohol.

So here I am, back at day one. Ready to be my best self and remember that sobriety isn’t linear. There are ups and downs and sometimes the journey has so many pit stops that you start to wonder if you’ll ever make it to your destination. But I have hope that it’s there, on the horizon.