Life Beyond A Bottle
It was a year ago that I woke up drunk from the night before for the last time.
And when I say drunk, I mean really embarrassingly drunk.
When the hangover started to set in, something that was a recurring joke between my friends and I suddenly wasn’t so funny anymore. That it went far beyond “being too old for this shit” and into “I might have a problem” territory.
At this point, I’ll admit that I had been cutting back my alcohol consumption and thought I was on my way to what the health experts call “moderate drinking.” But it would be that previous night’s festivities that would show me that I wasn’t capable of “moderate consumption;” that I was unable to just have one or two, I had to have 5 or 6. I didn’t need to drink, but once I started I needed to continue.
It took me a long time to admit this out loud to myself. When I made this similar post on my social media 6 months ago, I downplayed this as a “lifestyle decision” and not admitting to myself the real reason why I had to do this. Sure, there’s a lot of other reasons that I have been somewhat vocal about, but at the end of the day I didn’t start actually getting better until I admitted to myself and accepted that I had a problem. I’ll admit, It’s still hard to say that because there’s still a small part of me that feels like I failed. That it was yet another thing in my life that I couldn’t make work. I know in my heart that I wasn’t a failure, but that feeling is something that I have to move through as part of the process. I think It was also part of the reason why it took me a long time to use the word “sober” to describe this part of my life. That saying “I’m sober” admitted defeat when in reality, it’s the complete opposite. I made the conscious decision to choose myself and my life. Not what others thought I should do or act.
So today, I am proud to say I’m one year sober. It hasn’t been easy no matter how calm and collected I am about it. There’s days where it’s really lonely and isolating. But the good news is that those days are far less now than a year ago and there’s more days where it feels so much better than what was at the bottom of that empty bottle.
Note: You can read more about this year’s journey in my previous article here: https://roxydallen.substack.com/p/mirror-mirror-on-the-wall