Why I Don’t Talk About Drinking

Other than sharing bits and pieces about my own struggles with alcohol or making the occasional reference to sobriety, I don’t talk about drinking. And that’s intentional.

Not drinking isn’t about sobriety, it’s about recovery.

It isn’t and was never a conscious decision on our end to abuse substances. None of us woke up one day and said to ourselves, “You know what? I think today is a fabulous day to destroy the rest of my life.” No.

Drinking is the manifestation of unhealed wounds. It was a slow progression of numbing the things we wanted to numb, it was a reprieve from the internal dialogue that refused to turn off no matter how many times we tried, it was solace from a past that haunted us no matter how many times we try to forget it.

The more we drank, the more we thought we were getting a break from ourselves. Then it became something we needed in order to be ourselves.

When we get sober, we have no idea who we are without the drinking, so we outsource our own internal guidance. We seek out support groups and ask people for advice on how to stay sober, how to have fun in sobriety, how to fill our time and cure the boredom, etc.

But we don’t talk about the wounds. And that’s no fault of our own- we’ve either become so traumatized that we think we’re to blame for what’s happened to us, or we fall into the trap of needing to focus on being sober instead of needing to recover so we can stop running away from ourselves.

Instead, we talk about drinking. Talking about drinking is like talking about the bandaid on the wound. We can talk about the texture, the size, even the color of it- but it still does nothing to address the wound. Is the wound healing? Is it too painful to touch? Are there other symptoms?

The bandaid protects the wound, but it doesn’t heal the wound.

That also applies to us- drinking became our bandaid. It shoved the pain deep enough that we didn’t have to look at it or even feel it. When we get sober, we look for new bandaids. And we end up risking a relapse because the wounds of why we drank don’t leave until we confront them.

Every time we’re inevitably triggered, our instinct tells us drinking is our safe place. So, it isn’t surprising that when we’re only focusing on not drinking, we live in a state of panic and fear of doing the wrong thing. Which is why we need to approach sobriety from a different angle.

I’m not saying you have to face the pain you aren’t ready to confront. What I am saying is, at the very least, acknowledge that there are shadows you’re going to have to visit when you’re ready.

In the meantime, focus on building a relationship with yourself, cherish your journey, and create a life you’re proud to call yours. And when you know you’re ready (you will, trust yourself enough to know that), you’ll face your wounds.

I wanted to give you some context of my own journey and when I focused on sobriety versus when I didn’t:

I got sober twice for extended periods of time with a bunch of day ones in between. The first time was 17 years ago (at the time of publishing this) and lasted about eight months. I also did the “one meeting a day for 90 days.” After a bad experience, I vowed to myself I would never go to another AA meeting. The first time, I spoke about sobriety ALL THE TIME. My life revolved around it. And I had in fact tried to talk about my childhood trauma, but was dismissed by therapists and people in AA. They told me to only focus on my sobriety and nothing else. That didn’t really work out too great.

The second time I got sober (it’s over nine years and counting), I did it without any emotional or professional support. Just me and the Universe/God. I told myself I wasn’t going to focus on sobriety. Instead, I would focus on becoming the woman I’ve always wanted to be and heal the lifetime of trauma. And, it was exactly the medicine I needed.

I’ll see you soon…in the meantime, love yourself so much that even a Hallmark Christmas movie would be jealous.