Sobriety in the time of Coronavirus

I’ve always insisted I’d never start a blog. My long-suffering boyfriend has tried to talk me into it a number of times, and I’ve always wrinkled my nose and come up with an excuse, or claimed “but everyone starts a blog!” – doing what everyone else is doing has never come easily to me. I’ve grown comfortable being the outsider, on the edge of everyone else and looking in.

Anyway, I’ve come to a point in my sobriety where there’s a voice in me that just needs to come out. It’s been exacerbated by the current situation (Coronavirus, what else?!). I’ve had more time on my hands to think. And too much time thinking isn’t good for me. I haven’t wanted to pick up a drink, but my internet shopping habit has run away with itself (in its latest pairs of shoes from ASOS) and my online Facebook stalking has once again got me staring at the profile of that-girl-I-went-to-Uni-with’s-second-cousin-in-Sweden. I think if I don’t start writing now, I’ll either have a hand shaped like a claw from clutching mindlessly at my phone all day, or Hermes are going to have to hire a new fleet of personal drivers for me. Or both.

Another reason I wanted to start this blog was because of the HUGE surge of alcohol related images that are bombarding my screen during this pandemic. I can’t open my Instagram without seeing a bubbling flute of Prosecco or a pint of beer glimmering in the sun, or a meme that says “Can we all agree to raise the bar for what we consider as an alcoholic?” or something else which is laughing off drinking in the morning and drinking every day. There’s a new craze of “Zoom” parties which essentially just seem to be everybody sitting on their own in their house getting drunk, whilst on the laptop.

I can’t slate them too much. When I was a drinker, I revelled in this kind of social media content – tagging friends in posts about getting blackout and writing tweets about how horrendous my hangover was. I thought it was hilarious. Or at least, I thought it made me “normal”. I thought that if everyone else was doing it, and posting things like that, then alcohol abuse was just a part of society and that it was all ok. And it is a part of society, but I’ve come to decide that it isn’t ok for me.

So I wanted to write about my feelings, and I wanted to show that despite the numerous photos of pink gin and attractive looking cocktails, us sober folk can still be sparkly. We can still go to parties (if we want to - and when are actually allowed to leave the house again!) and we can drive ourselves home when we’ve had enough of pretending to like everyone, still looking much like we did when we arrived. We can still drink pretty drinks, only we don’t have to have any ethanol lurking in the glass, waiting to give us a raging headache the next day. Life can still be fun!

And sometimes it isn’t. We’re living in the real world, here. Sometimes we’d rather ditch the boring party and spend time with the people we can truly be ourselves with, or just spend an evening watching Netflix alone and eating Doritos. Our feelings are with us all the time and we must learn to befriend them. I’ll talk about that stuff, too. Sobriety is a fascinating journey and early sobriety (it’s been over 2 years, but I still feel like I’m new to it), for me, has been full of ups and downs. The downs, though, are never as low as that panicky feeling of waking up after a night out and having hours of my memory missing. For that, I am forever grateful!