Anyone who knows me, the eternal party girl, will be aware that this is going to be a pretty massive change of pace for me. Although I’ve tried to cut down a few times in the past, placing certain limitations on myself (never at home alone/only once a week/only classy booze that doesn’t come in a cardboard box), I’ve failed spectacularly every time. Why? Because I have zero willpower and poor self-negotiation skills – so I have to do it cold turkey, or it’s just not going to happen at all. Drinking is a really difficult thing for me to give up, considering I am a product of Dunedin and thus grew up with a comfortable acclimatisation to the binge-drinking normality of teen and student life here. As a party-loving adult who is child-free, I have never really had a good enough reason to be responsible or stop drinking – not to mention it’s fun as fuck, and I don’t have a problem!
Well, yeah actually – I totally do. Over the last couple of years I have been drinking by myself at home all the time because “why not?” – and frankly, “why not?” isn’t a good enough reason to drink (or do many things, for that matter). I started with the notion that I could get some decent artwork done after a few drinks, which always resulted in me being completely hammered, whilst my easel sat in the corner collecting dust. Alcohol lends me no productivity or creative motivation whatsoever, and it’s immature and futile to keep pretending it does. I can’t even fool myself into thinking that alcohol is a way to unwind or relax at the end of a stressful or busy day, because I am hands-down the least stressed and/or busy person that I know.
My sister and I recently started using the MyFitnessPal app, and it’s opened my eyes to exactly how much of my energy consumption is solely alcohol, or junk food consumed due to drinking. On days that I don’t drink, I struggle to even eat two thirds of my daily energy needs. On days that I drink, however, the alcohol puts me over by almost double, and on days after drinking I eat nothing but junk – no wonder my weight shot up when I started flatting and drinking beer by the crate! Drinking also saps all motivation or energy to do other things, so many past endeavours have ended up on the backburner while I continued to prioritise getting fucked up. These days I have lofty concrete goals that I want to achieve, and being drunk all the time is not going to make those things happen – especially considering they are of the academic and fitness variety. Simply put; I can no longer coast through life being drunk all the time when the expectations I am placing on myself are far more complex than “shower, get dressed, and get to your easy job selling dildos” (as satisfying as that was).
Thankfully I’ve always been a fairly happy drunk, so my alcohol consumption hasn’t resulted in any estrangement from friends or family, but I’m sure that it hasn’t done me any favours, either – I routinely arrive at family events already pissed, and I’m pretty sure nobody expects much better from me after so many years of being like this. I’ve also realised that I lack self confidence so badly, that in order to go on dates with dudes, I have to be almost legless before I even meet up with them (let alone doing anything else with them). How is that any way to be a human? The lame truth is that I have way more stuff to deal with before I can really be with anybody, and continuing to drink is not going to solve those issues for me. I guess the major thing that worries me is that without alcohol, I’ll have to actually be my sober self all the time, which may result in withdrawing from social situations due to a fear that people won’t like me, and (sob) never getting laid again.
As I started writing this feature, I did a shout-out on Facebook asking others who have ever given up drinking to give me their insights on why and how they did it, and suddenly all sorts of cray bitches came out of the woodwork – people I didn’t even know were sober! Many of these people had decided to give up for health reasons, to improve fitness, or to just undo many years of increased alcohol tolerance. Due to the binge-drinking culture of the ‘90s-’00s, we were all coming of age at a time where a bottle of Kristov vodka split between two fourteen-year-old girls was as commonplace as an expired condom in a boy racer’s wallet. Sobriety (something that I had always assumed was reserved for only the cripplingly religious and the painstakingly boring) as it turns out, has become increasingly common in my peer group.
A number of mates have quit drinking for reasons similar to me – they realised that they were unable to stop at one drink, or hid behind being drunk, and decided that this probably meant they had a problem. Some had given up after seeing the adverse effects drinking was having on loved ones (ie turning them into total cunts), while others were trying to increase fertility/had gotten pregnant. But mainly, most of us just got sick of being the poor man’s version of ourselves, much like when Dante’s Peak just casually decided to cast Jeremy Foley in the Joseph Gordon-Levitt role, thinking we wouldn’t notice.
But we did notice.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt or not, I am overdue to sort my shit out – and what better place to do it than Dunedin, where the clubs are full of 17-year-olds, the drugs are non-existent/awful quality sold at an astronomical markup, and the parties for 31-year-olds are scarce? Henceforth, I can be found in my bedroom, or at the library, and in both cases, sober. If you see me, don’t offer me a drink. Cheers.
One Month Later
I'm even further from being Joseph Gordon-Levitt now than I was when I stopped drinking.
Firstly, this has probably been the longest I have ever actually stuck to any habit that is supposedly good for me, so I guess I should feel some kind of smug pride at that - but oddly enough, I don't.
Here's what has happened in the last month: Nothing.
Like, literally fucking nothing. I have become a boring shell of my former fun self and have ceased almost all social contact, preferring to take extra shifts at work, tidy my room, go for walks, make future home decor vision boards (yes really, kill me please), revisit my seven year plan, and study for a paper that I'm not even taking until summer school next year. I have had zero sex. Fuck my life.
My brother had his old high school gang around to watch the rugby the other weekend and I ended up watching it with them all - it was a giant sausage-fest of drinking and happiness and I couldn't be more internally pissed off that I couldn't partake of the ale. It was an excruciating 80 minutes of inner struggle and hatred as I watched them all get progressively drunker and more excitable. I anxiously clammed up and kept my eyes fixed upon the screen, awkwardly only speaking when specifically asked a question, probably leading my brother's friends to think I had acquired some sort of PTSD and had come home to be put out to pasture, rather than being here to study. Someone very kindly passed a joint my way at some point, which mercifully got me through the second half.
I haven't given up drugs, by the way. They are just far more expensive and scarce here so I assumed they weren't going to be anywhere near as much of a problem for me as alcohol. I also vowed not to buy any more weed, only allowing myself a social hoot of whatever is proffered at any given time.
I feel like such a martyr.
On the health front, I had a constant headache for almost two weeks, combined with some hot flushes and shakes, but I'm told that will happen when you're giving things up cold turkey. After that shit cleared off though, I felt ... well ... not much different, to be honest. My body had gotten pretty used to functioning hungover so I just stopped getting perceivable hangovers altogether sometime in the mid 00s. My skin seems a little clearer, and I've lost around 6-8 kg this month - which is good, because I do need to lose weight. I hope that continues and I also hope that I develop some sort of transfer addiction to exercise or something else that will make me thin (unlikely though, because fuck you genetics and Murphy's Law).
My mental health has been a whole bunch of dildoes. Being sober means that my mind is now racing constantly with all of the lame things that I usually managed to obliterate with drinking. So I'm forcedly reminded constantly of all the little things I can't stand about myself and how deeply messed up I still am over a breakup that happened well over a year ago, and how anxious I am about going back to uni this semester as an old-as-fuck 31 year old who may or may not be able to keep up with her peers intellectually, especially because I have to relearn three years of forgotten high school maths in a couple of months just to be able to take MATH160 (by the way, if anyone is able to trade a few weeks of maths tutoring for any kind of proof-reading, essay-writing or guitar lessons, please contact me through Critic or Facebook - I'm serious) and other such worrying thoughts. My concentration/focus and attention span are both highly impaired (or were possibly never that good to begin with, although I don't remember all the way back that far). I have considered seeing the doctor about being tested for ADHD but I'm anxious that he will think that I am just there trying to scam a script for dexies or Ritalin to deal to 18 year olds outside Suburbia on a Friday night.
If it weren't for the weight loss, I'd be solely unimpressed with this whole bullshit sobriety thing. I'm bored and I'm boring and I definitely wouldn't want to be my friend right now. Thankfully the majority of my mates are all in the North Island and Australia, because I'd be kind of embarrassed for them to have to hang out with me in this state. I really hate it when people adopt some sort of new regime and wax lyrical about how it changed them and how they are much better people now, so I'm not going to lie to you guys. Sobriety sucks and it should only ever be done as a last resort when you have a giant drinking problem. I would never do this shit by choice or because I thought it would make me some sort of better, cleaner, person. From my sorry state my advice to you is drink literally everything you can get your hands on and pillage your lithe little livers - and then have another one for me. I wish I was you.
Love, Chelle
xoxo