18 Days of Sober Takeaways: Day 6
The Person I Thought Alcohol Made Me
I had a version of myself that I really liked. She was funny, confident and interesting, and she could walk into a room without worrying whether she belonged there.
She talked to people easily and seemed comfortable in assuming that they wanted to talk to her.
The problem was ‘Magical Me’ mostly presented after I’d been drinking, so alcohol got the credit.
If I was shy before my second drink and suddenly more outgoing afterward, the explanation seemed obvious.
Alcohol had unlocked something in me.
I thought I’d finally found the person I wanted to be.
It took a long time to understand this was not the case. I had confused permission with transformation.
Alcohol did not make me funny. It just made me feel less concerned whether others thought I was funny.
Alcohol did not give me confidence. It just silenced the part of me that was busy wondering whether I was good enough, interesting enough or accepted enough.
So, once I got sober, the burning issue became: ‘What is there without alcohol?’
Looking at the ‘what’ was uncomfortable at first.
I’d spent years believing that the drink was responsible for the best parts of me, and now I had to figure out whether those parts were part of me at all.
It was a realization that changed what recovery meant to me.
Getting sober wasn’t about becoming a completely different person.
I was using alcohol to silence the parts of myself that made it difficult to be me.
Recovery meant learning to live without doing that…
I’ll talk more about how I learned that tomorrow, Day 7 of my 18 Days of Sober Takeaways from #NationalSoberDay to the start of #SoberOctober.
If you’d like to start on Day 1, you can find it here: 18 Days of Sober Takeaways - Day 1
To further explore any of the topics raised in my 18 Days of Sober Takeaways, or if you’d like support in stopping drinking, please visit:
Substack: Sally Cardy - Transformative Recovery Solutions