I Was Sober Curious For a Month and This is What Happenedfeatured

If you know me, you know I have many past lives. One of my past lives took place in college, and I will not tiptoe around the fact that alcohol broke many parts of me at that time. I let it enter my life along with a series of bad decisions, which included falling hard for an alcoholic. The rest is history – a story for another day.

But I made it out alive, and alcohol stopped being a central part of my relationships and social life. Not because I magically found my way, but because I had no choice but to grow the f up and stop thinking that living on the brink of death all the time made me feel more “alive.”

After that haze, I began a spiritual journey that taught me to connect with my body through meditative movement and practice. I learned to eat to fuel my life rather than soothe my feelings, and I learned that my big feelings were not something to suppress or numb.

And as I transformed my mind and soul, my body inherently understood that alcohol was not needed to live a full life. No, I didn’t need to start a special program, but I did start my career, and it left no room to blissfully check out. I can’t say I didn’t fall into my old patterns along the way (don’t we always?), but I can say that I began to see life a lot more clearly. It was painful, but I was committed to making a future for myself – or at least living long enough to have a future.

So here we are today. Many years and lessons later. Drinking is really not a thing for me, but I do enjoy a festive gin and soda for my birthday dinner. Or during a wedding – okay, maybe more than one during a wedding. I have learned to drink for the taste rather than the result.

Yet, 37 has taught me that my body doesn’t bounce back from a drink the night before like it used to. It has also taught me that my energy is depleted by any amount of alcohol that I introduce into my body.

So I decided to delete ALL alcohol for a month. No fun drink at dinner or at that girls’ night. Not even at that wedding in Texas!

What happened? I saw life in a new light. The wedding was fun, but I was definitely watching it through a crisp, super-clear lens.

During my sober-curious experiment, many people asked me “why” I wasn’t drinking and ultimately went on to disclose the amount they drink and their own “why” for incorporating alcohol into their lives.

Honestly, I was/will never judge the many reasons to drink – the occasions that call for it and make it fun to indulge in a little alcohol-filled potion.

But it was interesting to have people question their own drinking habits simply because I was not partaking. It was also interesting to witness intoxication from the other side. The potion does give some people permission to have fun, loosen up, and simply be comfortable with being themselves.

Then suddenly it all clicked for me – life is a lot harder to live through the completely sober lens, and I don’t just mean giving up alcohol. I mean giving up the distractions and the numbing that keep us from being fully here.

Real sobriety isn’t about quitting social drinking. It’s about living without the comforts of distraction or dissociation.

Imagine not touching your phone for 3 full days. What would that look like? How would you be entertained?

Imagine deciding to be caffeine-free for 1 month? How would you find your energy to go on?

A lot of us millennials are desperately grasping for things that remind us of our yesteryears – those times when we would pass letters to our friends between classes and just meet at the mall at said time without the ability to text every second’s updated ETA.

There’s a reason for that.

Life was simpler.

Life was freer of digital distraction.

And that’s what my sober month taught me – that drinking can sometimes serve as an escape to simpler times, to transport us to places where being silly and having fun were accepted because we were kids and we didn’t know any better.

But what if we could do all the things we feel we have permission to do when we drink, while sober? Would that shift our decision to have those few glasses of wine with dinner? Or to get plastered at our 40th birthday party?

My sober curious month taught me that alcohol does my body and energy more harm than good. But it also taught me that alcohol is not needed to have a little fun, to be a little silly, and to celebrate this marvelously complicated life. While it can offer a more lubricated entry point, the endpoint can be dark, painful, and regrettable more often than not.

I didn’t write all of this to convince you to stop drinking (if you do); I wrote this so you could sit with some of my observations from the other side and consider if drinking is something that adds value to your life or something that you do simply because our society has been built around alcoholic drinking occasions.

If we stripped all the occasions of all the alcohol, would we find ourselves playing a few rounds of cornhole or Twister or enjoying more hikes with friends?

Love Deeply and Forever,