How I Quit Drinking Alcohol

The biggest mistake we can make in life is to believe that becoming sober and choosing to not drink is going to bring us eternal joy and happiness. That once we stop drinking, all our problems will go away and we will FINALLY be happy.

This kind of thinking is delusional and taught to us from childhood. “Happily ever after” in movies, and the belief that happiness is a THING we can ACHIEVE is a myth that ruins so many people’s lives.

When we believe that “life should be easy”, we “should” be happy, “I should” be enjoying life all the time... when we DON’T feel happy and joyful, then we can believe that something is wrong. Our life isn’t as good as it should be. We are not doing enough. It’s not fair. 

We look at the movies, at our idols, at our friends and family on social media and we see lots of pictures of good looking, smiling, travelling, happy-looking people who are living happily-ever-after lives.

And then we look at our lives and compare it and think “why am I not happy, why do I work so hard and I still don’t have that?” The “dream” is to have the house, the car, the family, the comfortable lifestyle etc. But it’s all a BIG lie that causes MORE PAIN than any kind of real enjoyment and happiness.

I also fell into the trap of believing that all my problems would go away as soon as  I stopped drinking alcohol. And you know what? SOME of my problems went away, like losing my phone, being late to work, being drunk/hungover at work, embarrassing myself due to drinking, feeling the shame and regret of blacking out, disappointing my family due to drinking.

But not ALL of my problems went away.

Instead, up came a whole heap of NEW problems!

• What do I really want to do with my life?

• How can I live a fulfilling and meaningful life?

• How can I make money without having to work in a job I hated?

• How can I fix the chronic pain in my back that I used to nub with alcohol?

• How can i mend the relationships I had broken?

• I don’t have any friends who don’t drink!

• How am I going to spend my days now?

These are bigger problems then the problems I used to have (UGH I lost my phone again!), but they are higher quality problems.

My life didn’t suddenly because more enjoyable ALL the time. But it became more enjoyable when I chose to focus on what I was doing, when I chose to do things that brought me joy, when I laughed, when I hung out with friends, when I connected with new people, when I did things I had never done before!

And there were times where I was depressed and frustrated, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for no reason at all, I just felt depressed. I did not turn back to drinking alcohol, when I felt these feelings (even though I felt like it), I just allowed myself to feel those feelings, to sit and breathe through it and accept that sometimes I’m going to feel this way and there is nothing wrong with that.

Life is full of ups and downs. Life is an adventure and a wonderful journey. Life is a fun and exciting ride! What makes life worth living are the diverse feelings and emotions that makes my life meaningful. If I only ever experienced joy and happiness all the time, then I would have a very limited experience of life, happiness would become boring, joy would be losing it’s spark.

We simply cannot experience the high’s of life if we do not experience the lows that come with it. We MUST experience contrast, in order to experience anything at all. The “challenges” that arise do not happen to hold us back, or because life is unfair and we are being punished, the challenges are opportunities for us to experience MORE of life and to grow, by learning to overcome them.

SO many people drink alcohol to avoid the discomfort and uncomfortable feelings in life... but what they are REALLY doing are numbing the lows, and therefore limiting our ability to feel the high’s. Which is why they NEED alcohol to artificially make us feel high temporarily.

If you want to stop drinking alcohol.... stop avoiding the suffering and the pain you might be feeling in your life. 

The more you can start to feel the lows (and this is going to require you to BE vulnerable), the more in touch with YOU you’ll be. 

When we suppress our feelings and problems, they get bottled up inside and they never go away, leaving us with low level anxiety and stress. 

When we allow ourselves to truly feel them and express them in a safe place and with people we trust, we gives ourselves the space to accept them and be WITH our feelings instead of being IN them and reacting from them.  Know that you are loved with ALL of your problems and flaws.

So don’t make the mistake of believing that life will be forever full of enjoyment, happiness and good feelings because you will eventually be disappointed when life throws a spanner in the works. Instead, when a “problem” arises, see it as an opportunity to grow and learn more about who you really are!