The Struggle Within…

Sober is the natural default state of the human being. We’re not meant to be drunk to function properly. Yes, there are all the medical debates around women drinking while pregnant and the impact on the child. As yet, however, I am yet to read a story about someone giving birth to a drunk baby.

Many people go through their lives and have no issues with alcohol. It doesn’t even appear on their radar. They may have a drink on a very special occasion but will think nothing more of it. Alcohol simply isn’t a factor in their lives.

Then there are the rest of us that to one degree or another like drinking alcohol. This includes people who used to drink, don’t anymore, but still like alcohol. Me, for example.

I’m trying to get to the bottom of the situation that I’ve evolved into. I had to give up drinking. It was bad for me in every way and it was well on the road to killing me. It was also bad for those around me. 

Now I live in the land of sobriety.

At Large In The Land of Sobriety
The truth… from a certain point of view.medium.com

This isn’t the same as living in the world of a non-drinker. There is, I have discovered, a world of difference between a non-drinker and an ex-drinker. To begin with, I have to force myself to largely live separately from societal drinking culture.

The drinking culture in the UK represents normality. This isn’t some shunned element of society, it’s front and centre. Non-drinkers are viewed as some form of anomaly and ex-drinkers are viewed as weak. Failed because they couldn’t handle their booze. Worse still they’re viewed as boring because in this country having a good time generally means getting drunk.

Except I haven’t given up on having a good time. If anything, my life is more fulfilling than ever. I just have a different definition of a good time; life is no longer an endless party that I can’t remember much about. Looking at you Tory MPs.

So, here I am as a ‘boring’ ex-drinker living in the Land of Sobriety. What it’s not correct to say is that I’ve rejoined normal society. Maybe it’s because abstinence is a fairly new condition for me, but I find myself living in the twilight world of alcohol avoidance. 

Now, I will stress at this moment that this experience is mine and mine alone. I don’t know what many other ex-drinkers experience after they give up. I’ve confirmed to myself that I have extraordinary willpower. I simply quit alcohol and won’t go back as long as the present parameters of my life endure.

However as already noted, this existence is not the same as being a non-drinker. I would imagine anyone that didn’t bother to start drinking in the first place wouldn’t give a second thought to turning down the offer of an alcoholic drink at a social gathering. 

I on the other hand seem to feel the need to stress that I’ve given up. This is probably more overt when in the company of people that have known me since before I quit. When in new company, I tend to just order something non-alcoholic. Perhaps with existing friends, I feel I need to counter their disbelief that I’ve actually stopped. 

It brings to the fore how people perceive you in a social sense. Towards the end of my drinking days, I started noticing how I drank more than anyone I was with. It’s not difficult to believe that other people noticed too. Anyone I’ve known for a while seems to simply expect me to drink when we’re gathered together for a ‘good time’.

Should I feel entitled to feel like a non-drinker instead of an ex-drinker? Or do I have to stay in the limbo of “might relapse at any moment”? Because that’s where I think a lot of ex-drinkers find themselves. I’ve encountered people that have made a point of stating they’ve been sober for ten, twenty even thirty years. 

One might feel they declare this as a form of encouragement. In saying sobriety can be the state of decades I can take heart that my drinking can be left far behind. I’m not encouraged. I fought the Battle of Booze Hill and appear to have won. I’d like to put up my sword and go home. However, it seems I still have to keep wearing my armour.

If I’m still counting days of sobriety into their thousands am I ever really free of alcohol? Am I to be defined by the duration of my time as an ex-drinker? My preference is to move on from my drinking days. I accept I have an addiction, I’m unclear how keeping score changes that fact.

The risk I fear is continuing to be defined by the fact that I used to consume unhealthy amounts of alcohol. This is the lot of the ex-drinker. The challenge is to leave that lifestyle and drinking culture behind.

It’s not enough for me to feel lucky that I escaped if all I do is use that act to define how I approach my state of sobriety. The implication is that I have downgraded my life. That really, secretly I’d like to be able to drink as much as I want without consequence. That I’d go back in a heartbeat if I thought I could get away with it.

This is why I’ve decided to stop describing myself as an ex-drinker, former alcoholic or sober. I’m just a person that doesn’t have alcohol in their life and doesn’t raise an eyebrow in its presence. You know, normal, whatever that is…

I’m not going to die in outer space. Not least because I have no way to get there. This has the same likelihood that I’ll ever know what normal means.

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