A month down.

A month down, already! Wowsers. It’s flown by.

For a few years, I suffered from invasive thoughts. These thoughts were mainly things like “what is going to happen when the world ends” and “what’s the meaning of life?” (I know right? Start with an easy one!) These thoughts were so debilitating that I literally didn’t have room in my head for anything else, and if I did happen to forget them for a few minutes, someone would only have to say something tangential and I would be off again, spiralling into this awful philosophical pit that I could neither reason my way out of or make sense of. This went on for at least two years. It was horrific. The more I tried to get rid of the thoughts, the stronger they became. Then, almost as suddenly as they arrived, they vanished. I can’t pinpoint when, or why, but they just stopped.

For a while it was a little bit strange. I was actually thinking about other things, I remembered things that prople told me, I was sleeping better. It didn’t take long for this to feel normal, even though the previous two years had been so different.

This is how I am starting to feel about not drinking. I am starting to settle into it now. It’s starting to feel normal. I am getting excited about the prospect of going out, of being able to drive and not have to worry about taxi’s. I have booked a couple of mini holidays and no longer have the dread of “well what am I going to do on holiday if I can’t drink nice wine?!”

When those awful thoughts finally stopped, for a long time afterwards I thought I was a massive weirdo. It’s only recently that I have learned that this is a recognised illness. It’s called existential OCD and is surprisingly not that uncommon. Just learning this was a huge relief. Not that it makes much difference now; I still had to experience it. BUT…. that knowledge has meant I now understand it, and it has normalised it. It has enabled me to label it, file it, and move on.

What I find concerning is the label that is so commonly given to giving up drinking of it being hard. One particular ‘give up drinking’ book I read has a section in the back which has plastered in big red letters BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF EMERGENCY! In this section is lots of tips on what to do if you fail, and how to ‘survive’ a night out…. How to survive a night out?!

This doesn’t sit well with me. I don’t know about anyone else, but I go out to have fun, regardless of whether I drink or not. It’s not a matter of surviving. I have read alot of addiction literature out of interest, and the majority of it has the same overarching message:

“quitting is hard, don’t be surprised or annoyed with yourself if you fail this time”

Hmmmmmm… That’s not really a positive start is it?

I still don’t know if I will ‘file’ drinking after my year off, or if I even want to. At the moment, that doesn’t matter. But what I do know is that I am enjoying the experience so far. I genuinely am. I am also enjoying the amount of discussion it is opening up with friends, and people who have stumbled upon the blog who I would not have met otherwise. I get messages daily from people offering words of support, book recommendations, and mocktail recipes, which is amazing. When I get round to it I will add some pages to my site with extra reading and other bits and bobs, but for now, a snippet to think about:

Everything and anything that creates a massive change or shift in mindset or habits will be hard. But being told it will be, and being told that failure is inevitable, is not helpful. Yes, failure is a possibility for sure, but that prospect does not need to be highlighted. Highlight instead the benefits of having support, the numerous benefits of making that change, and how at some point in the future, it will become normality.

Have a great weekend everyone 🙂