I am sober for the second time in my twenties and this time I know it has to stick. I even bought colored pencils and a coloring book, if that shows any indication of how committed I am. I have been reflecting on my drinking habits of the last six years and pondering the question that has been heavy on my mind this year. What is the nature of my relationship with alcohol? Last year I was sober for one hundred days, that was the first time in six years I had been sober for more than a week. It was life altering, I had never been happier in all of my adult life. Now I am still twenty six, its been five months since that fateful tuesday where I picked up a six pack, and I want to be happy again.

My relationship with alcohol throughout my twenties could be described as codependent. Everynight for years I drank to get drunk, I know now I was out running all sorts of things, but I lost the race everytime. It became something my roommate and I just did, every single night. We worked in fast paced restaurants for years and it was the way everyone took the edge off. Going with your coworkers to a dive bar after a grueling shift serving other people, was just the way things were done. However, post covid, we weren’t going out to bars, we weren’t having people over. We were just sitting on our couch drinking every day. For me it seemed a much more insidious habit, because when we eventually moved our separate ways, I took the handle of bourbon with me.

I don’t know how to explain that for the first four years of this journey I never once thought about my alcohol consumption. It was just what I did. Everyone I saw on a regular basis had some sort of vice and mine was just a bottle of wine or a few whiskey cokes. How bad could it be? There were no interventions, no warning signs flashing in big bold red, it was just a part of my daily routine. I never drove after I drank, I never got angry or violent, I just got depressed and anxious. The only way to get rid of the anxiety was my “taking the edge off” after work drinks.

So here I am one week and a day sober, I had no terrible physical side effects from quitting cold turkey. I feel truly blessed to be able to say that physically I feel a lot better. Mentally, it’s a rollercoaster so far and I have little desire to do anything. I know it’s a journey to falling in love with life again alcohol free and I am prepared to solider through. I mean hell I bought the coloring book.