In the novel Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, one character tells another, ‘There could be good shit up ahead; don’t rule it out’. My version of this quote would read, ‘There IS good shit up ahead; don’t rule it out”. This quote got me thinking about how so many of us can’t imagine that a life without alcohol will be okay, let alone better! And yet, I have never heard a single sober person say they regret getting sober! Alcohol lied to me, and it’s lying to you too. Alcohol reinforced my fears and told me I was not good enough. Alcohol told me I needed it to make up for my shyness and lack of self-esteem. Yet the more I drank, the more my self-worth plummeted. I know I am not alone in this experience. Although alcohol is a stimulant in the short term, drinking regularly acts as a depressant and increases anxiety. I thought the self-loathing, anxious, ‘not enough’ aspects of my personality were integral to who I was. But they weren’t. Turning to alcohol to cope with that inner critic was a bad decision. Drinking regularly through my teens and twenties only served to reinforce my negative self-image and tell me that my dreams were not achievable. And I believed it. Ten years into sobriety I am stunned when I compare how differently I approached life before and after I stopped drinking. During my twenties, when my social drinking was ostensibly under control, my self-esteem was on the floor. I dismissed career paths because I had zero confidence in my abilities. I didn’t get a single job offer after the interview because I was too nervous to answer the interviewers’ questions competently.
By comparison, I got the first job I went to interview for after getting sober! I felt a little anxious, but nothing I couldn’t handle. Sitting in an interview and thinking to myself, ‘I can do this job just as well as the next person, was an incredible feeling! I got this job just two months into sobriety. It took only two months of being alcohol-free for my self-worth and confidence levels to improve so drastically! When you think you can’t live without alcohol, you are so wrong! When you discount a future that you can’t even begin to visualise, you are making a terrible mistake. It can be scary at the beginning, but please believe me when I say that sobriety will improve all aspects of your life infinitely! A year into sobriety, I moved from the UK to Australia. I sought work in the fitness industry and bought and ran a small gym. The members trusted and respected me. They called me a ‘leader’! I became a successful businesswoman and won awards, including the National Australian Franchising Award! This life is a ‘life beyond my wildest dreams’ because even my wildest dreams could not conjure this up! When I was drinking, I would never have believed in this future for myself or in this future version of myself. Removing alcohol allowed me to discover the real me and believe in myself. There’s no stopping me, and there’ll be no stopping you either!
