Not Drinking is Hard

Not drinking is hard.

Especially when you’re grieving. But then it’s not really about the drinking, is it? It’s about what you think the drinking has to offer you. What it will help you forget. What you can ignore. What you, for a brief period of time, don’t have to feel so deeply, so hard, so painfully.

I quit drinking not because I was dependent, but because I had made of drinking a habit that was no longer serving me.

Now, as I’m grieving loss after loss in my life, I realize that perhaps I was more dependent than I thought.

Now, when I feel the sort of heartache that doesn’t leave my body for days on end, as I grieve and breathe and try to accept the loss of control that sitting in grief demands, I find a glass of white wine suddenly sounds so enticing.

I watch characters in a show sitting around a bonfire drinking to the loss of a loved one, and I envy their escape. I envy their freedom. I envy that they get to do what they want without worrying about the consequences. Or perhaps they know the consequences. They just choose to drink anyway.

(How many times after a bad hangover have I said, “I’m never drinking again,” only to carry on the next time there’s a party, a happy hour, a girl’s night out?)

I used to drink so often that I never noticed the difference between when I was drinking for fun and when I was drinking to self-soothe.

Now that I’m not drinking at all, I’m noticing that just about the only time I crave alcohol is the time when my grief is pinning me down, and I feel like I just need something to help me breathe.

But alcohol isn’t an oxygen mask. At best, it’s a ventilator— an illusion, a neutral thing that keeps you barely alive. At worst, it’s poison, robbing you of years of your life, turning your insides out, clogging up your healing and growth, and smudging your understanding of, and connection to, Self.

For me, the most challenging part about sitting in your grief is that there’s nothing to learn while you do it. The lesson is in remaining in your body. In not trying to escape, or trying to control. That’s where the healing is, in just allowing your feelings to express themselves without silencing them, drowning them out, or battering them with something like alcohol.

And that’s hard.

Sometimes I wish I could have a drink, even though I know it would be a mistake, just so I can feel like I don’t have to have such control over my life all the time. In that way, screwing up would be a relief. A breath of fresh air.

And then, about two seconds later, it would be a massive, massive regret.

The grief won’t be here forever. But grace will. I’m learning to offer myself more and more of it as this painful journey goes on. I’m getting to know myself in ways I never have before. I’m learning to trust myself, and building bridges over canyons that have separated my past from my present for far too long.

Not drinking is hard.

But it’s also a gift. A practice. A lifeline.

It’s choosing to water the flowers, rather than the weeds so that someday, I will have a garden. All of my own making.