Are you sober-curious?

I’m 5'8" and I have blue eyes. Both true. Certainly not correlated.

I drank. And I had a nagging feeling that my life was off track. I assumed that while they were both true, they were not correlated.

Or if they were correlated, my stuckness made it more likely that I drank.

I. Was. Wrong.

What I learned was that it wasn’t my stalled out life that caused my drinking. It was my drinking that was causing my life to be stuck.

I was stuck in a cycle of drinking and remorse. Drinking and hangovers. Drinking and drama. People who were moving ahead were not caught in that cycle, freeing them to take different actions.

Here’s my story. Can you relate to any of it?

I loved to drink. I loved feeling pleasantly numb.

I associated drinking with having fun, being social, and being a bit more wild than I really am. That enticing vision of a more fun and wild me was so compelling, it drove me to drink. I loved feeling drunk.

The day-to day reality, however, looked different. I drank when I was exhausted on Thursday nights. At home. Wine out of a coffee mug.

I drank alone. I drank with others. I drank out. I drank when there was booze. “With a fox. In a box.”

Many times when I started drinking, my “off” switch disappeared and an insatiable desire for more possessed me. I flew over the slightly buzzed zone so fast, I didn’t even had time to wave. If I could have lived there, life would have been great.

My slightly more wild version of myself became a wildly out of control version, resulting in cringe-worthy memories of making out in a bar with wildly inappropriate men and worse.

The consequences included:

Wondering where my car was.

Reconstructing whom I’d pissed off last night.

Feeling like shit.

Being anxious all day.

A dull sense of depression.

Starting to see “drinkers’ lines” on my face.

An earnest declaration, “Never again.”

And of course, a sip of wine would make all of this disappear. By the evening, I’d started to feel better. And perhaps I was exaggerating how bad it had been. So I’d open another bottle.

Rinse. Repeat.

I made up rules about when, where, what and how much I would drink.

No wine in the house.

Alternate glasses of water between my glasses of wine.

No hard liquor.

Only hard liquor.

Only on weekends.

Only on special occasions.

Never alone.

Only alone.

And nothing worked. If only I could have stopped at the third glass of wine!

My body reacts to alcohol differently than most people’s.

Many times the desire for alcohol is all-consuming. It feels like I’m possessed or controlled by a spell. Like Sleeping Beauty being drawn to touch the spindle on the spinning wheel, I’m drawn to that first glass. And once that starts, I am possessed by a need for more.

Of course, this doesn’t happen every time. And that is what makes it so freaking confusing. How can I really have a problem if it doesn’t happen every time?

I learned that it’s the first sip that is the problem. Not the third glass of wine.

As a friend of mine says, “It’s not the caboose that kills you.” And “If you don’t drink, you won’t get drunk.”

Meanwhile, this is what my non-drinking life looked like.

My career was stalled.

I’d seen a lot of success early in my career. But in my 30’s, my progress stopped. I complained. A lot. About how my potential wasn’t being rewarded. Simultaneously, my bosses were discussing whether or not to fire me.

2. The quality of the men I dated was on a serious decline.

My dating resume included guys who’d been convicted of SEC violations. Guys who hired the mob to enforce their business dealings. Guys who wore sports coats to bars. (Which of these is worse? Not quite sure.)

3. My life was constant chaos.

I had lots of drama with my sisters. My ex-husbands. My co-workers. All of it was their fault (naturally).

I didn’t make progress in my life because I was caught in a vicious cycle of doing the same thing over and over again.

After I gave up the “drinking rules” and made a simple decision to not ever pick up the first glass, the cycle became virtuous.

No drinking meant space to learn and do new things.

No drinking meant seeking help for the mental health challenges that were at the root of my issues.

No drinking gave me the space to not make more drama, and to take responsibility for my part in causing it.

If you’re wondering whether or not you have a real problem with alcohol, ask yourself which parts of my story you identify with.

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Join The 30-Day Turn Being Dry into a Juicy AF* Life Email Challenge by clicking here. (*alcohol-free. sheesh! what were YOU thinking it meant???????)