This blog post has been on my ‘to do’ list for quite some time. I’m not usually at a loss for words when it comes things that I am passionate about . . . but this one has me stumped. Living alcohol free this past year has almost changed too much – where I don’t even know where to begin.
My relationship with alcohol has never been a good one, and I know many can relate. I started in high school, as most of us do, and quickly fell in love with it all. I fell in love with the carelessness feeling, the excitement of doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing, the ‘fun girl’ image, the false confidence it gave me. My natural demeanor is more on the shy/laid back/timid side. I’m an introvert at heart and alcohol has always made socializing easier. Always. From high school until the day that I quit in 2022. When I was younger, I always wanted to be one of the girls who was effortlessly outgoing . . . and alcohol helped me (pretend to) be that. And now that I’m older, I realize there’s nothing wrong with being someone who is more quiet in social situations.
In high school, I drank often. I grew up in a party town I would say. All of my friends were doing it just as often as I was, and I was having fun, so I never saw a problem. (Looking back I obviously wish I could turn back time and protect my adolescent brain from the long lasting effects of alcohol).
In college, the party kept going. And if you’re familiar with Castleton University (it was a State school when I went there) and Killington, Vermont well . . . you know what I’m talking about. As I’m writing this I’m realizing that many of you who end up reading this post can probably say that you have had a drink with me at some point in our lives.
The past two years I’ve read many ‘quit lit’ books and have found a lot of similarities in my own story. I was always someone who enjoyed drinking. Always someone who was down to party (before children that is), always down to get drinks, never turned down an opportunity to have some fun. I never thought I would be someone who lived alcohol free. Truly. It never even crossed my mind. But I can say that it was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I’ve learned to never say never but I don’t see any reason why I would drink again.
My sober curiosity journey began in March 2020. When the world went into lockdown, I discovered the book Quit Like A Woman by Holly Whitaker. I will never stfu about that book because it completely changed the way I thought and felt about alcohol. I went about 1 month sober before I got pregnant with Calvin . . . soooooo I was sober by default at that point lol
Fast forward to Calvin’s birth and it was traumatic to say the least. I can’t talk about my sobriety without talking about this a little bit because they go hand in hand. The day we got home from the hospital I had to go right back and leave my newborn baby. And that alone broke my heart right there. I can’t even type that out, 2 years later, without tearing up. After that, I had to undergo two procedures about 5 weeks apart. These procedures were unplanned and I only had the second one because the first one was unsuccessful. This set me up for an awful postpartum experience. Something I was unprepared for and something that completely rocked me. That spring, about 3 months postpartum, is when the postpartum anxiety started. Then that summer it morphed into postpartum depression. I felt like I was drowning and nothing I did was helping . . . including drinking alcohol.
Have you ever heard of ‘Mommy Wine Culture’? Because it’s a thing and I feel like I bought into it without even realizing it. You see so many moms on Instagram drinking wine, complaining about their kids, and telling themselves (and their mom friends) that after a hard day with the kids, you deserve it. The image that is portrayed SO STRONGLY is that you cannot survive motherhood without alcohol. And its bullshit.
I had started to develop was a pattern of drinking every night. I would say from summer 2021 to when I quit in January 2022 is when I was at my worst. Ironically this is when I was mentally at the lowest I had ever been and was also when I was drinking 1 or 2 glasses of wine a night. Definitely not coincidence there.
It wasn’t until I quit alcohol that I learned that there are 5 servings of wine in a bottle. not 4. It would only take me 2 nights to finish 1 bottle so you do the math. Looking back I feel so sad for my past self but I’m so proud I made my way out and through that. The sad part is that what I was doing is deemed normal in today’s society. One or two glasses a night doesn’t sound bad. I wasn’t blacking out, making bad decisions, or unable to take care of my children. What I was doing was dulling myself and dulling my life. I was keeping myself where I was. I was stuck in depression and turning to wine because I thought it would help me relax and unwind, when really it was making everything worse. It felt like wine at the end of the day was all I had as an “escape.” I had no help with the boys . . . no breaks, ever, and besides keeping up with my skincare routines I was doing nothing to take care of myself.
Summer 2021 I did about 8 weeks alcohol free but stopped. It wasn’t until January 2022 that I was completely done. I’ve definitely learned that if you want to stop or start doing something, it has to be when you are ready . . . otherwise it won’t work.
The moment it clicked for me was when I was at one of my best friend’s baby showers and I was so hungover. It was Sean’s birthday weekend, I was back in my hometown, and seeing a lot of my friends that I don’t get to see often. And celebrating = drinking right? (insert eye roll). I was sitting next to a friend of mine at the baby shower, complaining about how awful I felt, when she casually mentioned that she was almost 1 year sober. And that’s when I knew that living alcohol free was the life I wanted for myself. I didn’t want to be hungover at my best friend’s baby shower. barely hanging on. I was so mad at myself and never wanted to feel that way again. The next day, I quit.
To get to that point took a lot of ‘sober curiosity,’ a few failed sobriety attempts, and basically just being fed up with myself. Alcohol keeps you small. Alcohol disempowers you. I was so depressed, overweight, inflamed, impatient, sad, unhappy, you name it. I was so serious about changing my life that I was willing to remove anything that held me back.
What I have gained far outweighs anything that I might have lost. I cannot think of one negative thing about not drinking alcohol. Not one thing. When I stopped drinking alcohol it felt like the fog was lifted. I was able to start pinpointing things I knew I needed to start healing. I was so clear minded and clear headed that I was able to slowly pull myself out of the place I was in and slowly start moving forward. If you think alcohol doesn’t effect your anxiety and depression, you’re dead wrong.
I had a vision for my life. I always admired sober women, so I became one. I became more patient, more present, more clear, I became more confident, more happy, more loving. Life became infinitely better. Instead of waking up every morning groggy and cranky, I was waking up before the sun to exercise and take care of my body. I didn’t know that alcohol stays in your body for 4+ days after you drink. That meant that it was more or less always in my body. How gross. I care so deeply about health and wellness that I knew poisoning myself with alcohol didn’t align with that 🙂
As I was getting older, I noticed that the hangovers got worse and worse from less and less alcohol. And “simple” things like having a few drinks during the day left me so lazy and unmotivated for the rest of the day. I wouldn’t accomplish anything if we happened to go out on a Saturday or Sunday and have a drink or two. The things is, I love my life and routines so much that I don’t want anything to interfere with that.
I’m really proud of myself. But now that I’ve hit 1 year, it just feels like this is my life. I don’t actively have to try every day to not drink. I’ve explained this to friends before that I feel SO good not drinking that it just doesn’t appeal to me anymore. No interest. I feel like I’ve discovered a magical secret to life being sober. It truly is life changing.
I’ve learned a lot of the past year. I’ve experienced birthdays, holidays, weddings, bachelorettes, showers, traveling, meeting new people, date nights, dinners, you name it . . . alcohol free. For the most part, people are too self absorbed to notice what’s in your glass. If you ever have questions about it or need someone to talk to, I’m always here. I absolutely love the conversations I’ve had with you all about living alcohol free, or sober, whatever you want to call it.
And as always, I want to thank you all for always sending me words of encouragement and always rooting for me ❤
I also wanted to share some of info/excerpts I highlighted from my favorite ‘quit lit’ book :
Quit Like A Woman by Holly Whitaker
“In other words, we drink – for fun – the same thing we use to make rocket fuel, house paint, antiseptics, solvents, perfumes, and deodorants, and to denature (i.e. take away the natural properties of, or kill) living organisms. Which might make sense on some level if we weren’t a generation of green-minded, organic, health-conscious, truth-seeking individuals. But we are.
We read labels. We shun gluten, dairy, processed foods, and refined sugars. We buy organic. We use natural sunscreens and beauty products. We worry about fluoride in our water, smog in our air, hydrogenated oils in our food, and we debate whether plastic bottles are safe to drink from. We replace toxic cleaning products with Mrs. Meyer’s. and homemade vinegar concoctions. We do yoga, we run, we SoulCycle and FitBit, we go paleo and keto, we juice, we cleanse. We do coffee enemas and steam our yonis and drink clay and charcoal and shoot up vitamins and sit in infrared foil boxes and hire naturopaths and shamans and functional doctors and we take nootropics, and we stress about our telomeres (these are real words). We are hypervigilant about everything we put into our body, everything we do to our body. And we are proud of this. We Instagram how proud we are of this and follow Goop and Well + Good and drop forty bucks on an exercise class because there are healing crystals in the floor. The global wellness economy is estimated to be worth four trillion dollars. Four trillion dollars. We are on an endless and expensive quest for well and vitality and youth.
And we drink fucking rocket fuel.”
“Alcohol is a depressant, so if we’re using it to relax, we’re actually netting out with more anxiety . . . “
“. . . it’s one of the worst drugs we can imbibe if we are prone to depressive and anxious states”
“There’s no way in hell alcohol is keeping you looking or feeling younger.”
“No matter who takes it or how much of it they take, it leaves us worse off than before.”
“Alcohol was all a sudden an accessory to every product, service, and event everywhere.”
“. . . we are lemmings who have bought into a marketing scheme that tells us that they only way to be happy/relax/eat fancy dinners/celebrate/date/do anything worth doing as adults is to drink alcohol (ethanol).
“We are not trained to ask if we are just not particularly okay with how alcohol shows up in our life or whether we should do something about it. If we aren’t like “them” – if we aren’t alcoholic- we don’t have to worry.”
“Cured means not having to keep the beast of alcohol at bay, but being free of it altogether.”
“We’re conditioned to believe it’s normal to imbibe, abnormal to abstain, and because of this, we are not conditioned to ask the most reasonable question of all: Is alcohol getting in the way of my happiness, my life, my self-esteem?”
“Does drinking feel like it takes more than it gives? Do you feel like you’d have a better life if you never had to drink again?”
“We are becoming more disconnected from our purpose, nature, culture, and each other.”
“This is about finding the truest version of ourselves and letting that lead the way.”
“So many of us are raised to strive for perfection, as if being perfect were a worthier calling than the quest to be whole.”
“We are not only expected to be mothers, we are expected to mother. And not just children, everyone. Which is another way of saying: You are skilled at putting everyone else’s needs first because our society subtly and unsubtly tells you to. As a result, you are probably not only unskilled at putting yourself first, you are probably sick from putting yourself last.”
“The more time and energy you spend taking care of yourself, the more you have to give away.”
“Act like a person who needs to heal.”
“The moment I finally let my knees hit the floor was when I finally stopped playing at life, and every bit of good that’s come to me since then stems from this reversal of opinion on surrender. Surrender is the strongest, most subversive thing you can do in this world. It takes strength to admit you are weak, bravery to show you are vulnerable, courage to ask for help.”
“It is not a privilege to “be able to” ingest a substance that’s sabotaging your health and spirit and life in a hundred different ways.”
“This is an invitation to a better everything.”
“It is a process of leaning toward love, creating subtle shifts, and doing lots of little and big things that ultimately have a cumulative effect.”
“Alcohol to me is the same as cigarettes are to people who’ve never smoked, something that exists but something I don’t consider.”
“This is not a consequence. This is an upgrade.”
“Where we think we need more discipline, we usually need more self-love.”
“. . . you don’t have to use willpower when you don’t want to do something. You just don’t do it.”
“. . . we don’t slide into the day, we slam into it, pumping ourselves full of stimulants (news, email, social media, caffeine, carbs).”
“I started to prioritize what fed my soul over what destroyed it.”
“You can’t help but look at all the other things you’ve been running from or that you’ve been forcing.”
“When your soul awakens, you begin to truly inherit your life. You leave the kingdom of fake surfaces, repetitive talk, and weary roles and slip deeper into the true adventure of who you are and who you are called to become.”
“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.”
“One day in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”
“. . . this newfound version of herself she’d somehow always and never known.”
“At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one’s lost self.”
“I didn’t need booze before I found it, and my life today is lived as if it never existed.:
Krista McGuire 
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