Two years, two whole years.

Happy two hear soberversary to me! I wanted to write something to celebrate. But what to write about? Well, obviously it would be about how I got sober after forty years of grog having its foot on my throat. It would be about how my life has changed, about how fucking miraculous it is that I’ve actually managed to do this thing. About what a surprise this sobriety gig is. About how, at the beginning, you don’t really know what you’re getting yourself into. About how you wish and pray - which I took to at the end such was my desperation - to be able to stop drinking, how you imagine things must be better if you could only do that one thing. Give the bloody stuff away. Stop it, when at that stage it feels like a freight train out of control. Like it has a life if its own and you are just an unwilling passenger, hanging on for grim death. Yes, it would be about all of that.

I won’t rehash my story, it’s on the Tribe website if you care to read it. I might publish it here at some stage. I’ve learned, by listening carefully to my friends in the Tribe, that it’s a common tale and many of us have lived some version of it. We’ve lived in trauma, in fear, in anxiety and in hopelessness. Some of us are abuse survivors. Perhaps what we all have in common is we’ve been battered about by life and at some stage or another alcohol seemed to be an answer. Until it wasn’t. Until it became one very big question - what in the fuck am I doing to myself, and how can I stop doing it? Similarly, I won’t rehash the steps you need to take to stop.  Wiser people than me have written widely on this topic, including Janet and team at Tribe Sober. That is where I learned to do it. How to build another life, how to be vulnerable enough to ask for help (this is big, I’ve never in my life been able to do this, having been taught as a child that to speak up is DANGER), what to pay attention to, what to read, listen to, think about. In short, how to give up drinking.

What else to say? Well, by far the biggest and most important thing I’ve learnt in my sober two years is, I think, what I will talk about. You my friend, wherever you are, whoever you may be, at whatever age you’re at now, CAN give up alcohol. You can give up alcohol completely. Believe it.  First step. Second step, see above.

What does it mean? Everything, just everything. Learning to live without alcohol, when it’s been a millstone around your neck for forty years, means absolutely everything to me. It’s freedom for sure, it’s a freedom I’ve never had ever. It’s a source of pride. It’s hard to do, very hard. Not many people can face up to it, probably fewer can actually do the work of learning to live without it. I would guess that fewer still have the fortitude, the courage, to stay the course, to do what it takes to achieve the final step. Being sober and being happy about it. So happy you stop fearing it will return and steal you away in the night. That’s taken me most of two years but I think I’m there now. Fuck alcohol, I’m finally in charge.

Although I found sobriety bloody liberating right from my first attempts, still I would wistfully look back. I would imagine myself sipping wine in the beautiful Australian sunshine (Tim Minchin even wrote a song about that, it’s called ‘White Wine in the Sun’, one of my favourite Xmas songs but I digress).  Slow learner perhaps, I would ‘wistfully look back’ for a long time to come. And of course, as has been pointed out to me by my wonderful plain speaking friends on zoom each week, wistfully looking back is code for bullshit. What I’m really talking about is getting well and truly sauced on two bottles of white wine in the sun. Utter, utter bullshit. There is my choice - doing the work to stay sober or, behind box number two, returning to heavy, soul destroying, mind and life numbing drinking. Dreaming of some utopia in between the two - bullshit. Thank you PJ, thank you Lizzie. 

In the beginning sobriety feels amazing. A-MAZ-ING!! Like putting down a boulder you’ve carried around for decades. In my twenties, thirties and forties I often thought ‘I should put this god damn boulder down’. But I’d carried it for so long that it felt welded to me and so I continued. I’d say ‘no drinking through the week’ boulder. I’d say ‘measure each glass of wine and add soda’ boulder. I’d say ‘just have one bottle and no more’ boulder. I guess I carried the load until I couldn’t carry it anymore. Until I was too tired, too sad. Until, dare I say it, I got bolder!

Eventually A-MAZ-ING becomes your everyday. And everyday can be exciting, wonderful, boring, depressing, stressful, beautiful, magical. But as long as I don’t drink, I’m free as a freakin bird. Two years in ‘A-MAZ-ING’ still makes a regular appearance. Waking up and feeling what I feel, but not feeling ill from booze is amazing. Getting home late and making tea instead of opening more wine is amazing. Knowing I’ll have energy for whatever life throws at me is amazing. Giving up alcohol at 57 and being happy and proud about it is really fucking amazing.

So that’s me. I’m a 59 year old Australian. I’m a sexual abuse survivor. I was broken by alcohol for 40 years and now I’m not broken. When I first joined Tribe Sober a fellow traveller told me I was brilliant and brave. God, that sustained me through many times when I’d cry tears of frustration and heartache. When I’d throw my hands up and think ‘why, after weeks, after months, is this so bloody hard’. Brilliant and brave made me try for just one more day. Brilliant and brave made me ask myself ‘how can I continue to do this even though all I want to do is drink’. Brilliant and brave saw me go for therapy, start meditating, try hypnotherapy, journal and journal some more, buy another book, listen to another podcast, send countless SOS messages to the Tribe. Countless. Brilliant and brave made me open my heart to what I truly wanted and had needed for decades. Love for myself, an end to the abuse I was serving myself in a wine glass. People like me. People to say ‘yes, this is shitty. Yes, you can do another day’.

Brilliant and brave. I am. You are too. Believe me.

Happy TWO YEARS to me. Happy, happy days. A-MAZ-ING days.