I have been alcohol free for 600 days. 600 glorious days of easy sobriety. 86 weeks of tea drinking calm. 20 months of wholesome living. One most notable result of such easy, calm, wholesome living is the increased feeling of stability and balance. Being sober has mellowed me out. And what that means is I don’t have such raucous crazy highs but I also don’t have the bummer, fear-ridden lows. Today, I have been reflecting on the relief of no longer having those gut-wrenching lows but also the grief of saying goodbye to a fun chapter of my life.
Closing the door on those days sometimes feels hard. Sometimes I just want to laugh until I pee myself or get asked to calm down and quieten down by a bar tender (something which used to happen a lot). I remember one particular time in Camden, London, a group of work mates and I had headed to the local pub to drink rosé, smoke Marlboro lights and hang out. And man oh man, did we hang. We sat at a large table near the bar and smoked and drank and laughed and smoked and drank and laughed until the bar tender told us that if we didn’t keep it down he would have to ask us to leave. Good times!
I have so so so many memories of the fun drunk times. Here on this blog, I tend to stay pretty negative on the woes of drinking. But the truth is, my boozy days had just as many highs as lows! So much fun, adventure, wild nights and fun morning debriefs. Twenties spent in London living the life and trying to take it all in my stride. But as I got older, the rough mornings and not-so-jolly capers out-weighed the fun ones. I started to stumble more, take it less in my stride and develop the scars to show for it. With age comes responsibility and I just couldn’t seem to make that work alongside drinking.
On the Sober Curious group on Facebook, I have seen many posts where people talk about grieving their old lives as they give up drinking. And while the addictive qualities of ethanol are of course creating a lot of that reluctance, I can completely relate, even 600 days in. Considering that you’ll never have a wild work night out again, or a boozy afternoon in a beer garden, or let loose with your friends on the weekend is definitely a sad realization and I feel some level of nostalgic sorrow that my wilder days are over.
When those moments of reflection creep in, I try and focus on the more freeing elements of my new alcohol free life; the balance and stability, lack of volatility. While this shift may have reduced my wild, carefree times it has also reduced my unstable, emotional times. With the alcohol-free lifestyle I now live, comes a lack of volatility that needs to be rejoiced. Whether it was because I was tired, hungover or on a ‘come down’, my old lifestyle had me frequently angry and short-tempered. And then guilt-ridden for being angry and short-tempered.
I was on a R-O-L-L-E-R-C-O-A-S-T-E-R.
And now I’m not.
So, goodbye Highs, goodbye Lows. Hello Mellow.
To celebrate my new even keel, let’s try a little NA fizz. A Dry Secco (non-alcoholic prosecco) from Gruvi. Gruvi has a number of delicious alcohol-free options on their website getgruvi.com but it is their best-selling non-alcoholic bubbly that first caught my eye. They describe it as delicate, floral and semi-dry with a touch of tartness. A sparkling wine with zero regrets. Each nifty little bottle contains 0.0% alcohol, 10 ounces of yumminess and just 50 calories. It’s also completely gluten-free and sulfate-free. Cheers to that.
Ingredients
- Gruvi Dry Secco
- A fabulous wine glass or flute
Instructions
- Chill well. NA bubbly needs to be super cold to help with the mind-trickery and enjoyment.
- Pour into classy glassware
- Enjoy! 🥂
While I enjoyed Gruvi’s Dry Secco, my favorite NA bubbly is still St Regis Sparkling Brut which I write about in my New Day blog post. When it comes to Gruvi, I am excited to try their handy cans of Dry Red wine which describes itself as full-bodied, fruity and bold. “Everything you want in a red wine, it makes the perfect companion to a weeknight steak dinner or rich chocolate dessert, with none of the hangover in the morning. This velvety smooth dealcoholized wine has a balance of tannins and a hint of oak and coffee that lingers on the palate”. Add. To. Cart.
Rachel, this one resonates for me more than any to date. I’ve never had any particular issues with alcohol but as a young woman I lived with very intense mood swings and was addicted to a super charged high achieving lifestyle. When I finally crashed and burned in my early 30s I had to confront all the childhood trauma that had led me to where I was. But the hardest part- and it’s still hard- was tempering the constant lure of the ‘highs.’ I liked being a person who could leap tall buildings at a single bound! There’s a lot of societal support for over achieving, even when it’s visibly self-destructive. And I loved having important missions in life, much too important to step back from into any hum drum exploration of my personal needs. In the 30+ years I’ve been consciously grappling with this, I’ve learned the value of maintaining an even keel, but still hear the line from “Desperado” in my mind, “You’re losing all your highs and lows, ain’t it funny how the feeling goes away…”