How I created a life I didn't want to escape from

Part 2 of how to cope with cravings

“I can sum up the extraordinary transformation I’ve experienced since quitting alcohol in one sentence: I love my life now.”

Last time I wrote to you I shared some ideas for how to manage cravings by meeting them in the moment. Some tips and a process for what to do when a craving arises that don’t involve willpower or distraction.

Today I have less of a ‘how to’ and more of a story. This is the story of how I created a life I didn’t want to escape from.

What my life used to look like

When I look back at what my life was like in my 20s, I realise that so much of my suffering was created by beliefs I held about myself and about how I thought alcohol was helping me.

I had really low self-worth. I thought that I wasn’t a likeable or lovable person. I carried huge amounts of shame: I believed there was something dark and rotten inside me and if anyone discovered it they would hate me, reject me and abandon me. I didn’t believe I was worthy of love and care.

All these beliefs meant that I didn’t treat myself with love and care. Instead, my focus was on trying to escape from my thoughts and feelings. To try and numb out the shame and loneliness. Alcohol seemed to provide me with some relief from that pain.

I believed that alcohol was helping me. I believed it was bringing me the relief and comfort I longed for. I believed it was getting me through life - helping me to survive. I believed there was no other option than to drink every evening. I believed that, despite the many negative consequences of drinking alcohol, the benefits outweighed the cons.

I believed I needed alcohol. And I didn’t believe that life would be better without it.

There were glimmers. I was in a relationship with a man (now my husband) who loved me for who I was, which I’d never felt before. I was drawn to being in nature as much as I could: I didn’t have to pretend or perform, and I felt safe among the trees. I was also excited by learning, literature, art. I was passionate about causes that mattered to me, hence working for so many years in the non-profit sector. I cared deeply about other people. I wanted to make a difference in the world. I wanted to be healthier, I wanted to feel better, I wanted to live my life fully alive - !

And yet.

Alcohol - this substance I thought was helping me - was taking me away from all that mattered to me. Alcohol was changing my brain chemistry, so I was often very down, or worse: spiralling into dark despair. So much of that suffering was completely created by the alcohol.

I began drinking when I was in huge emotional pain and it seemed like the solution. But very quickly, because of the effect it had on my biology, alcohol magnified my misery and then became the cause of most of it. It prevented me from healing from the reasons I started drinking in the first place. Of course I couldn’t bring myself love and care, or accept the love and care of others, because I was altering my brain with a poisonous chemical every night.

My sleep was ruined by the booze. You can’t have a good night’s sleep when you drink, even with just one drink. Nowadays, if I have one night’s bad sleep I feel incredibly depressed the next day, so that must have been a huge factor contributing to me feeling so unhappy for those years.

Alcohol was taking me away from what I needed. What I longed for. What mattered to me most. It was like an abusive friend: to begin with it felt like a warm hug of comfort, the one I’d been so longing for as a teenager after my mum died. But gradually its cruelty was revealed. It magnified by self-hatred. It made me believe that I was going to feel miserable for the rest of my life. It made me believe that I was a rotten, defective person and that I didn’t deserve love and care. And it made me believe I needed it.

I tried to stop drinking, but I couldn’t manage more than a few days without it. Because by using willpower, I was trying to force myself to stop drinking something that my brain believed I needed for my survival. As essential as water. I didn’t know a way out.

And then - as you may know - I was granted a miracle in April 2018, when I was 31 years old. I read This Naked Mind by Annie Grace and my life changed forever. You can read more about that here:

What my life is like now

As you may have heard me say before: sobriety has given me a second chance at life. Back when I was drinking and full of hopelessness and despair, I had no idea that the life I have now was possible for me. There were periods back then when I didn’t even want to be alive anymore. So to have what I have now is a miracle that I am grateful for every day.

I am truly free from alcohol because I have no desire to drink. My brain never offers it as a suggestion. This is because I went through a long process of unlearning all the ways I thought it was helping me and getting to a point where I realised that alcohol is never, ever the answer. It never, ever meets my needs. And the cost of using it to briefly escape from feelings is extraordinarily high.

So it means I go to pubs, wedding, parties and the idea of drinking doesn’t occur to me. I feel stress, sadness, shame, anger and the idea of drinking doesn’t occur to me. I walk past the supermarket alcohol aisle and the adverts for champagne and the idea of drinking doesn’t occur to me.

This is freedom. Peace. One of the greatest gifts I’ve ever been given.

I live in a beautiful town called Lewes where I have built a community of friends that I never imagined was possible for me. My favourite way to spend time with people is one-to-one: going for a walk in the countryside (which I can be in in just a 10 minute walk from my front door) or having a coffee. I’m also part of a book club, a monthly women’s circle, and I do strength training with delightful women twice a week. Sometimes I go wild swimming with friends. I work flexibly so I can pick up my son from school three times a week. Me, my son and husband mostly spend our weekends in nature with friends and family.

I am a mother to a wild-spirited five-year-old boy and I have parented him in ways that have required sacrifice, but are aligned with my beliefs about children’s needs for attachment, attunement, comfort and care. I couldn’t be the mum my son needs if I was drinking alcohol.

My husband and I prioritise the things that matter to us: friendship, family, community, health, joy, presence, purpose and connection to the natural world. We are living according to our values, and what brings us fulfilment, rather than ideas of success and achievement that were passed down to us when we were kids.

I am also continuing to learn about and embrace my unique brain, personality and needs. I’m a highly-sensitive and I am probably neurodivergent. I know for sure that I am not an extrovert. I really don’t like parties. I love one-to-one chats and deep conversations. I find small talk excruciating. I need plenty of time alone.

I feel things deeply and often intensely. I am passionate and expressive. I love change and novelty. I love learning. I have very low energy in the afternoons and going out in the evening is rarely appealing to me. Sleep is everything to me: the single most significant factor that determines whether I feel cheerful, optimistic and capable or depressed and unable to think straight.

These are all, to varying degrees, things I have hated about myself or thought were signs there was something deeply wrong with me. I now know that these are perfectly normal ways of being a human, and that everyone is different - just as we have evolved to be. I treat myself with respect, understanding and compassion now. This was not possible when I was pouring poison into my body every night.

How did I get here?

Ah, the golden question. Originally I wrote a list of things in answer to this question which included: reading and listening to podcasts to learn about how alcohol works, therapy, coaching, practicing gratitude, yoga, walks in nature, self-compassion, treating myself with love… the list goes on.

But how did I choose all these things? How did I know that that’s what I needed to do? I had a north star; a guiding light that kept me on the right track. At it’s heart my transformation was this: I moved towards living a life aligned with my values and beliefs.

Not the values and beliefs of my parents. Not the values and beliefs of my teachers at school. Not the values and beliefs of capitalism, patriarchy and all the many harmful belief-systems entangled within them. My values and beliefs - which I had had since I was a child but I had been systematically told to believe were wrong.

• So I moved from the belief that my value as a human was based on success and achievement, to believing that all humans have inherent value and worth. That we are all lovable no matter what grades we get, job we have, money we have.

• I moved from the belief that vulnerability is weakness and that falling apart is the most shameful thing you can do as a person - to believing that life will bring us to our knees many times over. And things will happen that are totally out of our control. And we will fall apart and need to ask for help and need so much love, care and understanding to get back on our feet again. Falling apart is human and normal and part of growing and learning.

• I moved from believing the world was uncaring and meaningless and that I was totally alone, to believing that the world is loving and people care about me and if I open my heart to it there is so much love just waiting for me to receive it.

• I moved from the belief that mistakes are the worst thing you can do, to knowing that mistakes are essential to learning.

• From believing that rest is a sign of laziness and weakness, to knowing that rest is an essential human need.

• From believing I should treat myself as a machine and override my body’s needs, to knowing humans are animals and we live rhythmically and we have needs and we cannot treat ourselves like machines without consequences.

• From believing that crying is weak and shameful to knowing that crying is a beautiful and necessary expression of sadness, grief and love.

I came home to myself. I listened to my heart. I’m living life on my own terms.

Radical self-care and wider change

Some important things to note here. A) I am still working on many of these beliefs: we can’t just ‘choose’ to change our beliefs with a snap of our fingers. But we can be clear on what we truly believe, understand that those other beliefs have helped us in the past, and keep gently and purposefully moving towards a life that is aligned with our values.

B) I am certainly not saying ‘Oh, just change your mindset! All your suffering is in your head!’ at all. It is essential in these conversations to acknowledge the harmful systems of oppression that disproportionately affect different people. Capitalism is the over-arching system, and it is upheld by and intertwined with harmful systems of oppression including patriarchy, white supremacy, ableism, homophobia and many others. These are real and we can all work towards challenging them and dismantling them to create freedom for everyone.

In her excellent book Women Who Work Too Much Tamu Thomas explains that self-care is essential for personal and collective change. She writes:

‘I’m talking about choosing yourself as the first step of radical self-care that enables us to shift to social care based on empathy, cooperation, and collective welfare that will become the foundation of a culture that is socially just.’

She talks about ‘regenerative self-care’:

‘Regenerative self-care requires introspection, compassion, and an unwavering commitment to actively engaging in regulating practices and habits that nourish your body, mind and soul.

Capitalism thrives on your dysregulation and distraction. Nourished women who are in charge of their attention are a threat because we don’t merely survive - we choose to live, love and work with intention.’

I mean - wow. That is the rallying cry we need right now.

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What are your values?

An exercise I always invite my coaching clients to do is a really simple but profound one.

1. Divide a piece of paper into two columns.

2. On the one side write down the values and beliefs you have been given by your parents, caregivers, teachers, wider society.

3. Then on the other side write: what do you believe? What is important to you? What matters to you?

Some ideas to uncover what these are:

• What do you feel strongly about? What makes you angry? What moves you to tears?

• What change do you think needs to happen in the world? How could you be part of that change?

• What did you love as a kid? What mattered to you when you were a kid?

• What do you love about yourself?

• What do you love about your friends and family?

• Who do you admire or look up to and why? What values do they embody?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments: what matters to you? What beliefs did you discover when you quit drinking?

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If you’re new here - welcome. I’m so grateful to you for reading my words. I’m Ellie: a sober coach, mentor, mother and writer. I’ve been joyfully sober since December 2019. In A Little Fantastic Sober Life I share personal stories, supportive practices and information about alcohol to support you on your sobriety journey.

I also offer:
- 1:1 sober coaching
- monthly women’s sobriety circles

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