Some Things I Wished Sobriety Would Fix, But It Hasn’t (Yet)
Although sobriety has brought along so many benefits to my life, it hasn’t fixed every single thing — like I think I expected it to. I thought that at 10 weeks sober, I would take an inventory of things that I thought sobriety would improve, but it hasn’t. That way, I can maybe take other steps to help fix these areas of my life that I think will make me feel a bit better.
Being an Early Riser
One thing I really wanted sobriety to change was my sleeping patterns. Even in sobriety, I still struggle to fall asleep before midnight and that means waking up later around 9am. This has been a problem for me my entire life, as it takes me sometimes 2–3 hours to fall asleep. I get a lot of anxiety around going to bed, because my mind always races and keeps me awake. Then I get frustrated with myself, because I know I will not be able to wake up as early as I would like to.
Since lockdown has meant working from home, I’ve been finding it extremely difficult to wake up early when I don’t have to. I know that the only real way to wake up earlier is to go to sleep earlier, but I think I am going to try to set my morning alarm at 9pm then not touch my phone for the rest of the night. I’ve also recently gotten back into reading, which helps me unwind at night, so next week I am going to try (really try!!) to get early nights’ sleep and wake up at 7am. I’m not sure if my natural body clock just prefers going to bed later and waking up later, but on the days where I have woken up earlier, I enjoy my day 100 times more. I also might try some night time meditations and see if they work at all for me.
Anxiety
I can definitely say with extreme certainty that not drinking has severely reduced my anxiety — that is no question. I no longer have hanxiety, where I have dread and fear every Sunday and Monday from drinking so much on Friday’s. There is scientific evidence that even small amounts of alcohol can induce anxiety over a long period of time, so it makes sense that this specific anxiety has gone away.
However, I still have some social anxiety that I can clearly identify now that booze has been removed from the equation. I think a lot of the reason why I drank more than I intended to when I was out in large groups of people was because I was trying to give myself confidence and reduce that lingering anxiety I had. I am still worried that people won’t like me or that they’ll think I am awkward. Also, I loath small talk. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. I don’t care about what route you took to get to the party, or the weather forecast for the week. Having small talk stresses me out so much. I think that this social anxiety will hopefully improve now that I am having more social gatherings, since lockdown restrictions are easing. Ever since my first party, I have been drinking to get drunk, so I think I need to relearn how to socialize people without getting terrified about them judging me for something. In a way, alcohol fixed this problem and now it’s reared its ugly head again since I quit drinking. Fixing this will take a lot of personal work on my part.
Productivity
By default, not drinking and not having hangovers leaves a lot more free time for hobbies and I am generally able be more focused day-to-day. In that way, I have been more productive than I have been for a long time. I have read books, took part in a cooking challenge, decluttered my wardrobe, and much more. But when it comes to my PhD work, I have definitely been slacking.
Over the past month, I have been very hard on myself for not getting as much work done as I probably could because I have not had any self discipline. Since lockdown, I have found it very difficult to work from home and work in short spurts rather than consistently throughout the week. I feel like I have been obsessively reading addiction and recovery stories online, and listening to recovery podcasts, and so I haven’t been as productive as I would like. I think this also ties into my waking up later. I’m hoping that by changing my routine a bit to waking up early, I can be more focused and get 4–5 solid hours of work done every day. I’ve been trying to plan my days so that when I sit down at my desk to work I have some clear tasks that I can begin and work on, but this just hasn’t been working.
I have to remind myself that accomplishing work tasks is a huge dopamine hit and builds my self-esteem, making me feel better about myself. It also lifts a heavy weight off my shoulders, and I am less stressed out by small, menial tasks.
By the way, these are three things that will take a long time to improve and it won’t be as simple as I am making it out to be in this article. I feel like this entire year I have been trying to implement small and steady changes into my life, rather than trying to do everything at once like I have done in the past.
Sobriety hasn’t fixed everything in my life, no. But it has been instrumental in helping me have the time and energy to work on these little things that have been bothering me for years. and I finally feel like I am making a bit of progress. I wouldn’t be able to properly work on these things if I was still drinking, because they would have been ten times worse (especially in lockdown) and now that alcohol is eliminated I can look for other ways to help improve them.
Maybe in a few months time I can check back into these three things and give an update on any progress I have made.
I must say, another perk of sobriety is having the clarity to improve your life in other ways.
