Sobriety top 5: Finally ditching beer forever

TLDR: Here in Spain, drinking is normalised and sobriety is not. Working as a DJ, I am in an environment where drinking on the job is accepted. I exert control over what and how much I drink, but it is time to bid adieu to the beer. For my own self-respect, I am taking an extended break from alcohol, starting this May Day. I will blog the journey, starting with the health consequences of drinking on the eyes, the brain, the heart, the breasts, and the liver.

Sobriety, power, and the changing of the season

Calling back my power

On this eve of Beltane, I am calling my power back to me. Beltane is the Celtic festival of the beginning of Summer. It is a liminal time, when the veil between the worlds is thin. If I lived in community, I might celebrate this night with ritual and a bonfire. As I am alone in my explorations, I offer these words as my gift to the Universe whose magnitude is incomprehensible, whose wisdom is boundless, and whose timing is impeccable.

My words are my promise to myself

My words are my promise to myself. The intention was already set many moons ago. Now is the time. I promise that, one day at a time, my life will be one of sobriety.

Watching Soft White Underbelly videos and #SoberTok, I saw how destructive alcohol can be.

Will my so-called social life die?

Fear of missing out (FOMO) is a common excuse for drinking more than we would like to. I have lived in Spain for twenty years, and it is a great place. But, living in a holiday town means a certain lack of mental stimulation. And if there is one thing that booze does well it is to make boring things seem fun 🤣.

So, my dearest here friends are mostly gay men. Which is fun, and frolicky. But the gay scene is notoriously substance heavy, we all know that. In fact, “About one-fourth of the LGBTQ+ community has moderate alcohol dependency, compared to 5%-10% of the general population…” says this article from the Baltimore Banner.

If I go teetotal will I lose my social life? Probably a little.

Soulful and Sober

We are mind, body, and soul. The mind is changeable, the body is mortal, but the soul is eternal. Connecting with the soul is the goal.

Sobriety is a vow I make to myself. I use my mind to unite my body and my soul.

The brain is a physical organ that is the seat of the mind. After studying the brain in my Neuromusic Masters, I have grown increasingly uncomfortable with my own mistreatment of this wondrous mass of neuron and synapse. Understanding one’s own mind brings a person closer to the soul.

My mind asks for alcohol. Not my body. I need to turn my mind to the matter or not drinking I must use ingenuity, willpower and creative thinking to catch my mind playing dirty tricks on me, lest I unwittingly find a glass of beer in my hand!

In good spirits

When the “Spirit” of (alcoholic) spirits takes hold, it can be either playful or mean. I am a happy drinker. But I am tired of the mean thoughts the next day. It stretches the limits of the mental and emotional control to have to constantly firefight the effects of “just one more”, always waking to think “did I drink two, or three? Or perhaps more…”

I want to awaken each morning “in better spirits”.

Video: The Spiritual Consequences of Alcohol Consumption

Periods of Sobriety

I have enjoyed three important periods of sobriety.

Straight edge

I had had a three-month “straight edge” period when I was 16. I was dating a SHARP skinhead, listening to Minor Threat and learning about anarchy. Being straightedge just came with the territory! We broke up and I thought “fuck it”, and started drinking at parties and nights out. I had a lot of fun.

Yoga

In 1999, the teachings of Sivananda yoga found me and supported me in my second period of abstinence. I was sober for about two years, until mid-2001. My mother was taken from us quite suddenly, by a devastating and untreatable brain tumour. This unleashed in me a “fuck it” avalanche, which led to meeting a charming Irish alcoholic who proceeded to make my life hell for four years. Did I drink? You betcha.

Motherhood

Motherhood gave me my third temperate period. I had the occasional drink, but was studying to be a yoga teacher, raising a child, and didn’t have many friends to tempt me 😉

And now…

It was menopause that made me drink again. I lost a lot of weight; beer was the best (and most entertaining) way to keep the weight on. This valedictory guzzle has lasted 8 years. I “only drank beer”, and I “never got drunk”. Which is true, but…

I noticed that days when I would say “night off” started to give way to the “fuck its” again. and soon enough I was only drinking beer and never getting drunk practically every night. Which is not the objective at all!

So the crossroads where I now stand is here: if I can’t control my drinking, why let my drinking control me? It is time to knock it on the head.

Blogging my sobriety journey

To support my journey, I am going to blog. I don’t mind making a TikTok or two, but I like the headspace of writing. I like to pause and think, conjure up nice sentences, and avoid repetitive vocabulary. In short, I like to write.

In the coming days and weeks, I am going to research, and write about, the effects of over-enthusiastic ethanol use. M questions are:

How does drinking alcohol affect the…

I hope. If you’re not some unhinged Internet looney, and you’re curious about the sobriety journey, say hi or join in the conversation on social media.