As I look this past week to the sixth anniversary marking my life-changing decision to quit drinking alcohol, I continue to focus on the ways my mind (the sneaky little devil it can be) keeps convincing me of untrue things.
Have I really made it to six years without alcohol?
Convincing myself of this fact is like making myself believe I can run a mile in under four minutes when I can barely tie my shoelaces without tripping. However, just as I remember to double-lace up before hitting the pavement, I kindly remind myself that I have done it and can add another year of alcohol-free living to the books.
Life is all about contrast, they say. It’s how we grow, how we learn, and how we become slightly less clueless than we were yesterday. I’m not entirely convinced that our contrasted experiences aren’t why each one of us is here.
Like most things, the decision to stop any habit confronts us with the reality that everything is on a spectrum. We all live in a grey zone most of the time, right? The world isn’t black and white, and yet, most of the time we’re navigating through it like we’re exploring a foggy forest with only a dim flashlight. Within this spectrum, you’ve got to be flexible, open-minded, and ready to dodge any metaphorical branches smacking you in the face.
Like everything in life, not all behaviours are created equal.
Many of our behaviours simply don’t serve us. They don’t help us grow. They just drag us down faster than a lead balloon in a helium factory.
The truth is when you’re trying to kick any habit – whether it’s alcohol, Netflix binging, or collecting rare stamps of famous pop singers (hey, don’t judge!)—at some point, continuing to engage within the behavioural spectrum of our habits isn’t going to “cut it.”
Before I decided to stop drinking alcohol, I tried many times to “cut back” on how much and how often I drank. When I finally decided that alcohol no longer provided me with anything positive, I realized that living in a black-and-white frame of mind was not as counterintuitive as I once believed.
Author Caroline Knapp writes in her book, Drinking, A Love Story, “When you quit drinking, you stop waiting.” I find those seven words to be an absolute truth for me.
When I quit drinking, I finally discovered that my whole life was becoming a perpetual ‘Unhappy Hour;’ I was waiting for something to change to make my life worth experiencing. So, when Knapp says, you stop waiting for life to happen and start making it happen, she’s saying you choose to grab the wheel and steer that ship, even when the waters are rough. For some people, it’s the grey areas of life that are like quicksand, but on steroids. Where they are sucked in deeper and deeper until they’re buried so far down, they can no longer see light. As much as my mind encourages me to live my life somewhere in between shades of light and dark, living in a grey area only works for some things – like deciding whether pineapple belongs on pizza (spoiler alert: it does). However, when it comes to kicking addictive demons to the curb, it’s got to be all or nothing
THE COGNITIVE DISTORTION OF QUITTING ALCOHOL
Let me start first by providing examples of cognitive distortions, which anyone struggling with the ambivalent dance between stagnation and action, may require.
A cognitive distortion is an irrational pattern of thinking that often propels itself into negative emotions and a distorted perception of reality. These distorted thought patterns are usually exaggerated and unhelpful.
One classic cognitive distortion is black-and-white thinking, which in most circumstances would be discouraged, but, for me, when it came to drinking alcohol, the only thing irrational and distorted was my belief that I could continue down the road I was on when every hazard sign was flashing for me to get off at the next exit.
On the road I was taking, the signs soon manifested into the form of arbitrary rules posing as boundaries I set for myself.
“I’ll only drink on weekends,” I said.
When this didn’t work, I got a bit fancier with my excuses, like, “Red wine is practically a health elixir, so I’ll stick to that. It’s good for me.“
Smooth, right? But soon enough, those rules start to bend.
Suddenly, every day is a weekend, and that health elixir is flowing like a river, and, in my experience, I was well and truly without a paddle on most excursions.
Many times, I convinced myself that I had cracked the code – that I had uncovered the secret formula for a healthy relationship with alcohol. Perhaps you’re feeling this way too, but let’s be real here: it’s all smoke and mirrors. These arbitrary rules we create might give us a fleeting sense of control, but deep down, we know it’s bulls**t.
Fair enough, there might be nights where we manage to toe the line without tripping over it, where we wake up without a pounding headache or an all-consuming feeling of regret. But let’s not kid ourselves. That’s only the calm before the storm, the eye of the hurricane where everything seems peaceful until it all comes crashing down around us.
I know we all must start somewhere, but most of these attempts become what I call ‘self-denial trials’.
For example, when I would participate in Dry January or Sober October, sure, I might have made some progress, but soon enough, I always found myself in the same place I started, but a whole lot messier spending my time teetering between the two ends of a fallible continuum.
The truth about these trials is that for someone who has an unhealthy habit they are tantamount to holding back a tidal wave with a wall of sand. My use of alcohol was not like Ross and Rachel’s relationship on the show Friends. I couldn’t simply tell myself “We’re on a break!” and therefore it was safe and productive to believe I was making meaningful progress, and that I could find a middle ground where everything is hunky-dory.
The reality is, for some of us, there is no middle ground, there is no “break-up and make-up” cycle. There’s only black and white, sober or drunk, in control or spiralling out of it.
Recognizing that we can’t live well within a spectrum isn’t a failure.
It’s not a sign of weakness or defeat.
It’s an acknowledgement of our truth, a realization that some battles are best fought with a clear head and a subdued heart.
Sometimes in life, we need to embrace the black and white to find the way back to a life that’s on a different colour spectrum, and for me, that way is one sober step at a time.
