Un-drunk me. How I pulled off the greatest brain hack ever.

I’ve waited six months and eight days to write this, each day one step closer to me believing it’s actually real. But it is and it has been. You see a little more than six months ago I arrived fresh-faced at a wine festival. I arrived by boat with a bunch of my friends. It was mid-October and we couldn’t have asked for a better day drinking day. The sun was warm and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The boat had champagne on the way over and for the first time EVER I didn’t drink any. “I want to maintain all day,” I said and my sweet little liar friends nodded as if just not partaking in morning champagne was going to create that magic trick. We were about to embark on a journey to get as shit canned as possible.

At the last wine festival, I snuck back down to the boat and took a two-hour nap right in the middle of the day. Sounds relaxing until you un-drunk code it: I blacked out, then passed out. Don’t worry! I got up and jumped right back into the party when I woke up. It was a little embarrassing to know I curled up in the fetal position in a bed meant for a child with my skirt probably hiked up to my waist and my face distorted into a sleepy double chin. But I digress.

Today was different. I hadn’t planned on not drinking but the weird thing was, I just didn’t want to. I was so happy hanging out in the sunshine and talking to my friends. I grabbed a La Cruix Pure, because shockingly I love water and hate fruit-flavored water, and I just acted normal. Not only did I not want to drink, but I had also already forgotten I wasn’t. But my friends hadn’t.

My already pre-gamed primed friends could feel my soberness like a tag in their shirts that just kept tugging at them to itch. “Why aren’t you drinking?” “Are you okay?” “You can have some of mine!”. In total, these comments reached five times, and the fifth time I snapped at the sweetest, youngest member of our group. It was her first wine fest and the first and last time she saw me go full bitch. “CAN EVERYONE JUST LEAVE ME ALONE! I AM A GROWN WOMAN AT A WINE FESTIVAL AND WHEN I AM READY TO DRINK I KNOW WHERE TO FIND THE WINE!”. God, I was pissed.

After my anger and embarrassment subsided I enjoyed the rest of the day. After the festival, we gathered for dinner at a local haunt and my best friend (it was her birthday) asked me to drink and I had a glass of champagne with her. Then the two of us snuck down to the boat and opened a very nice bottle of red. We talked and laughed and it was a truly amazing moment between friends that I will cherish forever. At that moment I think I knew I was approaching the end but the decision still hadn’t been made. We spent the night out and in the morning, I had champagne at breakfast with my best friends (now it was her actual birthday) and spent the rest of the day relaxing and drinking wine like normal. At 8 pm I crawled into bed, wine glass beside me. I took the last swig of my favorite wine and went to bed. And then I was done. No warning to my friends, no commitment to drinking all the wine in the house first, and no big splash on the way out. Finito.

So how did I get there? Slowly, but deliberately. I’d known for a long time that my dream life only existed on the other side of sobriety. It had been whispering in my ears and bouncing around in my head for a very long time. But drinking is what we did. I grabbed a bottle to celebrate my promotion and to comfort me when I got laid off. We toasted the weather, Saturdays, friendship, losing our parents, gaining our children, weddings, and funerals. We used it so much to define our emotions that I began to realize I no longer knew what my emotions even were. When you are drunk for all of them, they all feel the same. A little detached, a little vibration that runs down my spine. A smile, a tear, the joy and pain mixed together in a swirling glass.

When I felt in my bones that sobriety was something I should dabble in I first started following all the major sober players on social media. At first, it was just a few posts dispersed between pictures of my friends and the season’s latest trends. Then I started ordering books. The Quit Lit game is strong and you can find what you are looking for. I quickly realized that what resonated with me was the science behind what alcohol was doing to me and all the things that would happen physically once I quit. There was a promise that rang over and over…a good night’s sleep. I couldn’t remember the last time I had one of those without pills to keep me from waking in the middle of the night with my heart racing in crippling anxiety.

Completely on accident, I found Medium. I joined and after reading a few sober articles I guess my preference was set. Each morning I received an email from Medium highlighting articles written about sobriety and alcohol. Now I was following sobers on social media, reading quit lit, and reading daily articles on the benefits of quitting. And just like that, my brain quit for me.

For me, the key to all of this was finding non-alcoholic replacement drinks. I LOVE beer, champagne, and wine. LOVE. I would describe drinking as my favorite hobby. Picking out the perfect red to celebrate the occasion was an art form. The perfect champagne for Christmas morning is a must. That’s what I didn’t want to give up. So, I started searching and I found lots of AF beers that taste exactly the same (THANK YOU Heineken 0.0 for being this fantasy for me). I found most of the champagnes taste exactly the same too. I am still searching for a good red but having a great time experimenting.

So, it went like this- I am drinking beers like everyone else. Or maybe I am having champagne to celebrate today’s fill-in-the-blank. But at the end of the day, I sleep like a baby. My anxiety has almost disappeared. Depression is gone. All the little things that my doctors attributed to my MS diagnosis, gone. The crippling unexplained GI issues that have been blamed on IBS, a symptom of my MS, and also a side effect from my medication — GONE. I feel like I cured myself of an incurable disease. I CURED MYSELF OF AN INCURABLE DISEASE. Several, actually.

I feel as if I have found the absolute greatest drug in the entire world and that I have to keep it secret because l know all too well, that drinkers are incapable of believing you. I was prepared to feel left out, lose all my friends, perhaps my marriage, have to move, and basically start over once I became sober. But nothing has changed. I still go to wine festivals and I still love them. I still dance every chance I get, stay up late in soul-building conversations with people I love, and enjoy good meals. I still celebrate all of life’s little wins and throw down for the big ones. It’s like my life is exactly the same but now I am wearing these rose-colored glasses that make it all so much better. I sleep amazing, my body fat plummeted and my muscle mass increased, I lost weight, my skin cleared up, my stomach stopped dominating my schedule, and at almost 44 years old I truly believe I am happier and hotter than I have ever been.

This is my alcohol-free life and it works for me. I am scared of the day when I actually want to drink again but I am thankful for every day that doesn’t happen. I am still learning all of this and figuring out where I can go that stocks AF beer (most bars) and AF champagne (absolutely no one). After that first dreadful wine fest blow-up, my friends have all been shockingly supportive, and dare I say they don’t even notice anymore. Six months in I would say highly recommend, five stars, the greatest gift I have ever given myself. The un-drunk me crusade has created the me I always knew was hiding in there somewhere.