You quit drinking. So why do you feel worse?
16 Surprising Things That Sent Me Back to Alcohol, and what finally worked for each one.
You got through it. The hard part, the part everyone warned you about, you did that.
Then the congratulations stopped, the program ended, and you were left with an ordinary Tuesday evening and no idea what to do with it.
You were promised better sleep. You’re lying there at two in the morning.
You were told alcohol increases anxiety. You’re more anxious than you were when you were drinking.
The alcohol-free people brag about the weight they lost. Your eating has gotten worse, not better.
You heard about the pink cloud that fills your days with joy. You’re still waiting for it.
Nothing is wrong with you.
Here is what is actually happening
Your body clears the alcohol in a matter of days. Your brain takes a lot longer, and it does not heal in a straight line. It comes in waves, and the waves are temporary.
Most programs never tell you that. I was never told it. Every bad week became evidence. Evidence that I was doing it wrong, that this was my new permanent reality, or that maybe I never really had a problem in the first place if quitting wasn’t going the way I’d been promised.
That is the moment people go back. Not at a party and not in a crisis. On an ordinary evening, holding a reasonable-sounding argument for why this clearly isn’t working.
I went back hundreds of times
Over more than three decades. Not for lack of willpower or discipline, both of which I had plenty of everywhere else in my corporate life.
I went back because I kept getting blindsided, and then I used the surprise as proof.
Christmas Eve 2017 was the last night I drank. I was 54 and had been drinking since my early teens.
The difference the final time was not that I tried harder. I finally recognized what was coming, so the hard weeks stopped being evidence and became just the thing I knew would happen.
Looking back now, after nearly nine years alcohol-free, I can see clearly what kept sending me back. These sixteen showed up again and again.
What’s inside
Sixteen things, in five parts: your structure, your eating, your support, your life, your people.
Each one has what it looks like, when it tends to arrive, and what to do when it does.
Six of the sixteen:
Your sleep gets worse before it gets better.
I gained twelve pounds.
Meetings made me want to drink more.
I had no idea how long an evening could feel.
Some people won’t be happy for you.
What to do after a slip.
The other ten are inside.
If you haven’t quit yet
This works just as well before you stop, and arguably better.
Everything on this list blindsided me because I had no idea it was coming.
Reading it first means none of it can be used as evidence against you later.
What this is, and what it isn’t
Sixteen short written sections you read at your own pace and come back to when something shows up.
You keep it, which means every revision I make lands in your copy.
Most programs are built to get you to stop. This one is about what happens after you already have.