The second reason I decided to take a break from drinking was in search of a reprieve from the emotional rollercoaster of my daily life. I was struggling. My moods were up and down, I felt like my emotional state was being dictated by a force outside myself. I had no control. While I was doing my best to remain calm: I was exercising regularly, eating ok, and practicing some mindfulness, I could only find peace when I was alone, or before everyone woke up in the morning. Any peace I could find would quickly vanish as soon as someone needed something from me, or said something in the wrong tone.
The common advice would be to have a date night with my husband, get out of the house, blow off some steam, but oftentimes these dates would end in tears (mine) and frustration (his) and lead to rambling arguments with no particular point to be made. I was angry, sad, and frustrated and as much as I tried to focus on gratitude and taking care of myself, this would all fly out of me as soon as a drink or two were on board. I didn’t know what to do with these hard feelings, and when I tried to share them it never went well. In fact it would only add another layer of shame, guilt and blame on top of it all. Good times.
I knew that there was some validity to these alcohol fueled emotional outbursts, but I could see that it didn’t really help to firehose it onto someone else. I could imagine that taking a break from drinking could possibly help. I couldn’t change everyone around me, but cutting out alcohol seemed like it might help
And it did.
The feelings didn’t go away, they aren’t meant to anyway. But something happened to my ability to feel them, and to get curious about them, and to allow them to be. I didn’t need to fix them, I needed to acknowledge them.
I used to get so frustrated at bedtime with my kids. All I wanted was for the day to be over, for a moment of peace. I thought a glass of wine in the evening would help me be more relaxed with them (isn’t that what we’re told?) but honestly, without my brain screaming in the background for another hit of dopamine, I was able to be present with my kids through the evening routine. I learned to walk away and let them figure things out instead of hovering over them and micromanaging their toothpaste consumption. I didn’t need them to be asleep in the same way that I did before. I was ok either way.
I few months into my sober experiment, I asked my husband if he noticed any changes in me and he said yeah, “You haven’t flown off the handle in a while,” and he seemed relieved. Huh, I thought, he’s right.