5 ways quitting alcohol has changed my life
After a series of unsuccessful bouts of sobriety that didn’t stick, in July 2024, I said sayonara to alcohol once again, on the back of a bender that somehow thankfully landed me my now also sober, glaringly neurodivergent partner. There will be more online about that story one day, definitely behind a paywall.
With the fact that we’re living in a hellscape timeline and some personal troubles to boot, I would be lying if I didn’t admit that recent times haven’t been the closest I’ve been to throwing the towel in again.
So, what better way to reflect on my ‘why’ than to revisit the positive changes that quitting alcohol can bring to your life?
Better coping mechanisms
Now that I can’t yeet myself into oblivion with substances, I’ve gradually started to learn how to handle my emotions without devolving into a feral animal—most of the time. If I’m sad, instead of reaching for a bottle of vino that’ll squeeze out the (annoyingly very healthy and helpful!) tears that alexythymia tends to hide from me, I now force myself into ‘maternal mode’.
These days, I create an environment akin to one I’d offer to a friend going through a bad time: duvet on the sofa, safe food snacks, cat plush, same Taylor Swift documentary I’ve watched approximately 3,394,857 times. If the tears are still elusive, the first half of The Lion King can be relied upon to sort that out.
And if I’m filled with murderous, meltdown-y rage? Instead of reaching for something to self-destruct with, I have learned the art of the ‘Angry Rage Stomp’, which is usually paired with a phone call to either my sister or mum. I’m a Taurus, so I’m usually verrrrry chill, but when I’m not - my god…
Twenty minutes or so of ranting and raving around the neighbourhood, and I have managed to regulate, if only a little bit. This one has most definitely protected my relationship; my previous go-to was to break up with people the second we argued. 15 months in, we’re still at 0 break-ups. Winner.
Rediscovering smol me
Alcohol and I built up a bulletproof mask over our 15-year dalliance. So much so that I eventually eroded whoever I was at 14/15 years old when I first discovered its ‘magic’. It felt like I’d been in a coma for half of my life and have now emerged, a baby Bambi, wobbly and wide-eyed.
Before I started drinking, unmasked Eb was her delightfully odd, unknowingly autistic self. At 11 years old, I was obsessed with Dido, I could name every type of cat breed known to man, and I adopted a dress sense that was half London College of Fashion and half Wigan charity shop.
Happiest playing Pokémon or doing a codeword from my nana’s Take A Break magazine whilst we listened to Classic FM, there was little social hope for someone who much preferred the company of Jacqueline Wilson to her peers.
Then the world started to subtly inform me that that version of me wasn’t acceptable. I’d rallied through my pre-teens and very early teens, being the friend group clown; somehow knowing that even if I didn't understand the joke, as long as I leaned into it, I was safe. If they were laughing with me, that had to be better than at me, right?
But aged 14/15, when we suddenly became hyperaware of ourselves and our appearances, it was no longer cute to be the weird one. So I buried her.
I swapped cat facts for cigarettes and squashed my weird knowledge of Carry On films’ Kenneth Williams under an apparently much more palatable obsession; the edgy guy in my year who was always getting detention for telling teachers to “fuck off”. No surprise that he also turned out to be autistic.
For a decade and a half, I moulded my personality around being the messy party girl, a hollow mystery of a person who disappeared the second the booze ran out. I thought she was invincible. She somehow built a life for us. She got us an internship at ELLE magazine at a River Island opening party thanks to free cocktails. She helped us forge friendships at work parties, hanging out in the smoking shelter until a new prospective pal stumbled into her web.
Taking all that away, giving her up, still feels scary. Is little baby me enough to survive in this batshit mad world that seems to fucking hate introverts unless they’re acerbic savant men?
Beginning to welcome the old version of me back in has been one of the most fulfilling parts of sobriety. Welcoming her in without shame has been the most healing.
Finding new (and revisiting old) hobbies
Alcohol turns you into a drag. You become inconsistent, impulsive, and utterly incapable of keeping anything going in any meaningful way for more than a couple of days. Diets, exercise regimes, hobbies; all a minefield when there’s merlot on the horizon.
At my best, I am a fountain of ideas. When I’m fully in my stride, I can’t sleep because I’m percolating on the latest piece of writing or YouTube video I want to create. When I’m drinking, all I care about is when I’m going to drink next. Who I can hoodwink into hanging out with me to validate my decision to get drunk on a Tuesday.
Since cutting out alcohol again, I have taken on a whole host of hobbies - some expanding on from my past, some that are brand new (and out of my comfort zone!). These include writing the kinds of things you’re perusing right now: singing & playing guitar, facilitating online support groups for autistic women via an autism charity, volunteering at the local animal shelter, and starting up a YouTube channel. Who is she?
In truth, I’d missed her. I drowned out her ideas with vodka because I’d decided she wasn’t good enough to pursue them. But sobriety builds something inside of you. It reminds you, on a daily - almost hourly - basis, that you can achieve great things, simply by not picking up a Peroni.
This then allowed me to open up my horizons once again, creating the handy combination of giving me something to distract from the drink cravings and allowing me to rediscover my spark on my own watch.
I EXERCISE now
Granted, if you’d shown me this in the depths of my drinking days, where my only exercise was dashing to the supermarket at 21:55 for another bottle of wine (or two), I’d have laughed you out of the room. Similarly to the last point, when you’re in the murky mires of alcohol dependency (how mild or extreme it may be), you tend to have only the capacity to care about the next drink.
The first time I got sober, I didn’t factor in exercise. I factored in bare-knuckling the whole thing; letting myself eat copious amounts of sugar and junk food because hey, I was already being virtuous enough by quitting the booze and the cigarettes.
However, this meant that my mood was often all over the place, and ultimately, the negative emotions I’d been laying low in the pub to escape managed to find me - in abundance. And that time, I relapsed after 10 months.
This time, I decided to - despite having been a chain-smoking judgey budgie who called people who ran competitively “mad” - sign up for my first half-marathon in Venice. At first, I absolutely despised the training. In fairness, about 40% of the time, I still dislike the training when I’m actually doing it.
Yet something strange happened: on days when I went for a run - whether it was 3km or 20km - I felt… good after. It felt like someone had wrapped cotton wool around my brain, and the ruminating thoughts I’m often plagued with (thanks, OCD) decided to take their own chill pill and leave me be for a while.
Not to mention the resilience that is crafted with training. Proving to yourself - the most important person to prove yourself to in this case - that you can indeed do the hard thing. You choose to do the hard thing. Many people with alcohol issues tend to gravitate towards running for this reason.
Getting the answers — or at least some of them: I’m autistic
And what a gift that has been. Knowing that there’s a legitimate reason as to why life can sometimes feel like it’s running on hard mode has been such a freeing experience. Had I not stopped drinking and watched my carefully curated mask gradually fall apart at the seams, I’d never have been able to make this discovery.
Sometimes it can be difficult to wrap your head around the idea that the ‘issue’ that you have is technically something that you’ll experience for the rest of your life. There’s no pill or potion to ‘rid’ yourself of autism - nor would I really want one.
As long as you work to build your own reality that suits your autistic needs, you can live a truly happy, contented life being your best little weirdo self - without a substance turning you into somebody else.
