Celebrating one year sober 🎉

And the resources that helped me.

Hey there, all. I'm popping in (in real-time, this time) from sabbatical to celebrate this milestone: One year sober as of September 1st 🎉

I never had what our society might deem a 'serious' problem with drinking. It never super messed up my relationships, my work, my life, my health (at least yet...). Because our society is so dependent on alcohol and it's such a norm to indulge it in so regularly with such frequency, I don't think anybody would have thought I was anything more than an 'average' drinker. (Though, I sometimes definitely wondered if I was, because sometimes the hold alcohol had on me felt way too strong.)

But normal starts to lose its sheen with alcohol, after a point. What's normal? Alcohol is, quite literally, a carcinogenic poison. That's not even in question. How normal can it be to ingest it at all?

And normal for me, was meaning mornings and sunrises lost to headaches and fatigue; one more glass of wine even when I didn't even really want the first one, but felt obligated or like I "should" be drinking at social occasions with everyone else. It meant dysregulated hormones that were contributing to my perimenopause; disrupted sleep; and the all-too-often swing of the anxiety/depression pendulum that comes even with the occasional drink for the highly sensitive person.

When I crossed the mark of realizing I had spent more of my life drinking than not, I knew I wanted the next passage of my life to re-learn what it was like to live without alcohol. I started slowly — a week off here, eventually a dry January or two. At one point I was doing 30-60 days off alcohol annually and the last two years I did 90 days without alcohol.

In my last 90 days, which started on September 1, 2023, I just decided to just...keep going, not having alcohol. And here we are, finding myself joyfully sober, a year later. 

This was a slow process that was many years in the making for me. I circled sobriety like an interested animal, sniffing around it, skeptical, intrigued and fearful at the same time, and it took the process of just time and many false starts for it to happen for me. 

If you've been thinking about sobriety or alcohol reduction, here are a few resources that helped me:

1. I read Alan Carr's Easy Way to Stop Drinking a year before I stopped. I think I needed the year to let it set in. This book is weird, I can't explain how it works. It is like a readable hypnosis. Making the case over and over again with the same language for how alcohol isn't working in your life, something about the repetition, the points he makes, has an effect on your subconscious. I still drank for the year after reading this book (though I did 90 days dry right after reading it) but I think it really helped the process. I’m reading his same book around sugar now.

2. I used hypnosis and affirmations in this process. In particular, I used affirmations I created around sobriety in my ThinkUp app each night as I fell asleep; other nights I would use the Quit Drinking hypnosis from Andrew Johnson's app.

3. When cravings would arise, I would turn to EFT tapping. There are tons of EFT videos on YouTube for fomo around drinking or cravings. These really helped. Sometimes I would do them in the middle of a craving; sometimes I would just do them in the morning preventatively.

4. I worked a lot on nervous system regulation. I knew my alcohol use or overuse in part was to manage anxiety. Handling this naturally through mindfulness, breathing, Vagus nerve activation, earthing, was a big help.

5. I had done several 30 and 90 days off alcohol periods before settling into a decided sobriety. If you've never done 30 days off booze, I would start with 3-7 days. Then a month or two later I would do 1-2 weeks. Then I would build up to a month. Take your time with this. Nowhere do I see people fail more at goals when they set a massive goal for which they have no foundational support; they inevitably get disappointed in themselves and fall right back into the shame and self-sabotage cycle. Try really small periods of not drinking first, and let this build over months or years

6. I regulated my blood sugar, lowered carbs, and upped protein and fats in my diet. I learned that I have close to pre-diabetes and definite insulin resistance, which I think honestly had a lot to do with the cravings I would have for booze. It wasn't that I wanted the BOOZE necessarily... but sometimes I wanted the sugar or carbs associated with it and it was a quick and easy hit.

7. I started circadian living practices: seeing sunrise, getting plenty of sunlight throughout the day, and blocking blue light at night after sunset. There is something so grounding about this practice that tied me in more deeply to nature, made me calm and peaceful and regulated, that helped any desire for alcohol to melt away.

I hope these resources are helpful for anybody else thinking about their relationship with alcohol!

I know it's only September and perhaps a bit early to think about your 2025 plans, but if you are curious about starting the new year sober, clear-headed, in nature; if you want to start watching sunrise, falling asleep by a fireplace, with a groundedness and strong intentions, I run a NYE retreat each year that is substance-free in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We have delicious vegetarian meals; I lead workshops on goal-setting and Tarot; daily yoga and meditation; hiking; silent hours by the fire; and community and ritual to ring in the new year. Head to https://www.catherinedandrews.com/nye-retreat for more details. We'd love to have you.

Thanks for celebrating this milestone with me.

xo

Catherine