In June 2022, I became sober curious after allowing my covid fueled gray area drinking to run headlong into the prospect of full blown alcoholism, I was faced with a critical life decision. I needed to reframe my relationship with alcohol. But I wasn’t yet sure what that meant. Was that full abstinence? Did I need to start attending AA meetings? Did I need to seek out professional help? Or would I be able to simply drink more responsibly with mindfulness and intention (specifically, the intention to not get drunk)?
For the first time in a long time I could see see myself living a sober life. But how? Suddenly, I was sober curious.
While I remained open to some kind of professional intervention or program, I had read about the benefits of meditation in dealing with addiction and began a meditation regimen in earnest. Below are the 5 primary reasons I became sober curious, the very things that drove me to reexamine and ultimately recast my relationship with alcohol and marijuana.
1. Horribly Terrible Awful Sleep
Coming into January 2022, I found that for the first time in my life, I suffered from insomnia. Up to that point, I fell asleep most nights without much issue and slept pretty steadily through the night. That’s not to say I woke rested, because my binge drinking and daily pot smoking conspired to prevent that, but I slept okay, or so I mistakenly thought.
But this whole being up all night tossing and turning and staring at the ceiling thing was entirely new. After a few weeks of dealing with insomnia, and actually believing that drinking and smoking more would help me sleep, I started to do research on sleeping issues. Because more pot and alcohol clearly wasn’t helping!
My research revealed that drinking too much alcohol continually ranked high as a cause of insomnia. But I was in denial. So, I decided to ignore that fact and instead added melatonin and herbal remedies like lavender oil (as aromatherapy) to my routine. While this helped a little at first, ultimately the melatonin left me feeling even groggier and less rested in the morning.
Hitting this roadblock brought me back to alcohol as the primary culprit. And thus, I grew sober curious. My first attempt at dealing with alcohol caused sleep deprivation was simply to move my drinking window up so all my drinking was done by 8pm. Of course, this didn’t work at all.
It was only after I reduced both the number of days I was drinking each month (averaging 2 days a month as I type this – down from 5+days/week) and the amount at each sitting (averaging 2-3 beers – down from 5-9) that I experienced tremendous improvement in my sleep quality. Now I am the most rested and energetic I’ve felt in years!
2. Covid 19 Becomes the Covid 38
There’s nothing quite like gaining almost 40 pounds, largely the result of drinking copious amounts of beer, to make one sober curious.
Drinking a case and a half of craft beer every week is a great way to pack on the pounds. Entering covid I was around 192 pounds. Exiting it, I was just north of 230 pounds. As I write this, I’m 204. I attribute the first 10 pounds of weight loss to significantly less beer. At 220, I started the Plant Paradox and by then had massively reduced both my drinking frequency and quantity utilizing mindfulness techniques like RAIN, journaling, and my newly acquired bathroom scale.
I’m happy to report that turning sober curious has resulted in my losing 26 pounds to date. I expect to be at my goal weight in just a couple of months. Sure helps that I’m drinking so much less beer. I hate to think of all those empty calories I was guzzling down on a weekly basis. Yikes!
3. Drinking to Alleviate Symptoms Makes Me Sober Curious
There came a time when, because of my constant binge drinking, I suffered from frequent hangovers. At first, these hangovers were responsible for my taking days off from drinking. Afterall, I felt like a pile of garbage and needed some recovery time.
In June 2022, this all changed. My hangovers went from being the reason I took a day or two off from drinking to the reason I drank even more. Why? I noticed that I could alleviate my hangover symptoms with a couple of beers. Thus, drinking more sadly became my hangover remedy.
The irony of this was not lost on me. In fact, it was a major wake up call. Suddenly, my sober curiosity was on overdrive. I was like, “Oh, sh*t! I’m drinking to address my withdrawal symptoms!” That’s what a hangover is: a big ol’ bucket of withdrawal symptoms.
Drinking with the specific intention to ‘cure’ my hangovers is what led me to understand that I had arrived at the bleeding edge of alcohol use disorder (aka alcoholism). I knew if I kept it up, I’d find myself in real hot water down the road. And sooner rather than later at the rate I was going.
4. Meditation Makes Marijuana Quit Me
While I started daily meditation practice with the intention of reducing my dependency on alcohol, pot wasn’t even on my radar. I never saw my marijuana addiction as troublesome. Yet, for reasons still not entirely understood by me, at day 35 of meditation, I quit smoking pot cold turkey after nearly two decades of smoking it nearly everyday. Or rather, as I like to say, marijuana quit me. That’s the only way I can describe it. On day 34 I still wanted pot, but on day 35 I did not.
It was completely unintentional, but there you have it.
Once marijuana was out of the picture, I was able to clearly see the insidious relationship alcohol and marijuana enjoyed with each other. After a couple of drinks, I’d want to smoke weed. Equally, after a few bong hits, I’d feel the strong desire to crack open a beer. So, generally one drove the use of the other.
After marijuana quit me, I became ever more sober curious as a result. Without Smokie (as I like to call my marijuana addiction) coaxing my beer drinking (Drinkie) along, I was not only able to drastically reduce the frequency of my drinking, but also the total amount in any one sitting.
5. Success Breeds Sober Curiosity
I read somewhere that you don’t need to be an alcoholic to quit drinking. I’ve found this to be true in my life. While I’m not quite out of the woods yet, with the help of mindfulness and meditation, I feel like I may have dodged a bullet with alcoholism and pot addiction.
Having made this statement, I’m not fooling myself or anyone else. Addiction is a very slippery slope. As I continue on my sobriety journey, I find that rather than becoming less sober curious, the opposite is true. I’ve redoubled my research and am working to string together ever longer sobriety stretches using all that I’m learning and sharing here.
Knowledge is power when properly applied. I’ve come to realize that while I can enjoy a few beers now and again, I’m probably never going to use marijuana ever again. That would be foolish now that I understand the destructive relationship marijuana and alcohol share.
Plus, there’s no ‘kinda’ getting high. You’re high or you’re not. On the other hand, I can have three beers over the course of three hours and not encounter the slightest buzz.
Of course, I’m very open to the idea of never drinking again if that’s where my sobriety journey leads me. I remain quite curious to see if alcohol will quit me the way pot did. I’ll only know for sure if I manage to stay sober long enough to find out. Stay tuned.
For many of us, getting Sober Curious begins with a simple question: Would my life be better without alcohol? To discover the answer for yourself, all that remains is to put the cork back in the bottle, open your eyes, and see.
– Ruby Warrington
