When I began my sobriety journey, I really didn’t know how to approach my alcohol and pot addictions. I wondered: IS THERE A RECIPE FOR SOBRIETY? I began my own recipe with a spoonful of meditation and through nine months of contemplation on all things substance abuse, I finally arrived at this idea of decoupling. In other words, is it possible to completely decouple from alcohol like I managed to do with pot? And if so, are those steps a recipe for sober success?
First, what do I mean when I say: decouple from alcohol? Especially when we feel like it is smothering us!
“Alcoholism is a well documented pathological reaction to unresolved grief.”
– David Cook
Let’s take the quote above by David Cook as an example of coupling. This quote couples alcohol with unresolved grief. And that, in itself, sounds very tragic! And it is. We feel grief. We don’t like this feeling, so we drown it with alcohol. The grief remains unresolved. The pain continues. We drown it with alcohol. Mix and repeat until we have a dangerously toxic codependent relationship.
This is just one example of alcohol coupling, but there are many more less insidious, and seemingly harmless couplings. Let’s dive in.
Decoupling From Alcohol
What is decoupling? It is simply the idea of separating, disengaging, or dissociating something from something else. For example, Jack O Lanterns are associated with Halloween, and fireworks are associated with the 4th of July. What if we swapped these? Now we have fireworks on Halloween and Jack O Lanterns on July 4th. We’ve effectively decoupled and reassociated these objects with new holidays. And while this may seem like an odd thing to do, bear with me here.
If we consider all of the things alcohol is associated with, it comprises a vast array of people, places, events, holidays, physical sensations, emotions, and desires. Alcohol is very deeply entrenched in western society. It’s heavily marketed and advertised. It pervades almost every aspect of our lives. It’s been said alcohol is the only drug, that when you stop taking it, people question your decision to do so. Think about that for a moment!
In such a world, it would appear difficult to decouple from alcohol. But, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time! Therefore, it’s important to break out all of the myriad aspects of our lives that are coupled with alcohol so we can tackle them each in isolation.
1- Holidays
During the first several months of my sobriety journey, I had to decouple holidays from alcohol. Though I didn’t realize at the time I was doing this, that’s essentially what I was up to.
Think about all of the holidays associated with drinking. And think about all of the holiday inspired drinks, beers, and cocktails. It’s astounding!
For starters, there are the holidays established solely to get hammered:
- Saint Patrick’s Day
- Cinco de Mayo
- Oktoberfest
- New Year’s Eve
- Blackout Wednesday (also known as Drinksgiving) is the night before Thanksgiving
- National Beer Day (Yes, it’s on April 7th)
Then there are the less obvious ones. There’s Thanksgiving itself, Christmas (eggnog anyone?), July 4th, and Halloween. I’ve always associated Halloween with drinking pumpkin beer while handing out candy to the neighborhood kids. We spend Thanksgiving with my wife’s hard partying family. And I consume Christmas with a 12 pack of winter warmers.
This past year, I purposefully completed my first Sober Halloween, Sober Thanksgiving, and Sober Christmas. And I found it difficult to decouple alcohol from these traditional drinking holidays. There I am. I am surrounded by everyone drinking, some sloppily, and I just want a beer. I just want to fit in and relax a little, and I find myself craving a little egg nog or seasonal beer.
But I survived. Better, I found that I enjoyed the holidays significantly more without the alcohol. I was happier, more social, and more coherent. I had deeper and more interesting conversations, and I was more engaged. The result is a new and constructive association.
2- Occasions & Activities
Decoupling from alcohol and all of the occasions associated with it would seem impossible. As if holidays weren’t bad enough, we also have birthdays, office parties, Superbowl parties, happy hours, vacations, weddings, and even funerals to contend with.
Growing up in an Irish family, one could always count on the whiskey coming out at some point during the post funeral reception. Drinking and funerals were synonymous.
Then there’s the birthday of all birthdays: 21. You’ve waited your whole life for this moment. After years of sneaking drinks as a minor, you can finally join the big leagues and get sloshed in a bar! Brilliant! Following this momentous occasion, drinking at birthdays becomes a well established tradition for most people who ‘celebrate’ annually with a few drinks.
I could go on and talk about the sloppy drunken open bar fueled wedding speech, sipping Margaritas (plural) poolside in Puerto Vallarta, and knocking back some brewskies at a Super Bowl party. But pretty much anything that resembles or is billed as a ‘party’ or vacation involves alcohol. That’s the expectation. Which is why when you arrive, there’s often a table covered in liquor and wine and a cooler full of beer beckoning you.
We celebrate life with alcohol, a toxic depressant. We bond over it. It adorns our every social interaction. Which brings us to…
3- Friendships & Relationships
If you’re like me, you have many relationships based on alcohol and, in my case, marijuana consumption. These relationships are often the result of drinking together at birthday parties, concerts, weddings, and sporting events.
We use these excuses to get together, but often the real purpose is to drink together. In my blog Sobriety’s Side Effects, I discuss one of the side effects of a sober lifestyle being the loss of friendships.
Let’s face it, if you are working your ass off to be sober, and it’s A LOT of hard work, the best thing you can do to stay on track is to stay away from your old drinking buddies. These are people who are associated with one thing. Not only is it hard not to drink when socializing with these people, there’s often a lot of pressure to drink.
Afterall, they associate you with drinking, as well. Your decision to stop consuming alcohol reflects on their decision to continue. And if they’re having doubts themselves, it’s in their interest to derail you. To decouple from alcohol, you often have to decouple from friendships based on it.
4- Sex & Sophistication
The marketing and advertisements produced and disseminated by the alcohol companies are not only pervasive, but designed to trigger us at a very basic human level. If you’re an ‘ass man’ than this Bud’s, eh Miller Lite’s, for you!
To say that sex is inextricably linked with alcohol would be a massive understatement. Sex has been so heavily associated with alcohol that’s it’s become an expectation. We’re convinced that drinking alcohol makes us more social, interesting, funny, and therefore, more attractive.
I think back at all of the bikini clad beer commercials of my youth and laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. But here’s the thing, if you’re told something enough times, you’re bound to believe it. So, you head out to the bar to ‘hook up’, because that’s what’s implied.
In addition to alcohol enhancing our sexiness, it also enhances our sophistication. “Stay thirsty, my friends,” encourages the ‘most interesting man in the world’. While sophistication is not often associated with beer, it’s often used to hock top shelf spirits and wines whose customers must be convinced to support the inflated price tag. If it is more expensive, it is certainly more sophisticated, no?
It’s as if by virtue of purchasing these products, their sexiness and sophistication are transfered to us through osmosis. Truly magical! That’s the power of advertising.
5- Emotions
Emotions are particularly challenging to decouple from alcohol. When it comes to knee-jerk reactions, emotions rule the roost!
We’re told that when we are happy and celebratory, we should drink, but we often drink when we are sad, disappointed, or distressed. We drink to unwind, to relax, and to relieve anxiety.
But the more we drink, the more we feel its adverse effects and the ensuing guilt and depression that accompanies these. So we drink to numb these emotions as well.
In many of us, there is a hole and we try to fill that hole with alcohol and drugs. But the irony is that these chemicals don’t fill the hole. They simply lay a temporary blanket of fog over the hole. With the hole now hidden from view, our vices dig it ever deeper and wider. The result is often what becomes a seemingly impossible hole to fill.
The immediate nature of the euphoric and numbing effects mask the drugs’ fleeting and destructive nature. We live in an instant gratification society. But many problems we face are complex and require time horizons longer than a single evening in the bottom of a bottle to fix.
By divorcing alcohol from emotion, we are free to deal with the true nature of the issues underlying addiction as painful as they may be. For me, decoupling alcohol from emotion has resulted in a few good cries, as I like to call them. And after I release all of those pent up emotions, I realize there’s no amount of alcohol or pot that can make me feel half as light as letting all that go does.
To Decouple From Alcohol
When we examine the social and psychological landscape of alcohol in society, the ubiquity of the problem seems immense. Alcohol is everywhere. We are attempting to be sober on a drunk planet!
But by looking at where and how alcohol is associated with the various aspects of our lives, we can begin the process of decoupling or dissociation. I’ve written a lot about the RAIN method on this blog. If you’re familiar with it, you know that the ‘N’ stands for Non-association. And when we non-associate, we do so one thing at a time.
Decoupling requires us to find new meaning in events, holidays, and social gatherings that are dominated by the presence of alcohol. For example, I decoupled football from alcohol by switching to NA Beer. I decoupled alcohol from socializing by spending more time with friends who don’t drink or don’t make drinking the focus. I decoupled alcohol from Saint Patrick’s Day by not participating and eating Lucky Charms instead.
My advice when it comes to splitting up with alcohol is to break the process down into bite sized chunks. Hour by hour, day by day, event by event, holiday by holiday. Don’t get overwhelmed with the immensity of if all. Tackle each moment as it comes. And realize the power of association to work for OR against you as you allow it.
You are not weak, it’s just that alcohol is so deeply entrenched in our society and it’s messaging is ubiquitous. Reminders of it are literally everywhere.
By decoupling alcohol from its associations, we render it inert. A billboard for beer becomes no more influential than a billboard for a plumber or an ambulance chasing lawyer. Alcohol derives its power through association. The advertising agencies depend on it. To alcohol companies association is money in the bank.
While this may seem like an oversimplification of the problem, there’s real leverage here. We can quit drinking and go the rest of our lives fighting the urge to drink at every turn, or we can quit drinking and render alcohol powerless. As long as we fight against it, alcohol has power over us. When we let it go, it is powerless.
Decoupling is letting go. One bite at a time.
