Life After Alcohol

A year ago my life was unbearable, my health was dangerously precarious and I woke up every morning wishing I hadn’t woken up at all.
For breakfast I’d have a can of lager or maybe two, until I stopped shaking sufficiently to face the day. That would be anytime between 7 and 9am, no matter what time I’d gone to bed the night before. Most nights I’d fall asleep on the sofa or just pass out, waking some time in the night and making my way to bed.
In short I was one of the many people living with alcohol dependency. Some people class it as alcoholism- I prefer to use the word “dependency” because it says a whole lot more than just one word.
When I thought about writing an article on my recovery from alcohol, I had several good reasons, though actually starting to write proved the hardest part. How could I ever hope to put over my feelings, the good and the bad, without sounding smug or self-righteous?
In the end I started as I normally do with anything that I put off- I jumped in the deep end!
Why write about the subject in the first place?
Well, I had discussed it with my counsellor as a positive step to getting my thoughts in order and also as a thank you to her for all the hard work she has done with me over the years and all the hard work I am sure we will still have together.
That doesn’t mean I’m backsliding, but recovery is a long process and I still feel I have an awful lot to learn, even though its almost a year now since I took the plunge and went tee-total.
I also felt that I could perhaps give something back if my own experiences helped even one other person. You see, Sobriety is a real bitch to live with until you come to some mutual arrangement. After that things get easier-I promise you!
I imagine someone in the position I was before I stopped drinking reading this far and thinking “so what”. It’s the reaction I would have had myself, but honestly, it’s worth bearing with me while I make some sense of my thoughts.
Okay-why did I stop drinking alcohol in the first place? Like many dependants, I had tried to ease off my drinking or give it up altogether. I had succeeded several times in going for about six months and then going back to “social drinking”, which led right back to total chaos. I don’t know the actual figures, but few people ever give up straight away.
But this time something happened that really shook me up. I woke up in hospital after being found collapsed on the pavement at 7.30am with no memory of how I had got there. My first reaction was to get out as soon as possible so I could buy some alcohol to stop the shakes!
Fortunately a very kind and sensible doctor persuaded me that this was a wake-up call and I agreed to stay in for a hospital de-tox.
I am not going into the process. It’s unpleasant but over fairly soon. I was in for a week in all. Most people need longer, I was lucky enough to get over the worst of it and was referred back to the organisation that helps people with any sort of addictions to control or give up their habit. In my case this was G…. Alcohol Project, a volunteer service that is second to none with an excellent staff and a great service.
I had been going to them for many years, during which I was never judged or made to feel I had to give up or they would give up on me. Far from it, support continues for as long as the person wants it.
Through talking I found I could work out the ways in which I had failed before and the way I wanted to go forward this time. I still wasn’t sure I wanted to abstain for life initially, though that is what I’ve now decided is the only way for me.
More than that though, my sessions with the counsellor helped me to move on from one stage to another and realise that I had moved on. That’s such an important thing that seems so obvious, but only in hindsight.

The first month after I left hospital, I felt really good about myself and very positive about my future. This “honeymoon” period is almost euphoric. Your mind feels so clear, your body starts to feel better, but most of all you feel good about yourself.
In my case I was grossly overweight from drinking anything up to ten cans of lager a day. Sometimes I’d have a binge on wine or spirits, depending how bad I felt about myself. Within the first month I’d lost half a stone in weight and could walk about half a mile instead of being totally housebound. I hadn’t actually planned to diet as well as giving up alcohol, but I found I needed some sort of control over another area of my life and losing weight was going to make me feel better about my appearance.
The second month I still felt positive, but I started to miss the relaxed feeling I got from drinking. I also felt ever ache and pain that the alcohol had masked so well and as I was pushing my body to exercise, I felt it even more. It was now going into early Autumn and the nights drawing in didn’t help my frame of mind. One thing I did do when I felt I would scream if I didn’t have a drink was to get up, walk out of the house and just walk anywhere until the feeling went away.
I can’t remember how many times I’d get back from a walk, exhausted, in tears because I really wanted a drink, but determined not to give in. This was the second stage, the one where my craving wasn’t physical, it was purely in my mind. That didn’t make it any easier to cope with, but knowing I could survive without a drink kept me going.
After four months I went into another mental stage. By now I had lost three stones in weight and I was swimming about forty lengths in an hour. I was walking about a mile three times a week and my arthritis was improving all the time. However, Christmas was nearly on top of me and I was really only hanging onto my sobriety by the skin of my teeth. This is again quite a common reaction, but all I could think of was not being able to have a Christmas drink and feeling very bitter because of it.
The upshot was that I did lapse for about ten days but then got back on track again. Since then I haven’t had another alcoholic drink and I now know that I can’t really cope with it at all. Knowing that has changed my attitude to one of positive recognition, not a bitter resignation. This time the feeling is so different it’s hard to explain it.
I reached my target weight of ten stones (a weight loss of six and a half stones in 7months). I started to enjoy healthy food as opposed to just putting up with it. Getting in touch with my body again was a big plus. Obviously I still have health problems, but they are not drink-related. The best way I can describe it is being totally aware of all the good feelings that were never there when I was drinking. When I swim, I love the power of moving through the water. Walking gives me a natural “high” and occasionally I can even manage a run.
The best thing of all though is the relationship with my family and friends.
Drink takes prisoners of the drinker’s family. They suffer terribly but can’t do much about it. I was lucky that I kept my family, my daughter, son-in-law and my young grandson. I don’t have living parents and I haven’t got a partner, so life would be very lonely without my family. Friends have also been a lifeline to me.
I can honestly say that the smallest of things give me pleasure now. I have moments when life is pure bliss and it’s a natural high from just enjoying the moment. I can’t stress that enough, because I never expected such a bonus to come from having a healthy mind and body.
Alcohol masks an awful lot of things and some are so very precious.
I would love to say that this is the final stage in my rehabilitation, but I never take things for granted anymore.
Recently I went through a stage where I was fed up of dieting, but was worried about putting weight back on. That led to me worrying about losing control. Remember what I said about going in feet first?
I had a two-week eating binge where I ate fairly normally, but allowed myself a treat of a bag of sweets, then some biscuits.” well, so what?” you might say. I never do things by halves. One day I had three lots of sweets and a packet of biscuits! Not such a little snack.
The point is, I had my loss of control in my eyes, though I’m now eating normally again.
This is the stage I hope to stay at. All the time I worried that I’d lose my control, when I did I made it back to where I was before, but feeling as if I had gained peace of mind.
I still feel more comfortable with having a set routine. It’s not a rigid routine though and I’m not afraid to go outside of it.
My counsellor says that I’m very disciplined. I think I’m just being bloody-minded sometimes, because me and that bitch, Sobriety, we never got on so well. I wasn’t going to give her an inch to spare!

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Lisa Fuller. June 2009.