“I need a drink!” – Notes on why I will never drink again

A few years ago, I remember hearing someone, I think it was Dave Hollis, say that alcohol doesn’t just numb the bad feelings it numbs everything. And that really resonated with me. I wasn’t sober yet, but I was realizing alcohol had become something I relied on to get through the hard days or times. It moved from something that was “fun” to self-medicating. And when you have a strong history of addiction in your family, substances are not a good way to self-medicate.

When my drinking was at its worst, I felt lost and numb, a shell of myself. Now, this might be a chicken and an egg thing. Was I feeling lost because I was drinking so much that all my feelings we numb? Or was I drinking because I felt lost and I wanted to numb those feelings? I’m not sure. Whatever it is, I can be sure that when I was drinking, I didn’t want to have fun, I wanted to fade away and forget the world.

At the time of writing this post, I am 1,281 days sober. Or 3 ½ years. That’s a lot of opportunities to have a drink. Sometimes I’ve thought, “Oh, I could go for a daiquiri or a margarita.” However, for most of them, I have easily, said, “Nah, I’m not interested.” But on a handful of occasions, on some really hard days over the last few years, my thought has been, “I need a drink.” 

One of those days was Good Friday 2022. I was a few weeks out from my miscarriage with Robin, and I was struggling. For weeks I had thought, “Man, I need a drink.” Then, as I was driving home from the afternoon Good Friday service, I passed a liquor store and thought, “I could run inside, grab a bottle of wine, and drink it in the parking lot. I’ll just call James to come get me. And in half an hour, I won’t feel like this anymore.” Yeah, this was a low point. And I was over 2 years sober at this point. By God’s grace, I did not stop at the liquor store. I drove the last 10 minutes home, messaged a fellow sober seminarian, and quickly hopped on a call with her. Five days later, I found out I was pregnant with Jimmy.

Another one of those moments was today, June 5th, 2023. Today is Jimmy’s first day of daycare, and I am not ready. In fact, he’s been at daycare for roughly 3 hours and I’m counting down the minutes until I can go pick him up. For a little more than 400 days, my little man has been a part of me. I carried him, tucked away safe inside, for 9 months. In the last 5 months, I can count on one hand the number of times we’ve been apart for more than a couple of hours. Needless to say, dropping him off was hard. And I didn’t want to feel those feelings. So again, I thought to myself, “I need a drink.”

But the fact was, I didn’t need a drink. I never need a drink. What I need is to feel my feelings. To put into practice the idea that no feelings are bad feelings. To accept that my feelings are teaching me something. Because by learning from my feelings, I can be a better person. A better mom, wife, student, friend.

After 3 ½ years, I still can’t untangle the desire to numb myself from drinking. As fun as it might be to have a drink when I’m out with friends, I have again proven to myself that it’s not a safe idea for me. And that’s why I will never drink again.