Why?
So I could be my happiest self and manifest my dreams.
So I could GLOW.
Let me explain:
I’m doing it.
I’m doing it, you guys.
It’s so funny – everyone’s journey with numbing, escapism, and how we handle fear.
For most of my life (ok, well actually for 35 out of my 38 years), I was active in a high demand religion that had strict standards around what we did and did not put in our bodies. So, sobriety was just a given for me and my family. I didn’t grow up around alcohol, never had it in my house, managed to basically avoid it in high school, and went to a church-run college and married my first husband at 19–all sober.
It was never in my vicinity because 1 – I could numb or escape in other ways like tv, food, or shopping. And 2 – there was a deep, subconscious part of my soul that actually had a really strong aversion to even the thought of alcohol.
I never thought, “Oh I wish I could just drink like everyone else is, but I won’t because I’ll get in trouble.”
I simply never wanted to. The thought was off-putting and brought up a strange emotional pain in me I didn’t understand.
Cut to my recent self – a divorcee and now on my second marriage, a mother of 3 step kids and 3 biological ones, and an emerging, newly-liberated woman who had left her lifelong religion. I was living in integrity of what was right to me despite my family, spouse, and circle all remaining actively religious, and figuring out what life looked like for me with such fresh eyes.
I didn’t turn to drinking to heal my loneliness at that point. I turned to intense spiritual growth.
I read, listened to audio books and podcasts, immersing myself in the teachings of other gurus, and attending events like sound baths and women’s circles so I could keep uncovering my layers of pain and growth.
So last year (exactly a year ago!) I was in France with my sister on an amazing girls scouting/work trip for a retreat we were planning, and if you know anything about France, and cheese, and fine dining, alcohol is a big focus. (Side note, isn’t it funny that if I say “alcohol” it sounds soooooooo less classy and elegant than wine, or champagne, or bubbly . . . ?)
I tried my first few sips of it on that trip, safely commiserating with my sister and two other friends, all of us in the same religion-leaving, newly-liberated, emerging phase.
We barely drank anything, and I realized then, with the few sips I had, that alcohol made me sleepy, less aware, and foggy.
Cut to a month later and suddenly my husband and I, who was now on his own spiritual journey, were at the state liquor store looking at the bottles and bottles of an overwhelming amount of liquor. 🍸🥃 🍹
It was going to be fun! Right? This was unchartered territory for us – finally being able to explore whatever the hell we wanted without any morality attached to it.
Well, it was fun. It was fun sometimes. It was fun to feel loopy, out of control, giggly, and numb.
It was fun to whip up beautiful and (sometimes) tasty drinks, make them together, plan a night when our kids were either gone or all in bed and make the house romantic and have our drinks.
In my state of emerging liberation I was also going through intense sexual shame release and reclamation. I had deep buried trauma around patriarchy, women’s values and roles, body shame, impurity, and hurtful wounds.
I found that as I was healing from that, I would reach for a drink as liquid courage to get me through some tough discussions with my husband and tap into my vulnerability.
Only, alcohol doesn’t really do that, does it. Alcohol only gives you “courage” because it numbs your ability to reason and be aware. It actually is a great breeding ground for arguments and hurt feelings. (It’s also a great breeding ground for all sorts of physical health problems as well, and I’m glad I’ve got science in my corner to really back me up here, but that’s not this post is really about).
It blocks our ability to feel fully, and to process those feelings. So basically, it inhibits our greatest superpower – our bodies and our feelings. Two things that I’ve been told to suppress my whole life. Especially as a woman.
Don’t be so emotional! You’re acting crazy! Just get over it! You’re being so sensitive! Let’s just forgive and move on!
Hmmmmmm.
I see what happens to people who don’t allow themselves to feel it all. Who don’t process. Who numb instead.
It’s not for me.
About six months after I started this, and our drinking became a regular weekend (or weeknight too!) occurrence, I noticed a few things:
1 – I didn’t sleep well.
So I wasn’t well-rested. So my mind was foggy. So I didn’t have great energy. So I was a little less patient. Less motivated. So I felt crummy and would have to spend a few days really recouping.
2 – Sometimes we’d have a great night together, but just as often, we’d end it with arguing and hurt feelings.
So we were actually less connected. So our resentments grew. So we had less sex. (And the sex we had while drinking? It made my body so numb it would take me so long to orgasm, I didn’t get to feel the full euphoria of it, and I was perpetually unsatisfied). So I started to get anxious about sex again because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to come . . . and down the rabbit hole we went.
3 – My body was in disrepair.
I was bloating out of control, to the point where I had to stop wearing my normal clothes because I couldn’t fit in them or it was too uncomfortable to have them on. I don’t mean typical period bloating, I mean like horrible, huge, uncomfortable bloating all day and all night, every time I ate.
I couldn’t get it under control. I tried doctors, supplements, dietary restrictions . . . and it persisted.
I finally met with a gut specialist. A thousand dollars later and a mailed-in poop sample, the results came back that my gut bacteria was a mess. Too many bad bacteria strains, not enough good ones. What disrupted it? What had changed in my lifestyle? Uh huh.
4 – I didn’t like the taste of it.
And I only wanted to drink it out of FOMO or from a place of wanting to numb or escape. I literally knew it was poison I was putting into my body, but I was afraid. Afraid of being alone, of being left out, of feeling restricted again.
In the second week of my I’m a Glow Getter course I teach, I was helping my students analyze and reshape their outer work practices so they can support their highest-self woman of who they want to be. We were talking about routines and physical and emotional nourishment, and implementing the lifestyle of who we consider our best, truest, and highest selves to be.
One of the participants was talking about her nightly “reward” of a glass of red wine, and how she knew it was terrible for her and how she wanted to reshape her perspective and practice. Afterwards, another person in the class reached out to me and we had a long Marco Polo back-and-forth about our views on it.
“When I picture my Higher Self, she doesn’t drink,” she said. “My Higher Self takes meticulous care of her body and loves it, and loves being completely present with herself, her family, and her life.”
I agreed.
I reflected on the “weird emotional pain” that the thought of drinking had previously brought up in me, and had some big aha moments in regards to my very wise intuition.
In discussion with my own coach, I brought it up and knew that my Higher Self (this girl that I knew I truly was and came here to grow into) was happy, fulfilled, and didn’t feel the need to numb, inhibit, or poison.
My Higher Self was asking me to start living as her already – to open myself up to more growth, expansion, learning, and feeling.
She wanted me to provide the physical means of allowing her to come through, so that I could reach my full potential and manifest the shit out of my life.
My dreams are astronomical, and they used to feel impossible. They don’t feel impossible anymore. But they feel a little scary and hard. And every time I took a drink, I felt the dream get shelved. I would come up for air, but alcohol would squash it.
In short, she wanted me to love myself. To love my body. To stop seeing sobriety as a means of restriction or punishment – because it was the opposite.
Alcohol was ruining my health (as it will everyone’s, eventually), and my body was screaming at me in speak of gut-wreck and weight-gain to stop.
It was ruining my mental clarity. My ability to feel good in my own skin.
I knew that if I wanted a drink when I was upset, stressed, anxious, or wanted to have a good time, it was a pretty good indication that I was choosing it for numbing and escapism.
And I don’t want to numb. I don’t want to escape. I don’t want to feel like I can’t be in complete presence in order to be happy, relaxed, or buzzy.
I love a good buzz. But I feel it even more-so when it’s organic. When I put on sexy music and dance to it, when I laugh really hard with my friends, when I have a deep and connected conversation with my husband or kids. When I sit on the beach and feel connected to the entire earth.
I feel it when I sit in my chair in the mornings and the house is quiet, and I sip on my ceremonial cacao and connect with Goddess.
So, having realized all this, I knew it was time for me to stop.
A hard stop.
Because what my soul is searching for is freedom. Freedom from pain, from fear, from stress, from anxiety. From limitation. From scarcity. From upheaval.
The last piece of my journey is that I’m doing it alone.
Well, not totally alone, because as I’ve listened to my intuition, I’ve attracted some support and new friends who all have similar journeys. Some are right at this beginning stage with me, and others have been sober for 7+ years.
I’ve never met one person who has regretted being sober.
I’ve met a lot who regret drinking.
But I’m mostly alone in it. And I suppose if I believe all the spiritual shit I do, this is the way my subconscious likes it. Forging my own path, finding my independence, really solidifying who I am and being ok with it . . . I guess this is the growth that my Higher Self is searching for. Can I be truly me, and love me, even if I’m the only one? Can I have the courage to hold it all together and stick to my Higher Self commitments, even if it’s just me doing it?
SO, here I am. Why I went sober is simple:
I want the most out of my life.
I have a powerful message to share, and alcohol stands in direct contradiction with it.
I want to love my body and release all my past shame and trauma with it, but I know to do that, I have to treat my body like I love it – in nutrition, movement, and substances.
I don’t think I can be ok with my weight and wrinkles if I’m not treating myself with the complete respect and care I deserve.
Confession? Even writing this post is scary. As I was sitting in meditation the last few mornings, I could feel all this fear and turmoil rise up in me around this subject. I scanned my body with my hand, running it up and down my chakras, hovering a few inches above so I could energetically feel where the negative emotion I was storing was residing.
Surprised, I kept finding it in my throat chakra – which is all about voice and communication.
What I am not communicating? I kept asking. Because, geesh! I’ve been posting on social media like crazy. I’m so open about me and my life on my website and when I talk to people.
But I’m finding that writing this is very therapeutic. Because for me, having grown up in a religious culture where drinking is viewed as sinning and immoral, there was a whole story attached to that. Shame in what I was doing. Fear that people would think I’d “gone off the deep end.”
But I’m not hiding it anymore. So while I’ve never publicly talked about my drinking, apparently that is what my body is telling me to do. And as (in real time!) I write this, I’m pausing to scan my body again and see if my energy has moved, dissipated, or what my throat now feels like.
The report? I feel much more peaceful. My throat chakra is steady, calm, and warm.
My real struggle is not with the alcohol or wanting it to numb or relax (seriously, I really don’t like it – even the smell makes my stomach turn a little).
For me, letting it go is about actually my addiction to companionship. It’s about stepping into my fear of loneliness and FOMO. Stepping into allowing myself to sit with the full spectrum of my being and feel all the dark so that I can also feel all the light.
I’m willing to do it.
And I have to confess, I don’t want to do it alone. But I will, anyway. 💕
Sending you all the love and light I have to give,
Maren
Leave a Reply