One Month :)

Yes a whole month has  passed and it's all so very different from the last times I stopped drinking. I know now that in the past sober times I was just "not drinking", rather than having stopped drinking.

Even though I did it for a long time, I was still the same me, still with all the baggage and depression and self loathing and feeling broken and worthless, just without the alcohol as well.

This time, having worked over the last month (with help)  on how I feel and on changing how I  think about myself,  I actually feel so much happier already! Some of this builds on previous work I did when sober (but never quite believed was true) but mostly it's down to Belle. Her voice in my ear, her emails, reading her blog (all of it, in order ) and listening to sober podcasts.

It's not just about stopping drinking, in my opinion.  Although that's good!  But, unless we work on the underlying issues which made us want to drown our brains in alcohol and numb out our lives in the first place, there will be a much higher risk of lapsing back into drinking when something stressful happens.

We  have to replace the poor habit with a good one (bath, meditation, fizzy water and lemon juice, cuddle a cat, buy a book etc). We have to learn good coping mechanisms to replace the maladaptive ones.


I had a dreadful weekend just gone. Really very stressful and unpleasant. My reaction was to seek comfort in a bath, meditation, nice chocolate and a cuddle with my DH. It honestly did not occur to me to drink. I was in a shop and could have bought some wine, a thought which actually only occurred to me as I drove home and then only in a "oh, yes I could have" sort of way, not a craving way. Huge progress in reshaping my neural pathways. Early days but even so, it really is progress for me.


Day 31 and I have a new necklace as my sober treat for a month :) A feather to remind me I am now flying, free of alcohol 😀