6 Things You Need To Learn Before You Quit Drinking

Master these life skills and your quest for sobriety will be easier.

Photo by ian dooley on Unsplash

To those of us who learn to manage our emotions with alcohol, every occasion can make us want to drink. If you want to quit drinking, it’s crucial that you learn how to tolerate the feeling of… having feelings.

Sad? Drown your sorrows with a Guinness. Happy? Celebrate with cava! Bored? Stop for a cheeky pint. Etc. This over-reliance on booze is what makes it hard to stop drinking, even if you don’t tick the box for having an addiction. But drinking away our feelings prevents us from becoming emotionally intelligent. We might feel better in the short term, but in the long term, we are stunting our development.

If you are keen to live alcohol-free or close to it, then these are the main feelings you need to learn to deal with.

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1. How to tolerate social awkwardness

So much of our social life does not run smoothly. There is waiting for a table, queueing to get into the restaurant (post-COVID-19), finding out that they have sold out of the one thing your vegan friend with the allergies can eat…

Things don’t go to plan often and it can be frustrating trying to come up with something that suits everybody. Alcohol helps smooth social awkwardness over.

Without a mood alterant, you are just there, sipping a soda and feeling disappointed or struggling with indecision or getting annoyed. There is nothing to take the edge off, and it can feel excruciating.

A huge part of my early sobriety was learning to simply tolerate social awkwardness. How to make small talk is an important skill. Get curious about people, and see what you can do to help them feel more comfortable. Is there someone who looks left out? See if you can make them smile.

And if there’s nothing to talk about for a while, try not to panic. Breathe. Have a look around you at what’s there to be noticed. Remember that you aren’t responsible for everybody having a good time. Stretch those social awkwardness muscles and acknowledge that you are growing stronger. Learn to appreciate the quiet moments as part of the social experience.

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2. How to celebrate

Going to a wedding sober feels impossible when you are still drinking. How do you toast the happy couple with lemonade? How do you enjoy catching up with friends you’ve not seen for years? How do you dance? Like many people, I used beer to help me do all of these things. And the truth is, it took a while to get comfortable doing them without it.

The trick is to change your perspective. Remember that your friend’s wedding day isn’t about you. Toasting with Appletizer doesn’t make you less pleased for your pals’ happiness. And hanging out with old friends is pretty enjoyable without drinking, even if you do have to manage a bit of social anxiety or a lot of social awkwardness.

When the music plays, and the dancing starts, with a bit of determination you can find that it wasn’t the alcohol that nudged you to dance. And even if you don’t reach the dizzy heights of enjoyment that you did in the past, at least you’ll remember the occasion. And you’ll feel good in the morning too.

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3. How to deal with disappointment

Sometimes you get the promotion and sometimes you don’t. Health falters. Dreams fail. When life goes wrong, it’s easy to crave booze to comfort yourself and numb the pain.

It’s important to find new ways of processing disappointment. Talking to friends, as honestly as you can manage, helps. Journaling or exercise can help you deal with how you’re feeling too. Feelings pass more quickly if you allow yourself to feel them. Naming difficult emotions helps us to get sufficient distance from them to choose how we react. It also allows us to increase our emotional intelligence and become the older, wiser people we aspire to be.

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4. How to handle free time

Boredom is a huge trigger for drinking. Many of the sober people I know claim this as being the ultimate hurdle for them. Days can seem very long without the promise of a drink at the end of them, and it can be hard to switch into the relaxed mode you can attain instantaneously via cold beer.

The trick is to appreciate the space that drinking leaves. To recognize that you have an opportunity to reshape your life. To learn a new skill or finish that dream project or get in the best shape of your life.

Getting sober with a community helps. When I was bored, I called my equally bored freshly sober new friends, and we watched films or talked our heads off about all the revelations we were having. We helped each other adjust.

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5. Learn what makes you happy

Getting sober is a positive experience, generally, but it isn’t easy. Most people who develop addictions have coexisting mental health issues — anxiety and depression are commonplace. Others will have more serious diagnoses and issues that they used booze to self-medicate over the years.

You might need to do a lot of personal work to identify why booze has been such a crutch for you, and to uncover the person that waits underneath all your coping strategies. Therapy can help. As can meditation and volunteering and talking with good friends and family.

Every time you come across an activity that makes you happy, write it down. And when you find yourself feeling stuck or low, make sure you are including things from your list in your life. There is so much more to life than alcohol, but it can take a while to learn to appreciate it.

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6. How to say no to drinks smoothly

Okay, so this isn’t a feeling, but it’s super important. Not everybody is respectful of non-drinkers preferences. The serious drinkers might find you suspect. Others feel the need to push you on why you don’t drink. Or insist that you should.

If you are already feeling socially awkward or irritable, it can be tough to keep your resolve not to drink. So be prepared. Have a couple of sentences you can throw out to fend people off without making a big deal of it.

“I’m not drinking today” works. Simple, assertive, and not at all intriguing, which is exactly what you need to be when dealing with the serious drinkers. The only thing they fear more than a non-drinker is a non-drinker with boundaries.

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So get comfortable with refusing drinks. Learn to tolerate the normal social awkwardness that comes whenever humans get together and accept the discomfort of sitting with your feelings and learning to interpret what they are trying to tell you.

It can take a while to uncover who you really are and what you truly love, and how you can best be of service to your fellow humans, but it is a quest that is well worth the effort. What better way to spend a life?

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If you need help to stop drinking you’re not alone.

If you’re ready to try something different, try my alcohol experiment.

Do whatever it takes to stay sober for 30 days: go to your doctor, try Smart or AA or Hip Sobriety or Soberistas. Read beautiful hangover. Listen to Recovery Elevator and SHAIR podcasts. Read This Naked Mind.

There is a whole community of people just waiting to help you. Reach out. Something better is waiting.

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Chelsey Flood is the author of Infinite Sky and Nightwanderers, and a senior lecturer in creative writing at UWE She writes about freedom, addiction, nature and love.

She writes about being late-diagnosed autistic at Polite Robot.