I Thought Sobriety Would Solve All My Problems, and then I Got Sober

And I realised that life is basically about solving problems.

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Before I got sober, I thought sobriety would be a kind of reset. On my drinking, primarily. (Like all committed booze-lovers I never intended to give up forever, just to learn to moderate.) I thought that if I could just stop drinking, everything else would fall into place — the mess would tidy itself up, my mind would stop churning and I’d be calm and collected. One of those impressive people who has their shit together.

Then, I got sober.

And it was striking, the difference. Mountains of time appeared. And I spent a lot less time in pubs. My friendship groups even began to change, after a while. But the main difference of sobriety - forgive me if this is too obvious - was that I was just not drunk. Not even a little bit. All the time. It was so wild!

As this not-drunkenness went on, I developed a new superpower. Unlike the time travelling to places I didn’t want to go via the Blackout Express of old, I discovered that I could now show up where and when I said I would. Delighted with this ability, I began to chronically over commit myself, signing up for and agreeing to all kinds of strange and wholesome pursuits.

Obviously, I couldn't keep up with this new personality/lifestyle so I had no choice but to revert to type.

But I found that, rather than having fewer problems after all this self-improvement and sobriety, I actually had a greater awareness of the scale of my problems, which were still very much present. Without the kind assistance of beer, problems were quite a lot harder to ignore. And, to make matters worse, not much easier to deal with.

It was like taking the register of my nightmares.

“Anxiety?”

“Here, Miss!”

“Shame?”

“Yep!”

“Insecurities? INSECURITIES?”

[In an annoying whisper, from right at the front of the class.] “Sorry. I’m here. : (”

Except for hangovers and maybe some water retention around my face, sobriety didn’t really fix anything for aaages. It just made it clearer that I had things to fix, and it gave me a group of people who agreed that fixing things was what life was all about. (Not drinking Amstel in beer gardens.)

Sobriety and AA gave me space from my life. Space to wonder what I'd been up to and who I was now that the drinking days were over. To consider something I thought about a lot, but wasn’t able to action very effectively - who I wanted to be.

It took a long time, but sobriety (and therapy) gradually led me to discover some important information about why I had struggled in the ways I had, and why I seemed to struggle more than my peers, even if I didn’t drink more than them.

Maybe it’s just something we do as humans. Keep expecting one big change to fix everything. Getting sober or landing the dream job or finding love (definitely finding love!) or having kids… Surely it will fix everything forever?

I did it with my autism diagnosis, weirdly. And it was helpful and illuminating, but hardly a life-fix.

My latest fix-me fixation is on writing a bestselling novel. If I can just do that then… Then what? My life will be perfect, and I will never have to do anything I don’t want to do and nobody I love will die and my son will never push me away and I will die happy and peaceful with all significant threads resolved satisfactorily the end?

It’s not wrong to dream, but it’s good to remember that external things, no matter how glorious for a moment, don’t fix us for long. Apparently.

Though if I can just write a bestselling novel…

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Good Things

TV: Alma's Not Normal - quietly radical and subversive. A celebration of art, family and fluffy pink jackets.

Game: The Last of Us - I decided to become a gamer! But I’m terrible at it. Still it’s most enjoyable and we call the game the Mushroom Men, which takes the edge off how terrifying it is. Join us.

Article: Is moderation just “dependence in disguise?” Do healthy or ‘normal’ drinkers have to work to moderate? Or is having to moderate at all an issue?

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Okay, your turn…

Have you ever had one of those moments when you thought that big thing—quitting, starting, changing—would make it all make sense, only to realise it was just the beginning of something more complicated? What did it teach you? How did you change because of it?

Tell meeee everything.

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Chelsey Flood is the author of award-winning novels Infinite Sky and Nightwanderers, and a senior lecturer in creative writing at UWE. She is currently working on a non-fiction book about the intersection between addiction and neurodiversity and a new novel.