“....fear can only tell you what you stand to lose. It has no capacity to tell you what you might gain”
That is such a tremendous insight imho, Chelsey, thank you so much for that.
It is a gift to those looking to make a change & one that I am going to hold within whilst I do my work with people looking to make that change. I am an addiction therapist based in Brighton, Sussex.
Once again, thank you for that gift, I am going to share it & share it & I’ll never lose it & hopefully it will help many others to make that change...? As the man, or woman, in the mirror would say..? And now, perhaps, they can aided by this inspirational (imho) insight.......thank you once again Chelsey🙏🤗👍👌
You’re most welcome 🙏 & you’re doing important work too, so, again, thank you for your writings. Are there distance learning modules in Creative Writing at UWE btw? I am a wannabe writer so thought I’d take the time to enquire briefly here. I will check out the website but thought I’d ask here too...? Hope that ok?
You know, there aren't, but there should be. We're missing a trick there... Falmouth Uni (where I taught before UWE) has an online degree/MA and there's the open university. Also lots of online writing communities like Writing Mastery with Jessica Brody (I'm a member there) that are quite good. Good luck!
This is inspiring, thank you, Chelsey. I feel like I need to do more work in terms of finding sober friends. I find myself avoiding the kinds of gatherings I used to love because I worry they will be quite hard without drinking. I have met a few people who don't drink, but I'm finding a difference between people who don't drink because they just don't drink, and people who don't drink because they have stopped drinking. I don't have anybody in the physical world to talk about being sober with (which is why I appreciate your blog and this group of folks who engage with it so much!). Question - was it hard to find an AA group that you connected with? I just went to one meeting, but i felt quite distant from the people there. I didn't feel like it was my place. I know people say to just keep trying different meetings, but I wonder how many people in AA have had the kind of "high bottom" experience that we've had. It's that kind of imposter feeling of "Am I enough of an alcoholic for AA?"
Hiya P, yes, I know what you mean about the difference between people who don't drink and people who have quit drinking. I remember feeling that v acutely in the first part of my not drinking chapter.
And yes, it was hard, and sometimes still can be, to find an AA group that I connect with. The first meeting I went to was full (or felt full) of 'proper alcoholics' and so I did leave with the feeling that this wasn't quite the right place for me. The people there were telling me I should move into a dry house, if I was serious about getting sober, and they also assumed my cut on my hand from cooking was in fact an injury from drinking! "I used to hurt myself 'while cooking' too," one man said to me kindly.
I was like, "no, it really was from cooking!" but everything can sound like a statement of denial in that context.
Anyway, I didn't go back for a while. But I'd met the woman who would become my sponsor there and she gave me her number, so a few months later, after I'd accidentally got drunk a load more times I called and then went to a meeting she suggested and it was Totally Different.
It was a women's meeting, so I was lucky in that respect. And the majority of attendees looked v 'normal', many hadn't been to rehab. Many hadn't been physically addicted. That was v exciting to me as I realised, quite clearly, that I was 'allowed' to join. I still remember how happy I felt at that meeting! (It didn't last, that first year was so up n down.)
I returned to that meeting and made it my 'home group' (ie attended each week, and helped out) yet I continued to feel outside of it. Prob for whole time I was a home group member (over a year). Getting the autism diagnosis helped me understand why that might be.
I never felt properly part of the group (while feeling everyone else was, of course!) but I connected with a couple of individuals within it, who are still good friends, and I learned a lot from the experience.
All meetings have a different feel, and they change over time as the members change. I'm lucky that live in a largeish, progressive city so our meetings tend to be open-minded and relaxed.
But I've heard of overtly Christian meetings. And I've attended extremely depressing meetings. And I've turned up at meetings where it seems like the majority of people have experience of living on the streets, so I've felt like a bit of a yuppy pillock.
I'm super nosy, so it was all fascinating to me. The first year, I think I kinda thought I was just going to write about the experience, and that helped me just turn up and be a bit of a tourist. But eventually, through friendships with other people who wanted a different kind of life, I got properly drawn in.
It's a minority with the 'high bottom' experience, but there are more and more of us. I was uncomfortable with it, at first,
bit embarrassed, but most there think of 'alcoholism' as a progressive disease, and that the high bottoms were just lucky enough to quit before they got to that physical addiction stage.
Personally, I still don't really believe I would have gotten there, but by now, I don't really care about that. I just prefer my life and myself when I don't drink, and I prefer not drinking as part of a group. It's fun, and it teaches me a lot to spend time with people I wouldn't normally spend time with. One friend of mine sees it as kind of like our weird church.
Part of a community, helping each other, lots of ritual, discussion about how to live and how to have faith (my fave meetings dont mean this in a religious way).
But after all that pro AA writing, I still think about leaving often. Cos I just prefer (or think I prefer) to be alone. Or with the pets. Once I have a baby, I can imagine I'll have this resistance to meetings even more strongly.
Now I know I'm autistic, I am keeping an open mind about what is best for me. AA worked cos of the rules of engagement, but sometimes it can feel like ABA for adults. Like I defo mask a fair bit there, cos so many people. And I get overstimulated and the lights bother me. And I have learned to be more 'normal' there. (Or maybe just more conscientious, considerate and self-aware?) More conventional, I think, for sure. And more authentic. Whatever I have learned there, it has been mostly enjoyable. And I do try to 'let go of the mask' but obvs don't really know how to actually do that. The fun part is that everyone there is having their own experience of the same thing. As much as I feel separate and different. And it's a lot of what people share about.
Honestly, I think there's a lot of neurodiversity there. I sometimes dream of doing a research project cos so many people sound autistic.
An aside within an aside.
Maybe one day I will leave. Or find something that fits me better. Anywho, it has certainly been a big help, and I love it, as well as having lots of criticisms of it!
Whew, that was a long one!
Good luck in finding sober friends. That's what it is all about, I think. You don't need many either. I have maybe 4 who are proper friends, as in I trust them implicitly and feel totally accepted with them and would ring them just for a chat. And a fair few more that I see less frequently, but care about a lot.
I think you did just write a post :) THANK YOU. This is so helpful, and it is so great to hear more detail on your experience and thoughts of AA. I was just listening to the Alcohol Problem podcast (which you recommended a while back) and they were talking about AA in a way that helped me see it in a different light. I think I have gotten a bit sucked into the AA view of the world, and it’s good to be reminded there are other ways of looking at the situation.
As I think about it, I think part of what I may be struggling with a bit here is that I really, really like alone time. I used to love going to parties, where the drunk version of me would emerge (which involved both drinking and masking), but my preference is not to drink and to keep a relatively low key routine at home. But, our society sends a lot of signals that this is not healthy/normal behavior. So, I feel a sense of judgment for not wanting to do a lot of social engagements, or I feel like I "should" be wanting something else. This leads me to second guess myself - like "do I really like alone time or am I actually depressed and I just don't realize it?" When I listen to or read AA stories, I also get that feeling. Like I'm yet to discover this new life sober life in its full bloom, and i'm stuck in this early phase where I've stopped drinking but I haven't discovered "emotional sobriety" (or perhaps haven't "surrendered" in the language of AA).
I suspect that there are hundreds different AA meetings in my area (a fairly big progressive city), and that if I tried several I would find one I meshed with. The way I tend to do things is alone, figuring things out my own way, on my own, and so far I’ve treated sobriety the same way. But I have also found great benefit through interactions like this one on Substack and other virtual communities, so that’s great too.
I follow a number of ex addicts on social media and heard the idiom, "If you want a friend be a friend." through one of them. I think this resonates with your piece on friendships and sobriety. Thanks for posting, I enjoyed reading it.
That's a good, one - I haven't heard that. I've heard lots of wisdom there that has helped me understand life and how to live better. I remember learning that what I did changed the way I felt, which was pretty profound. I started to just do things I didn't want to a lot mere, and found it often made me feel better.
I've kind of lost that lesson a bit now! I'm trying to learn it again at the moment. Since getting all my diagnoses I have been more into letting myself do what I actually want cos I had felt sometimes like my whole life has been me not doing that. But after a year or two, I think the AA approach might have felt better.
I'm working on having a mix of both.
It's hard cos I am so resistant to Everything. Apart from reading, napping and eating.
I'm part of this research project at the moment, it's CBT or maybe DBT based and the essential teaching that underpins it is about changing the way you feel by doing things.
I am always hoping for a different answer. Cos it's so hard to push thru the resistance and do A Thing in order to feel better. I feel like the resistance is such a huge and frustrating part of my experience!
It must be so nice to be able to actually look forward to Doing Things and begin with gusto rather than having to sort of drag yourself into it, kicking and screaming, only to be pleasantly surprised by the experience.
Thanks for reading and for being a founding member! x
Ooh relate I felt like that in AA for a bit and some meetings I wasn't so keen on. I was a ' functional drinking ' ' didn't lose my job, end up in prison or hospital and didn't drink everyday or mornings ( well unless I hadn't been to bed. No park bench girl for me... Well yet anyway...
Women's meetings I've found a nice place... Many online. Maybe in your area? And many many nice and supportive mixed meetings so yep going to a few is good idea 💡
Stick with the women is a good moto esp in beginning many women at mixed meetings.
I'm Emma I'm an alcoholic ( but my head used to tell me different..
Hi Emma, and you were such an important person for me to see and hear cos you helped me understand why my drinking was 'bad enough' to quit, and why AA was for me too.
I like sharing about my low bottom now so others can realise they are welcome. But I used to feel quite embarrassed of it!
Nowadays I just think it's really sad/odd that I was so attached to drinking that I felt I needed permission to quit. Or that I needed to be a certain level of bad to be able to quit.
We're lucky as women to get special meetings, aren't we? I Def wasn't ready for mixed groups at first.
I still don't really like the alcoholic identifying thing. And I think that keeps a lot of people out. Or distracts people with a question that is beside the point.
Am I really alcoholic? God that haunted me for years. In the end, it's just about how much choice you have around drinking i think. Most of my life I had v little choice. Drink chose me!
“....fear can only tell you what you stand to lose. It has no capacity to tell you what you might gain”
That is such a tremendous insight imho, Chelsey, thank you so much for that.
It is a gift to those looking to make a change & one that I am going to hold within whilst I do my work with people looking to make that change. I am an addiction therapist based in Brighton, Sussex.
Once again, thank you for that gift, I am going to share it & share it & I’ll never lose it & hopefully it will help many others to make that change...? As the man, or woman, in the mirror would say..? And now, perhaps, they can aided by this inspirational (imho) insight.......thank you once again Chelsey🙏🤗👍👌
Thanks Bradley. It sounds like you're doing important work out there in Sussex. I appreciate you taking the time to let me know this spoke to you! 💜
You’re most welcome 🙏 & you’re doing important work too, so, again, thank you for your writings. Are there distance learning modules in Creative Writing at UWE btw? I am a wannabe writer so thought I’d take the time to enquire briefly here. I will check out the website but thought I’d ask here too...? Hope that ok?
You know, there aren't, but there should be. We're missing a trick there... Falmouth Uni (where I taught before UWE) has an online degree/MA and there's the open university. Also lots of online writing communities like Writing Mastery with Jessica Brody (I'm a member there) that are quite good. Good luck!
This is inspiring, thank you, Chelsey. I feel like I need to do more work in terms of finding sober friends. I find myself avoiding the kinds of gatherings I used to love because I worry they will be quite hard without drinking. I have met a few people who don't drink, but I'm finding a difference between people who don't drink because they just don't drink, and people who don't drink because they have stopped drinking. I don't have anybody in the physical world to talk about being sober with (which is why I appreciate your blog and this group of folks who engage with it so much!). Question - was it hard to find an AA group that you connected with? I just went to one meeting, but i felt quite distant from the people there. I didn't feel like it was my place. I know people say to just keep trying different meetings, but I wonder how many people in AA have had the kind of "high bottom" experience that we've had. It's that kind of imposter feeling of "Am I enough of an alcoholic for AA?"
Hiya P, yes, I know what you mean about the difference between people who don't drink and people who have quit drinking. I remember feeling that v acutely in the first part of my not drinking chapter.
And yes, it was hard, and sometimes still can be, to find an AA group that I connect with. The first meeting I went to was full (or felt full) of 'proper alcoholics' and so I did leave with the feeling that this wasn't quite the right place for me. The people there were telling me I should move into a dry house, if I was serious about getting sober, and they also assumed my cut on my hand from cooking was in fact an injury from drinking! "I used to hurt myself 'while cooking' too," one man said to me kindly.
I was like, "no, it really was from cooking!" but everything can sound like a statement of denial in that context.
Anyway, I didn't go back for a while. But I'd met the woman who would become my sponsor there and she gave me her number, so a few months later, after I'd accidentally got drunk a load more times I called and then went to a meeting she suggested and it was Totally Different.
It was a women's meeting, so I was lucky in that respect. And the majority of attendees looked v 'normal', many hadn't been to rehab. Many hadn't been physically addicted. That was v exciting to me as I realised, quite clearly, that I was 'allowed' to join. I still remember how happy I felt at that meeting! (It didn't last, that first year was so up n down.)
I returned to that meeting and made it my 'home group' (ie attended each week, and helped out) yet I continued to feel outside of it. Prob for whole time I was a home group member (over a year). Getting the autism diagnosis helped me understand why that might be.
I never felt properly part of the group (while feeling everyone else was, of course!) but I connected with a couple of individuals within it, who are still good friends, and I learned a lot from the experience.
All meetings have a different feel, and they change over time as the members change. I'm lucky that live in a largeish, progressive city so our meetings tend to be open-minded and relaxed.
But I've heard of overtly Christian meetings. And I've attended extremely depressing meetings. And I've turned up at meetings where it seems like the majority of people have experience of living on the streets, so I've felt like a bit of a yuppy pillock.
I'm super nosy, so it was all fascinating to me. The first year, I think I kinda thought I was just going to write about the experience, and that helped me just turn up and be a bit of a tourist. But eventually, through friendships with other people who wanted a different kind of life, I got properly drawn in.
It's a minority with the 'high bottom' experience, but there are more and more of us. I was uncomfortable with it, at first,
bit embarrassed, but most there think of 'alcoholism' as a progressive disease, and that the high bottoms were just lucky enough to quit before they got to that physical addiction stage.
Personally, I still don't really believe I would have gotten there, but by now, I don't really care about that. I just prefer my life and myself when I don't drink, and I prefer not drinking as part of a group. It's fun, and it teaches me a lot to spend time with people I wouldn't normally spend time with. One friend of mine sees it as kind of like our weird church.
Part of a community, helping each other, lots of ritual, discussion about how to live and how to have faith (my fave meetings dont mean this in a religious way).
But after all that pro AA writing, I still think about leaving often. Cos I just prefer (or think I prefer) to be alone. Or with the pets. Once I have a baby, I can imagine I'll have this resistance to meetings even more strongly.
Now I know I'm autistic, I am keeping an open mind about what is best for me. AA worked cos of the rules of engagement, but sometimes it can feel like ABA for adults. Like I defo mask a fair bit there, cos so many people. And I get overstimulated and the lights bother me. And I have learned to be more 'normal' there. (Or maybe just more conscientious, considerate and self-aware?) More conventional, I think, for sure. And more authentic. Whatever I have learned there, it has been mostly enjoyable. And I do try to 'let go of the mask' but obvs don't really know how to actually do that. The fun part is that everyone there is having their own experience of the same thing. As much as I feel separate and different. And it's a lot of what people share about.
Honestly, I think there's a lot of neurodiversity there. I sometimes dream of doing a research project cos so many people sound autistic.
An aside within an aside.
Maybe one day I will leave. Or find something that fits me better. Anywho, it has certainly been a big help, and I love it, as well as having lots of criticisms of it!
Whew, that was a long one!
Good luck in finding sober friends. That's what it is all about, I think. You don't need many either. I have maybe 4 who are proper friends, as in I trust them implicitly and feel totally accepted with them and would ring them just for a chat. And a fair few more that I see less frequently, but care about a lot.
Maybe I should write a post about this!
x
I think you did just write a post :) THANK YOU. This is so helpful, and it is so great to hear more detail on your experience and thoughts of AA. I was just listening to the Alcohol Problem podcast (which you recommended a while back) and they were talking about AA in a way that helped me see it in a different light. I think I have gotten a bit sucked into the AA view of the world, and it’s good to be reminded there are other ways of looking at the situation.
As I think about it, I think part of what I may be struggling with a bit here is that I really, really like alone time. I used to love going to parties, where the drunk version of me would emerge (which involved both drinking and masking), but my preference is not to drink and to keep a relatively low key routine at home. But, our society sends a lot of signals that this is not healthy/normal behavior. So, I feel a sense of judgment for not wanting to do a lot of social engagements, or I feel like I "should" be wanting something else. This leads me to second guess myself - like "do I really like alone time or am I actually depressed and I just don't realize it?" When I listen to or read AA stories, I also get that feeling. Like I'm yet to discover this new life sober life in its full bloom, and i'm stuck in this early phase where I've stopped drinking but I haven't discovered "emotional sobriety" (or perhaps haven't "surrendered" in the language of AA).
I suspect that there are hundreds different AA meetings in my area (a fairly big progressive city), and that if I tried several I would find one I meshed with. The way I tend to do things is alone, figuring things out my own way, on my own, and so far I’ve treated sobriety the same way. But I have also found great benefit through interactions like this one on Substack and other virtual communities, so that’s great too.
Thank you so much for sharing!
Such a beautiful post! I love hearing about how your relationships change, and that it's all part of the process.
Thanks sweet pea! 💜❣️💜
I follow a number of ex addicts on social media and heard the idiom, "If you want a friend be a friend." through one of them. I think this resonates with your piece on friendships and sobriety. Thanks for posting, I enjoyed reading it.
That's a good, one - I haven't heard that. I've heard lots of wisdom there that has helped me understand life and how to live better. I remember learning that what I did changed the way I felt, which was pretty profound. I started to just do things I didn't want to a lot mere, and found it often made me feel better.
I've kind of lost that lesson a bit now! I'm trying to learn it again at the moment. Since getting all my diagnoses I have been more into letting myself do what I actually want cos I had felt sometimes like my whole life has been me not doing that. But after a year or two, I think the AA approach might have felt better.
I'm working on having a mix of both.
It's hard cos I am so resistant to Everything. Apart from reading, napping and eating.
I'm part of this research project at the moment, it's CBT or maybe DBT based and the essential teaching that underpins it is about changing the way you feel by doing things.
I am always hoping for a different answer. Cos it's so hard to push thru the resistance and do A Thing in order to feel better. I feel like the resistance is such a huge and frustrating part of my experience!
It must be so nice to be able to actually look forward to Doing Things and begin with gusto rather than having to sort of drag yourself into it, kicking and screaming, only to be pleasantly surprised by the experience.
Thanks for reading and for being a founding member! x
Ooh relate I felt like that in AA for a bit and some meetings I wasn't so keen on. I was a ' functional drinking ' ' didn't lose my job, end up in prison or hospital and didn't drink everyday or mornings ( well unless I hadn't been to bed. No park bench girl for me... Well yet anyway...
Women's meetings I've found a nice place... Many online. Maybe in your area? And many many nice and supportive mixed meetings so yep going to a few is good idea 💡
Stick with the women is a good moto esp in beginning many women at mixed meetings.
I'm Emma I'm an alcoholic ( but my head used to tell me different..
Hi Emma, and you were such an important person for me to see and hear cos you helped me understand why my drinking was 'bad enough' to quit, and why AA was for me too.
I like sharing about my low bottom now so others can realise they are welcome. But I used to feel quite embarrassed of it!
Nowadays I just think it's really sad/odd that I was so attached to drinking that I felt I needed permission to quit. Or that I needed to be a certain level of bad to be able to quit.
We're lucky as women to get special meetings, aren't we? I Def wasn't ready for mixed groups at first.
I still don't really like the alcoholic identifying thing. And I think that keeps a lot of people out. Or distracts people with a question that is beside the point.
Am I really alcoholic? God that haunted me for years. In the end, it's just about how much choice you have around drinking i think. Most of my life I had v little choice. Drink chose me!
Thanks for reading and responding x
Yep I relate..
My head told me for a good few mths I wasn't a ' real alcoholic '.
I wasnt like ' them '. I was a binge drinker not an every day drinker some times I could even have one... Um not v often.
When I heard ' if when u honestly want to stop drinking and find u can't. Your probably an alcoholic of sorts '. I thought, ok yep I'm of sorts 😊
Today with each sober day, wk and year I get so much more clearer on how so v bad my drinking was due to how it erroded Emma...
Chelsey, thank you for this today ❤️
You're welcome, Hunter. Thanks for reading. 💜