Sobriety Series: Dry January Doesn’t Have to Be Miserable
A letter from me to you, in your first days of quitting a thing
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Dearest Reader,
My sober birthdate is February 11th, 2020. Today—the first Sunday of 2024—I’m practically a four-year-old.
I have other sober birthdays too: Some thirteen years back, I had my last run with cocaine. Around the same time, I stopped starving myself and broke free from anorexia (although I did relapse with that in 2017-18, amidst divorce and a very dark winter). And just last month, I quit Instagram (after quitting Facebook in 2020 and never getting on the rest of it).
Then there are the many, many internal and behavioral patterns I’ve shifted along the way. As well as ones that I’m walking and practicing with still—addiction to overwork, perfectionism, external validation, obsessive-compulsive patterning, and the like.
Sobriety for me is not about one thing, and there’s always, always another layer. I’ve come to love this. I’ve come to equate it with feeling and living.
And, quitting alcohol was a pivot point. Quitting alcohol once and for all—without exception and without moderation—changed everything.1
This is true even though I was drinking no more than average in the years prior to stopping. This is true even though I could have continued drinking that same amount without obvious consequences.
I’m using the word “obvious” here with intention. Because there were huge consequences from drinking. Those consequences befell body, mind, spirit. Those consequences had less to do with “how much,” and more to do with falling in love with a toxin we pour down our throats.2
Those consequences weren’t obvious to outsiders for two simple reasons: 1) I’m hyper-functioning (with or without booze), and 2) I swim in a society that normalizes addiction to alcohol and normalizes addiction to numbing out.