Consciously Sober

My unexpected journey into sobriety and what I've learned

I’ve gotten a lot of questions about my sobriety lately, mainly about why I stopped drinking, how I started, and how it’s going. So, I thought it would make sense to take a moment here to revisit the topic. Outside of meditation, my sobriety is my foundation.

I often wonder if it was mindfulness practice that led me to sobriety, or if it’s been my sobriety that’s deepened my mindfulness practice. Either way, the two are intertwined and so much a part of who I am today.

But that' wasn’t always the case.

I never planned on being sober. 

If you would have told me years ago that I’d never have another drink again, I would have laughed. After all, I didn’t have a drinking problem. 

And yet, here I am, three and a half years sober.

Like most of the people around me, I considered myself a “social drinker,” whatever that even means. A great bottle of wine over dinner, a spicy margarita on our patio, and every once in a while having one too many with the girls on a rare Saturday night out. That was about as wild as my story got.

But a drinking “problem”? Never. After all, I didn’t drink any more than anyone else I knew. In fact, I felt like I drank less.

But it didn’t matter because asking myself if I had a “drinking problem” was asking the wrong question. 

What I should have been asking is, does drinking make me feel good? Does it add value to my life?

Alcohol is the only thing in our modern society that we have to have a “problem” to justify quitting something we know is not good for us.

And deep down, for years, I knew. 

As I look back on my relationship with alcohol, I can see now that it was always surrounding me. At every family holiday, at every celebration, marking every occasion. It was everywhere.