The Sober School

In my Google Doc Contract from 2014, I had a couple of webpage link for references - and I picked winners!    Mrs. D inspired and supported the growth of the sobriety seed of even then.  The other weblink I had completely forgotten about until I found my Google Doc.  The Sober Journalist was another blog I was reading at the time. 

These two blogs are written by women who "quietly" got sober anonymously. They both happen to be professional journalists and eventually came out of their closets and made careers about their journeys and resources.  I'm glad they are out there, and can stand squarely in their lives and histories and now publicly help others.  I will remain iwillstartwithwater, I cringe when I think of an expanding circle of friends and acquaintances reading my drinking dirt mixed up in with my family shit.  This summer I regrettably mentioned the existence of my blog to two different people...but managed not to tell them the name in the moment.  Neither of them followed up to ask for its name so I'm safe so far.  I have a few of my inner circle friends that check in here and cheer me on and that is enough for me to feel supported, understood and stripped down.  This blog is mainly for me and for other people out there quietly battling it out with their drinking selves.  You are so not alone!

Both above links open to pages that show my worries as I tried to imagine a life without alcohol: social isolation, boredom, judgement from friends, folding to pressures of the drinking all around me.   Basically, who would I be if I wasn't a drinker?  

I'm still in a heavy drinking world most of the time, and I don't mind it most of the time.  I like sitting around chatting with people and I can continue to do that while they drink alcohol and I drink something else.  I one main change is that I get tired earlier and go home before I would have before.  A positive, for sure.  And mostly I'm impressed with how "with it" most people are when drinking and talking with me, again, because many times my drinking didn't stay at a nice warm buzz.

Poking around the The Sober Journalist this morning I read that the author has created a new site with resources that she had hoped for when she wanted to quit and was newly sober.  Here it is:  The Sober School.  Looks pretty cool!  I liked this concise statement to understand my relationship with booze and have a way to explain it to others when they ask me why I don't drink anymore:


"If you’re regularly drinking more than you intend to, and it’s making you miserable, then yes, you might well be dependent on alcohol. It is not really about how much you drink, it’s how it makes you feel."