Two months sober, fury and fear.

My two months sober gift to myself!
Bought in my favourite shop in Sheringham on our recent hollibobs.

I am two months sober. Pretty good eh?

I almost wasn’t though.

Prior to my sobriety, my life was beer. I worked for a pub and a brewery. My social calendar revolved around beer festivals, tap takeovers, beer launches and homebrewing. I loved trying new beers, visiting taphouses and breweries in new cities, meeting people with the same passion for beer that I had.

And I miss it. I miss my social life, I miss beer festivals and I miss the opportunities to catch up with people I know and adore through these events. I miss drinking. I miss trying new beers. I miss going to Tap Takeovers and my favourite bars.

I miss having that fake confidence to talk to strangers, meet new people and even to just talk to people I know. I miss the passion I had about beer and talking about it, drinking it, debating it. I miss the fact that beer was what bought us all together and now I struggle to open myself up enough to people to find a different common ground.

How do we do that as adults? Why do we find it so difficult to be vulnerable?

While we were away last week, I saw a couple of young kids on the salt marshes who didn’t know each other.

“I like mud.”

“I like mud too. Shall we be friends?”

Why can’t we make it that easy? Is it because we all use booze as a commonality to avoid opening ourselves up to people? Is it because without alcohol, we don’t actually know who we are or what we like?

“I like your face, shall we be friends?”

Maybe this needs to be my new line. I wrote earlier on in my sobriety journey about making the first move with people, about finding a way to establish common ground and get chatting to people. I still find this impossible to do. How can I make that easier? How can I find the confidence to just talk to people?

I watch some of my friends talk to anybody and maybe I need to speak to them about how they do that, learn their tips for establishing such positive relationships with people so quickly and so easily. The difficulty is, when it comes naturally to you, it’s hard to explain how to do it.

On Sunday evening, I spent the evening at Brewdog in Norwich awaiting the results of a homebrew competition that both Hubs and I entered. In separate categories of course, he actually brewed a different category beer to his first attempt as he didn’t want to enter a Pale into the same category as mine! I submitted my Grapefruit IPA and hubs brewed a Chocolate Orange Milk Stout.

I got to be in a room with a number of incredible people I know from amazing breweries, who I adore, surrounded by alcohol that I could not touch and home brew entries that I could not taste. Without alcohol to calm my anxiety (which I know it doesn’t but mentally it has that effect initially), I find myself incapable of speaking to people without being an idiot.

How, as adults, do we learn how to make friends? Or, you know, just engage with people without being a twat?! Am I just destined to be a twat?! As hubs would say, “you are a twat, accept it.”

Luckily on Sunday night, I was driving so I couldn’t go on the desired bender anyway. I tried a few sips of some of the beers (which were amazing) and immediately realised that, given the opportunity, I would drink until I blacked out.

This revelation that I am unlikely to ever be able to moderate my drinking hit me like a sack of shit. There is a part of me that obviously liked to think that I would be able to moderate one day. Knowing that I can’t means more than just not drinking, it means changing my whole life, my whole social structure, my likes and dislikes, my fucking hobbies. If sitting in the pub getting wankered can be classed as a hobby. Homebrewing certainly is a hobby that I have no desire to give up.

I might be the only homebrewer in the history of the fucking world who can’t drink their own beer. And as you can tell, this makes me furious. I hate that I am so utterly fucking miswired, damaged, fucked up that I can’t have one drink without having eight thousand more.

“One drink is too many and a thousand is not enough.”

I hate that I can’t enjoy the things I love because I can’t control myself. I hate that my ability to socialise is non-existent without booze. I hate that I know from this point on, my life will change in a way that I have little control over.

And after that little rant, I’m going to pull my shit together and crack on with it. Because this is my journey, I can’t travel on any other path. I have to start finding other hobbies, social groups, activities that I can participate in sober. So now I just need to figure out what I want to do instead… Stay tuned for that!