Sirens: The First Few Days of Getting Rid of Alcohol
This is a piece I wrote about 4 years ago while on a personal writing retreat in Washago, Ontario, and I stumbled across it in my journals, and felt a little ashamed I never shared it. It’s, in a roundabout way, a guide to how to survive the first few days of not drinking – or to correct myself – of getting rid of alcohol.
Please consider sharing this with others who may be starting out, or thinking about, being brave enough to once and for all get rid of alcohol. It very well may help or inspire them, and everyone who loves them will be grateful.
Everything you need to accomplish your goals is in you already.
Whenever I was about to begin a photoshoot with a new couple, I would always start by asking them if they’d ever done anything like it before. The answer was almost always ‘no’ followed by me explaining to them (read: calming them down) that the first ten or fifteen minutes can feel really awkward, but then it becomes fun, and all they need to do is just relax into it and I’ll help guide them as we go along.
I offer to you the exact same advice about getting sober.
Instead of it being the first ten or fifteen minutes though, it’s the first ten or fifteen hours.
Then days.
Then weeks, and months, and years.
The early days of getting sober can feel a lot like travelling back through time to middle school and suddenly becoming the most awkward, geekiest, nerdiest version of yourself complete with headgear, acne and braces.
Though you know you’re there to learn, you still can’t seem to focus because you’re fixated on your insecurities and differences, not to mention confined by strange and new restrictions, plus you feel as though everyone is watching you, and despite being in the company of so many other people, there’s just something different about you – and not like how the majority of other kids are different.
You will, most definitely, feel alone.
Getting sober will, indeed, make you the odd one out for awhile.
For some it will be more obvious if your social circle drink as much as you do, or if your taste for alcohol was born from a home life riddled with addiction, trauma and neglect. For others, it may just be one more dirty little secret that you’re adding to your pile behind closed doors, covering it up like it never happened, no different than a cat crapping in a litter-box.
What we do share – and what everyone in recovery goes through – is feeling like the odd man out, displaced within your own storyline.
Suddenly, the script will have changed.
Suddenly, your character is getting completely rewritten.
Suddenly, the whole plot has twisted and you’re no longer sure how or if the story will even end – or if it will be a happy ending or a sad and tragically told true story.
You step from one moment feeling as though you’re standing on solid ground (despite it being shaky as hell) to the next – and into total and absolute groundlessness.
I’ll tell you right now: not drinking is the easy part.
And I’ll also remind you again: it isn’t alcohol you need to recover from.
It’s from your addiction to escaping reality.
TIP: Keep both of those notes in your back pocket throughout your journey, and refer to them often, because I guarantee you’ll forget them over and over and over again. Tape it as a note on your fridge (which you’ll visit often because getting rid of alcohol and learning how not to drink will inevitably, eventually, stir up a ravenous appetite within you. Sometimes it will be for sugar, but stay with the hunger for awhile, because it’s also a different kind of appetite you’ll spend the years to come needing to explore). Stick it in your wallet or on the dashboard of your car, so you’re reminded every time you almost turn into the liquor store parking lot. Make it your phone’s wallpaper (I did, and it really helped). Whatever you need to do, wherever you learn to spot your triggers – leave yourself a reminder that it’s not a drink you want or need.
You’re going to fixate on wanting a drink.
Needing a drink.
You do NOT need a drink.
You need to look at the feelings that you’re trying to drown with a drink.
And for once in God-only-knows-how-long, you’re going to be able to feel those feelings without the anesthetic of alcohol, and hear what they’re asking for without the sirens blaring in your head and your heart like they always do.
Now don’t get me wrong – there will be sirens, and they’ll start going off at the worst of times. They’re going to blast out of nowhere and scare the hell out of you, and they’re going to call to you with their sweet and irresistible song.
It is not your job to ignore them.
It is your job to learn how to hear them for what they really are.
The way all of this works is that you need to start recognizing that everything you think you know, everything you believe you see, and all that you think you understand – about alcohol, yourself, and the world around you – is for the most part untrue.
It’s just our monkey mind painting pictures and creating illusions so things fit neatly into our storyline, so our ego stays harboured, safe and protected. Honestly – it’s just doing its job.
This is where the hard part starts.
As if the hard part wasn’t already just (finally) coming-to-terms with (read: admitting) the fact that you very much do indeed have a drinking problem in the first place, and that yes, it has happened to you.
You can (and you will) not have a drink. You won’t go to the liquor store, or the cabinet, or wherever it is you stash away your favourite poison. You will make it through the craving and the urge, and be pretty darn smug with yourself.
Except that the sirens will still be blaring, and there will still be an overall, off-putting uneasiness that will continue writhing beneath your skin.
It will all still be there because drinking is not the actual problem you are here to fix.
You are here to practice how to stop yourself from falling down the same rabbit hole over and over, and you’re here to learn how to stop running every time things get a little too close for comfort.
The smoke alarms will stop going off once you’ve found – and begin to put out – all the real fires that are creating the smoke.
This is the beginning of where you start to understand the polar difference between not drinking and not wanting a drink.
So on one hand, you have your body demanding alcohol because it is chemically expecting it, and on the other hand, you have your soul demanding sobriety because it is begging for it. It’s relatively easy to deal with physical cravings and pain. It’s also relatively easy to sweat through the clammy withdrawal symptoms window riddled with headaches, fatigue, moodiness and surprising body pain for 3 or 4 days, even though while it’s happening the rest of yourself – notably your mind, your non-stop inner dialogue, and the really-real you who hasn’t found their voice yet – they’re all going to be inside, coordinating a riot.
The physical discomforts will pass, so treat them the same as if you’re holding your breath while you’re at the doctor’s office waiting for them to give you a needle. (This analogy may be triggering and counterproductive for addicts who inject – in which case, I’d recommend you just skip to the next paragraph). A little prick, a little pressure, and sooner than you’d imagine – the worst part is over. And, it was the dreading the needle that caused the pain, right? What you imagined was going to be like and feel like that hurt the most, right? Not the actual shot itself, not the tiny little prick no different than a mosquito bite, but your own imagination that created the bigger-than-life dread you built around it.
TIP: What’s important is that you allow yourself to have a no-holds-barred pity party for yourself if you want to (and yes, that inner voice will pipe up and tell you to stop it). Spoil yourself freaking rotten (and yes, that inner voice will start chirping and tell you that you don’t deserve it). Nap (despite that voice telling you there’s so much stuff you should be doing, instead). Eat all the chocolate. Cry. Take a bath. Go to bed. Read, read, read and read some more – the world of sober lit (that’s what you’re reading right now, if you didn’t know) is vast and growing, and full of magical little nooks and crannies jam-packed with goodies and treats you never imagined. Write. Journalling is like crying, but a hell of a lot more of a release. Talk to your loved ones. Hell, talk to yourself. Spoil yourself in whatever way suits you and brings you a little needed comfort, so long as it’s healthy and constructive.
There is no level of self care that you don’t deserve during these first few days, or weeks, or months.
Or ever.
What is also crucial is that you stay firmly planted in your resolve to never drink again, and to treat your sobriety as though it is your full-time job.
You can’t do this half-ass.
You can’t do this by shuffling towards the end of the diving board without ever jumping in.
You have to take a leap of faith – in yourself.
So how you do you begin to stop – or prevent – the riots? Where do you look to start putting out the fires that keep sounding the alarms? How do you train yourself to shift your gaze so you’re no longer fixated on what feels like you’re now going without?
You begin to look beneath everything.
You learn to start peeling back the layers of everything you think you know and everything you think you see, and hear, and read, and most importantly, think and feel.
You start to open tiny spaces between what is actually happening and how you’re reacting, where you can pause and revisit what you think you’re thinking.
You start asking yourself at every trigger, craving and curveball – is what I’m thinking or telling myself true? And if I believe it actually is, then asking next how can I really know that it is, without a doubt, as true as I’m convincing myself it is?
In a nutshell – stop trusting your thoughts and your feelings until you’ve seen their true colours.
They aren’t serving you like you think they are.
They are almost all exactly like that needle at the doctor’s office. It’s your imagination, not really-real reality, that is causing you the pain.
Your mind is going to start racing with thoughts of having “given up” alcohol. Of not being allowed to drink. You’re going to start running through every possible (and now terrifying) scenario that you once used alcohol as a crutch to get through – that is, until now. You’ll imagine all the challenges and tight situations you’re going to find yourself in, and you’re going to wonder what the hell you’ve gotten yourself into, and if you have the strength to stick with it after all.
You’re going to start feeling as though your best friend just died.
Well here’s another reminder, and toss this one in your back pocket, too: that best friend was nothing ever than a wolf in sheep’s clothing, just waiting to huff, and puff, and blow your whole house down.
That “best friend” reliably stabbed you in the back every time you turned around.
That “best friend” did nothing other than pour fuel on your fires, always topping it with a lit match.
You are not giving up alcohol. It is not a sacrifice.
You are getting rid of it.
You are getting rid of it, because that’s what we do with garbage and things that no longer serve us: we get rid of them.
Without fail, the cravings will return. Sometimes they’ll arrive like subtle waves lapping at your feet, and sometimes they’ll roar ashore like a violent and greedy tsunami that’s trying it’s damndest to pull you back out to sea.
You need to be prepared – always – for both.
Walk through it.
Step by step.
TIP: Walk yourself through the inevitable chain of events that is going to happen if you do decide to have a drink – because let’s face it, you’ve proven almost every time you drink that it never ends at just one drink.
Generally, it never ends well at all.
Admit it – it really, truly, never ever did. If the power to choose whether you were going to have just one more drink wasn’t one of your greatest challenges – would you even be here in the first place?
You need to catch yourself in craving, when you find your mind wandering to the liquor store or playing a slideshow of the rare, rosy memories of drinking and ask yourself, “And then what happens?”
And then what happens.
Exactly.
What happens is what always happens.
What happens are all the things that drove you to read this, or my book. To not want to get out of bed. To want to cancel plans, and stop wanting to make plans at all. To feel like a bag of shit every day. What happens is the ground beneath you gets slippery and you slide, like you always have, back down into the rabbit hole, to some newer rock bottom and shallower lower low, and the sad black hole inside you grows somehow even bigger.
That is what happens.
So go ahead and have a drink if you want one, after proving to yourself you can predict the future – because now you know exactly what is going to happen once you take that first insidious sip.
Always. Walk. Yourself. Through. It.
When the cravings hit and the spoiled brat inside you is throwing the tantrum of all tantrums, take yourself by the hand, take a deep breath, and walk the very predictable path of where this will head if you don’t start pumping the brakes right now.
Straight into the ditch.
Like usual.
What is also happening while you’re rationalizing your way out of a craving, is you’re allowing room for The Pause. That magical split second made up of sliding doors and alternate outcomes. It’s the ultimate crossroads, where quite literally anything is possible.
Even healing.
IMPORTANT PS: As always, I very highly recommend seeking professional treatment or advice. Depending on your history, health, and level of addiction, the process of detox can not only be traumatizing and difficult, but downright dangerous, too. I, for example, had a medically supervised detox because the risk of developing seizures and heart failure was terrifyingly very high.
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A dude who thinks, bakes, writes, learns, and teaches. And I make a LOT of sourdough.
Shawn Van Daele / SJ Van Dee
