My Alcohol Journey

I’ve been doing a lot of self-reflection recently, and piecing together parts of my story so far, and one thing that has come up time again, is my relationship with alcohol over the years. So, for today’s blog, I’m going to get a little deep and personal. I invite you to read this post with an open heart & open mind. It may resonate with you, it may not, and either way is totally OK.

For a little context, I grew up in the UK where the legal drinking age in public or at a licensed premises is 18, or 16 if you’re having a drink (not spirits) with parent/guardian along with a meal at a licensed premises, and it’s not illegal for someone between the ages of five and 17 to drink alcohol at home/other private premises.

Recently I’ve noticed that alcohol seems to be a recurring theme in my life & my story, especially my reliance on it during my teens & twenties to help reduce anxiety in social situations. Despite often putting myself in dangerous places through drinking to excess, including one particularly scary incident of waking up in hospital after a night out, I would give in to peer pressure and use it as a way to ‘fit in’. And through these thoughts, I’ve decided to go back and write through my experience with alcohol since I was a teenager.

Like a lot of people who grew up in the Western world, I was brought up with alcohol around me - my parents would have a drink at the end of the day to release stress and tension from the day, at family gatherings everyone would have an aperitif (often G&T!) before dinner, a glass of wine with dinner, maybe a digestif (whiskey, port, or similar) afterwards. It’s one of those drugs that was just normal in most social situations. And yes, it’s a drug, and I’m happy to refer to it as such.

One of my earliest memories of feeling peer pressure around drinking it was when I was around 15 years old. I’d gone on holiday with a friend, her mum & mum’s partner, and we were allowed to drink beer, cider & wine - they’d got permission from my parents before we went. And I remember one evening, one of the adults asked me if I’d like a cider, to which my response was ‘oh, I’m OK, I’m not really thirsty’, to which their response was something along the lines of ‘don’t be boring like your mum, we don’t drink alcohol because we’re thirsty’ and laughing at me. This was someone in their 30s/40s laughing at me, a 15-year-old girl, because I said no to having a glass of alcohol. Of course, at that age, I thought I was the one in the wrong and thought I had to drink to fit in and be accepted. If my memory serves me right, it was straight after that holiday that my friend and I went to a house party that was BYOB (bring your own bottle) and being encouraged by her mum to take alcohol with us. I remember her mum laughing about 15-year-olds going to a BYOB house party.

Through my teenage years, there were plenty of house parties that always had drinking games, encouraging each other to drink, and it felt like the only excuse anyone could ever have for not drinking would be if they had to drive home (this was always respected). I remember often hearing things like, ‘you’re so fun when you drink’ as if I was boring when I didn’t.

In large social gatherings, especially with people who weren’t in my close friendship group, I often like a bit of an odd one out. I can’t explain why, but that feeling was often there. So alcohol helped me to feel accepted. I also hated small talk, the worry about if the conversation died, or I didn’t have anything interesting to say, and so I would drink to numb those feelings of anxiety, uncertainty, and discomfort. Now, I realise that those feelings were there for a reason; trying to tell me that these social situations weren’t ‘for’ me, they weren’t in alignment with my true self, so I was disguising my true self and trying to fit in.

Before going to uni, I often knew my so-called limit - drinking just until I felt tipsy and having what I thought was a good time. However, once I went to university, things were very different. I went to uni in Newcastle, which is well known across the UK for its drinking culture, partying, and being a ‘good night out’. Here, you could buy 3 triple spirits & mixer for £5 - that’s 9 shots of spirits, usually vodka, for £5! As broke uni students, we were over the moon! And no, we didn’t share those 3 drinks between 3 of us, we would have 3 triple drinks each to start the night. Needless to say things went downhill from here, and I would regularly end up black out drunk, with zero memory of the night before. I now know this means that my brain was so fried it was incapable of making new memories - pretty scary when you think of it like that!

I would get horrendous hangovers, so much so that I’d spend the day in bed, wasting a whole day. And yet, that’s still the culture in a lot of places, especially cities, in the UK; counting down to the weekend to have a blazing night out and spend Sunday nursing a hangover in bed. Nowadays, I know there are way more enjoyable ways to spend my weekends.

Coming up the end of uni, with months left before my final exams, I woke up in hospital after a night out with numerous serious injuries. I’m not going to go into the details of it here, but what I will tell you is that should have been a big enough sign for me to stop drinking. Well, I stopped drinking for about 3 months while I recovered from a concussion, and I did become scared to go out, scared to take a taxi on my own, and when I did eventually start drinking again, it was always in familiar places, with people I felt safe around, who I trusted would make sure I got home OK.

I soon became confident drinking again, and so the drinking culture carried on through my early twenties as I started working ski seasons in Europe - where the culture is to drink most nights and just go to work hungover. You’re an odd one out if you don’t - and you’ve probably guessed by now, I didn’t like being an odd one out!

Interestingly, when I spent a year in Australia in my mid twenties, I didn’t really drink so much, especially when I was travelling around. When I was travelling, I was camping most nights, and spending time in nature, with a fairly regular meditation & yoga practice was enough to satisfy me I suppose. It helped that the lovely girls I was travelling with also weren’t into partying & drinking huge amounts.

However, my first year in New Zealand, I came here for another ski season, and so I was straight back into that partying culture. Drinking regularly, going to work hungover, drinking pretty much every weekend. And this carried on after I’d finished the ski season, once I was working elsewhere. And again, even though I thought that by drinking I was feeling like I was fitting in, and being accepted, the next day I’d be ashamed to show my face and hear the stories of what had happened the night before.

In 2019, I decided I wanted to finally learn how to teach yoga - I’d been practicing since my teens and it was finally time to share my love of it with the world. So, away I went to Bali to do my YTT (Yoga Teacher Training). Before going, it was recommended to us to not drink alcohol in the month leading up to it, and not to drink during the training. And so, I ended up spending another 3 months not drinking, and when I came back to NZ, I had no desire to drink. I’d had such an awakening while I’d been doing my YTT that I realised I had way more interesting things to put my focus into than drinking alcohol. So it was probably another 2 months before I had a drink, and this time it was on a camping trip with friends who were there to party, so I figured ‘why not?’ and I had a bottle of wine to myself, injured myself once more, and spent the night black out drunk. (To be fair the injury could have happened without the alcohol, but looking back on it, I do believe it was a sign to myself to carry on without drinking.) That was probably the last time I allowed myself to drink to the point of blacking out.

I’ve gone through many periods of drinking/not drinking since then. Through the periods of not drinking, I’ve received harsh comments from people who didn’t understand, and I’ve also lost touch with friends who don’t understand. This troubled me a lot at first. I was worried about this feeling of rejection, this feeling of not being interesting enough, or accepted, because I don’t drink anymore.

Now, I realise that drinking to fit in to friendship groups, to fit in at social gatherings was disguising the fact that, actually, I don’t fit in to those places. And now, I understand that that’s OK! I know that there is so much more to my life than poisoning my body every weekend in the name of fun, for the sake of fitting in. When I don’t drink alcohol, my mind, my body and my soul all feel so much clearer.

And now, I feel like I have a healthy relationship with alcohol; I’ll have a glass of delicious wine, because I enjoy it, I’ll have a glass of homebrewed beer by my partner, because I enjoy it. And on the whole, I feel so much healthier & happier, in all aspects of my life from not drinking. I know who my true friends are - the ones who still want to socialise without alcohol involved. I attend events & social gatherings that light up my soul, that I don’t feel like I need to drink to enjoy. I met the most amazing partner, who didn’t judge me for not drinking for the first few months we knew each other, and who understands when I have a kombucha on a Friday night instead of a glass/bottle of wine.

I also know that anyone who made/makes comments about me not drinking actually have their own demons to deal with. How I choose to nourish & fuel my body is actually nothing to do with anyone else and that it’s entirely my decision.

I’d love to hear any feedback you may have, and would also love to ask, what’s your relationship with alcohol?