Pouring a Drink is the Easy Option
Try sitting with your feelings or relieving stress in a natural way
You know that same old song and dance. You have a really hard day at work or you are a stay-at-home parent with unruly children. You are stressed, upset, and tired. You just need something to relieve the tension and help you unwind because you are wound up as tight as a spring.
The spring is ready to be sprung.
It’s 3 o’clock on a Wednesday. You shouldn’t be wanting a drink at 3 pm, but you are counting down the minutes until that rich, full-bodied glass of Cabernet Sauvignon is in your hand.
It’s enveloped by fancy crystal glass and the whole drink twinkles, it will be winking right at you. But, not soon enough.
The stress continues to build and that uncomfortable feeling that needs masking keeps tapping you on the shoulder.
You don’t try to breathe. You don’t go out for a quick walk for some fresh air. You don’t close your eyes for a minute and meditate. You don’t distract yourself with something else. All you think about is that drink.
That instant calm you feel when you take a sip after a hard day. You tell yourself that you deserve it. You deserve to be putting that in your body even though you kind of know that it isn’t a healthy remedy for stress.
But, everyone does this so you brush off that thinking.
Pouring a drink is the easy option. It’s quick and it works fast with basically no effort. All you do is sit down at a bar and order a drink. Or, pop that bottle when you beeline straight to the kitchen after work for that relief.
When Friday rolls around, you really need the unwinding, to get all loosened up for the weekend. Why just have one glass when you can sleep in on a Saturday? Or, you might have the day off from kid duties.
You deserve it, remember?
You tell yourself that you won’t do this all the time. Save it for when you are really stressed out. You start making promises to yourself and justify that you have everything going on so it’s no big deal to reach for wine when you have a bad day, when you are stressed, have a lot going on, or someone hurt your feelings.
After a glass of wine or whatever drink you might fancy, your shoulders start to droop and you breathe.
“Aaaaaahhhhhh…”
You take a few more sips and feel even better. Why not keep going? The whole bottle really is only 3 glasses of wine.
Pouring another drink is an even easier option. You are loosened up and no longer stiff, so pouring more is nothing.
Here’s what is not easier. I know this all too well.
Waking up at 3 am with a racing heart because yes, you finished those 3 large glasses of wine. Unable to go back to sleep. There goes sleeping in. Now, you are up for the day at 3 am.
That’s not easier. The whole day you feel tired and hungover. I know I would after a bottle of wine. Once you hit 35, I think, it’s harder to recover in the morning.
You eat some nasty drive-thru junk food but it tastes oh-so-good. You bargain with yourself that it’s totally fine, you don’t do this all the time.
Or, do you? It was always at least 2 nights a week.
Monday rolls around and you feel awful because you barely slept all weekend, you are dehydrated and bloated. Maybe you have a fever? You can’t tell if it’s that or you are just flushed.
With a heavy dose of Visine, some Tylenol, concealer, and Pepto, you are out the door and off to work or dropping the kids off at school.
You tell yourself that you won’t drink that night and stick to your promise until 2 pm when you figure out how you might be able to get a drink on the sly. You don’t want to be that person who starts drinking again on a Monday.
No one has to know. Little secrets from your family aren’t a big deal.
Sometimes these things eat away at you. Maybe you are being shown some reasons that you should quit.
But, it’s such an easy solution to stress and anxiety.
Do you know what really works to curb anxiety and stress?
Time without alcohol.
Once you have enough time without a glass of wine, you don’t think about it as your only option. For me, I thought I would always be a wreck. I would never be able to relax and be around other people. My stress would be so high that I wouldn’t know what to do.
I’ve found that it just gets easier, with time. Sure, I go to yoga and meditate for that one minute at the end of class but I wish I could say that I sit and breathe with meditation every day to get myself centered.
I would love to say that I walk out in nature every day.
It would be good if I journaled among many of the other tools that they tell you to do. I do these things, sometimes. But, on a normal day, I do yoga and work. Then, I watch TV or read and go to bed.
But, it’s so weird that I am just naturally more relaxed now than ever. It’s such a nice feeling that is also foreign. I truly believe that after reaching for that glass or that substance for the past 26 years, it was the normal jerk reaction.
Nothing else would work so why would I try? The lies that I told myself to stay stuck in the easy option.
I have this easy crutch that I can fall back on with no effort. All I need is a little money and the means.
Easy peasy.
So many people are quitting and don’t feel they fit the bill of an alcoholic. I started reading a book called “Intoxicating Lies: One Woman’s Journey to Freedom from Gray Area Drinking” by Meg Geisewite. In the book, she describes her drinking patterns, which are similar to many, many other adults.
I know so many people that drink every single night but they don’t stop because it’s easy. They are not an alcoholic.
So, it always makes me so happy to hear of someone who put the drink down before they really got out of control.
If I quit when I was in that gray area stage, it would have taught me a lot fewer lessons! Boy, I learned many hard lessons and I’d love to pretend some situations didn’t happen.
Meg started having awful feelings the mornings after nights of drinking. She didn’t drink and drive, she didn’t get arrested or do anything stupid, but she was tired of feeling like crap, to put it bluntly.
She saw an ad for Sober Sis and made the decision one night that she should sign up for their 21-day reset. She could not drink for 21 days, no big deal. That 21 days ended up turning into a month, then 6 months, and a year, and she has been alcohol-free ever since.
You can live an authentic, happy, and low-stress life without reaching for a glass of wine. Time without alcohol proves to be the best stress reliever for me.
You don’t have to hit rock bottom to quit drinking but if you have, that’s an even better reason to quit.
Was reading an article in the newspaper yesterday that here in the UK Dry January has been one of the biggest ever. Sales of non-alcohol beers are increasing and dry bars are opening too. What cheering news.
I seldom drink, and when I do, it's usually one or at most two drinks. Maybe I have more than that once every few years -- alcohol gives me terrible heartburn so I'm incentivized not to indulge much. But I still can't sleep or chill out -- sober or not sober! I am sure that if there was something out there that actually relaxed me I'd do too much of it.