soft sober: a new relationship with alcohol
So much of social life in college revolves around drinking. I used to take shots of cherry-flavored Burnett’s without a chaser on a Thursday night, go out to the bar until two in the morning. Somehow, I would still make it to my 8am French class on Friday mornings, and then I would do it all over again that night. The hangovers weren’t the most amazing feeling, but usually a Tylenol and some Gatorade would revive me, and I would be just fine. As college went on and my fear of missing out dissipated, I didn’t feel the need to go out to the bars and the parties quite as often, but no one was batting an eye at having a glass or two of wine almost every night. Now that I am post-grad, I’m navigating a new relationship with drinking. I am calling it “soft sober.” While I don’t want to cut out alcohol entirely for the foreseeable future, I want to be able to establish a better boundary for myself. “Soft sober,” for me, allows me to drink one day during the week, and I am limited to two glasses of wine or two beers during that period on the day I am choosing to drink.
The first reason I am trying out being “soft sober” relates to finances. Between happy hour with friends, a glass or two of wine to wind down at the end of a long day, and going out on the weekends, drinking makes a significant dent in my monthly spending. As someone in my mid-twenties, who lives in one of the most expensive cities in the country, and who doesn’t make very much money, cutting down expenses and pinching pennies is a necessity. I don’t want to give up my social activities and other exciting opportunities because of a lack of funds, so I have to trim the fat. My normal alcohol consumption was the thing I was most willing to sacrifice in order to have a little more cushion in my bank account. Giving up alcohol is significantly more productive than giving up dance classes, a gym membership, vacations, or activities with my friends.
Another reason I am trying out this path of semi-sobriety is due to a term the internet has coined “hangxiety.” The anxiety that overcomes you after a night of drinking is something I decided I couldn’t put up with anymore. Due to the medication I am on, I am much more prone to memory loss after a night of drinking than most people, and there is nothing I hate more than waking up the next morning and not remembering parts of the night. It is, frankly, humiliating. It’s incredibly embarrassing to admit that this happens, especially as frequently as it does. This doesn’t happen every time I drink, of course, but the fact that it happened more than once is something I am not proud of. I am also significantly impacted by the general hangover the next day. No matter what I drink, what I eat, how much tylenol I take or how long I sleep, I will be hungover from the minute I wake up until I fall asleep that night. I can’t rally myself and force myself to do chores or run errands, all I do is lay around and feel miserable. It is an absolute waste of a day, and I am sick and tired of letting these days pass me by!
Cutting out alcohol is also a move towards improving my health. Since my senior year of college, I had a pretty significant and rapid weight gain. Even with dancing every day, going to the gym, and eating well, I was still gaining weight and no longer fitting into my clothes. It is something I have been incredibly self-conscious about, but something I am now working on managing. Nixing alcohol from my diet can also help with this, and I know my body will thank me!
The final major reason I decided to explore soft sobriety was to set a hard boundary for myself. When I go to the bar, I am more conscious of how much I am drinking, because every time I want a drink, I have to go up to the bar, order, and pay. When I am home alone with a bottle of wine, or I’m at a friend’s house party and we are talking and pouring drinks without thinking about how many times I have actually poured a glass for myself, I find myself not even keeping count. I think part of me just likes to have something in my hand to sip on, becoming more about the action of pouring a glass, taking a sip, and repeating the cycle. I’ll go through a bottle of wine by myself in a matter of a few hours, just because I keep pouring it without taking a second to think about how I’m feeling, and if I actually want another drink versus going through the motions.
My overall relationship with drinking has also changed quite a bit over the last few years, as I mentioned in the beginning. I used to enjoy going out to the crowded bars, dancing and drinking shitty vodka sodas. Call me a loser, but that really doesn’t interest me anymore. I like going to the bar, where I can sit with my friends and have lengthy conversations about whatever happens across our mind. I love a house party for similar reasons. I can actually have conversions with people, making new friends that I am having endearing and funny conversations with. Going out to the club where you can’t hear yourself think, let alone have a conversation with the people you came with, is just not something that I find enjoyable anymore. For some people, a night devoted to dancing and singing along to the DJ is a perfect night, and I am not here to say that is a bad or incorrect opinion. If that is your ideal night out, then I absolutely support that. It just isn’t for me! If I have a friend who comes to visit, I would much rather sit around the living room for hours, going out for dinner or getting take out, and just getting to spend (what I view as) quality time together. Why does being social with friends have to revolve around alcohol or drinking? It also makes me feel like alcohol is needed to maintain the friendship, and that’s not what friendship is about! That’s not to say you can’t go to the bar together, or split a bottle of wine over dinner, but friendship is so much more than that. It can be hard in the wintertime to think of activities to do as someone in your twenties that doesn’t involve drinking, because when it is below freezing and there is snow everywhere, there aren’t many outdoor daytime activities, and many activities that take place indoors require less-than-affordable tickets. Sometimes, it can feel like going out and drinking is the only option, but I am challenging myself to find other activities to do with friends that won’t break the bank.
I’m not sure how long I am going to be “soft sober;” I don’t want to put a timeline on it. That makes it seem like a challenge, where I am competing with myself to see if I can last the allotted amount of time. I don’t want it to feel like a fight to the end, I just want to explore it and see how I feel as time goes on. I believe that I can set these boundaries for myself and abide by them, and down the line when I feel like I have gotten to a better place with my relationship with alcohol, I can then allow myself to expand those boundaries.
grace nyberg
