2500 days teetotal: removing alcohol from my life has been a game changer

There are many reasons that cause me to live with depression and anxiety. 

Some go back to my childhood. Some are the result of my obsessive need to be a good husband and a good dad - and the pressure I put on myself to meet those expectations. Some are probably in the genes. Some are probably because - like many of us - I have some undiagnosed neurodivergence (I know myself very well, and with my experience as a therapist with many, many neurodivergent clients, I see some clear autistic traits in my experience of the world around me). Some arise from being an introvert. Some are just unexplained, but are no less real. Some are just bad luck.

The thing about all of these reasons, which in some ways make them harder to manage or address, but in some ways easier to accept (as they are not my fault!), is that they cannot be eliminated. They cannot be removed completely from my life. They cannot be banished.

I am stuck with them: trying to understand them, accept them, and work with them. 

But there is one thing that adds to be depression and anxiety - like petrol on an already lit flame - that can be completely extinguished. This can be eliminated, completely removed and banished. I am not stuck with it.  

This reason is alcohol. 

It is 2500 days since my last drink. 2500 days of sobriety. Six years, ten months, and five days. In all of this time I have been and continue to be teetotal. 

I am both extremely pleased with the hugely positive impact this change has had on my wellbeing; my levels of happiness; my physical health and mental health, and deeply proud of myself. 

I didn’t drink properly until my 18th birthday, when I had my first bottle of Budweiser. I haven’t drunk since just after my 40th birthday. I don’t regret the years in between and the drinking I did - mostly low volume, social and nowhere near becoming a problem or a dependency. I don’t regret the funny times with mates in my twenties and thirties and the great nights out and great laughs. I don’t regret the Friday nights in the Black Lion near Chiswick with my darling wife or the many, many pints of Guinness in many, many pubs and bars in Ireland and around the world. But I don’t miss it - not even a little bit. 

I don’t miss it because it was rocket fuel for my depression and anxiety. It left me feeling on edge - sometimes not by much, sometimes by miles - after only one or two drinks. This edgy feeling could last for days. It ate into my life. It made me feel scared. 

Drink didn’t make me into a bad drunk or to regret what I had said or done, but it did make me feel a lesser version of myself. More full of self-doubt. More anxious about my value to people and the world. More willing to believe the negative voices in the my head. These feelings always came after drinking - never during - and arose whether I’d drank enough for a hangover or not. One drink was enough to turn the volume up on the negative voices and enough to make me feel less than a whole person.  

I don’t write this post to preach or be smug. I write it to pat myself on the back (in a non-smug way!) and because I see so many clients for whom changing their relationship with drink is high on their agenda. I see the damage and the pain it can cause and I see the courage of clients who are working hard to break cycles that trap them in the same sort of cycles I was in: cycles of negativity and anxiety. 

Living with depression and anxiety - in my case, the latter being turbo-charged and often instigated by the former - is not fun. It can feel like a cruel joke, with dark clouds sometimes just appearing for no reason and without warning. But there is also a pattern in the triggers that can prompt a depressive episode for me.

There are people and experiences that I know are really bad for my mental health - and I know what these are. There are, therefore, things that I need to do, need to avoid, and need to manage that will help keep the triggers remaining un-pulled. Things that can help keep the depression away from my door. 

I knew on day one and I certainty know today with even greater clarity - on day 2500 - that removing alcohol from my life is one of those things. It has been a game changer for me. Truly game changing. Game changing and life changing. 

I’ll raise a cuppa to that today and to thousands more days teetotal.