What One Year With No Wine Has Taught Me

     Recently, I celebrated achieving my goal of reaching one year without alcohol. I decided to give up the wine (my beverage of choice) on July 30th, 2019, mostly out of curiosity, but partly out of a sense of becoming aware that, for me, the benefits of wine consumption were becoming more and more overshadowed by the lousy parts of it. I wanted to find out what it would feel like- physically, emotionally and mentally- to not have any alcohol in my system for a year. So last summer, I began the journey...    

    There are so many things I could write about, as I reflect on what it has been like for me, but something that stands out for me is how giving up the booze has presented the opportunity for me to come face to face with myself, demons and all, and to handle things differently. I'm reading a fabulous book right now by Pema Chodron, "When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times" that is resonating so much with me because she talks about how we often react to "discomfort" in our lives (and I am taking this to mean mostly "emotional discomfort") when we encounter uncomfortable situations:

"Most of us do not take these situations as teachings. We automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape-- all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can't stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain...There are so many ways that have been dreamt up to entertain us away from the moment, soften its hard edge..." (14).

    When I think of what much of the past year has been for me, it has been a meeting of my edge, as Pema calls it. I love that description. I'm not saying the past year has been awful, or miserable, because I gave up the wine. But it has definitely been "edgier". Without a doubt. And by choosing to not blunt that edge with a luscious red or crispy white, this meant I've often rubbed up against the hard spots, and as a result, felt uncomfortable. So the biggest task of this past year has been learning how to handle discomfort, instead of running from or trying to manipulate it in some way. 

    I was partly prepared for this kind of thing because I've been meditating fairly regularly for over 20 years now. Meditating has provided me often with the opportunity to come face to face with my discomfort while I am sitting, and thoughts and feelings arise, as they will. Meditation is in many ways the opposite of running, or numbing, or distracting, or manipulating. In those moments, when you experience discomfort while meditating, you simply acknowledge what is happening, breathe, and notice things. I say simply, but this is probably the wrong word to use because there is nothing simple about just sitting there while you are being bombarded with uncomfortable thoughts and feelings (which is why many people hate meditating, and why of course, they probably should do it regularly, but this is another blog entry entirely)... But I digress... My point is that meditation helped me greatly this past year.

    I've been thinking a lot of this discomfort idea, and have come to the conclusion that it is at the heart of many problems people face. Although some people on the planet grew up learning how to deal with discomfort in healthy ways, I think many of us did not. Many of us grew up thinking it wasn't desirable to feel intensely negative emotions at all and the best thing to do when experiencing them was to run, distract, ignore, etc. In fact, many of us came to think that extreme emotional discomfort was to be avoided at all costs, and that it might actually destroy us somehow should we allow ourselves to experience it fully. So we grew up believing all of that, when actually, there is a whole other story that can be told about discomfort. The truth is that discomfort is normal, okay, that we won't be destroyed by it, that it doesn't last, that we can handle it, and so on. But we only discover that truth when we sit still and stop running long enough.

    So if I had to say what my biggest lesson has been this past year going alcohol-free, it would be that I can sit with emotional discomfort now more than before without freaking out about it and without telling myself stories that only make the discomfort worse. I can meet my edge without obsessing over the wounds that the edge might cause. I can do this, and when I do this, I become stronger, more resilient emotionally. Although I could do this before I quit drinking, I couldn't and didn't do it consistently. It was only after giving up the vino that this happened on a more regular basis. So in following through with my goal, a whole new way of living has been opened up to me, and it's pretty cool.

    I still haven't poured myself a glass of wine, even though my year-long experiment is now over, and I'm not sure when and if I ever will again. When I set out to do this, it wasn't for forever, as I know that I am not a forever type of woman, but I do know that some of the gifts that have been born out of this past year have indeed been priceless to me, and so for now, that is motivation enough to continue on this path.