100 Days Sober

I have quit drinking for 100 days. Today is Day 23.

I’m going to document my journey on this blog as a kind of public diary to try encourage myself to keep going.

So today I begin with why…

My 100 day sober challenge came to me fairly suddenly in the end. 

After what seemed like endless talks with myself to cut back or try just stick to a couple of drinks, I would continually find myself at the end of the night essentially smashed out of my face. Not every night of course, but every night of drinking ended the same.

But after one night of heavy drinking I woke up the next day and said this is enough! And the sobriety began. 

Whilst usually I love getting drunk and having fun with loved ones (I do not love the extremely debilitating hangovers), I’d found recently it didn’t feel the same.

In fact alcohol was not adding to my life and instead contributing to making me feel incredibly down. 

The last 8-9 months have been pretty dire for me. It’s been a shit year – life can be that way sometimes – in fact I am not sure I’ve ever experienced anything quite like this particular year. 

Over these months, often I’d go out with the intention of getting completely drunk because I wanted to ‘get away’ from whatever I was feeling. 

Or sometimes I’d go out with the best intentions of staying sober but after that one glass of wine would release that initial feeling of calm, it was difficult to stop. Then once the calm was gone and as I’d begin to head home I’d be left feeling this intense emotional pain. (Crying on late night trains is not a look to go for!)

It became rare that I’d be able to just have the one drink. 

I essentially found myself very irresponsibly drinking. I can see now that rather than drinking to have a laugh, I have begun to use alcohol as a way of coping with the reality of what was happening in my life. Or sometimes  as a way to help let the emotions out. 

I don’t regret any of the nights out and I haven’t done anything bad whilst drinking or (hopefully not) hurt anyone. I have even had nice times with friends, before the anxiety and emotional wave hit. 

But the use of it felt bad. I felt like I was heading down a very slippery slope that I didn’t know how to stop. 

I’m not sure exactly why but I woke up that Friday morning and knew I needed a break. And 100 days began. 

Initially it was till the end of the year but that was 85 days and so I added an extra 15 to round it up to 100. 

This may need to be longer than 100 days, it might be the perfect amount – who knows?!

All I know is it’s going to take me a lot of strength and time to get over what this year has thrown at me. 

So to help kickstart the recovery from the beast that has been 2022, I need to give myself the best possible environment to overcome it. For now – that’s without drinking. 

I thought I would share my story to say it’s okay not to be okay. Also to tell myself this – I need to stop feeling ashamed of having got to this place. 

But also because maybe it might resonate with someone else and it could help. Who knows?

So as I said to begin with I thought I would reignite my old marathon training blog to document my 100 days. 

Thanks for joining the journey! 

Siobhan x