I’m participating in Dry January because booze is a sledgehammer to mental health.
By Brooke Jean, MA, LPC
Like everything else I do, have done and most likely will continue to do in my life, I take the most messy unperfected path.
As an overwhelmed, over-stimulated, busy working mama just trying to do life while healing her own damn wounds, I have adopted some pretty shitty ways of coping over the years.
How do I deal with all the forces coming at me all day needing things from me? The loud and painfully noisy “mama, mama, mama, mama”? The pressure to be the perfect mother, professional, neighbor, class volunteer, yogi, you name it? How do I decompress from a heavy day, forget my problems and find the energy for what I call the second shift in parenting which consists of school pick up, playtime, sports, dinner, bath, books and the ridiculously long and drawn out bedtime routine?
VINO. That’s how.
Unfortunately for me, one glass always leads to many more, to later be combined with a full plate of brie cheese and crackers and some mindless shopping online. The result is shitty sleep and waking up the next day in yet another shame spiral.
How was I navigating that relentless shame spiral? You guess it, more food, booze and Amazon Prime. Fuck me.
Being on a never ending personal development and healing journey, I have faced that this way of existing might not be serving me and my highest good (insert heavy eye roll here due to my sarcasm). Like I know deep down this shit isn’t serving me, but turning awareness into long-term action is freaking HARD.
I have been sober curious for around two years now and have taken many breaks from the booze just to fall back into old patterns.
In my practice, I have been yappin’ my trapper all month long about setting holiday boundaries and about how the holidays are full of opportunities for self-sabotaging our intentions, goals, dreams and desires.
In looking at my own life, because all too often the messages we are sharing with others are the ones we need to hear the most, I have come to the realization that my coping combo (food, wine and Amazon Prime) are self-sabotaging time sucks that quite literally demolish my mental health.
Every year, I join the Dry January movement as I believe big alcohol negatively affects many people and I want to be part of the movement toward better health and higher consciousness. This time around however I feel it may be a longer experiment as I have big dreams to fulfill and when I am really honest with myself, they don’t have room for hangovers or really any low vibe shit.
Let me say it loud here:
I no longer engage in mindless and soul-crushing time sucks anymore.
My journey to this clarity has been anything but linear and clear. It’s actually been so freaking messy. I’ve gone back and forth and ran back into the fire a million times over just to ditch my intentions all over again. But that’s life, and apparently how I roll.
Can we normalize the struggle to ditch our crummy coping mechanisms? Even when we are a helping professional who damn well knows better but still finds her / himself in the traps of despair from time to time?
Yes. I am a human just like the rest of us. And this is my unperfected path to unlearn everything I have been conditioned to believe is stress-relieving, fun and joyful. To make space for new ways of being that don’t take a sledgehammer to my mental health but actually build me up.
