….”sobriety is boring”

It’s a Saturday day time and I am bored. I have the whole day to myself…and I don’t know what to do with it. 

What do people do, who don’t spend the whole weekend being hungover?

I didn’t realise I spent so many of my days off hungover. I don’t miss the hangover but I’ve hit a new obstacle in my sobriety journey. So, I don’t stay out all night until 4am (carrying a pumpkin and trying to climb into the house via the window) and I don’t subsequently spend the whole of the next day alternating between lying on the bathroom tiles and eating every brand of crisps I can get a hold of that are ‘beef’ flavoured. 

I’m bored. Sobriety is boring.

I find myself relating to Memes on Facebook “ALCOHOL – because no great story started with a salad!”. Maybe they are right. Maybe I am fighting a losing battle. Maybe life IS boring without alcohol. 

Only that can’t be the answer because alcohol is making me fucking miserable. It used to be fun, until it wasn’t. Now I can’t remember the last time it was fun. So what now?

The answer was in my past. Way way way back to a girl who hung out in her purple bedroom in a yellow paint stained dressing gown.

Once upon a time I was too young to drink. That’s right, I had lived quite a number of years happily booze free and not even realising I was supposedly “missing out”. Interesting. 

I didn’t have friends back then. I had paint brushes, books, long walks in the woods just daydreaming to myself, I made maps of imaginary worlds, wrote stories, I sang songs and lived a full existence and never once felt bored. That was what was different about me to my siblings…I always knew how to keep myself busy and happy.

One hangover free Saturday I went into town and without really thinking about it I bought myself a drawing pad and some graphite pencils. I took myself home and I plonked my bum down and I sat for a few hours with some music on and just drew…for hours. Hours and hours. In fact I sat drawing for pretty much the entire day. It was awesome. Why had I stopped doing this? Look at me, drawing, no hangover with breath that tastes like a pack of fags and 15 cans of Stella! Once my drawing was complete I was pretty impressed to see that I didn’t suck, I still had some ability and more importantly the process took me completely out of my own head. I wasn’t bored. I was strangely at peace and I had something to show for it.

Well, things just got interesting.

I bought paints. Oil paints. I used to paint like a maniac when I was a kid. Art had been one of my favourite subjects, I had the coolest art teacher at school who used to put her hair up with a pencil and would encourage my weird obsession with bird skeletons and allow me to fly my arty ‘freak’ flag as much as I pleased.

What else could I do? Hello pandoras box. I HAVE SO MUCH FREE TIME! I COULD DO ANYTHING!

I spy an old beat up guitar in the spare room and decide to have a go. I had an ex boyfriend who used to play and I would watch, head tilted to one side, secretly logging in my brain so I could have a go myself in private. I’d dabbled over the years, occasionally got really wasted and played a few songs badly at an open mic or a friends party. I never remembered playing though…I had always got way too drunk and then the next day would feel ashamed.

I’m going to learn and I’m going to perform -sober!

…and I did! The first time I signed up to play an open mic and I was sober was literally the most terrifying experience of my life. No social lubricant, no tingly sense of alcohol induced confidence. Just an overwhelming and LOUD sense of clarity. I remember getting up and the lights were in my eyes and the words to the song completely left my brain…I made a joke on the mic and I fumbled my way through a song. I heard every mistake and felt every stumble…but at the end people were clapping, my heart was thumping and I knew it wasn’t perfect but I did it! I don’t think anyone knew how much of a big deal this was for me to have done it without alcohol but secretly inside I felt wonderful. I have conquered a fear.

The more I did things that scared the living be-jesus out of me the less afraid I felt. The more my willpower grew. It was getting easier to say ‘no’ to booze and to the negative habits in my life and instead saying ‘yes’ to the so called ‘scary stuff’, the stuff I wanted to do but was to afraid I wasn’t good enough. I remember being drunk at open mics and watching girls sing and feeling that sting of jealousy that I couldn’t do that.

Well now that’s me. I’m THAT girl!

Since my decision to not let sobriety be boring or to hold me back I’ve been WAY more productive and fearless. I spent the majority of my twenties ‘living for the weekend’ and thinking that the fun was at the bottom of a wine bottle, that I missed out on so much. I had forgot all the things that used to make me happy organically and left behind that girl in the yellow dressing gown. I kept trying to be someone I wasn’t and it eventually made me very unhappy. Now I feel more myself than ever and actually proud of the person I am. Being a party girl made me despise myself, being an arty girl gives me all sorts of self love.

I don’t know about you but I don’t think that sounds boring at all. I think the stigma that sobriety is “boring” can stick itself up its own arse.