Hi. I’m not sure what to do. I want to stop drinking.
You are doing it and this is what it looks like.
Good morning!
Quick reminder: I’m offering a 30-day free trial into our SELF MADE membership:
Check out upcoming SELF MADE events below!
All my love,
Dani
💥 Events 💥
LOCAL EVENT: Join us Sunday, April 23rd from 1-4pm PST in San Francisco’s Dolores Park for our second annual SELF MADE Spring Social. For more information and to register, click here. All are welcome!
VIRTUAL EVENT: April Writing Workshop is Sunday, 4/30, from 10am-12pm PST. Workshops feature two writing prompts, and a (zero-obligation) option to read aloud and receive non-critical feedback. This workshop is appropriate for all levels. For more information and to register, click here.
INTERNATIONAL (!) EVENT: Dream come true alert: SELF MADE presents With Pleasure! —a seven-day alcohol-free retreat in Tuscany happening this October 7-14. I’ve partnered with Carol Sicbaldi, founder of Carol’s Moveable Feast, with the intention that you reclaim joy and pleasure, relish in your five senses, and soak in the richness of your surroundings. To learn more and make a deposit, click here.
❓Questions? Ask. I’m here and I’d love to hear from you.
Alcohol was never uncomplicated for me. I pushed off drinking for as long as possible because I saw what it did to my dad, how it unleashed a different personality, a volatile and mean personality, a Mr. Hyde-type personality so unlike the Jekyll dad I knew the rest of the time. This of course confused me, and my confusion was only compounded by a persistent line of questioning that was met by my mother telling me, “Well, your dad’s an alcoholic,” as if I knew what that meant, as if I knew what that meant for me as his daughter. If other adults around me were drinking to excess they were of the jolly and sentimental variety—nostalgic and sentimental on one side, telling bright eyed stories and holding court on the other. And observing this discrepancy between “normal” and “fucked the hell up” was the genesis of the thing that kept me stuck, the programming that keeps so many of us stuck: that if someone struggles with alcohol, it is a problem with them, and has nothing to do with the substance itself.
I was a sensitive, emotional kid, with a significant amount of anxiety. So yes, though I pushed off drinking for as long as possible, I found something else: at fifteen I smoked pot for the first time, and even though in retrospect I wish I’d learned other ways of dealing with the bigness of emotion I felt, in some ways I see it as a blessing, because it was the first thing that relieved a paralyzingly intense inner world, it was the thing that helped me socialize, and relax, and lay the intensity down for a while.
And then at the beginning of my sophomore year of college at SF State, the reliable relief transformed overnight into crippling paranoia and it was then that my drinking ramped up, and I stepped onto a hamster wheel for the next fifteen years.
It never once crossed my mind that I could simply have opted-out. It never occurred to me, not even early on when I knew that something was off with the way alcohol made me feel, compared to how I had been programmed to believe it was supposed to make me feel. I had so completely internalized a belief that alcohol was the thing that would grant me access to fun, and excitement, and everything else I associated with leaving childhood behind and entering into the sophistication of adulthood, that when weird shit would happen—strange behavior; saying yes to things that would have been a hell no under sober circumstances—I doubled down on figuring out how to drink “normally” instead of ever questioning the thing itself.
I knew something was wrong but instead of looking at the substance, I used my “failure” to drink normally as evidence that something was wrong with me. And I already had plenty of evidence: that aforementioned hyper-sensitivity? Bless my family, but they did not know what to do with me, so growing up there was a lot of eye-rolling and exasperation, a lot of you’re too sensitive and oh, are you *crying* again!? and just not a lot of tenderness offered when I was freaking out. Drinking perpetuated this cycle of there’s-something-wrong-with-me thinking, greasing the engine that had me never not gathering evidence to support what at the time I viewed as fact.
My limited imagination kept me in a cycle for almost two decades. I did not think it would be possible to walk away. I didn’t want to be deprived, you see. I didn’t want to miss out on fun. I certainly didn’t want to claim a certain label I’d seen my dad drag around with disgust my whole life. But also, I simply could not imagine a reality without alcohol. Who was I without it?
And this was the deeper question I couldn’t face until I had no other choice.
🪐
For most of us, alcohol use disorder isn’t the drama we see portrayed in news and media. It’s far more subtle and insidious. It’s a murky underworld that no one talks about but so many of us live inside. It’s the murkiness of putting off until tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. It’s the murkiness of watching the people around you accomplishing Big Life Things, while you are treading water, exhausted and barely keeping your head above. It’s the silent and degrading everyday shame that has no end, a wound we privately pick at, yet another reinforcement of all the ways we are wrong and disgusting and fucked up. It’s the recognition that the moments of feeling care-free that we are so desperately seeking when we drink are increasingly being overshadowed by a knowing that this shit is making us feel worse than it is making us feel better, followed up by a denial of that knowing, a subsequent relegation of said knowing to a metaphorical back burner where it sits simmering for, well. You know how long.
And then one day, after however many days, we draw a line in the sand.
This is the moment we turn and face our lives.
🪐
This week an email rolled in:
Hi. I’m not sure what to do. I want to stop drinking.
And just like that: a lantern shows up in a dark wood.
Step one is reaching out. So to this person I say, you are already on your way. You are already doing it and this is what it looks like.
Another thing that is helpful? Releasing expectations and outcomes. You don’t need any answers. You don’t need to know anything beyond this day, this hour. That will come.
Next, it’s good to get curious. Practice expanding your imagination. You don’t have to say any of this out loud. Or maybe you talk to yourself in the shower, in car rides alone, on walks with the dog. Maybe you scribble what the fuck is happening in your journal. Get curious, and take your time. I know it might seem urgent but there is no need to rush.
On a practical level: It also helps to drink a lot of water. Another thing you can do is find consistency with some daily routines and practices. Consistency means more often than not. Perfection is not the goal here, not ever. Gathering data is, and you can gather a lot of data from doing things more often than not. For example: If you journal for 10 minutes four mornings out of seven, that is frequent enough to gather some data. Is this helpful? You can ask yourself. Do I notice that I feel better—even a few percentage points better—on the other side of this practice? Am I learning something?
You can tend to skin, muscles, bones. When you don’t know what to do, you can tend to your physical self. There is always an action you can take, whether that’s drinking water, moving your body, taking a rest, getting in the shower, preparing a decent meal, sticking your nose in a sweet-smelling flower, pressing a cold washcloth to the back of your neck. Sometimes there’s no resolution or answer in the moment, and so you do what you can which is tend to skin, muscles, bones. Breath in your lungs. Feet on the ground, whole body on the ground maybe. Staying close to the ground is so helpful.
When you’re ready, you can begin looking for your people. One person is wonderful, plenty. Virtual friends can become forever friends. Doing this alone is not more noble or more worthy. It’s a lot fucking harder and takes a lot fucking longer than necessary. And if you’re like me, you know what it is for things to be hard, for things to take longer than they might. I’m not going to lie to you. You are in a dark wood. You are in a dark wood but you are not alone. There are lanterns all around. Your path is your own but there are other people in the forest. You are walking together.
You don’t have to know what’s on the other side. You just have to start walking. And then you keep walking. You keep walking when you don’t want to walk. You keep walking even when you fail. You keep walking when you’re angry, enraged, melancholy, sad. You let yourself be seen as you are by the other walkers. You show up in your messy humanity and you keep fucking going.
Slowly, slowly, over time, as much time as it takes, which is always longer than you want it to take (I told you I wasn’t going to lie to you), you begin the process of moving toward friendship with yourself, with the whole world. The forest gets friendlier. The lanterns get brighter, come faster. Pockets of joy arrive. You fall in love with the other people in the forest. The tendrils of your imagination creep past the limits and confines of the shitty story you’ve been operating inside of up to this point. Weird shit starts happening—coincidence, serendipity, happenstance, delight, stuff like that. A different horizon emerges. You keep walking, you practice and experiment with new things, some of which work, and so you hold those things close. You try other things, because what’s the harm, and you decide nah, not for you, so you let them go as part of the experiment.
I believe change is possible. I see it every single day, in my own life, in the lives of my clients, my friends, my community. It’s the most beautiful experiment I know.
Curiosity, consistency, community. And then you walk.
Click the button for a 30-day free trial into our SELF MADE membership.
I’d be honored if you checked us out. If you have questions…you know I’m here.
SELF MADE is a rebellious recovery community that empowers you to liberate yourself from societal programming and boldly step into a life of your design. Posts are written by me, Dani Cirignano, founder, writer, Integral coach, and recovery guide based in San Francisco, CA.
I have three spots open for 1:1 coaching. Click here to learn about working with me. Or just go ahead and book an “Alignment Session” and we can chat.
Check out the “About” page for more information about our online community and click any of the “Subscribe Now” buttons to become a subscriber👇🏽
You can also support this work by pressing the little heart button on these posts, sharing this newsletter with others, and letting me know how this newsletter helps you.
Thank you.