Getting sober in a pandemic: one year alcohol-free

2020 will be a year that goes down in history, a year that no doubt will be etched (scarred?) into our memories. The things we learned, the things we lost, and the way our lives changed will stay with us forever. But while the coronavirus pandemic took center stage, when I reflect on my own year, there was so much more than that. There were the little wins and losses and the growth spurts that happen in any year. And there was one big change: 2020 was not only the year of the pandemic, but my first year of sobriety. 

I had my last alcoholic drink on December 22nd, 2019, which happened to be me and my husband’s first wedding anniversary. We had saved a fancy bottle of champagne from our wedding for the occasion, and after going through that I had a couple more glasses with dinner and then thought it a great idea to open up one of the bottles of wine in our hotel room minibar. Thankfully after a sip I realized I was going to be sick if I drank any more and so I put it away and went to bed. 

The next morning I found that I’d come down with flu-like symptoms, and proceeded to be sick for the next couple weeks, all through the holidays. It was a blessing in disguise because it brought an immediate aversion to drinking and an early start to the “dry January” that I was planning to partake in anyway. We drove to Las Vegas after Christmas to stay with my mother-in-law, and while every previous trip to Sin City had involved getting drunk on the strip, this year I was holed up on the couch watching movies and drinking throat coat tea to try to soothe the sensation of daggers every time I swallowed. I couldn’t see it then, but it was the beginning of a new era. 

It wasn’t uncommon for me to go a month or even a few without drinking. A health-conscious yogi and Ayurveda coach in training, I was always trying new healthy eating regimes and cutting things out of my diet. The conversation I’d been having with myself about alcohol had been going on for many, many years, and the only way to stop thinking about how much I should or shouldn’t be drinking was really to stop altogether. Once I’d made a conscious decision to quit for a month, it was actually quite easy for me to stick to it. Similar to cutting sugar out. It was the moment-by-moment decision-making that was tricky and exhausting. Like how turning down cupcakes at the office was so easy if I was committed to eating paleo at the time, but those same cupcakes became irresistible if I didn’t have a plan for avoidance. 

I tried several games in an attempt to ease this decision-making. I set up rules for myself, including but not limited to the following: I would only drink during the first half of my menstrual cycle, because I noticed that it caused worse PMS symptoms later in my cycle; I would only drink beer in the summer and wine in the winter, because of Ayurveda and the doshas (drinking and being a good Ayurveda girl, see?!); I would only drink once a week, or maybe twice, because that’s what one diet program I was on recommended. 

I also harbored a secret wish that somehow, somewhere along the line, someone else would tell me I had to stop drinking. That someone in a position of power would make the decision for me. I hoped this would happen when I did my yoga teacher training, and also when I started Ayurveda school. I was waiting for someone to tell me, “You know what Siena, this is the end of the line, the moment of truth. This substance is really not compatible with the path you are choosing to walk down, and now you will be asked to stop before going further.” But that didn’t happen. Because of course, no one else could make that decision for me. At any point in time, I could have chosen to hear what I wanted to hear anyway. There are no hard and fast rules as plenty of yogis use drugs and Ayurveda recommends wine in certain circumstances for certain conditions. I wasn’t going to find this ultimatum outside of myself; it was going to have to come from inside. And it was going to take however long it took. 

I tell you all this because the way I thought about drinking gives a much better picture of my relationship to alcohol than how much I actually drank. I drank a lot less than a lot of people I knew. I drank a lot less than I used to. And like I said, there were all those weeks and even months where I didn’t drink at all, and didn’t even struggle with it, proving not only how much willpower I have but also how I am definitely not an alcoholic. 

Which brings me to the word “alcoholic.” I do not like this word. I feel that this word gave me permission to drink longer than I would have liked to. My mother got sober when I was eight years old, which meant I grew up pretty deeply entrenched in the world of Alcoholics Anonymous (our wall clock had the 12 steps in place of numbers, and I would often attend meetings with my mom when I was younger.) I learned from this tradition that some people are alcoholics and some are not; that some people can have a perfectly “normal,” “healthy” relationship to alcohol, while others simply can not handle it (in which case their only option is to admit powerlessness and attend AA meetings for the rest of their life.) 

(I have a lot of respect and gratitude for AA. I know how crucial and lifesaving it’s been for my mom and so many others. So I don’t write this with the intention to dissuade anyone, ever, from using this program. I just think it confused and complicated things for me.)

Because, like, I was definitely not an alcoholic. I mean, there were a few points in my life you could point to, sure, but overall I did not fit the picture, and there was always a surefire way to convince myself of that. Especially by the time I was 30, I was definitely drinking a lot less than I used to. A very normal-to-light amount for a 30-year old. I was really, then definitely not an alcoholic, which meant that I was one of the “normal people” and for me, drinking was fine. Not only fine, but something expected, that I should be able to work seamlessly into my married, artistic, healthy, spiritual type of life. This was what I saw everyone else doing, after all. 

Do you get the picture? Do you see why the word “alcoholic” was problematic for me, a permission slip I used to keep drinking? It wasn’t until getting on the sober curious train, and especially being exposed to people like Holly Whitaker and Laura McKowen that I realized how unhelpful this whole “alcoholic” debate was. There is a chapter in Laura McKowen’s memoir We Are the Luckiest called “The Wrong Damn Question.” This chapter helped everything click for me. McKowen writes, 

“The typical question is, Is this bad enough for me to have to change? The question we should be asking is, Is this good enough for me to stay the same? And the real question underneath it all is, Am I free?”

I knew deep down that I could be more free. That all that space in my brain that I used to think about whether I should drink or not, to plot out the next date night or vacation and how it always seemed to circle around drink options, to battle the depression and lack of motivation that came after every night of even very mild drinking — I knew that brain space could be put to better use! I knew the reward was not good enough for me to stay the same. 

And let me just take a minute to say that the reward was pretty good. I like drinking a lot. Drinking is great. I like weddings and date nights and dancing and all-inclusive resorts and the Las Vegas strip and dancing and wine in Italy and long margarita-dinners with a good friend and most of all the permission drinking gives me to take a “break” from the rest of my life. I really like and miss these things. But there came a point where this reward was just not good enough anymore. I had been waiting for this point for a long, long time. 

Finally, I came up with an excuse that would give me a good, solid, six months of no drinking. In January of 2020 I was embarking on a journey of recording and producing my own album at home. I was in a small mastermind group of musicians who were all doing the same thing, and we met weekly to discuss our progress and keep each other accountable. We were each committed to having a full album by the end of those six months. Something about this structure was appealing for me to latch onto. I decided that, just like I would quit drinking for nine months if I was pregnant, I could give myself six months to grow and birth this album. It didn’t really have anything to do with the album, but it was the excuse I needed to get started. 

During the first couple of months I needed a lot of motivation. I was constantly listening to podcasts and reading books on sobriety. It was still something I thought about all the time, but now I felt proud and happy to think about it. I felt like I was doing something admirable. I avoided most social situations in January and February, a little worried about seeing friends and having to explain why I wasn’t drinking, or going out to shows or events I used to always drink at. It was easy enough not to drink if I just stayed home and focused on work and music. 

And then… COVID-19 hit. The first lockdown in Los Angeles started in March, and suddenly all those social events I’d been avoiding were completely off the table. It was the second blessing in disguise for my sobriety journey (the first being the horrible flu at the beginning of the year… is it possible that that was COVID-19 too?) Because all of a sudden, all the things that I worried would make me want to drink were no longer an option. Going out to dinner, concerts, bars, parties, vacations, weddings… all canceled, for all of 2020. 

I know that quarantine certainly wouldn’t make sobriety easier for everyone, but it definitely did for me. Everything became so different that drinking was quickly compartmentalized in my brain as part of the “before” life. I started working from home, building a business and continuing to record my album. My days were busy with things I was passionate about, and my social life consisted of making dinner and watching movies with my husband. I stopped thinking about drinking or sobriety much at all. I stopped listening to the podcasts and reading the books, and while I attended a few Zoom sobriety meetings in the early weeks of quarantine, those fizzled out quickly. Once the first six months were up, I didn’t even consider that I would go back to drinking. To be honest, the benefits were too big. And I’d learned too much now to go back. 

I will never know what this year would have looked like if the pandemic hadn’t happened. I’m still looking forward to attending my first sober wedding, and taking my first sober vacation with my husband, and just attending all the little events that I thought drinking made better. In a way, I think that when I can do these things again I will appreciate them so much more, because of not being able to do any of them for a year. It will be so glorious just to be able to sit down in a restaurant again, that I won’t need a glass of wine to make it special. And my life has changed in other ways too. I know more about what really makes me happy (hint: it’s more about the subtle and small pleasures of daily life than I ever expected.)

To close, I’ve been thinking about a few of the specific gifts that this strange year has given me. 

1. I’ve made more progress in personal goals than ever before. I know that I could not have made these strides had I still been drinking, mainly because of the effect on my mental state. It’s hard to stay motivated in your big picture visions when once a week you wake up hating yourself and feeling like a failure. 
2. I’ve learned that I don’t want my life to be something I need to take a “break” from. Drinking allowed me to change channels, from the “regular life” channel to the channel that was all about enjoyment, pleasure and ease. Well, I want my whole life to be about enjoyment, pleasure and ease. I want it in my work, in my relationships, in my daily routines, and in my longer stretches of time off. I realized I couldn’t fully welcome this in until I was willing to give up the heightened and fleeting pleasure of drinking. 
3. I’ve stopped caring what people think. When I first quit drinking, I was anxious about how to explain it to people. I was worried that I would be less fun, or that I would miss out on friendships or experiences. Well, I don’t know if it’s the prolonged time spent at home away from the expectations of society, but I don’t give a f*** anymore what people think about all that. In fact, it seems laughable that I ever did. Now, I wouldn’t think twice about turning down a drink, or leaving a party early because my bedtime is actually 9pm. I feel so rooted in the life that I’ve created this year that I know it could stand the questioning of the harshest critics. I no longer care if my lifestyle makes other people uncomfortable. 

I know that this sobriety story is perhaps not the typical one. I’ve questioned if it’s even “worthy” to share, because staying sober has been pretty easy for me. The hardest part was making the decision to stop drinking, and I mean that 100 percent. It took me many, many years to get to the point where I was ready to make that decision. Now that I’ve made it, I rarely look back. 

But I do think it’s worth sharing, because maybe more people than I know will relate. Because I wish I’d heard more stories like this when I was drinking. I wish I’d known: you don’t have to be an alcoholic to stop drinking. Alcohol doesn’t need to be ruining your life. You don’t have to have a therapist or family member confront you about how they’re concerned you might have a problem. You don’t need to join an ashram that forbids you to drink. In fact, you don’t need any good reason at all. It’s your life, and you can make up your own rules.