When it comes to self-care, I’ve tried it all. Hot baths, hot yoga, trips to hot climates. Retail therapy, sun therapy, cat therapy, talk therapy. Massages, mindfulness, acupuncture, reiki. I felt pretty chill for an hour or so after a massage, sufficiently revitalized after working up a sweat with sun salutations and downward dogs—but the positive effects never lasted. For all my forays into the world of wellness none ever seem to make a real dent in the anxiety and bouts of depression I’ve been living with since my teens.
After years of this cycle, I finally realized the problem: All my self-care efforts were accompanied by a side helping of alcohol. A cold beer in the airport, to stem the stress of travel; a glass of wine, to wind down after a long day; a few flutes of champagne, to calm my nerves at a party; and, if things got really bad, a shot of vodka to dull my anxiety. Despite the dozens of wellness trends I was pouring myself into, I realized I was putting more effort into self-medicating than self-care.
Alcohol had become a soothing salve. I needed it.
For the longest time, I genuinely believed that alcohol was a legit component of my self-care regimen. After a tough day at work, I’d seek solace in a bottle of wine. Or two. It was my go-to when I needed to relax, deserved a reward after a stressful day of parenting, or was feeling sorry for myself. My “me time” invariably involved drinking—any other acts of self-care I engaged in took second place. And I didn’t see anything wrong with this. After all, treating yourself at happy hour or cuddling up with a bottle of chardonnay are often billed as totally acceptable forms of self-care. For years, I believed they were.
As a short-term measure, alcohol does seem to help. “It has a sedative effect on the brain,” says Channing Marinari, a licensed mental health counselor at Banyan Treatment Center. “This means that a few beers or glasses of wine can seem to relieve stress and make you feel more relaxed and calm.” But the reality is, alcohol can actually make your anxiety and depression worse, since booze is a depressant. “This can cause your problems to seem worse than they actually are,” Marinari says, leaving you more anxious and depressed than before you had a drink.
Using alcohol as a self-care strategy, in other words, is like downing a sugary soda to boost your energy—it may seem to work in the moment, but the sugar crash will only leave you more tired. “It becomes a vicious cycle,” says Jean Campbell, a licensed clinical social worker in California. “When the effects of the alcohol wear off, you not only have your original anxiety, but the added anxiety that sets up in the nervous system and brain when you stop using alcohol,” she says. Turning to the bar when I was feeling anxious or depressed meant I wasn’t developing healthy coping mechanisms. The result? Needing a drink became the one self-care strategy I couldn’t cope without.
Alcohol wasn’t really helping me take the edge off—it was slowly but surely making me even more stressed. After two decades of heavy drinking, I finally hit a turning point in June 2017. For a year, my drinking had gotten more and more out of control. Blackouts were no longer a rarity: Whether I’d been drinking solo at home to “relax” or hanging out with friends, I’d often wake up in the morning with absolutely no recollection of what had happened the night before. I had become totally emotionally dependent on alcohol and it was eating away at my ability to actually take care of myself. I wanted control of my life back.
I read as many sobriety memoirs as I could get my hands on, and found support from the sober community on Instagram. In the beginning, it really was one day at a time. My goal was just to make it to bedtime without succumbing to my inner wine witch—even that was difficult. As I marked off more sober days and weeks, I started to realize how much drinking had affected every aspect of my life. I was starting from scratch in so many ways: redefining relationships, working out how to socialize, and—one of the hardest things of all—learning how to approach self-care sober.
Without alcohol as my crutch, I needed real—healthy—self-care. Growing up, I thought that meant eating your veggies and getting enough sleep. Anything beyond that—the yoga, the reiki, the meditation—felt like luxuries. By the time I was old enough to appreciate the importance of caring for my inner self, I was already committed to drowning out her voice with copious amounts of wine. The revelation that self-care isn’t a luxury, but a necessity (for everybody, not only those who misuse alcohol and other drugs) was life-changing. After some trial and error, I’ve learned a 30-minute swim does more for my mental health than an hour on the massage table. Alone time and hot baths help make my anxiety manageable. None of these things are magic cures for anxiety or depression, but now that I’m sober, they make a lasting, meaningful difference.
At no time is this shift more apparent than during the holidays when booze is everywhere. This is the time of year I need to take care of my mental health the most—FOMO, financial strains, family stress, and an endless holiday to-do list make quick fixes like mulled wine and spiked hot cocoa seem more tempting than ever. But I remind myself that self-care can help keep me on the sober road. Last year, spending Christmas with drinkers was exhausting. I couldn’t face doing it all over again for New Year’s so, I politely declined a spate of party invites, stayed at home with my boyfriend and watched movies all day. I listened to myself, and did exactly what I needed to do to feel positive, strengthened and safe. Watching the ball drop sober, I realized I’d finally gotten self-care right.
Claire Gillespie is a writer living in Scotland with her blended family of eight. She dreams of moving to France to (finally) finish her novel.
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