The Sober Diaries #8

2 years in...

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Two Years Sober, June 1st 2025

June 1st 2025, 8.44am, marks two years since I pledged to myself that, from this point on, I would be sober and no longer drink alcohol.

2 years have passed since I last had a sip of alcohol. I have not missed it at all but it has changed how I view things, how I react to things, particularly invites to parties and weekends away.

I’m not all that enthused at the idea of being around a variety of drunk people particularly if I have no way of making an easy escape.

Was I ever enthused by this?

Probably not but also being drunk made it easier to handle, up until the point of going a step too far and ending up crying for hours on end. Not to mention the feeling the next morning that I carried for weeks after. A feeling of deep “I have done something terrible” anxiety that I imagine most people would only feel upon murdering someone mixed with a black cloud of melancholy. That was never fun.

Becoming sober has not been some miracle cure for having no bad days but it has opened me up to myself in ways I never envisioned. I feel more connected to who I am and what I want from this life that I have.

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The hardest part for me remains other people and their perceptions of me. I still have a deep need to please and to be like.

I am just over two weeks away from my autism diagnosis, a process I began the month before deciding to become sober.

It is all connected.

The start of a journey that has helped me make sense in ways I never knew possible coming just weeks before I would stop drinking a substance that had only ever made me feel terrible but I still drank for years.

Because I thought it made me better because it helped me to stop acting like me.

Quiet, weird, unworthy me.

I think it all had to come at once. It had to be a big crash, bang, wallop.

I do not find it surprising that they are now linked by the same month.

June.

June 1st is my sober date.

June 18th will, well, we’ll see, but I envision it being a big date for me from this year on.

June is a big month for me. It has become the month synonymous for me with change, with growth, with acceptance.

This is who I am and who I have always been. And they are enough.

Now, my task is to actually believe all of this so I stop playing the role of someone who I am not anymore, maybe never was. So, I stop fearing every ‘No’ that wants to leave my mouth, so filled with fear that this is the ‘No’ that will mark the end of all I’ve ever known.

It is time to see that I matter and what I want matters. And what I do not want matters.

It is time I believed that I matter.

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Thank you so much for reading The Sober Diaries. This one was really quite hard to write because not drinking alcohol has just a part of my life now.

Yes, I still have some issues surrounding it to deal with but I don’t think these will have a quick, concise fix that I can talk about in another 6 months or a year.

So, saying all this, I think this will be the last of my sober diaries. Never say never, of course, but I just feel it’s a topic where the well is dry for me.

Further proving that I will never be someone who can write about the same thing all the time!

As always, if you enjoyed this letter or anything resonated, please let me know by replying to this email or, if you are on Substack, by giving it a like or leaving a comment. If you really enjoyed it, please share it or restack it so someone else might find it. Thank you. 🖤

Until next time, take care of yourself.

Love,
Becky
🖤✨🌈