5 Reasons Quitting Drinking Helped Me Write My Book
A post series inspired by @mamamedicine’s recent blog post on her three years without alcohol.
I truly believe that I would not have published my memoir at the end of last year if I were still drinking - even the very little alcohol I was consuming (around 2-4 units / week, at the weekend only).
This May will mark three years without alcohol, and this has been one of the most profound clearings of my life.
Here are just a few of the gifts I’ve received from this choice.
1. Clearing Cultural Programming — An American in the UK’s perspective
Alcohol is a huge part of culture in the UK where I live. I moved here twenty years ago, and I remember how shocked I was to discover the deep integration of alcohol into daily life. Even having lived with a fraternity (I was a Resident Advisor in college and supervised a dorm of frat boys), I was unprepared for the prevalence of drinking in every social occasion, no matter the tone of the event or time of day. Over time (and especially after having children here), this culture has in many ways become my own. As the years passed, I became more accustomed to alcohol as an accompaniment to every aspect of life. You could celebrate your sophistication with fancy wine, or start your girls’ trip to Spain with beers in the airport at 9AM — a wide range of behaviours are totally socially acceptable here, even within the same person. You can be high and low brow with alcohol and it is all treated as part of life’s pleasures. I noticed my own perspective and perception of what is normal change.
Calling it quits has been incredibly confronting for me personally as I reckon with my dual identities (a theme which I explore in greater detail and in other ways in my memoir). People I’ve known for a long time have become visibly uncomfortable in my presence in settings where drinking is centred (so many!), and other friendships have fallen away entirely. Life was definitely fuller before I stopped drinking, but the cleansing that has come with releasing this substance from my life has been undeniably positive. I’ll also note that I now see far more alcohol-free cocktail and beer options throughout the UK than in the US, so who knows where culture is heading in the longer term.
Wherever we end up in the long term, stopping drinking has allowed me to stand apart from the culture here a little, and this allows me greater perspective as an artist.
2. Strengthening the Creative Process
I doubt I would have a published memoir out now if I were still drinking. While there is a lineage of creatives who use alcohol and other drugs to help them create (or so they say), I find much more resonance in the idea that consistent creativity requires strength and discipline. This doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun! But my own experience has been that even the little I was drinking (between 1 and 2 drinks on a Friday and Saturday evening) had a huge impact on my creative flow. The “hangover” isn’t just physical, lasting a day or two. For me, alcohol creates an energetic fug that lingers for days, weeks, months…perhaps even years. I really felt that it took me two full years to clear the entire residue of alcohol from my system. I remember sitting in a sauna and recalling Richard Burton’s journal entries about the “drying out” process. Burton was a talented actor, a magnanimous lover, a cultural icon, a fascinating memoirist (his letters and journals are so interesting), and an alcoholic. I latched onto this idea that “drying out” the alcohol would allow other creative juices to flow, and this has absolutely been my experience. Coco Mellors also writes beautifully about sobriety and its role in allowing her fiction to flourish. Haruki Murakami writes that novelists need to be physically strong. I put myself in this class, and know that my decision to stop drinking is a choice that will flow into my desire to have a long and fruitful artistic career.
3. Lineage Clearing
More personally, I found stopping the flow of alcohol into my life and system facilitated the lineage-clearing work my memoir wanted to perform. No Prayer More Powerful is a story of initiation and transformation — some of this is personal, but much of this is intergenerational. In choosing to leave behind a substance that left a deep imprint on my family line, I was given perspective to explore the patterns related to it more clearly. The writing that flowed from this has been deeply impactful for me, for my family, and for many of its early readers.
4. Greater Discernment
The obvious consequence of clearing out cultural programming, epigenetic expression / family patterns and generally the influence of an energetically-dense (and distracting) substance has been that I find decision making easier. My vision has been cleared. This doesn’t mean that I don’t still find myself lost at times (or even frequently), but I can see the light that guides me. It’s easier to simply take the next step. I am less distracted and confused with alcohol completely gone from my life.
5. Building the Next Generation
I’m actually really happy that my children were old enough to consciously observe me give up alcohol and what that process looked like. I decided to stop right as we went on holiday to Greece — a time when most people would enjoy a glass or two of wine with dinner (or for me, a cocktail). In fact, it seemed to me that as we sat down for meals at our hotel, I was the only person in the whole restaurant not drinking. I ordered a drink each of the first three nights, and sat looking at it throughout the meal. But I didn’t drink it. By the fourth night, the desire to even order the drink had passed. My children cheered me on massively during this process, even making me a sticker chart that said “NO!” at the top! Turns out stickers can be as motivational for adults as for children; this really helped me celebrate the passing of the days, then weeks, then months. I’m glad my children have seen me choose better for myself, and I hope that whatever choices they make going forward, ultimately they will absorb the model of someone choosing the harder road towards better health and a fulfilled creative life.
