44 Weeks of Sobriety- 10 Things I Hate about Drugs & Alcohol

Marking 10 months of sobriety by reminding me of the ten things I hate the most about drugs and alcohol

Feb 21, 2023

I’m having so much doing these blatantly shitty photoshops. I crack myself up.

Today I have been sober for 44 weeks. 308 days.

Sobriety

I haven’t been sober for double-digit months since I was 15. 19 years. I haven’t gone 10 months without drugs since I was 18. 16 years.

I had two moments this week where I thought about drinking. I was listening to a podcast, and one of my idols and the greatest Rugby League footballer to ever take a breath, Andrew Johns, said, “how good is the world after three schooners?” I agreed. It’s always the first two or three that feel the best. That transition of sober to not sober. It’s that process that is most enjoyable. Once you’re there, you’re there. Not a lot of good happens after that. I would still be drinking if I could have just two or three and stopped, but I’m the kind of person that spends the rest of the night chasing that feeling those first few gave me, and I think that’s where drugs come into it. You get the initial boost from alcohol, but then you plateau. Because that feeling is so recent, it’s front of mind, and you want it again. The only thing that will give you something similar once you’re affected by alcohol is drugs.

The other one was when I travelled to Merimbula, NSW, for work the other afternoon. It was a beautiful sunny day. I still associate drinking with working away. It’s just what we have always done. I thought about drinking that afternoon and sitting at the pub down by the water. It would have been beautiful, but it wouldn’t have ended well. I didn’t sleep well the night before, and I was tired from spending all day driving, and I think that’s why I was susceptible to such thoughts.

Grateful that I didn’t cave in either situation. We learn and grow each time.

10 Things I hate About Drugs & Alcohol

To mark 10 months of sobriety, I thought I would list ten things I hate about drugs and alcohol. A little reminder for my fuckin’ thick head of what I hate about drugs and alcohol. I know I won’t be able to avoid thinking about 12 months of sobriety, no matter how hard I try. So a little reminder of all the things I hate about my old life can only help me to get there, right?

Hangovers

No shit. This is an obvious one. Being sick sucks ass. I used to think I was pretty “seasoned” at drinking and that hangovers didn’t knock me about as much as others, especially when I drank without taking drugs. It wasn’t until I got sober that I realised even a quiet night at home drinking 10 beers would impact how I felt the next day. Fuck hangovers, man. Don’t miss those fuckers at all.

Wasted Time

Now that I am sober, I have found I have so much more time. Sadly, it doesn’t mean I am less busy or have more time to relax. But When you spend 20+ hours a week either drinking or being a hungover piece of shit, you are far less productive. Only on reflection do I realise how much I have achieved over the last 10 months by having that extra 20+ hours a week. It makes perfect sense. 20 hours is half a full-time job. How much more could you achieve if you gained 20 hours a week? If you could work 2.5 days less per week? Or maybe the better question is, how much time are you currently losing to drinking, taking drugs or being hungover, and could you be investing that time elsewhere? To me, time is the most valuable commodity on earth, and we have no idea how much of it we have left. I’ve wasted a lifetime's worth of time being drunk, high or hungover, and I’m not interested in wasting any more.

Money

I spent months spending over $500 a week on drugs and alcohol. Some weeks, well over. I’m glad I got sober when I did because these fucking interest rates and my partner being on maternity leave are making things a little tight, and we could really use some of that money right now. I still carry a lot of guilt around this. The money I was spending… wasting wasn’t mine, and even though I have been sober for over 10 months now, to this day, those poor choices affect the people who matter to me the most.

Scatter Brain

When I used drugs, my brain would go into idle mode for days after. This is known as the scatterbrain. Stimulants like cocaine and ecstasy simultaneously dump all the serotonin you have in your brain. That’s why it feels so fucking good. The problem is it can take up to three days for your brain to recalibrate. During this time, your brain just doesn’t work as it should. It’s slow and foggy. Your whole executive function is compromised. Everything is harder. Everything fucking sucks. Work is harder, you have less patience, you are less tolerant, you’re just generally grumpy and miserable, and it’s bloody torturous.

Affect on Health & Fitness

We all know drugs and alcohol are bad for our health. Most of the time, I maintained a reasonable fitness level I drank and took drugs. I remember always trying to get out for a run on a Monday, no matter what. I was trying to punish myself for my behaviour on the weekend. If you want to have fun, you have to earn it. Although, in hindsight, this was kind of backward, haha. The compulsory Monday run was also about trying to sweat as much of the crap from the weekend out of me as possible and fatiguing myself as much as possible to get a good night’s sleep the following night. Sleep is the only thing that helps your brain recover from the above-mentioned scatterbrain. That’s when your brain recovers.

The problem was, though, towards the end, where I was giving it a really good nudge, I wasn’t running or training on Mondays. Some weeks I wouldn’t get back on the cart until Wednesday or Thursday. I wasn’t earning the good time anymore. When you only train a few days a week and then have a massive bender on the weekend, you start regressing and undoing all the hard work you’ve put in through the week. All that hard work for nothing.

Poison

Drugs and alcohol are literally poison. Methylated spirits, mineral turpentine and many hand sanitisers are all alcohol. I guess you can drink it if you like, and in some cases, people do, but most people wouldn’t because that’s fucking stupid. Hydrochloric acid is a key ingredient in cocaine. Not to mention all the other shit dodgy bastards use to cut drugs these days. They have found pulverised glass in ecstasy tablets, the theory being that when ingested, the glass makes micro-cuts in your stomach as the pill starts to dissolve, making you digest it quickly so that the “come-on” is quicker and harder. You wouldn’t drink a cocktail of metho, turps, and hydrochloric acid with a sprinkle of glass shards in it. Yet millions of people worldwide would have done similar on one night out many times. Fuck, all that!

Social Acceptance

This one may upset a few people, but it’s how I feel. I hate how accepted it is culturally and socially to write yourself off. It gave me an out. An excuse. It allowed me to dodge accountability. Others did it, which made it ok for me to do it. I’ve had an issue with my own drinking and drug use all my adult life. I had a constant internal conflict. What I was doing didn’t sit well with me. I just couldn’t stop, and the fact that it was everywhere I went made it harder to do anything about it again. Don’t get me wrong. I am responsible for every decision I have ever made. It’s just that personally, I found it difficult to effect change until I realised I would have to physically remove myself from a lot of these environments because I just didn’t have the self-control or discipline to abstain from drugs and alcohol.

Shame

I fucking hated the sense of shame I would get after a big night or weekend. I never felt like I was “that kind of person”. I didn’t see myself as a drug user or an alcoholic. And maybe, that’s why it took me so long to do something about it. Maybe I was avoiding acceptance. Whatever the case, I would always feel like a disappointment. At the time, I felt like I was letting other people down. My family, partner and even some friends. I’d miss birthday parties, weddings, and all sorts of events because I was too hungover, tired or scattered to go. I’d make up some bullshit, and most people would be understanding and would excuse my absence. It’s only in sobriety that I have learned the thing that hurt the most was I was letting myself down all along. I knew I was better than that. I just couldn’t manage to be better at the time. I never want to feel like that again.

The Person it Made Me

I was a fucking liar. I would lie about where I had been, what I was doing, and who I was with. For the most part, it was innocent enough. I just didn’t want people who mattered to know what I had been doing because I didn’t want anyone to be disappointed or ashamed of me. I already felt bad enough about myself. I didn’t need a pile on. I would sneak money out of our shared savings account at times when we were saving for a house deposit or saving to help with our recent move to the coast and my partner’s impending maternity leave, where her wage would be cut in half. I was so sneaky about my drug use in particular because I was so ashamed of it. I would just deny it all the time. I made the most ridiculous excuses, got the shits, and stormed off when questioned. When you lie, you only make things harder for yourself because you have to carry it around and remember all the lies you’ve told each person. It’s anxiety and inducing and fucking stupid. It takes up too much of your mental bandwidth, and we have far more important shit to use that up on.

Impact on Others

One thing many people don’t realise when they are using drugs and alcohol is its impact on those around them. You put the people who matter to you the most through so much unnecessary stress. A lot of people in addiction think no one cares about them. They have low self-worth. They truly believe that their actions impact no one but themselves and don’t care much for self-preservation. Now that sobriety has provided me with mental clarity, I shudder to think of the stress I caused my parents, my ex-partner and my current partner. I’m not sure I’ll ever get to a place where I am comfortable with that.

All I can do moving forward is what’s right. My son is six months old today. He has never seen me drunk. Unlike the rest of my family, I have never been doing coke at family events or even just at home on a Friday night behind his back, and I don’t plan to do so. He has been such an incredible source of inspiration and motivation. I just want to be the person that I want him to grow up to be. It’s not easy, and I have some mental hurdles to cross to get there, but if I can ask myself before making a risky decision, “what would I want him to do in this situation” I think I’ll be ok and he’ll never have to see me in the state that so many others had to.

Cheers Wankers.