#mentalhealt

Estos han sido días de adaptación a mi hogar. Trabajo, alimentación sana, un poco de limpieza.

Al fin terminé el atlas en las nubes. Me gustó pero no lo volvería a leer. Lo recomiendo, es entretenido. Insisto, si eres de CDMX y deseas hacer trueque de libros, tengo disponible "El atlas de las nubes".

Tengo que prepararme para los extraordinarios pero necesito un par de días más para adaptarme.

Mañana será un día de acción.

Debo llevar al gatito a su castración. Será un día de mucho agetreo y aventura. Esperemos lo mejor.

Saludos y bonito jueves para ustedes.

Hi guys! Sarah here. This is my first official solo post on the blog. Given that it was my week to post and also the week I hit 90 days alcohol-free, I figured I’d write about that! 

Also, this title is definitely supposed to be a “Friends” reference. I’m currently attempting to convince Cassie that this should be our thing and I’m only half kidding. 

Last Summer, I read an intriguing Instagram post. It's pretty hippie-dippie, so stick with me through this part. @rawforhealth posted on Instagram a picture of a bubbly glass of some sort of alcohol with a caption on alcohol's spiritual effects - to sum up her post, here is the excerpt that really hit me: "In the words of writer and health enthusiast, #JasonChristoff – ‘In alchemy, alcohol is used to extract the soul essence of an entity. Hence its use in extracting essences for essential oils, and the sterilization of medical instruments. By consuming alcohol into the body, it in effect extracts the very essence of the soul, allowing the body to be more susceptible to neighboring entities most of which are of low frequencies (why do you think we call certain alcoholic beverages “SPIRITS?”). That is why people who consume excessive amounts of alcohol often blackout, not remembering what happened. This happens when the good soul (we were sent here with) leaves because the living conditions are too polluted and too traumatic to tolerate. The good soul jettisons the body, staying connected to a tether, and a dark entity takes the body for a joy ride around the block, often in a hedonistic and self-serving illogical rampage. Our bodies are cars for spirits. If one leaves, another can take the car for a ride. Essentially when someone goes dark after drinking alcohol or polluting themselves in many other ways, their body often becomes possessed by another entity.’”

I read it approximately 2 months after turning 21 and a little over a year since I'd gotten a fake ID that I used without restraint, to say the least. I've never had a drinking problem. Truly. I justified my drinking easily. I was a grown adult. I'd been paying my own rent for years, so clearly that justified some wine in the bathtub. Hell, maybe the whole bottle in the bathtub. My job is stressful. I work in social work. The end of hard days is often met with co-workers exclaiming "you deserve a drink tonight!" I was in college, this is what I was supposed to be doing. I was frustrated when I would go out to eat and they didn't have a full bar. Turning 21 was the permission slip I needed to order alcohol everywhere we went. Reading this Instagram post was the first time the idea of stopping drinking occurred to me. I quickly fell back on the excuse that I didn’t have a problem and forced the idea out of my head.

Sometime later, I stopped being able to handle my alcohol. Completely. I'd been off medications for several months, and to this day I wonder if the tolerances I'd built up while on anti-depressants (WHY was I drinking while on anti-depressants. Why, why, why former Sarah??) didn't quite translate. Even after a glass of wine, I would wake up incredibly anxious. Friends always teased me for "looking at a glass of wine and getting drunk”, my tolerance was so low. But this was terrible. I would wake up so anxious I'd cancel plans. Every night I drank ended in extreme nausea. But yet, I continued.

Around this time, a LOT of people entered my life who were abstaining from drinking. Some from a place of addiction, some from a place of mental health care, some from a place of physical health care, some from a place of spiritual care. I knew this was the Universe sending me a sign (or multiple signs - over and over). But I pushed it away, terrified of giving up this societal norm - the social lubricant that relaxed my anxious brain. I drank on first dates to ease my nerves, I drank to cope, I drank to celebrate, I drank when it was girl's night, I drank at the movies, I drank, I drank, I drank. Not inherently excessively, but too much for me.

Then I started yoga teacher training. During one of our first required readings, a Brené Brown book, she spoke of numbing. Of all the ways we as humans numb. She cited an example as simple as a man at work who could not stay off of social media - to the point he got fired. We as humans can numb so many ways - there are the commonly known ones: drugs, sex, alcohol, self-harm. There are the more socially acceptable ones: exercise, eating, social media, etc. As Brené Brown so wisely explains, “We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.”

Well, fuck.

As someone who spends A LOT of money and time managing my anxiety as naturally as possible, why was I still choosing alcohol? Why was I choosing numbing over feeling? Why was I preaching movement, vulnerability, stepping into the light, paying a lot of money, energy, and time to become a yoga teacher only to go home and numb with something that quite literally poisons my body? So I toyed with the idea of sobriety. I mentioned it to a few friends. I told myself I'd drink in moderation. Then shit went down in my life and I drank. I went to a wedding, got anxious and a little sad, and drank.

Here's a pretty important thing about me: I need accountability and no grey areas. I was never going to stop drinking by jokingly muttering the idea to my best friend in the middle of TJMaxx and then half-laughing it off. I was never going to stop drinking if I allowed myself any leeway.

So I continued toying. Then, last minute, in the bathroom of a wedding, at least three double vodka crans in, I texted our lead teacher for yoga teacher training. I changed my heart song to "Weak" by AJR. Then, I told my entire YTT cohort that I was not going to drink. And I haven't. For 90 days as of today - September 26th, 2019.