How To Deal With Cutting Out Alcohol As An Overthinker

Relatability

One of the biggest overthinking exacerbations I have is when I know that my actions and my values aren’t lining up. It’s confusing to have an understanding of who you are and do something that is really far off from who that person is. 

This feeling of scattered self security was a common occurrence when I was drinking. When I was sober, I could at the very least tolerate and like who I was. However, when I started to drink it created this really quick downward spiral leading to a version of me I did not like at all. I would find myself doing or saying things out of character for me while drunk and then swap to be sober the next day having to deal with those things. Eventually, the feeling I had of who I actually was became really blurry because the sober me and drunk me were starting to merge, after all, it was still me choosing to indulge in alcohol and act out of my typical behavior. 

I would overthink what I did, what I said, and who I was as a person, and I would typically just feel really down. To my core, I knew I wasn’t a bad person but I really had no barriers (within reason) to what I would accept and what I wouldn’t with alcohol. My issue with alcohol was that I didn’t know when to stop. And when you have no limits, it is inevitable that life will show you what those limits are. 

The thing about alcohol, for me,  was I noticed the effects of alcohol lasted much longer than the drink itself. The depression and anxiety alcohol would cause for days after was really apparent too and was the worst part of alcohol itself for me. I have always been an overthinker, but overthinking about what I even did and who I was anymore would turn into a daily experience for me. This overthinking of myself, worst case scenarios, and my actions would lead to so much mental exhaustion from simply hating myself and what I was doing that is would lead to depression as well. 

Reflection 

When I looked in the mirror and realized I really didn’t like who I was, I really took that seriously. I had to be real with myself that I was lazy, had no standards, was drinking because I didn’t want to be in my own head, a lot of my relationships with people were only centered around alcohol, and I felt really lost and sad. Alcohol seemed to just be a crutch to help me forget how disconnected I was from myself. 

At some point, you have to stop blaming the substance itself, the people around you, and realize it is up to you to change this behavior. I thought the alcohol itself was my issue, and that when I got rid of the alcohol I would feel so much better and lighter. Which was true to a point, but I was really way off from that assumption. 

Removing alcohol was a really great start, and it did lead me to some really important realizations. It allowed me to see how impactful my own view of myself was. I had really developed a hateful self-talk and self image of myself. Stepping away from alcohol, which is how  I was getting away from that view of myself, did let me see that my behavior with alcohol was sort of a self fulfilling prophecy of the idea that I had that I was a bad person. Alcohol aside, I truly had a very low self esteem and self image and it was really painful to deal with when I wasn’t drinking that there was a clear link that I used alcohol as a way to really subconsciously prove that to myself. 

The self deprivation I would face the days after I would drink became normal for me. It was normal for me to just hate myself and use my behavior with alcohol as a segway to do that. Alcohol was simply an excuse for me to hate myself. And what goes on in your inner world really does show on the external world. I hated myself, used alcohol as my bridge to do that, and my external world was full of depression, anxiety, overthinking, not having any dreams, and no respect to do better for myself. 

However, when you’re clouded in this state of mind by continuing in the cycle of drinking, hating yourself, drinking, hating yourself it is really difficult to discover what the root is of it all. Without really realizing, understanding, and choosing differently I would never have known how something that seemed so surface as an issue, was not. Alcohol was definitely a problem, but my self hate was the problem. Figuring out your root to self destruction leads you to know better and then do better.

Reinvention

It’s interesting to look back at this point in my life, and see that the “fun” I thought I was having was not fun. I was running from myself, and drank to get away from myself. Deciding to stop drinking alcohol has really been an invitation to really see myself for who I am. There’s nothing clouding who I am, which makes what I don’t like fixable and what I do like really wonderful. 

A big part of choosing to stop participating in a substance that isn’t right for you is forgiveness. I think it’s easy to ruminate on the part of you that did drink and get really embarrassed, upset, or sad. But that person was clouded under a lot of self destruction and could still see that a change needed to be made. Making a decision to remove something that harms and poisons your life, is the best gift you could ever give yourself too. 

So, as easy as it is to let the natural thinking and thinking and thinking occur about the past, you can forgive that part of you and thank them for leading you to where you’re at now. 

I'm going to circle back from a point I made earlier about realizing I didn’t like who I was, and share some things I have realized I love about myself being sober. I have high standards for myself, I am very disciplined, I have a clear mind, I can admit when I’m wrong and work on those things, I celebrate and appreciate myself more, I see myself reaching goals that were once thoughts, I feel healthier, I feel at peace with who I am, and I really do like myself. 

This was a 2 year endeavor for me to come to terms with who I am. There are times when I still want to disappear and go back to alcohol to cover myself up, but I now know that feeling is really just me feeling something that I need to address with myself. It is typically tied up in something related to my self esteem or a self hate feeling being brought up and when I face it it goes away much longer than it did when I’d cover it up with drinking. I am thankful that removing 1 thing in my life let me fill myself up with so much more than it ever did.