Am I the only sober person in the world who doesn’t like to meditate or do yoga? Sure seems that way. Seems like every other sober lifestyle blog or Instagram account is preaching the joys of meditation, yoga, lavender scented baths and walking barefoot in the rain.
OK I made that last one up. But the other 3 I see a lot.
Now there’s nothing wrong with yoga or meditation. If it is one of your interests and doing it is helping you keep sober then fantastic. I am over the moon you have found something for you.
But I wasn’t some yogi before I stopped drinking, and I’m not one now. I still like what I used to like, I still do the things I used to like to do. Stopping drinking is a huge lifestyle change as it is without changing my interests as well.
I need ways to relieve stress that don’t involve necking a bottle of wine. I need to unwind after a hard day’s work without reaching for a couple of cans. I need to get to sleep without using alcohol to knock me out. And I need to do this my way.
Stressed – Everyone has a hard day every now and then. Sometimes it can be more now than then. My job at the moment is super stressful. So when I get home and can feel that I am still stressed out I take the dog for a walk. Being outside and just free to wander around takes the edge off a bit. Then when I get back home my stress levels are way down and I am free to enjoy my night without needing to drink.
Relaxing – Got to have an outlet at some point. Can’t work all the time. Once I am done with work and any chores around the house I need to relax. This is where a lot of blogs will tell you to take a nice hot bath. Turn on some chill music. Light a candle. And just soak away.
Not for me. I kill monsters.
(video games!)
I’m currently completing my 2nd play-through of Bloodborne. Which at the time of writing this is probably about 5 years old. But still a great game.
I used to drink every time I sat down to play games but i have managed to decouple the activity from the drinking and now I can just sit back relax and kill some evil sons of bitches.
Sleeping – Sleeping was a hard shift for me. Usually I’d had enough drinks that sleeping was no issue at all (if you can actually call it sleeping). Take away the alcohol though and man I just lay there staring at the ceiling for what seemed like hours before I fell asleep. Eventually it was too much and I went and researched how to get a good night’s sleep. There was a great post from the Sleep Foundation (read that here) that I took and tweaked and now I sleep better than ever.
I don’t religiously follow all 10 steps but what I try to do each night is:
- get to bed and wake up at the same time
- have a wind down hour where I just read a book
- completely black out my room so there are no lights at all
- exercise regularly so my body is ready for the rest
- And finally I do one thing that goes against the advice from the Sleep Foundation; I listen to an audiobook to drift off to. The key here though is I listen to an audiobook of something I have already read/listened to. This way I am not worried about missing anything by dozing off and I can just get lost in my imagination, with the story flowing in the background, drifting off to sleep.
And you? How do you unwind, de-stress, relax after a hard day at the old 9 to 5? Share in the comments below. Until then…
IWNDWYT – I will not drink with you today
My problem isn’t so much the 9-5 as it is the 5-11 doing chores and then waking up at 6am to do more chores before leaving for work. I can drink half a bottle or so of wine while doing chores, but if I replaced that with yoga, mediation, or gaming the house would be a pigsty and I wouldn’t be any more relaxed. At least with alcohol I can numb myself to the sisyphean dreariness that is my entire life (and before anyone says it – if I could afford to just hire a cleaner, gardener and chef then I would! It bewilders me how often people think that that’s advice).