Why I Quit Drinking | Six Months Sober Update | Lucy Moon

this is copenhagen sparkling tea i picked this up around christmas this is a little premature but in two days i will hit six months of sobriety so cheers so as i said in two days i will be six months sober where has that time gone i couldn't tell you i didn't want to talk about things initially because it's a very personal journey and i wanted some time to find my feet and get the hang of things but six months in i thought let's answer some questions that you have about my sobriety so i put out some feelers on my community tab and on instagram and on twitter i've collated everything and i'm gonna answer some of the most frequently asked questions also i'm really sorry if you see the light fluctuate i've done my best to kind of make this a well-lit room but it's been storming it's been sunny outside it's really moving about so i'm mainly going to be answering questions about my relationship with alcohol and my experiences with alcohol a lot of people ask me questions that are more advised questions so i think i'm going to save that for a separate video so yeah do leave comments if you have any kind of advice questions about drinking about alcohol and about sobriety and i will try and answer those in a separate video but this one is more about me and my personal experiences with alcohol i'm quite afraid of being vulnerable online i don't know if you saw the last video i made about alcohol it was safe to say a train wreck i decided to make a video about alcohol two days after i went sober while part of me regrets the way i went about it i know it is so helpful and has been so helpful to so many people so i do leave it up and you can go and watch it if that's something you'd like to see the most asked question was why did you get sober and honestly a lot of what i said in my previous video still applies i haven't watched my last video in full but i think i pretty much cover my relationship with alcohol up until the age of 21. so in summary i was a regular drinker and i was kind of a heavy drinker but in terms of the uk i was a relatively normal drinker in terms of quantity and frequency so i actually built up quite slowly after reintroducing alcohol back into my life after that period of sobriety i think it was around 100 days that i took off and for a few years things were fine overall i was drinking infrequently i was drinking relatively measured amounts like i was still binge drinking but it all felt a bit more manageable and when i say manageable i mean i always felt like i had an iron grip on what i was putting into my body and consuming in terms of alcoholic drinks i was always watching how much everyone else was drinking making sure i wasn't over drinking relative to the people i was with i was going home when the last person went home and i thought you know what this is this is manageable but i was thinking about alcohol all the time when it was around me i was still doing periods of sobriety but a lot of the time i was doing it through gritted teeth and gradually i noticed that the amount i was drinking was increasing a lot of it's just to do with my social life i live in london i'm a busy gal i'm out and about and often drinks are free at my work events which does make things a bit more challenging so again i started doing the things to moderate that i did previously where i was saying i'll only drink at weekends or i'll only have two drinks etc etc fill the blank here i think everyone's done it and for me unfortunately i just couldn't stick to those i used to think it was a willpower thing i used to think i just i'm not strong enough i'm not strong enough to stick by myself and to go through with something i've committed to and it really wore down my self-esteem and obviously in the era of instagram drinking was slash is immensely glamorized i noticed it on tank top as well like there's always like wine o'clock wine in the bath wine at a gorgeous like meal like late night in a high rise drinking your wine like it's a thing peppered through all of my drinking experiences with little to high frequency were blackouts i am a blackout girl unfortunately i just lose my marbles and lose huge portions of the night if i'm having a big night i will mostly not remember it but yeah more often than not i wouldn't know really what had happened and i never intended to get drunk i think this is the main thing that was scary was that i'd always go out thinking i'll have three drinks and go home i'll have four drinks and go home which even then is like kind of a lot of alcohol and i was just going out and as soon as i'd had my first drink i just wanted more and more and more it's like it kind of switched off that part of my brain that had stopping ability and that's what it does obviously it takes down your inhibitions and then look done happened i ended up drinking pretty much at the end of every day in most of the lockdowns just to mark out the end of the day it hit six or seven o'clock i would pour myself a glass of wine and i'd go and play spiro so yeah it really crept up and on top of that i was still doing the binge drinking so i was just drinking a substantial amount and i was noticing other changes to my body and my mental and physical health so i was gaining weight i was really lethargic i just felt crap in the mornings and i've always felt crap in the mornings but i felt so bad i felt heavy all the time and like foggy i struggled with focus i struggled with productivity not to be all gas like a cute girl boss but productivity was a problem i'm self-employed and i just wasn't sure why any of this was happening i just kind of suspected maybe alcohol played a role but honestly everyone else was doing fine and everyone else was drinking as much as me or so i thought in all this time i'm reading a lot of quit lit which is the genre of like sober literature and i read this book called quit like a woman by holly whittaker and it really put a fire up my bum basically it really made me want to quit drinking but i just didn't have the minerals to do it being dead honest it takes a lot to quit and to quit something that's so pervasive in society and in my own life but she specifically talks about big alcohol and how it functions like big tobacco so it's this huge industry they have huge financial power and they currently want women and minorities to drink more so that's why we're finding the romanticizing of alcohol consumption going up and up and up it's directly influenced by big alcohol anyway so i'm reading all of that that's having an impact on me i'm wanting to quit and i'm saying to myself i'll quit before i'm 30 i'll quit before i'm 30. but every saturday or friday i'll go out and i have a drink it felt like no matter how much i was trying to reduce my alcohol consumption it just wasn't happening and it made me feel like such a failure like it's just not good for you to be in that headspace and then by the end things were quite bad i've always had consequences from the blacking out and the binge drinking i've always woken up found out i've done stuff and had no memory of it and also experienced some situations where i've been in a lot of danger and a lot of stranger danger and you know i've come to in really stupid uh situations which i shouldn't have been in but i was and yeah just like really dangerous situations london is not a safe place to be a drunk woman at night and i knew every time that i came out one of those situations i got really lucky i'm also white and i'm a woman and i think that played a role as well like i don't know if i'd have been as lucky had i been from another background or an ethnic minority or if i was lgbtq plus or if i was not able-bodied there's yeah i got very very lucky but yeah i never felt like i was making those decisions and that i think was what really scared me and also what led into the anxiety i know you've heard of anxiety but by the end of my drinking no matter how much i drank even if i just went out for two i'd wake up in the morning and i'd feel physically dreadful like my chest was tight i'd be crying and then i'd obviously go down this shame and blame and guilt kind of cycle and it wore me down and that was after my good night after my bad nights i'd feel awful for days yeah i just didn't it wasn't right the mental toll it would take on me was so bad i don't know if i mentioned it in my previous video but drugs are not part of my adult story i had some bad experiences with drugs when i was a lot younger when i was a teenager and so they just weren't a part of my existence in london as an adult i just want to put that in here as well because i know that for a lot of people drugs and alcohol come hand in hand especially when they have a relationship with alcohol like i did or i do but yet for me drugs aren't part of my experience and then the world reopens again and i realize just how much money i'm spending on booze when i'm drinking at home now regularly and i'm also drinking out and about in the world i'm spending like 100 pounds on a night out and that's just not sustainable and then i'm also going to free drinks events and then i'm also drinking at home and conservatively when i got my soba app which counts my days and just like i have a little app for it it said how much are you spending on alcohol a day and conservatively i said 10 pounds a day so like yeah if that gives you an idea that was real conservative like i would sit there and say oh i can't afford therapy but i'd spend 450 pounds on booze a month i had one really bad night i kind of had an epiphany but no matter how much i read how much i knew about big alcohol how enlightened i was how many periods of sobriety i took unless i quit i wasn't ever going to be in control i needed a hard reset if you can imagine what the cumulative effects of experiencing that level of shame guilt and anxiety for maybe two years looks like i had to start dealing with all of that the next question is how did you know you had a problem with alcohol i've also done a tick tock on this so i'll kind of summarize what i said there here i've always known i've had a problem with alcohol i remember trying to sit down with one of my friends at uni when i was like 18 and say hey i'm not drinking the way you're drinking and they went oh it's uni it'll pass but i have always struggled with this idea of alcoholism and thinking well i'm not an alcoholic so why is this affecting me so much which is silly because it's not black and white it's like the rest of human experience everything's on a spectrum in my opinion there is no such thing as a good or a bad drinker it's just not that binary the things that really differentiated me from the way that my friends drank was that i thought about alcohol a lot as i said before i would think about watching everyone's drinks as they went down i'd it'd be on my mind if i was in any social situation it was like a mental chain always attached to me like every time i'd be socializing i'd be thinking when's the next drink i'd be antsy at the bar or i'd be drinking my drink antsy about the next one so much of what kept me in check with social expectations which is why a lot of my friends were really surprised when i told them i was giving off alcohol even though i've talked about it for years they were like but why you're a good drinker and it's like yeah because i keep up i keep pace with everyone perfectly because i'm constantly thinking about it the way i think about alcohol is obsessive and i also saw that it wasn't affecting my friends lives the way it was affecting mine like i've lost relationships i've lost friendships through booze and the way that i've behaved having never had a resentment against that person i've done nasty nasty things when i've been drunk especially when i was younger and not knowing where it came from not knowing the origin of it but still had to own that because i i made those decisions and i said those things my other friends don't do stuff like that they might wake up with a few bad hangovers but they don't do stuff like that they feel done at a certain point and they stop drinking i don't stop until the rest of the group stops it's not that big of a deal but the way that those behaviors creep into your life to satisfy that never-ending hunger for alcohol is quite sinister and also my friends have days and times where they don't fancy a drink whereas for me from like 11 o'clock i would pretty much always be down to have a drink doesn't mean i wanted to drink 24 7 but if the opportunity arose i wasn't working i would absolutely be down and sometimes when i was working has quitting this time felt different to the first time you stopped drinking ultimately yes and no it does feel different in that this time around i feel very sure that the way i was going the trajectory i was on nothing was going to change about my drinking no matter how many rules i put in place for myself no matter how much i changed my lifestyle or i moved city or something like that nothing was going to change until i stopped because it was the first drink that was sending me west so yeah these were cycles of behavior and they were cycles mentally and i had to reset however there are a lot of similarities as well like a lot of the things i've been experiencing are kind of similar and i feel like i'm re-treading some old steps and also i've been in therapy both those times with two different therapists both who are wonderful love dearly but they have had some weird correlations in that you know i realized like oh need to get sober time to check into therapy and they both marked new chapters of my life ultimately that first time i went sober was a hugely transformative period for me and this one is turning out to be two have you noticed any positive changes since going sober oh my god yes i don't think i would have lasted six months if i hadn't noticed positive changes there's obviously more than the ones i'm going to say here but these are the main things that came to mind when i was making notes my relationship with money is so much better i can check my bank balance in the middle of the month and not feel that bubbling anxiety in my chest i know you know that feeling it's hard to explain like your overall well-being being better but i've definitely felt that and i don't generally actually have that good well-being like i struggle with my thyroid and stuff like that but actually overall everything is so much more consistent so much more explainable alcohol stays in your system for around three days after your last drink so i was in a constant state of having alcohol in my system i rarely took more than two days off in a row before i did sober october i couldn't even remember a date where i'd taken more than a week off so basically my energy's more even killed my productivity is better because my focus is better i don't feel great every day but i feel pretty decent a lot of days and that's such an improvement on where i was at before i'm also going to talk a little bit about weight now and if that's something you would find difficult to hear i will leave a little thing on the screen where you can skip through and go to the next bit in terms of weight i have lost weight weight has never felt something like i have control over in my whole life it just fluctuates i don't really know why or what it does but i am realizing that alcohol definitely impacts my body and the way that i hold weight i do want to share numbers because i just want to show it slow and steady and this isn't a lose weight fast scheme or some diet and there have also been some other lifestyle changes but small ones not ones that i would have expected to make a significant impact on my weight since i went sober i have lost i think it's 10 pounds it turns out that scientists don't actually know how alcohol and calories work in terms of whether your body even turns alcohol calories into fat we don't understand it at all because hardly anyone's researched it and we just don't really understand how alcohol affects the body in that way so i don't want to put too much emphasis on weight loss um yeah anyway and the other weird one my allergies are so much better this year i don't know if that's to do with the alcohol but i am really doing well for my allergies this year and we think the pollen's got worse like my friends are saying that everyone feels worse and i've got it more in my throat but not in my sinuses not in my ears the way i used to have it not in my head and not in my eyes i it's all throat i think it might be to do with the drinking on a personality level my gut instinct is so much more in tune i can't explain that i was living in a state of constant exhaustion and now i realize it's probably because i was busy tuesday night thursday night friday night saturday night every single week and often wednesday nights as well either at work events seeing friends going to parties whatever and it was just burning me out to my core because we actually do have a social battery and we do need to recharge and i wasn't recharging at any point alcohol was just switching off the sensors i had no idea how depleted i was whereas now i know when i need to retreat when i need to be by myself and when i can go out and hang out with people it sounds bad but it's weirdly refreshing my self-esteem has been built so strongly by this the fact that i'm saying no and following through with something i've committed to is just huge for me and it's freed up so much time in my life to go and do things that i want to put my time into i felt so awful at how much stuff i wanted to do but i didn't feel that i had the time to do or the space or the energy to do and i'm doing more of those things now and it's wonderful so that's just a few of the things the things that off the top of my head i've noticed that have been huge changes to me since quitting alcohol did you notice any other addictive behaviors appear to replace alcohol yes um especially in those first few months my phone addiction my relationship with my phone has never been great i mean my job is social media but it was bad it was bad because i just wanted to numb out like this hasn't been the easiest journey this is definitely something that i find challenging and i will probably keep finding challenging because i'll colors everywhere i'm still really social so it wasn't that i had crazy amounts of extra time but i did have extra time in that i wasn't out late and i needed more time to myself and instead of spending that time in ways that i find really rewarding i was just going to my phone because it was easier so that's actually been a bit of a challenge in itself is just getting that to a better place which is ongoing i'm not perfect how did your friends and family react i may be a slightly unique case because i had to tell everyone the first time around that i was quitting alcohol so a few people who've been in my life that long for them it was not a surprise so there's people in my life who had seen me quit alcohol before for them it was less of a surprise still a surprise but they we kind of trodden those steps before and then in terms of new people in my life overall it was fine people generally don't think stuff's as big of a deal as you think it is so while alcohol makes me prang out all the time it doesn't make everyone else prang out overall it was absolutely fine i made sure to tell as many people as possible as fast as i could because it keeps you accountable ultimately it's better that people know because even if you're not going to tell them why you're not drinking it just helps them normalize in their head i do think people just in general when there's some kind of change just take a bit of time to mentally process it and adjust and that was my experience at least even the people who were more reluctant about my decision to stop drinking they adjusted pretty fast and they only want what's best for me at the end of the day it's just you've got to remember we're in a society where alcohol is everywhere alcohol is so normalized that people with a normal drinking relationship can't understand why someone or how someone has a problem with it which brings me on to my next question how did you deal with people in your life who reacted negatively so the first thing is that i was really sure of my decision i quit drinking purely for me i knew that i couldn't keep living my life with alcohol in it and i was so sure of that no one could persuade me otherwise it was exhausting advocating for myself constantly in the first few months even when it just came to go into the bar and asking for a non-alcoholic drink all the way up to justifying why i was still not drinking and explaining that this was a good thing even if i might seem a little down it was a really good thing for those first few months i really struggled not just with adjusting to a life of that alcohol but also adjusting to the fact that my whole con like my concept of life was changing really drastically i know that's quite melodramatic i was really going through it so i was obviously a bit down but it wasn't just the alcohol it was like all of this other stuff as well just kind of once you pull one thing out of the cupboard it was like dominoes or like jenga so explaining that no matter how difficult my life looked at that time this was a really positive thing and actually really helping everyone's come round and everyone meant well they were just lacking understanding because they can't relate how do you deal with social situations that involve drinking parties dinners celebrations etc one i have an out i have to be able to leave at whatever point i need to leave and i will go i have so much more fun when i know i can leave whether that's going to a room to get some rest or whether that's literally going home i just need to be able to tap out if we're going to a bar or restaurant and i know beforehand i will go on the site check what non-alcoholic drinks they have and mentally prepare myself because some have amazing selections like a lot of places in east london do big drop brewery which are gluten-free alcohol-free beers and they make my life i love that but sometimes there's literally just diet coke but it's better if i know that beforehand so i can prepare myself for a diet coke evening in terms of dealing with it mentally i just try and romanticize my life and remind myself i'm doing so much better i am having so many better chats than i was before i'm living my best life right now it comes across like people can tell it also makes you realize what events you didn't enjoy in the first place do you miss drinking yeah because there were good nights right there were the odd night that was really lovely really fun and sometimes i do feel a bit of fomo and i do think well i wish i could tap into that extra social energy sometimes but honestly when i think about how the majority of those nights ended for me no it's easy for me to be on a night out or be a work event or be a family event and get stuck in this mental loop of oh this would be so much easier if i was drinking this would be so much easier but all i have to do is talk myself through what those nights would actually look like in reality which is i'd say i have one i have five or six i am slurry i'm boiling hot my face is red i am saying stuff i don't mean i can't predict where the night's gonna go i wake up in the morning and i feel i start crying in bed all i have to do is think about that and think no way i don't want that back at all and i will say as well the one thing i do miss is the taste i really miss tequila i miss wine there is no such thing as a good alcofrey wine i'm sorry to disappoint this is delicious this sparkling tea i really like crisp dry flavors and bitter flavors as well and this has that so that's great like there are tough moments like when you first get somewhere and everyone's having a nice little romantic glass of wine on the terrace and there's a pretty bone it's all just like lovely but the reality is five drinks in everyone's pissed everyone's being messy they're slurring they're saying things they don't mean and at that point it stops being appealing if they can ever replicate the taste of actual alcohol and put it in a drink i'd be so happy because my god i would love a margarita why do you use the term sober a lot of people ask me why i use the term sober and a lot of people said to them it sounds really serious and they don't want to overplay why they're not drinking i use the term sober because it's just quite well understood and at the moment i don't partake in any other drugs drugs sounds really serious but like i don't smoke weed i mean it's not like i'm taking care while i'm sober like absolutely not i use the term so because i don't relate to the term alcoholic i don't have alcohol use disorder or at least i don't think i ever did i don't think of it as a particularly serious term but at the same time even if it was and is taken as a serious term good because i can't drink but i don't just say oh i don't drink because i feel like that makes it sound like i'm on a health kick when i'm i'm not how do you treat yourself slash unwind great question by far the thing i was most nervous about when i quit drinking was how am i gonna do the unwinding bit during my sobriety i've heard a sober person say i felt like i could never let air out of the tire and oh my goodness that is exactly how i felt and i felt like my whole life and like alcohol was the only thing that helps let that air out of the tire it's taken a few months but honestly that element has really evened out there are loads of ways that i decompress now i always think i needed to detox and regulate my system again to understand like my dopamine and like my endorphins and serotonin and whatever else plays into the happy chemicals it's more just that my system is regulated now so like i don't feel that urge to decompress in quite the same way so it could be a more internal need for me i could be really stressed need to stop working watch tv have a bunch of snacks make myself a little nest on the sofa that could be creative need for me i need to go i need to make something i need to write a song i need to do something like that or it could be a social need so maybe i need to go out i need to see people i need to feel a part of the community a community i need to have a catch up over dinner with all of my friends you know something like that so if you're feeling that way and you've maybe only quit for like a month or something and you want to keep going like please do keep going please see this as me encouraging you because i honestly was terrified i'd never get to a point where i could relax and it did happen what's the most surprising thing you found about not drinking so a lot of the things i felt shame around that i did drunk like on nights out i actually do sober i don't know if that's positive when i'm on my way home i'll stop and take photos of like everything i see i just find life so beautiful on my way home from a night out a chat load of i gossip i'm still that guy i don't know if that's a good or a bad thing but i really thought they were correlated to me drinking but no that's just me the pollen allergy stuff as well so wild i also forgot to mention but my gut health improved drastically it is by no means perfect but it's way more even keeled i also love a coffee coffee gives me serotonin what do you find hardest in sobriety overthinking i tend to spiral a bit i think about all of the drinking stuff loads i think about everything else in my life loads i am still struggling with like self-esteem stuff and thinking failure imposter syndrome all of that and i just have to be able to take a step back and separate myself from my thoughts and check myself basically i have to pull myself out of these thought black holes and stop thinking and just start doing also in sobriety i've noticed i do have a bit of fear around what people think of me not drinking i always worry that people think it's me making a comment about them drinking or um that people think it's a health kick or that they think i'm just trying to be like little miss perfect and yeah i find that quite challenging a lot of people asked will you stay sober forever why can't you just drink in moderation it's a great question and i try not to think about it too much because honestly who can think about forever can you think about doing anything for the rest of your life i can't all i know is that right now being sober is the right thing for me when people say why don't you just drink in moderation i always want to like proper face palm don't you think everyone who's quit drinking has tried drinking in moderation if it works they wouldn't be quitting drinking i have tried everything i could possibly think of to drink in moderation and for me personally it hasn't worked yet and right now i don't think it will ever work maybe after taking 10 years off booze five years off booze maybe i might have some way of doing moderation right now at this stage in my life and at the point i'm at now it would not be possible for me however i'm never gonna say never to drinking again a lot can change and i for one have been caught out by saying i'm never going to drink again and then drinking again life isn't black and white and i have to learn to embrace the nuances so right now i'm not drinking drinking is not for me and i have no intention of going back to it but never say never finally there's one advice question i wanted to address because i just think it's something i can answer personally my loved one is also getting sober how can i support them the few things that came to the top of my head were have a non-alcoholic drink available at whatever you're hosting if you're having them over for dinner if you're having a party a barbecue make sure there's something nice for them to drink that's fun and not just lemonade or diet coke i would literally happily never drink a soda lime again in my life don't make a big deal out of it but also don't act like it's nothing being sober is a lot of work this is the hardest thing i've ever done in my life but also the most rewarding so it's kind of like someone running a marathon like you're not gonna go oh my god you're doing this huge amazing thing but you're also not gonna pretend like it's just a normal run you're not gonna be like oh you just a casual 26 miles so yeah maybe you know ask them if it's okay to drink around them and be careful with it but don't constantly bring it up don't make it this huge thing just follow their lead the main thing i think is just be nice being sober is a different experience for everyone but from everyone who i've spoken to who is sober i think the one thing people have in common is they're worried about being ostracized so yeah be inclusive and be kind and it will be so appreciated so on that note i'm gonna round out this video i'm in a good place right now i feel the best i felt in ages i feel so much more myself and the positives are really coming through at the moment so please don't give up hope if you are also quitting drinking or you're thinking about quitting drinking it gets so much better my life is so full and so bright and i'm endlessly grateful so yeah thank you so much for watching really appreciate it do you like the video if you've enjoyed it let me know your experiences with alcohol in the comments i'm always so down to hear people's stories and let's make the comment section somewhere really nice to go and let's be empathetic let's be understanding of each other because everyone's coming from a different place with a different experience of drinking i just want to make sure everyone feels okay and feels understood so yeah there will be a zero tolerance policy of any judgment of any to be honest i don't even think i'll need to delete anything because i think everyone would be great yeah i can't believe how vulnerable i've been thanks again and i will see you in my next video i cannot believe i filmed that

Channel: Lucy Moon

Views: 220,318

Keywords: lucy moon, lucy, capsule wardrobe, london vlogger, lifestyle vlogger london, minimal fashion, I quit drinking, Lucy moon alcohol, giving up alcohol, sober, pros and cons of giving up alcohol, advice for giving up alcohol, sobriety, sober before 30, quitting drinking, why I quit drinking, am I an alcoholic, dry January, sober October, sober curious, hi i'm lucy

Id: K0yQOU2Bvb4

Length: 28min 33sec (1713 seconds)

Published: Sun May 29 2022