When God Said Stop Drinking

a reflection on my first year sober

I never thought about my alcohol habits until…I did? It never occurred to me I could have had a drinking problem. But once I started thinking about it, I never stopped.

I was sitting at church. I just thought hmm I should stop drinking & followed that with an oh, that was weird I wonder how that made its way into my brain & then figured I should take the seemingly random thoughts that pop up into my head at church seriously. So I did. When it feels like God could be speaking directly to me, I try to listen.

On June 30, 2019, I told my friends I would only be drinking twice during the month of July—the 21st birthdays of two of my best friends. Seemed impossible, the thought of weeknights without Rosé stumped me, but I figured I would try. I credited my newfound interest in sobriety to wanting to save calories & money & lower my sugar intake instead of just admitting the truth. Telling people God told me to stop drinking didn’t fit my cool girl image & I knew my friends wouldn’t all get it. I've said God told me to stop drinking exactly once to one person one time. God’s role in my relationship with alcohol was a secret truth of my heart.

God chose the absolute worst time to sober me up: the summer all my housemates turned twenty-one. I watched this movie called Remember Me the other day & at one point the main character Tyler says all 21-year-olds drink because it's new & exciting—feels accurate. But I was about to be a senior in college. Each of us had been drinking & partying for at least three years already, it didn’t feel new & it didn’t feel exciting, I didn't think it would be a big deal to phase out, it didn’t feel completely out of character for me. When Tyler the Creator talked about being straight edge during an interview with Converse—I just never wanted to drink, it was just something that never interested me—everyone thinks he's different & cool & worth listening to. There's a video of him talking about it on YouTube with nearly 700,000 views saying exactly that. But when you're twenty-one & a lot of your social life involves happy hours & all your friends are suddenly becoming capable of using their real ID's at the bars you've already been going to for months & you decide drinking no longer interests you, everyone gets annoyed you're suddenly different, no one thinks you're cool, & no one wants to listen to you. They think you're pulling some sort of selfish stunt & tell you you're not fun anymore.

My relationship with alcohol once I started drinking, in short:

I got drunk for the first time when I was eighteen. My friend was house sitting & we decided to get drunk. I had three shots of vodka right after each other, threw up 20 minutes later, & was so hungover the next morning I threw up in the YMCA parking lot before clocking in for the daycare shift I eventually left.

I started getting drunk more regularly once I left for college. My boyfriend at the time was a sophomore & had more experience with alcohol, so we would drink together with our friends in my dorm room. The entirety of our relationship was defined by dorm-room drinking & movie nights.

After my boyfriend & I broke up, I started expressing interest in going out. Much to my friends’ surprise, I was no longer interested in quiet nights in & wanted to get off campus as much as possible. My drinking went from casual to more reckless & the spring of my sophomore year was filled with frat parties & Uber charges on my debit card.

After I turned 21, I transitioned from frat parties to bars with frat brothers. I had about six months of the classic LA bar hopping & cocktails-with-every-dinner before retiring. Over the course of those three years, I blacked out once, cried quite a few times, & have had a couple of nights spent in the bathroom. While I was drinking constantly, I didn’t get too crazy too often. No one would have suspected anything about my relationship with alcohol.

Let's contemplate alcohol. That weird liquid stuff that makes you feel warm & more talkative & sometimes makes you feel like you can say whatever you want without consequences.

An alcoholic drink is a drink that contains the recreational drug ethanol, a type of alcohol produced by fermentation of grains, fruits, or other sources of sugar. Beer is fermented wheat, vodka can be made from practically anything including corn & potatoes, & wine is fermented grapes of every variety. Everything alcoholic is fermented.

Alcohol affects each organ differently. It interferes with the brain's communication pathways & can affect the way the brain looks & works. These disruptions can change mood & behavior, & make it harder to think clearly & move with coordination. Basically, alcohol gets you drunk. Feels obvious. Drinking a lot over a long period of time or too much on a single occasion can damage your heart, heavy drinking can take a toll on your liver & can lead to a variety of problems & inflammations, alcohol causes the pancreas to produce toxic substances that can eventually lead to a dangerous inflammation & swelling of the blood vessels that prevents proper digestion, there is also a strong scientific consensus of an association between alcohol drinking & several types of cancer, & drinking too much can weaken your immune system, making your body a much easier target for disease. Fun fact—I woke up with a stuffy nose pretty much every morning after a night out.

Alcohol abuse, or alcohol use disorder, is a chronic disease characterized by uncontrolled drinking & preoccupation with alcohol. Those with AUD may have problems controlling their drinking, continue to use alcohol even when it causes problems, or have withdrawal symptoms when they rapidly decrease or stop drinking. Alcoholism is the most severe form of problem drinking, it involves all the symptoms of alcohol abuse, but also another element: physical dependence on alcohol. If you rely on alcohol to function or feel physically compelled to drink, you're an alcoholic.

I believe people can have healthy relationships with alcohol, I just don’t think I do. Actually, I’m not sure. I get that alcohol tastes good & it’s fun to let loose after a rough day & lose control every once in a while, but needing an escape from reality rubs me the wrong way sometimes. There’s something about it that makes it feel unnatural even though alcohol occurs naturally. I want to say I know people with healthy relationships with alcohol, but the more I think about it, how can I determine that? I don’t know what goes on in anyone else’s head & I don’t know anyone’s true motivations. What even deems a healthy relationship with alcohol? What’s the metric? One glass of wine at dinner? How many times a week? Only alcohol after a certain hour?

My grandpa is an alcoholic & addiction runs in my family. I know this to be true & definitely inherited the addictive personality trait. I absolutely have an addictive personality. I’ll go through phases where I’ll get fixated on something & want to do it all the time. Like wear the same outfit every day for a month or only eat Trader Joe’s chicken tacos for days on end or listen to the same song on repeat for 24 hours or go to In-N-Out four times a week or trying 36 different flavors of GT Dave’s Kombucha in a month or exclusively wearing denim jackets or owning many sweatshirts but insisting on wearing the Naval Academy sweatshirt my uncle bought my dad in the 90’s even though it’s completely destroyed & ugly. My most recent addiction is thrifting, I’ve been to six thrift stores in the last two weeks in three states.

I didn’t notice my grandpa was an alcoholic until my college boyfriend & I stayed at my grandparents’ house in the East Bay for a few days so we could explore San Francisco & one night my grandpa drank an entire bottle of wine in one sitting. I thought it was a one-time thing, I didn’t think it happened often. While it was fun to hear his wild stories from his early twenties, it was not fun to see his hand shake as he poured out the last few drops of Butter Chardonnay. I asked my mom about it when I got back home & she was surprised I had never noticed my grandpa’s drinking habits before. I didn’t know what to say. My grandpa’s alcoholism wasn’t a secret, but no one ever talked about it, so it kinda did. I didn’t like the acceptance of it, but apparently, my grandpa’s habits had been so bad for so long that everyone gave up trying to slow him down. Most recently I’ve seen him pour himself a glass of scotch at 3 PM. 5 o'clock seems to get earlier & earlier with each year that passes. I don’t even want to know how poorly quarantine has affected him.

When I was a kid, one of my friends told me our dads were alcoholics. Our dads were best friends, but that didn’t mean my dad was an alcoholic like her dad.

But the truth is...I don’t know? There is a lot of alcohol in my house, there are easily over 20 bottles in our pantry at a time & my parents belong to a few wine clubs. But again, I’m not sure & I’m not going to ask. For so long I associated binge drinking 2-4 nights a week on the verge of alcoholism, but what about all the other ways to consume?

My sobriety started with July. The thought of only drinking twice for an entire month was mind-blowing, but it was successful. I only drank at a Shawn Mendes concert (got barely buzzed) & when I went bar hopping for my best friend Phebe’s birthday. After a little bit of contemplation, finding moderate comfort in my new lifestyle, & wanting to challenge myself more, I turned my two-drinks July turned into a "sober summer"—I ended up extending it through the end of August & gave myself an additional three days on top of my original two. I got drunk exactly twice: at my friend Phebe's birthday celebration & at my friend Sai's birthday celebration. Both times I cared more about the photo booths than anything else that happened that night, including my alcohol consumption. It was fun, but I didn’t necessarily feel like I needed to get drunk in order to enjoy myself.

When school started again, my friends were excited I would be adopting my old habits. I was finally going to be fun again! I, as the college kids say, was back on my bleep, but I quickly grew into not liking who I am when I'm drunk. Pretty much every time I went out after I started drinking again, one of two things happened: I was either a bad friend or I only wanted to talk about Jesus (doesn’t getting drunk to talk about Jesus feel counterintuitive?). & when I say bad friend, I mean my roommates all felt compelled at one point to sit me down on a Sunday morning so we could discuss my actions on Saturday night.

Uhh...okay. So that particular Saturday, our Sorority & Fraternity Life community threw an annual event called “Lip Sync & Stroll Off”. Basically, every single sorority & fraternity on campus comes up with a 5-minute lip-sync dance routine & I just happened to be one of our leads my senior year even though I cannot dance & have no theater experience. I think I just expressed interest at the right place at the right time to the right person. Anyway...I was feeling like hot sh*t that night after performing in front of over two-thousand people.

After the event, I went to a house party with a few of my friends. We pre-gamed at my house beforehand, so we were all pretty drunk upon arriving at the venue: a fraternity house called “Jungle”. I immediately met a cute guy & after twenty minutes of flirting, I figured one of us would end up at the other’s place when the party started winding down. I don’t usually have those types of intentions with people I just meet, but I did this time.

Eventually, a different girl showed up (who I’m sure he was waiting for) & he disappeared with her. Not a big deal, I was fine avoiding a situation I could’ve possibly regretted. Actually, kind of a big deal. I was drunk, felt rejected, & decided I would get what I wanted: a boy in my bed.

So I convinced all my friends to Uber to a different party so I could find a particular boy I knew I could get in my bed. Upon arriving at the new house, I found my target, wrapped my hands around his waist, looked up at him with a sparkle in my blue eyes, immediately felt a wave of regret, & said, I’m not sure what I’m doing here.

What do you mean? Is this not where you want to be?

No.

I proceeded to find my roommate, screamed I’m leaving! & run out of the house. Not only did I run out of the house in my drunken state, when my friend started chasing after me, but I also screamed shut the f**k up, leave me alone & continued to run multiple blocks away. I turned off my location & hung out in the middle of the Los Angeles suburbs. I sat behind a bush, ignored every call I got & prayed about better intentions. I was out for at least an hour & a half contemplating why I suddenly cared more about bedding a boy than I did about anything else. I think I walked home around 3 AM.

I got home & all three of my roommates were on our couch with mascara tears running down their faces. I had never pulled an escape quite like the one I pulled that night & it rightfully scared them. No one knew where I was & they thought I was in serious trouble.

Still drunk, I told them to get over it. I was praying in a bush.

The intervention to discuss my actions was horrible. I woke up feeling super guilty, I knew I messed up. I was being an awful friend, I shouldn’t have done half the things I did. I shouldn’t have yelled, I shouldn’t have declined their calls, I shouldn’t have turned off my location. I was just too drunk to know what I was actually doing. I thanked God for protecting me from using others (boys) to hurt myself despite my desire to be reckless & irresponsible. God always has my best interest at heart, even when I don't.

I drank alcohol for exactly six weeks before I gave it up again on October 6th, a Sunday.

I wish I could describe the walls of a treatment center for you or tell you that I hit rock bottom or tell you some horrific story about throwing up on a boy I liked, but the truth is I got drunk at a fraternity formal on October 5th & kinda stopped drinking after that by accident. Social drinking was becoming less & less appealing & I started associating sobriety with a more active faith life. How could I separate them? It felt like I was always choosing between the two & after a while, alcohol started representing something that was actively taking me away from Jesus. Worship night or wine night, fraternity party or service trip. I quickly realized I needed to work out my feelings surrounding alcohol & in order to do it properly, I needed to take a break from it again. I also realized I should pray about it more & try to get more answers from the Man Upstairs.

I met Jacob at a Jesus retreat (FYR) three weeks into drinking again & three weeks before I stopped, which feels appropriate. We were quick friends & he kinda ended up getting in the middle of everything in my life as soon as he entered it. Jacob is my closest friend who also doesn't drink & probably the person I talk to the most about drinking. We have been friends for ten different Yogurtland locations, about seven cases of Cactus Cooler (we always share them), & A LOOOT of late-night, long talks in my Ford C-Max. If you ask him why he doesn't drink he'll say he only drinks Kool-Aid, but he's always more real with me, so when I ask he’ll talk about his relationship with his faith & Jesus & his grandparents’ sobriety & never really being interested in it. Jacob has been a great friend to me & consistently points me to God, which is all I can ask for.

I took Jacob to my sorority's fall formal & was really nervous about going to an event sober for the first time. I seriously considered secretly taking a few shots before he picked me up even though I hadn’t had a drink in over a month & already told him I was going to be sober, but I didn't end up drinking any alcohol that night & I would be lying if I said Jacob didn't have an impact on my sobriety. I don't believe Jesus wanted any of us to practice our faith alone, so I feel incredibly blessed to have a church friend as close to me as Jacob is. I also feel incredibly blessed I have a friend to not drink alcohol with. It makes me feel way less alone & gives me more reasons to continue doing what I’m doing. He just gets me, ya know? He tells people we have matching chips in our brains that make up telepathic. Sometimes I feel like God uses Jacob to keep me in check for all the times I ignore the thoughts He tries to communicate to me or for when they’re not loud enough. On the other hand, God uses me to remind Jacob he’s nothing but a stupid boy. Life is all about mutually beneficial relationships!

I can list all the times I've had more than exactly one sip of alcohol since October 6, 2019: Half a glass of white wine on December 23, 2019 (my 22nd birthday) at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse in Pasadena, one shot of tequila & half an adios Oedipus (do you get my joke? I'm avoiding bad words) on February 28, 2020 (my sorority's date night), half a glass of white wine & half a glass of red wine on February 29, 2020 (my grandma's 20th birthday) at Parkway Grill in Pasadena, two shots of tequila on March 5, 2020 (my friend Spencer's date night), half of a mango tajin margarita on March 10, 2020, from Felipe's in Palm Springs (spraaang breaaak!), & another half a glass of white wine & half a glass of red wine on September 1, 2020 (my mom's 58th birthday) at Arroyo Chophouse in Pasadena. This totals three shots of tequila, one & a half glasses of white, one glass of red, half an AMF, & half a margarita. Three birthdays, two date nights, & one spraaang breaaak. It feels crazy to think about this now, but I’ve had more to drink in one (awful) night than I have had in the last year of my life.

My friend Spencer has been my favorite person to go out with for as long as I’ve been going out with him & even though I don’t get drunk anymore, he still holds that title.

Spencer is tall & funny & smart & nice & blonde & one of those nerds who cares a lot about space, but he cares in all the coolest ways. Like he wants to work for SpaceX & he thought it was really funny when I bought him NASA shot glasses from TJMaxx for $5.99 one time & he takes his resume to all the engineering department's guest lectures & he was the only person I asked to go to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory open house with me because I knew he'd say yes, so why would I have to ask anyone else? He's an engineer, but he can write a phenomenal narrative. One time I handed him my laptop & he wrote a three-page manifesto from my point of view about falling in love with him. It was incredible. I should publish it. It's the most amazing thing in my Google Drive &, trust me, I have a lot of essays in my Google Drive. I’m pretty sure Spencer can throw back eighteen beers & I'm almost confident he blackouts more than any of my friends. I’ve been to In-N-Out with Spencer, drunk or not, more times than I can count. Spencer asked me to his fraternity’s “champagne & shackles” back in February 2020 & I was honored he asked me even though I was sober—I felt entirely unworthy of getting to have so much fun with him.

Do you think you’d ever go to an event sober? I ask Spencer.

If I had the option every time, like, hey, Spence you can drink for this event! I probably would. But if my date was like, will you go sober with me, obviously I would. & there’s been quite a few times I’ve been pretty sober at the venue or whatever & I still have a rockin good time with whoever I’m with.

Spencer is a king & constantly surprises me with how good he is. A lot changed when I stopped drinking, but Spencer never did.

I have a video of my housemates & I taking shots of tequila before my date night back in February. Immediately after we cheers, I stare blankly off ahead of me, shake my head like I know what I’m doing is wrong, & take it with no chaser, without flinching. I look like I'm on autopilot, like I'm not actually there at all.

My drinking problem, when I was drinking, was so subtle no one noticed & it even took me a long time to realize it. To this day when I say I had a problem & probably could revert back to my old ways if I adopted old habits, my friends usually deny it until I tell them exactly why I think so.

My alcohol consumption, throughout my adult life, has been entirely correlated with how sad, emotional, or insecure I had been at the time. After I broke up with my college boyfriend, my alcohol consumption skyrocketed because I wanted to prove myself to my sorority sisters & get attention from guys I didn’t know. I spent my entire junior year of college exhausted & over-programmed & miserable &, unsurprisingly, I was drinking more than ever. The night I unsuccessfully tried to convince the boy I loved to love me back, I got so drunk I blacked out & subsequently cried for three hours. On a Thursday. I woke up the next morning puffy from crying so much & ended up spending the following three days at a Christian conference emotionally hungover to the point my small group leader, Jess, asked me if I was a human or a robot. I told her I was a robot.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I was constantly relying on alcohol to make me happier, more fun, & help me feel like I was worth something. I didn't want to be who I was, so I relied on the drunk version of her to make my life better. When you rely on alcohol to make yourself happier without even realizing it yourself, your friends probably won't notice, either.

To this day, I only ever want to drink when I'm sad—never when I’m happy. When I’m happy, drinking doesn’t even cross my mind. When I drank before my date night in February 2020, it was because I was sad. When I drank at Spencer's date night two weeks later, it was because I was sad. When I had half a margarita during spraaang breaaak my senior year, it was because I was sad. A few months ago I told Spencer & our best friend Lexi, an angel, I wanted to get drunk after I barged into Spencer’s house screaming about my most recent boy-related frustrations after fully crying on the drive there. My sober, sad overthinking wants to turn into sad over-drinking to overcompensate for the anxiety & depression that tries to sneak itself into every corner of my life & sometimes I get so frustrated with my circumstances I want to give up & throw down like I used to. Sometimes giving up & giving in feels easier than admitting that life isn’t as good as you want it to be. Sometimes giving up & giving in feels reckless & irresponsible & sometimes reckless & irresponsible seems more fun than sober & sad.

You know you don't actually want to do that. You're just sad, Lexi said, firmly.

She was right & none of us got drunk. I thanked her a few hours later for very obviously having my best interest at heart. I have great friends.

Here’s the thing about my sadness: I was diagnosed with depression when I was a teenager, but I started showing signs when I was really young. Like before kindergarten young. I’ve been depressed my whole life. On the other hand, I converted to Christianity when I was eighteen during my last semester of high school. A girl named Julia started a bible study because she wanted me, the depressed atheist, to go to bible study. I’m sure you can assume how the rest of the story goes.

What I’m trying to say is I’ve been depressed longer than I’ve been Christian. & while I’ve found a lot of comfort in God & my savior, I’ve found a lot of comfort in sadness, too.

I’ve talked to God a lot about my mental health & why He made me the way I am. I used to believe God gave me depression because He knew I could handle it. Like when God was creating me He deliberately chose to create imbalances in my brain that would give me the strange, chronic sadness that depression is. For a long time, I held the belief it must’ve been on purpose. It’s how I’ve justified years of anger, hurt, & feeling lost. It’s how I justified my brain—I know God loves me & He only wants what’s best for me. He must’ve known I could do this.

In college, I started to fight my depression with gratitude & at first, it felt like I was putting a bandaid on a fire, but I grew into it. I like to focus on the goodness surrounding me & try to remind myself of the little miracles that make up our daily lives. Like when all our lightbulbs work, when our WiFi is connected, & when our refrigerators have food in them (even when it feels like it doesn’t). How we can drink water from our faucets, how I have an address to get mail to, & how I can spend $8 on a latte when I really want to (a large soy raspberry vanilla chai with two shots of espresso from Tanner’s in Playa Del Rey, please). I really try to think about good things daily.

But sometimes I just let myself be depressed. I stop fighting. I let my mind go to the dark places it wants to go to & I fall into it. I walk straight into the dark places & let every bad thought have its place in my head. I let my depression take the space it wants & I let my mind wander & allow it all to run through me. Sometimes it feels easier to stop fighting & just feel; even when it leads me to a place of numbness or apathy. A place that feels familiar in a pernicious way.

But one night while I was in my C-max during a long drive home, I let myself do that, & I knew it wasn’t God. When I would let myself feel what my brain was telling me to feel vs. when I would actively think about my savior who died for me, it was a complete shift. Those auras felt completely different. Even the colors in my vision would change. God doesn’t whisper isolating thoughts to me, God doesn’t force me to fixate on moments that repeat in my head for hours, God doesn’t tell me I’m anything other than beloved. My God has no part in my depression whatsoever, my God doesn’t want my mind to go to the dark places depression leads me to.

God didn’t give me depression & God doesn’t want my depression to take up space in my life. He doesn’t want me to surrender to the wrath of diagnoses, He wants me to surrender to Him instead. God didn’t give me depression, but He gives me tools to work through it. God isn’t my cure, but He’ll sit shotgun in my C-max & say, Don’t worry, we’re almost home. You & I are gonna make it.

My image of God has always been, & is, Best Friend God. The person you can & want to turn to at any moment. The person you can call whenever & immediately feel comforted by their voice. The person you can sit with in complete silence, just enjoying each other’s company.

I often find myself turning to my best friends for advice, encouragement, & companionship, the exact same things I seek from God. God is, just like my closest friends, the person who knows me better than myself, always keeps it real, & stands next to me when I feel weak. The person who holds me when I’m crying & will even cry with me.

The person who looks into my eyes & says ...you dumb bish. I love you.

I only want to drink when I’m sad & my God is not my sadness. But I do find Him there. There can be a lot of beauty in letting yourself feel things instead of avoiding them like the plague (starting to think that phrase might go out of commission considering people don’t seem to be avoiding COVID-19 like you’d think they would).

Jacob drove me home from a bar once. My friends & I had ended up at the bar Jacob was DJ-ing at after my friend Spencer's date night. I was barely buzzed if not sober at that point. My friends & I didn't want to double buckle in an Uber back to Spencer's house, so Jacob offered to drive me home in his Yellow 1984 Nissan pickup truck. I affectionately call it the Mobile Banana. Emphasis on affectionately—I love his truck. We stayed at the bar until they turned on the lights. Do you know how strange it is to be in a bar so late they turn on the lights? He took a long way home, along the Pacific Ocean.

So is Lizzie officially drinking again?

No, it just doesn't feel like me anymore.

I was telling the truth even though I still had that margarita a few days later.

It’s weird to think about it now, but I’m sure my response was significant to him. Sobriety can be very isolating & even though I hate to admit it, I would be disappointed if Jacob started drinking. I’m sure he feels the same about me.

I asked him if he remembered that moment & he said barely, so I guess it wasn’t that significant. I take it back.

Scratch that—I read him that previous line & he clarified that he didn’t think it was overly significant because me stating how it just didn’t “feel like me anymore” only confirmed the idea of me he already had in his head. Jacob said he remembered that moment but he wasn’t actually worried I would start drinking again because he trusted I was going to follow God’s plan despite my hiccups (pun intended) & knew in his heart the few drinks I had wasn’t representative of anything, they were just because stuff was hitting the fan in my life.

I have always felt "different" from people, but I genuinely thought this was a universal experience until I started vocalizing that sentiment & people would tell me they couldn't relate. While this initially made me question everything I thought I knew, I do find a lot of comfort in my individuality. This individuality constantly reminds me that Jesus didn't want me to mindlessly follow what's popular, he wants me to follow him.

I've learned quite a few things while I've been Christian (it’s been about four years), but one of my biggest lessons is understanding how if you are Christian & you've devoted your life to Jesus, your life isn't going to look like everyone else's around you. You shouldn't "fit into the culture" & be loved & accepted by everyone because the things that are important to you & what you believe is different. Do not get me wrong, I want people to like me. I enjoy being liked by the people around me & I enjoy feeling important & I enjoy the feeling of belonging & community & all those other great things. But if I'm truly devoting my life to Jesus, I am not going to be a cookie-cutter of popular culture & while people often try to justify their actions by phrases like God will love me anyway, I do not want to take God's love for granted. God isn't going to rewrite the bible for me or my generation & we need to stop trying to change scripture when it's written to change us.

I used to love being the "cool Jesus girl", the girl who went to bible studies throughout the week & church on Sundays, but threw back ciders & tequila shots on Friday & Saturday. I loved people’s reactions when they’d see me at parties or at bars—what are you doing here? Someone get this girl a shot, she’s wildin out tonight! I like being different from who people expect me to be & feeling like I was still sick as bleep despite loving Jesus made me feel better about myself & seemingly made people interested in me. I love living in dichotomies & extremes and, truthfully, I thought I was representing my savior in the best ways. I thought I was bringing Jesus to house parties, which felt like the best job ever.

But the "cool Jesus girl" persona started bothering me when I noticed I was hoping alcohol would fill me up in ways I know only Jesus can. The warm feelings a couple of shots of tequila gave me would always fade like the sun into the Pacific Ocean any day of the week & I almost always woke up the next day feeling lost & unloved & as dark as the night sky & even though there were mornings I woke up with only good memories from the night before, feeling on top of the world, I have never loved a bar, a party, or a gin & tonic more than I love my savior.

And at the end of the day, God told me to stop drinking, so I'm not going to attempt to justify doing it anyway. I know God would love me anyway, but that’s not the point.

I may complain about sobriety, but I genuinely love it. I love being sober. I love the friends I’ve made since I’ve been sober, I love never having hangovers, & I love how God has blessed me throughout this vocation. This past year I started asking myself questions instead of asking others questions about me & became so comfortable with “Lizzie” that I truly stopped caring about what people think about me. Again, I like being liked, but that’s not my motivation. I just want to glorify God in any & every way I can and, ultimately, if that makes me less popular & less accepted…I think that’s a good testament to the fact that I’m doing something right.

Okay, I’ve actually learned way more than that being sober & I figured I will tell you the truth about it all because there is no point in lying. While commenting on people who say things they regret while drunk, Tyler the Creator said 1: don't blame it on the alcohol, you bleep. Like, you're a bleep. & 2: maybe that's what you actually wanted to say, but you're too much of a bleep to actually be honest. I don't ever want to have to rely on alcohol to be that guy. Like, I rather just tell you sober, look you in the eye, & not regret it.

So, this is me looking you straight in the eye & not regretting it.

Being sober is hard sometimes & I fight with myself about it often. I thought it was going to be really easy because it feels as simple as not drinking alcohol, but it is not easy. Sobriety changed a lot of my relationships; everyone in my life likes to pretend they were supportive the whole time, but they absolutely were not. The amount of friends I lost touch with because I wasn't seeing them at parties anymore is high & the number of times I was not invited out to bars with my friends & ended up having conversations about how I could still go out with my friends & order a Sprite instead of a vodka soda was more than I can count. People cannot comprehend going out without getting drunk. It makes you question your friendships when you have to tell people more than once you can still hang out with them. Exclusion became a part of my life in a way that broke bonds I thought I would have forever. It's insane to me that a liquid can do that, but I’ve seen it happen.

Even though I know being sober is worth it & it's right for me & it’s God’s will & it has a much more positive impact on my life than negative, it's hard to be explicitly different from people in your age group when a majority of the social aspect of that age group is consuming drinks that create a version of them that is not authentic. Not partaking makes me feel self-conscious sometimes. Getting people to drink for you for every game of rage cage is not fun. I have been asked out for drinks by cute humans a few times, & when I tell people oh, I don't drink, I’m sober, whatever, they are usually so surprised we just end up talking about why & never end up going out. When I tell someone I don't drink, they assume I'm some granola girl who doesn’t enjoy a good time. I can be fun sometimes!

I'm constantly offered drinks & I never know what anyone’s reaction will be when I turn someone down. I've gotten everything between don't be so bleeping lame to I'm so proud of you. Even an open your mouth anyway, let me pour some vodka in, it's fine. Constantly anticipating negative responses from people is confusing & explaining to people why you don't drink when your reasons aren't good enough for them only frustrates both of you. No matter what I say, my reasons don't feel good enough. I’ve even said I’m on antibiotics, I can’t drink right now & have been told to man the bleep up & take the bleeping shot. That feels so wrong on so many levels.

When situations like that happen, I just remind myself that misery loves company. I’ve noticed the people who pressure me the most are often the ones who care the most about what other people think or the people who feel like they have to prove something to others. People who care more about what you do than what they’re doing probably don’t have their priorities straight.

I purposely use the word sober because the first time I used it one of my friends told me I wasn't sober, I just chose not to drink. I questioned the distinction. In her mind, getting sober has a negative connotation, like you’re a serious addict, & I am too good of a person to be tied to that negative connotation. I wasn't an addict, so I am not sober. But I am no better than people in treatment centers. We all struggle the same, just in different ways. I chose not to drink & I am sober. Honestly, based on the way people react to me getting sober, it’s almost as if acknowledging you have a problem is worse in some people’s minds than the problem itself.

When Freud declined drugs to alleviate the pain caused by his jaw cancer, he said he prefers thinking in torment to not being able to think clearly, which I claim, too, even though I still have a few sad girl moments of let’s get wasted. My life got better when I got sober. Instead of relying on liquid confidence, I focused my energy on building sober confidence. I liked how getting drunk made me more likely to be honest, so I focused on always speaking my truth. I took alcohol's positives & made them my life's positives. I still look at cocktail menus & pick the one I would order if I'd drink it, I still think apple ales are the best ciders, & I still have a wine bottle I bought while I was in Napa after my 21st birthday that I've been saving for a special occasion (even though I'm starting to believe I won't end up drinking it), but I choose not to drink because thinking clearly at all times is much better than not. Plus, I’m always available to embark on a spontaneous road trip at any moment. For whatever reason, that feels really significant.

Living for the weekend made sense to me until I focused my energy on making my weekdays just as good. I found myself craving the friendship & connection I thought getting drunk at parties brought me and, instead, focused on connection in every area of my life. & you know what I found? It’s way easier to make genuine connections with people when you know both of you will remember it the next morning. It’s also way easier to make connections with people when you know they’re now being influenced by some liquid that makes them say things they don’t fully mean.

My weeks got better the more effort I put into appreciating the little things & the more effort I put into loving the people around me. Jesus can do it all.

It’s been a little over a year now, which feels big & small & significant & insignificant & like an accomplishment but also like I accomplished nothing other than spouts of self-discovery, a deeper sense of God’s plan for me, & kinda figuring out who’s a good friend versus a convenient friend. Which are all good things, so maybe I did accomplish something. I think I downplay it because I feel guilty for saying I’m sober when I’ve willingly celebrated birthdays with expensive fermented grape juice & hit a few road bumps like half a margarita along the way. It’s been confusing. Like a long time & a short time at the same time. It’s also confusing because no matter how many times I ask God to let me know exactly how He feels about alcohol’s role in my life or it’s lack of role in my life, He still speaks in metaphors & signs & thoughts & circumstances instead of sending me a text or an email like I want sometimes. It would be really great to get an email from God with exact instructions for my life. I’m sure that would be an email that could actually find me well.

In my head, my sobriety is a phase, but in my heart, I know it's not. When God told me to stop drinking He didn't finish it with for the summer or until you have kids & need to take the edge off with a glass of wine after you put them to bed. God just said stop drinking.