Sober Saturday Nights

Happy and hangover-free

I had always wondered about and wished for this life yet it took until my mid-30s to take the plunge into a sober lifestyle. My only regret is waiting this long.

I was dressed as a Gryffindor girl in a Hogwarts sweater at my cousin’s Halloween party in 2019 when I had my last sips of red wine. Later I learned that Harry Potter, aka Daniel Radcliffe, lives a sober lifestyle too which further empowered my choice. (Check out this great video of him discussing sobriety)

There was no big declaration but I decided the next day, when I woke up with a headache, that drinking was no longer going to be a part of my life. Prioritizing yoga class on weekend mornings became more important than feeling tipsy on weekend nights. I no longer felt pressured to partake as I had built enough of a support system of people around me and worked on myself enough to finally realize there were no real benefits to drinking alcohol.

Ironically, I knew that for years already. As a professional health educator, and Director of a Health Promotion department, I have studied alcohol’s effects on the brain and body for decades. Daily, I teach college students how the buzz we feel when drinking is because alcohol is a poison that gets to our brains and disrupts our functioning.

Alcohol’s Impact on the Brain

It takes less than ten minutes for alcohol to go from our stomach to our bloodstream but takes another forty-five minutes or so to make its way through the bloodstream to the brain. When it passes through the blood-brain barrier, it begins to depress or turn off parts of the brain that we experience as feelings of intoxication.

The first impairment we feel is in our executive functioning. We get a rush of dopamine while our decision-making becomes distorted. We appear confident and outgoing because we are left with our impulses rather than our future thinking. “Let’s do shots!” is the hasty idea we’ve all had after a few drinks which amplifies the cycle of poor judgment. It’s fun in the beginning but there is something called the point of diminishing returns which is visualized as the peak of a bell curve.

Image Source: https://slideplayer.com/slide/9138782/

The point of diminishing returns for alcohol in the brain is a .06 blood alcohol concentration (BAC). Once past that point, the negative effects of alcohol are amplified. Starting at a .07 BAC, alcohol gets into the cerebellum which controls our motor functions. It starts as klutzy behavior, party fouls like knocking over a cup or dropping a phone, and becomes sloppy behavior, like being unable to walk or talk. With hand-eye coordination impaired and response time slowed, this is why the level limit to drive in America is .08 BAC.

A few more drinks and the drama begins. Starting at a .12 BAC, alcohol gets into the amygdala and hippocampus. Our amygdala houses our fear response and is our emotional control center so when alcohol depresses it, we overreact to everything. Whatever we feel becomes extreme. This is where fights happen as someone bumps into another at the bar and the reaction is to push or punch back. This is also why someone might end up crying in the corner of a party. Sober, they might have felt rejected, sad, or lonely, but with alcohol poisoning the emotional control center, feelings and reactions are extremely exaggerated. This level of BAC can also lead to “beer goggles” intensifying our desires for others. And seen in the person who is having the ABSOLUTE BEST TIME EVER, is overly excited about everything, and declares everyone as their VERY BEST friend.

These emotional outbursts are the only indicator we have to assume when someone might be blacked out. Since they don’t know until the next day that their brain is no longer forming new memories, we can assume if someone is being highly emotional, they are likely also blacked out since the hippocampus is impaired at the same BAC range as the amygdala.

The only difference with the hippocampus is that while the other behaviors are guaranteed to happen if the brain has that specific amount of alcohol in it, blacking out is not a given. It matters more about how quickly alcohol is consumed.

Drinking fast to a .13 BAC or higher will cause a blackout. This is why taking shots and playing drinking games often lead to waking up without memories of the night before.

Most people head to bed by this point but if they keep drinking and hit a .22 BAC, it becomes even more dangerous. Alcohol gets into the brain stem which controls all the basic life functions of the body - breathing, heart rate, reflexes. When these machine functions of the body are depressed, overdose can begin and lead to passing out (aka alcohol-induced coma), vomiting, slow and irregular breathing, and even hypothermia. Death can occur at .24 BAC and sadly, alcohol overdose deaths are not uncommon.

So those are the facts about alcohol on the brain but I didn’t drink to feel those effects. I actively avoided feeling intoxicated, but I drank to feel accepted by others.

When I was younger, alcohol was a magic elixir that made me feel like I fit into any crowd. So many times in college, I didn’t even drink it, I just held a can in my hand and instantly I belonged. The times I wasn’t holding a drink, I was forced to explain myself. “Why aren’t you drinking?” someone would ask, incredulous. “I’m just not into it tonight,” I’d shrug. Unconvinced, they continued to pester me like a 2-year-old with endless “but why?” questions. I made up excuses until I learned it was easier to just hold a drink instead. A classic Katie move at college parties was to bring out a bottle of water and pretend it was vodka. Now and then, I’d scrunch up my face after taking a swig and people stopped asking why I wasn’t drinking. Funny how I never thought to ask “Why are you drinking?” in return.

I believed that being around alcohol made me more fun. Yet I quickly learned that being around alcohol wasn’t fun for me. Loud crowded parties are not my scene, and yelling over the music is no way to have a conversation. After college, I found smaller parties, and more intimate gatherings, and had more fun with alcohol in those settings. Even though I typically stayed in the tipsy range myself, hanging with others while they get wasted has historically not been a good time for me. Nicknamed Mama Bean for a while, I was the one holding the girl’s hair back as she puked, and cleaning up the place, sober by the end of the night. Never wanting to skip the parties for fear of missing out (FOMO), I was torn. I always showed up, just to be a part of the crowd.

Our entire culture tells us that alcohol is a part of the social scene. From birthday or graduation parties to bachelorettes and weddings, events are built around booze. After the World Series, the media records the winners pounding beers and spraying champagne across the locker room for all to see. It’s a part of American culture, like apple pie, and I’m not saying people who drink are bad or wrong for doing it. I’m just saying we should all be asking ourselves why to make sure we are engaging for the right reasons.

Drinking to fit in is not healthy.

As the years continued, I kept choosing other people’s ideas of fun while ignoring my own wants and needs. Living a sober lifestyle became the obvious choice for me but unfortunately, I only had friends who drank.

Until I was at a Halloween party in 2012. I heard a booming laugh coming from the other room. There was a tall man dressed as Popeye with a crowd around him, talking loudly and looking like the life of the party. My future husband was six months sober at the time. He was in a 12-step program for recovery and wanted to drink but knew he couldn’t, while I didn’t want to drink but felt like I had to. I had been told throughout my life, directly and indirectly, that I wouldn’t be considered fun unless I was drinking. He was proof of that falsehood.

Being with him gave me a confidence I never knew but it still took me a few more years to completely drop drinking. I guess I had to wait until I got into my “not giving a shit about what others think of me” era. That required some more brain growth and maturity, as well as some healing work but I’m so grateful to be here now.

For so long, I drank or socialized with alcohol because of environmental peer pressure. No one ever said “Drink this or we’re not friends!” but it just felt like if I wasn’t partaking in the party scene, then I wasn’t cool. It was my internal issue and inner critic causing the problem; she was telling me all kinds of lies.

Check out my Substack where I introduce my inner critic, Tiffany.

Now, after being on my healing journey, I don’t mind if people think I’m uncool because I feel cool all on my own. What a revelation! I’ve learned to shut down my inner critic when she starts telling me that no one likes me or that I must do things I don’t want to do just to fit in with the crowd.

Since I am more secure with myself, I talk openly about living a sober lifestyle, and I have found many friends who share my mindset. At a girl’s weekend at the beach recently, we pulled oracle cards and chatted over tea the whole weekend.

Book clubbing is the only clubbing I like to do now and I feel like I belong without having to contort myself to fit into the mold set by society.

Scrolling through socials, I still see friends cheers-ing at the bar or posting pics of their favorite new craft beer and even popping champagne at 9am as part of a group celebration. Yet I never feel I am missing out. As for my real friends, I know I’ll see them in a different setting soon. As I am typing this on a Saturday night, I’m happy knowing I’ll be hangover-free as I head to yoga in the morning. To expand what I see on my socials, I follow people like Laura at SoberInPhiladelphia and the community she is building for sober locals. Also, pages like SoberGirlSociety and SoberMotivation fill my feed which helps to normalize my lifestyle.

It seems more and more people are talking about sobriety these days. Glennon Doyle and Elizabeth Gilbert have shared openly about their sobriety journeys and their writings have inspired me. Earlier this month here on Substack,

Lindsay Johnstone

had many of us commenting on her authentic piece, My spouse is sober… I am not. I’d love to keep that conversation going. The more we can talk openly about alcohol and investigate why we use it or not, the more everyone will be able to make decisions that work for them rather than simply following society’s rules of socializing.

Journal Prompts:

Alcohol is so common in our society and is a part of our lives from a young age. Taking time to reflect on the ways alcohol has impacted us and our thinking is a useful activity.

1. How old were you when you first recognized alcohol existed? What else was happening in your life at that age when alcohol first became present to you?

2. What are your families values relating to alcohol use? How do you know? How did your family of origin talk about (or not talk about) alcohol? What type of language was used?

3. If you have consumed alcohol before, how old were you when you took your first drink? If you said no to alcohol when first offered, how old were you when that happened? Write out those experiences as a story, with yourself as an objective 3rd person, and see how that makes you feel about the experience.

4. Consider your own relationship with alcohol within a timeline and reflect on the changes to your relationship with alcohol as you age. In what ways have you changed and in what ways has your relationship to alcohol changed? Have the pros and cons of drinking changed in any way over time?

5. Consider your reasons for drinking or not drinking. What is your why?

Please meet me in the comments and share your why - and feel free to ask questions about alcohol’s impact on the brain and body as that is my area of expertise.