The Number One Reason You Can't Quit
S T I G M A
The number one thing that keeps sober curious peeps from cutting back or eliminating alcohol from their diet is the stigma they know will be directly applied by their peers when the word gets out:
“Did you hear Martha quit drinking? Yeah, there must be something wrong with her. She must have a problem. The poor dear. Ah, well. There’s always more going on behind the scenes than people let on. I would NEVER have known! I just feel so bad for her…”
Alcohol-centric living works just fine. Until it doesn’t. Try and deviate from the “norm,” and you can expect to be shunted to the fray before a first line of defense has the chance to bubble forth from your root chakra. Because, remember, that’s what’s being challenged here. Your belief system. The things you are rooted in. The things you have been taught. The things you have practiced so diligently you don’t even question their rightness anymore.
This is why it feels so hard and impossible to change your relationship with alcohol. Because you are shaking up the very foundation of it all. Becuase the world makes you feel like “you’re wrong.” And “it’s right.”
And everything about this is entirely fucked.
You’re NOT wrong. The fact that alcohol is no longer delivering joy in your life is correct. The fact that alcohol causes more deaths per year than any other drug out there, and we’re not taught this in health class 101, is incorrect.
I show up every day in your inbox, on your Instagram feed, in your stories, to remind you of this truth:
YOU get to write your reality.
YOU get to imprint a new tattoo on the soft belly of your belief system.
YOU get to craft your story.
And if you REALLY want to leave the legacy stirring up your heart-batter right now, you’re going to have to step outside of the “norm” and risk being judged. There’s really no other way around it. People are going to judge you. They’re going to talk about you. And you know what? They’re going to judge you and talk about you no matter what you do. I know it’s not what you want to hear. But at least if you’re doing what you’re doing in the name of self-actualization, you control the narrative. You holy badass, you.
People will respect you more for doing what they don’t have the courage to do [yet].
The more we stand in our power, the more we piss people off, the more they have to say about it.
The other day, I got a dm from someone warning me that my content was misleading and that the kind of sobriety I advocate for (the wild, rebellious, free kind) is wrong. I could feel myself starting to spiral, so I reached out to my healer, Sugar, forwarding her our correspondence. This was her exact reply:
“The fact that she pushed back is a good sign that you’re doing something important. If you post kittens and baby monkeys being adopted by golden retrievers, nobody will push back.
Onward!”
As women it is drilled into our muscle memory not to make a fuss. Not to stir up our heart batter and leak it all over people’s kitchens and leave a mess. Keep it tidy. Make everyone else feel comfortable. Keep the peace. Bottle it up. Swallow it down. Do whatever over-functioning, over-promising or over-apologizing you have to do. Just make sure not to l o o s e the goddamn scream.
I can’t take away the stigma or make it hurt any less when people stop inviting you places or hush up when you enter a room. It hurts. And I think that’s how you know you’re doing it right. The hurt indicates a growth tear—a rip in the seed skin of your life—which means you get to grow out in any direction you choose, that you are no longer bound by the casing of other people’s expectations.
Let the scarlet letter be the scarlet letter. I bet you can work it into one of your signature kick-ass thrifted outfits like a boss, anyway. Then everybody and their mom’ll be wanting one, too.
Now,