This might seem a bit silly and trite but I’m often incredulous about this.
Before I got sober I hated soda water (club soda, sparkling water, seltzer water, or fizzy water… call it what you will) – like HATED it. I would NEVER drink it, turning it down with a ‘no thanks, I don’t like it’ if it were offered to me.
Same goes with herbal teas. Boozy me drank instant coffee for a hot drink, occasionally a real coffee. But no tea – black, green or otherwise.
Nowadays I can’t get enough of soda water. I make it regularly from the Soda Stream, I buy it in big bottles and little bottles, I order it when I go out. I LOVE it! It’s so refreshing and yummy.
And sober me doesn’t drink coffee any more. I gave it up about 9 months ago when I realised I wasn’t really enjoying it (it gave me a sicky feeling in my tummy and headaches). Occasionally now I’ll make a decaf instant at home or order a decaf flat white when out. But full-strength coffee has left the building.
But boy does sober me love tea. Not black tea – but green teas and herbal teas? Oh yes, yes, yes.
I currently have at home; green tea with mandarin, chamomile tea, lemon, lime & ginger tea, berrylicious fruit tea, green spice tea, sencha ginger & lemon tea, gen mai cha tea, green chai tea, white christmas tea, apple & elderflower tea, and orange spice tea.
I have a lovely little tea pot that I use to infuse the loose leaf teas and I drink those with a large floral tea cup & saucer. With tea bags I always use my favourite mug that has a zebra on it.
When it comes to liquids my tastebuds have changed completely! Such an interesting reflection on how the rest of me has changed since I gave up the booze. Because really, my turnaround in liquid preferences mirrors the deeper turnaround that is inside me.
Boozy me was scornful of ‘naval gazing’ and thought any introspection and inner reflection was indulgent and boring. Sober me now knows that well guided introspection and positively focused inner reflection is hugely calming and life-changing.
Boozy me never paused when socialising to properly connect with people. Boozy me thought socialising was all about fun! Frivolity! Light-hearted banter! Sober me treads more gently at parties, weddings, and dinners out. I now have lovely real conversations with people at social events. I properly connect. I never knew I wasn’t properly connecting with people before. I thought I was. But I wasn’t.
And here’s the big one. Boozy me never paused to properly connect with herself. She thought she knew herself. She didn’t.
I’ve been sober for four years now and I am still figuring myself out. The more time I spend with myself sober the more I start to realise who I really am. How I talk to myself. How I process things. What I really need. What I really don’t need. What makes me feel good. What makes me feel uncomfortable.
It’s incredible how the more sober time I have the more I am able unpick myself. There were many wonderful revelations that came quickly after I put the bottle down, but the slow revelations are proving even more rewarding.
Love, Mrs D xxx
One of the things I’m most ashamed of having done while drinking is shouting at people at parties/dinners; or if not shouting, then asking direct, too personal questions, which I thought was me being edgy, but was actually me being rude. Without drinking, I try to listen more now. It’s not easy for me, but it’s something I need to learn. Annie x
Yes, loving the tea Mrs D. Have my now-deceased mother’s tea pot and one that my kids have bought me and one I got for our wedding. Have just discovered peppermint tea – so zingy for those hardened coffee drinkers, really uplifting. I do still have the odd coffee but would like to stop that eventually.
My mum always used to suck air through her teeth after a first sip of tea and say “Ahhh nectar of the gods!” I reckon she had something there.
x
Funny, I was thinking this same thing when I was swimming the other day.
My tastebuds have changed too. After 8 months without grog, I’m starting to realise I don’t have much of a ‘sweet tooth’ something I didn’t realise when I was downing three bottles of wine a night. I had some coke (cola 🙂 the other day and realised it was too sweet for me. Now it’s soda and loads of lemon. Perhaps I have a sour tooth…better than being a sour puss!
The funny thing is that my tastes broadly speaking have changed too. I love swimming and hot yoga…something I didn’t bother with much when something else came first on my list. It did too, sometimes it even came before my children…but now the other things have emerged to prominence (now that they have the chance) and they give me transcendence and lightness…something drinking gave me (but without the other shit that came along with it).
PS As far as the kids go these days, they love this new life a ‘present’, happy Mum offers…so I’m sold.
It never ceases to amaze me how much booze puts up a wall inside of us so that even we don’t know our true selves when we’re pouring the stuff down our throats ‘in order to function’.
And how big the small things in life actually matter. I always love reading someone’s story of what they’ve learnt about themselves after removing stinky booze.
Thanks lotta xo
Love this post herbal tea is slowly unravelling to me I’m ‘a coffee drinker coffee coffee coffee not ready to tackle that one yet whilst the wine is still on my mind but I’m sure and I hope I’ll get there. I can’t tell you how much I relate to your description of what socialising was. Socialising meant fun, loudness, gregariousness, sexual flirtations, looking a certain way, being seen in the right places, the right membership clubs etc etc really I was shy throughout all that. I can make people laugh. So that’s helped but it was a shield anything serious gets a joke. Really I was more introverted that I was letting on and had been from a very young age. I have needed help from other sources from a very young age as well as had no parenting from either of my parents for such a large chunk of my formative childhood with an absent father and an alcoholic mother in charge. I have had periods of sobriety in my life, and many hours of counselling to have a dose of self awareness. I am more powerful and stronger than I realise or allow myself to be. I am scared sometimes to speak my truth. I like what morgan commented, it’s all a quest
Beautiful. So agree about the taste buds! Still love strong decaf though, just in the morning.
I’ve always been incredibly introspective (painfully so, worthy of your scorn!). Now just gently interested, and I don’t think there is “A FINAL aha DISCOVERY” of who we are, as the minute we get a bit of an idea, we change, the children change, the man changes, career takes a new direction, and off we go on the unfolding new journey of discovery – quest sorry XXXX