1 year sober 🎉

A year ago I finally took the plunge and did the thing that I'd needed to do for a long time: I quit alcohol.

The past year has been one of the hardest but almost definitely the best of my life. There's been a lot of really positive stuff, from spending a while touring England and Scotland in the van with the family, being more present with them in general, getting some projects completed at home and work that almost definitely wouldn't have otherwise and putting in more effort to the admin side of running NOMAD Sim Racing.

On the flip side, there have been a lot of moments and days which have been consumed by my brain telling me that all this goodness (or anything bad) could only be made better with a beer. Repaired a fence? "You worked hard, have a beer". Didn't repair a fence? "You suck as a human being, have a beer". The mind and body does some weird stuff when you take away something that gives it an easy dopamine hit, or an "out" of the hard stuff, and I'm lucky to have had a huge amount of support from Hayley and some sober subs on Reddit when it's clear I'm having a tough time.

Not drinking has also taken away a barrier, and given me the space to do some real introspection on some of the ways that I am that I wanted to change. I wanted to really explore some stuff that I believed, why I believed it, and whether I really believed it or was just told it enough that it became a part of me. There's no way I'd have done that while drinking, because drinking is a great way of hiding from myself. Being a more tolerant, understanding, and loving version of myself is something that I really want, and so that's probably the biggest pro so far.

I also started university with some of that free time I ended up with. I'm a student 😂

I wrote a post a few days into being sober which is kind of fun to look back on. I started with some sort of internal argument on the semantics of whether or not I am an alcoholic. Here's a top tip I've learned since then:

"if you're arguing the semantics about whether or not you're an alcoholic, you're almost certainly an alcoholic"

Alcoholism, in the vast majority of cases, doesn't look like waking up and washing your mouth out with vodka, or hiding your consumption or any of the other clichés. It just looks like someone who thinks about their next drink all the time. So yea, I'm Jason and I'm an alcoholic. But I'm an alcoholic who's been sober for a year. Cheers!