sobriety Archives | Hello Sunday Morning

I always had an on-and-off relationship with alcohol.

From a young age, my friends and I loved partying – we lived for the weekend. Friday and Saturday nights were spent at the pub or nightclubs often not getting home till sunrise. I was also very involved in sport and I would abstain from alcohol completely while I was training and competing. However, once the season was over, I would “let my hair down” and that would always get out of hand. It’s almost like there were two versions of me.

It got to a point where, as much as I loved a beer or a night out, I struggled to control my drinking.

The urge to continue drinking was so strong it often led to blackouts, embarrassment and shame. Social events and holidays revolved around booze, whether it was dinner out, visiting a friend at their place or going to a sporting event (which was usually a full day of drinking). There were times where I was a daily drinker, binge drinker and both.

As it progressed, I found myself leaning into booze at times of stress as a way to relieve my anxiety, however the relief was only temporary and it would make things worse overall. Deep down, I knew I had to change.

Typically, after a big period on the booze I would flip the switch and take a month off. “Feb-fast”, “Dry July”, “Ocsober” – I did them all. I found myself much happier, healthier and more productive during these months off. Once the month was over, the goal was to moderate my drinking. However, that never quite worked out for me. I found moderation really difficult. At times, I pulled it off and it took a lot of will power and bandwidth to do so, but then it would only last so long before my drinking would once again become unmanageable and I was back where I started.

Moderation was not for me, life was far better when I was completely sober.

It took me years to come to this realisation. It was during one of these months off that I knew I needed some help and I discovered the Daybreak app. I created a profile and shared my first “day one” in June 2019. I was astonished by all of the support and encouragement I received from a community of people that were dealing with the exact same issue I was. I found it refreshing to speak honestly about my situation without the fear of being shamed or judged. Instead, I was heard. People I had never met were rooting for me – that was powerful.

It was through reading other members posts on Daybreak that I got onto some really valuable resources in the form of podcasts and audio books that would end up being crucial to giving up for good. The How I quit alcohol podcast was great as I was able to listen to other people’s journeys and I felt like I wasn’t alone. After reading William Porters book Alcohol Explained, I fully understood how alcohol affects the body and it greatly reduced the desire to drink.

I like to look back on my old posts for a bit of motivation and insight. I had a total of 9 “day ones”; 5 of which were in a 4-month period, right before I quit for good on 13.12.2021. It just goes to show that staying alcohol-free is a skill, and like any skill, it must be honed and practiced until you eventually get it right.

Once I admitted to myself that I had a problem and that I needed help, that’s when the path to recovery began. I don’t crave alcohol anymore, nor have any desire to return to drinking. Life for me now is far better without alcohol. It still has its ups and downs, however I find myself much better equipped to deal with whatever life throws my way, without numbing it with booze.

Shortly after I quit drinking, I was diagnosed with ADHD. It explained my impulsivity and why booze is not an option for me anymore. When I was a young man, I lacked confidence and thought there was something wrong with me. Turns out it was ADHD. Alcohol gave me a false sense of confidence and identity, almost masking the symptoms. I probably wouldn’t have had the diagnosis if I hadn’t quit drinking and I feel so empowered knowing this and staying alcohol-free.

When it comes to understanding limits to alcohol intake, there is an assumption that it all boils down to each individual choice. ‘When it doesn’t serve you anymore,’ seems to be the rule of thumb for most things in our society these days. But there are certain things that we want to draw a hard line in the sand. Alcohol consumption is one of them.

So, what does a healthy relationship with alcohol look like? What’s unhealthy? What if we fall somewhere between the two? Hello Sunday Morning supports people in finding a balance that works for them, whatever their life stage is. Before finding your own balance, it is important to understand what defines healthy or unhealthy drinking habits. We will also be looking at the in-between category – also known as the ’gray area’. We will use a wellbeing lens to assess our drinking habits.

Healthy relationship with alcohol

Although defining what a healthy relationship with alcohol looks like is fairly consistent universally, there are some individual differences that may impact each individual differently. For example, we know that body mass, genetic make-up, ethnicity, gender, and health conditions can all play a part in how well our body tolerates alcohol.

Each country has their own guidelines. In America, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) recommends that for ‘adults of legal drinking age can choose not to drink or to drink in moderation by limiting intakes to 2 drinks or less in a day for men and 1 drink or less in a day for women, on days when alcohol is consumed.’ Furthermore, DGA defined binge drinking is defined as consuming ‘5 or more drinks for the typical adult male or 4 or more drinks for the typical adult female in about 2 hour.’

In Australia, NHMRC – the national medical advisory body has a set of guidelines for a standard drink.

(Download guidelines here)

And below are Australia’s NHMRC alcohol consumptions guidelines to reduce harm from drinking alcohol. (Download guidelines here)

It is not recommended for children and young person under 18 years of age to consumed alcohol. The NHMRC also recommends no alcohol consumption during pregnancy and breast feeding to reduce the risk of harm for both mothers and unborn children.

Unhealthy relationship with alcohol

So, we understand that a healthy relationship with alcohol may still differ from one person to another based on individual differences, when this turns into an unhealthy relationship, that may be much harder to notice. This acknowledgement often requires some honest self-observations. A few questions you could consider asking yourself if you are weighing this up are:

Does alcohol help me to cope with uncomfortable situations, life events and unpleasant emotions?
Am I starting to hide my alcohol use?
Do I often drink on my own?
Have I prioritised alcohol above my other responsibilities – such as work, study, etc? Am I experiencing guilt over my drinking behaviour?
Has drinking started to strain my relationships as my behaviour changes under the influence of alcohol?
Have I taken part in risky behaviour as a result of drinking – such as drink driving or unsafe sex practices?
Do I find myself needing more alcohol to experience the same effects?
Do I find it difficult to control my drinking, such as not being able to say ‘no’ even when I want to or know that I should?
Is getting over a hangover starting to take over my life?

If you believe you have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol, and it’s taking over aspects of your life you may have what is called alcohol use disorder (AUD).

The in-between category

There is a point where people fall into the in-between category of alcohol use. This is what’s commonly known as the Gray Area drinking. In this bracket, people don’t usually drink to oblivion, nor do they have just an occasional drink. It is a stage where people can still function, yet their alcohol intakes are almost in excess.

Before you put yourself in any category, it is essential that you undertake an assessment and seek advice from your health professional.

Well-being indicator

Another health indicator of our relationship with alcohol is by measuring it through the lens of our overall well–being. Designed using insights from Australians challenged first hand with managing their drinking habits, Hello Sunday Morning has created the Alcohol and Wellbeing Self-assessment. It is a five–minute confidential online self–assessment where you can check your drinking habits and receive support and real-time personalised feedback. You can do this self-assessment via the link below.

Do the self-assessment

START HERE

In summary

There are certain rules and guidelines to a healthy relationship with alcohol. They are designed to help reduce or minimise harm. Guidelines can be useful, and at Hello Sunday Morning we recommend that you consult with a health professional to better understand your relationship with alcohol. As alcohol is classified as a drug, the safest standard drink is zero. However, at Hello Sunday Morning, we know that everyone is on their personal journey and may need support to find a balance that works for them. We are here to help you.

Warning: For some people, to stop drinking alcohol completely can be dangerous and life-threatening. Seek advice from your own doctor and health professionals before attempting to quit or reduce drinking alcohol.

Many aspire, few attain – but it’s never too late to change

Most people give up their new year’s resolution within the first month of the year. This is not a surprise for us in 2022, given the rocky start we’ve had and how painfully similar to our last two years it has been. Life is already full of surprises even without a pandemic.

As good as our intentions may be, our goals and resolutions can turn against us if we align them too close to our own self-worth. Unfortunately failure and relapse are often viewed as negative. And when our first attempt to make positive change in our life is met with a defeat, our tendencies are often to give in to alcohol and give up our goals completely.

Before throwing in the towel to sobriety, why not give your goals a second chance? Perhaps changing your mindset on failure and relapses, or coming up with new strategies and learning to forgive yourself, will help you get back on track.

Changing your perspective on failure

According to Amy C. Edmondson at Harvard Business Review on Strategies for learning from failures, from a young age, we are conditioned to believe that admitting failure means to take the blame. Amy believes that the link between fail and fault is closely related in most business and culture. Of course a project failure and a relapse are two different things. We could see, however, that the mindset of seeing failure and dealing with our slip-ups are similar, when it comes to changing our relationship with alcohol.

Certain words can have a stigma around them and ‘fail’ is no doubt one of them. It might take a while for our society and culture to shift their negative projection around failure, but we can start viewing it as it is: a learning curve.

Make good use of our learning curve

As uncomfortable as it is, revisiting our relapses can give us a lot of insight around our drinking habits that we would overlook if we hadn’t experienced the slip-up. So take some time to revisit your journey so far, even if it was only a few sober days in a row. Write down things that work and don’t work. Where possible, doing it with someone with whom you feel safe, and trust, could help give a fair perspective in both giving honest feedback on areas to improve and in exposing some unhelpful self-critics.

Let’s get back into the saddle

Once reflection on recent lapses is done, you can now move towards getting back on track with your New Year’s resolutions. Here are some ways to get back up and running again:

Acknowledge that changing is hard Any type of change towards a positive shift is difficult. To borrow Fauja Singh’s quote: ‘Anything worth doing is going to be difficult’. Take a deep breath and acknowledge the difficulties that come with changing, but also commend yourself for taking a brave step into a healthier lifestyle. If you find quitting drinking is challenging, you are not alone. Join a sobriety group on Facebook or an anonymous platform such as our Daybreak app.

Revisit your commitment and resolution It’s time to be honest with your own resolution. Reassess your commitment and your readiness to change, is your goal unrealistic? Is the time frame reasonable? Some helpful approaches for re-setting goals are: S.M.A.R.T (to keep you accountable), Reach goal (goal that moves and motivates you) and H.A.R.D goal (mindset focus)

Dedicate time Most goals fail because there is not enough time dedicated to them. Set up a schedule to do whatever is needed in making sure your goal is on track – whether taking some time to plan the weekends without alcohol, journaling progresses and key learnings, researching for replacement behaviours or simply celebrating little wins.

Be prepared for what you will lose along the way When you decide to give up alcohol, there will be experiences and connections you will miss out on as a result of that – like the annual wine tasting trip traditions with friends, or the invites to check out the latest hip underground clubs and bars. When these are expected and you come to terms with it, the loss – although it is still hard, won’t catch you by surprise. After you’ve considered the cost and made peace, shift your focus toward what you will gain from changing your relationship with alcohol. Read more about sitting with the grief of change.

Be patient with yourself Osher Günsberg reflected on his sobriety journey, ‘I haven’t had a drink since March, 14th 2010. And this is what I would tell anybody; it truly, really is: a day at a time. Sometimes, half a day at a time. Sometimes, an hour at a time, and sometimes, five minutes at a time.’ Changing your relationship with alcohol will take time, but you are making the right steps already. Be patient with your progress.

Plan for a rainy day Here is where you can apply those key learnings from setbacks. Understanding your weaknesses through the recent relapse and applying the learnings will help you prepare for some difficult days ahead.

‘Today is not over yet ’ – Alexandra Franzen

No matter how bad or messy the start is, it’s never too late to change how the rest of our day will be like. What we love about this quote by Alexandra Franzen is that it works for any time of the day. Whether it is 10 am or at 11.59 pm, today is not over and it’s not too late to make that change.

And this year is certainly far from over!

At Hello Sunday morning, we recognise there are many layers of complexity when it comes to alcohol dependency. If you have been drinking alcohol heavily for a long period of time, you should contact your GP to speak about your plan to quit drinking. You should also seek immediate medical attention if you are already experiencing any of the following symptoms.

This week’s guest blog is from Hannah Rodger, a sales director in the recruitment industry – one of many high-pressure industries where there is social pressure to drink. She shares some insights into her journey of 18 months of sobriety and the questions she gets asks, and asks herself.

Am I an alcoholic?

I had a thought provoking conversation with a recruitment industry leader I have a huge amount of respect for this week. He asked me how my sobriety was going and told me he has had a 6 week break from booze, as he does every year…

‘But are you an alcoholic? Would you describe yourself as an alcoholic?’

Why is that the question everyone asks? It doesn’t offend me, I’m happy and proud to say I choose to live without drinking a highly addictive poison that is dressed up in prettily labelled bottles and sold to us as ‘happy juice’. I never knew whether I would just have 1 and go home or have 10 and share too much with people I don’t know. I became addicted to an addictive substance. Slowly, over a long number of years. Then I stopped.

“I would say that in my recruitment career, I believe that any one time, 10% of my staff are problem drinkers, although I see it less in millennials.’

I thought, and those are just the ones you know about. The ones who show visible signs of wear and tear. There will be others struggling in silence, maybe not even seeing themselves as having a problem with alcohol. High functioning, flying under the radar but full of anxiety, self-confidence issues and almost certainly letting themselves down in at least one area of their lives. They probably don’t relate their evening glass of Shiraz with the overwhelm they feel getting into the office the next day. Or the weekly blowout with their lack of ability to deal with feedback the next Tuesday. They don’t have a ‘problem’.

So who is an alcoholic?

What about the ones who don’t drink all week but go home and get smashed at the weekend, and turn up to work on Monday ready to do it all again. Are they alcoholics?

Or the ones who hardly ever drink, but when they do they go hard and everyone has a good laugh at what they did on the team night out. Are they alcoholics?

Or the CEO who incentivises his team with a boozy trip away, but then reprimands or fires one of them for drinking too much and getting into trouble on said trip. Is he an alcoholic?

The word alcoholic has connotations that we don’t like in the recruitment industry – we demonise it. It feels dirty and shameful. It’s not so much that it evokes images of someone who doesn’t have it together; the homeless man asleep in his own urine, the woman who’s mumbling to herself in the supermarket with a basket full of biscuits – although it most certainly does that. In recruitment, I’ve heard a lot of us joke that we are high functioning alcoholics and that’s ok. We need the booze to cope with our stressful jobs right?! It’s almost like we don’t want to say the word because we might have to take a look at our own habits and change something. If a candidate told you they were an alcoholic you wouldn’t put them forward for roles, I guarantee it, however smartly they dressed or how well they presented.

In context of my conversation with this leader, we expressed a mutual understanding that mental health needs to be talked about more and the link between alcohol and mental health is undeniable. I hope to continue this discussion to open up the dialogue to more people. Only by speaking up will we make a difference, and I know this leader does a lot to promote wellbeing in the workplace, and his own annual sobriety stints are to be commended.

But let’s unpack what you think you mean by that term. Here are some responses I can think of.

Am I an alcoholic?

Yes absolutely, if you want to call me that. And yet…

I have suffered from alcoholism; a disease where I, a mere human with a brain that likes patterns and routine, have become addicted to a highly addictive, highly poisonous liquid that is readily available and encouraged by everyone from government to celebrities to sports personalities as well as our partners, friends and colleagues as a mechanism we need to relax and have a good time. Bad day? You need a wine. Great day? Celebrate with a wine. Party? Champagne!

Am I an alcoholic?

No and I don’t believe anyone is an alcoholic. Telling people to drink in moderation is like telling people to only eat one Pringle in the pack. I don’t know when I have my first drink whether I’m going to be able to just have that one or whether I’ll end up having 10, so I choose not to have any. I used alcohol to mask my insecurities so people would think I was cool and clever and more important than I believed myself to be. Then I stopped doing that.

Am I an alcoholic?

Yes and I have started to choose me over the bottle. I’m facing up to my demons and facing them head on. I’m dealing with my emotional baggage and learning to be a better partner, friend and colleague. I’m showing up 100% and I’m not numbing out at the first sign of something difficult.

Am I an alcoholic?

Yes but it was never a decision I made to become one. It started with drinking at parties at college and university, progressed to sophisticated wine bars and champagne to celebrate deals at work and before I knew it, a bottle a night was the norm with more at weekends and on special occasions. I say before I knew it, it was a good 15 years in the making.

Am I an alcoholic?

Does it make you feel more justified in your own drinking if I tell you I stopped because I had a problematic relationship with alcohol?

Am I an alcoholic?

No I’m a sober warrior. A trailblazer. A punk in a world full of mods. I like to be different.

Am I an alcoholic?

Yes and proudly so. Since identifying alcohol was not serving me, and in fact making my life increasingly chaotic, I stopped drinking it. Since then I have achieved more in the last 18 months for my personal development than I ever believed I could have done. I’ve saved over $15,000 and I’ve never been fitter and stronger.

Am I an alcoholic?

Yes and it feels great. I choose every day to back myself and to live in the real, raw world. I wake up fresh and hangover free every day and skip to my Pilates studio. I am ready to face everything life has to throw at me. I’ve never felt more alive.

Am I an alcoholic?

No are you?

Am I an alcoholic?

Why does it matter to you?

Am I an alcoholic?

No I’m an empath who couldn’t cope with all the horror I’d put myself through so I numbed out in a socially acceptable way. I didn’t know it wasn’t going to end up with me drinking 3 bottles of red wine and clutching the toilet bowl on a regular basis.

Am I an alcoholic?

No I just woke up to the fact that alcohol is used to keep us quietly numb so we don’t complain about the fact the government doesn’t give a shit about the important things like climate change, our health, or children’s future. I woke up to the lie that we need alcohol to cope with our lives. I woke up to the poor choices I’d made and I started making different ones. I woke up and I started growing again.

Am I an alcoholic?

I’m a sales director, a colleague, a friend, a loving wife, a step-mother, a daughter, a sister. I’m a Pilates nut, a natural health educator, a writer and a diy-er. I’m a gluten egg and dairy free menu, I’m a conscious consumer and I’m a student of yoga. I’m impatient and often impulsive. I’m kind and I’m caring. I’m sometimes funny, I’m often irritated. I’m a one-time Tough Mudder, I’m a wannabe cyclist and I’m an Arcade Fire fan. This is a small list of adjectives to describe me. Am I an alcoholic? If you want to call me an alcoholic then yes I’m an alcoholic, but I rather see myself as someone who has broken free from that hamster wheel and is choosing to live life in full colour. I’m doing something most are too afraid to and that makes me feel pretty special.

It’s important to know this; I didn’t have to stop drinking, I chose to. I’m sure I could have hidden my pain long enough to drink for another decade or even a whole lifetime, but I chose to stop. We all have choice, and that makes us extremely privileged. We are fortunate enough that everything in our comfortable middle class lives is a choice and I am grateful to my addiction for allowing me to choose life every day.

I’m always open to dialogue about this as it’s so important and I am thankful for being able to talk so openly, as reading blogs such as this helped me so much when I was on the early stages of my journey to an alcohol free life. Please reach out if you are concerned about your drinking, I’d love to be your cheerleader.

I decided to stop drinking and have my last drink on 28th December 2018. Although I was not an everyday drinker, I was what some may call a ‘problem drinker’ – I would binge drink.

I am a 55-year-old single mum of an 18 year-old. When I broke up with my partner in March 2003, I decided that I would make sure my daughter was brought up in a loving and secure home; I was present for her ALWAYS!
Growing up I didn’t realise until I had my own child, how neglected I was from the love of my mother who is an alcoholic and now has been diagnosed with dementia. I didn’t want this for my daughter; I wanted to be a strong role model for her.

I didn’t drink all the time but in recent years I would have a couple of wines three or four times a week, and this became more and more over time. I would isolate myself at home, prefer to drink alone and watch Netflix rather than go out and socialise. If I did socialise I would leave early so I could go home and have a drink. I was always worried about how I would get home or who would be there to look out for me if I had too much to drink, so I would prefer to be behind closed doors; that way I felt safe.

One terrible incident that came into my mind was getting home from a work’s Christmas party a few years ago. I cannot remember getting home and I was so sick for 3–4 days afterwards, I never wanted to touch a drink again. But I did!
I was beginning not to enjoy my drinking as much as I used to; I would feel ashamed, self-loathing and just hate myself for sitting at home drinking alone. I would wake up and go to work feeling heady, foggy and so tired and grumpy. I would be so disappointed in myself for even having the two glasses of wine the previous night! I would torment myself each day, saying ‘I won’t drink after work, blah blah’, but would always end up having a couple of glasses, sometimes the whole bottle. This cycle went on for months.

The light-bulb moment when I realised that I needed to make a change with my drinking, was the day after Boxing Day 2018. I was sitting at home with my bottle of wine, relaxing after a busy Christmas. I hadn’t really had much to drink over the Chrissy period as I was mainly the designated driver, so that night I remember drinking the whole bottle of wine. My daughter was out with her friends. They were at a club and I knew she would probably have a few drinks herself, so before I went to bed, I put a bottle of water, some Panadol and her eye mask by her bed.

The next day when she got up, she said ‘I love you so much Mum, you are so cute leaving the water etc. by my bed’ – I couldn’t remember doing it. I felt so ashamed and disgusted with myself because I couldn’t remember putting the water etc. by her bed. This was the moment I knew I had to stop drinking; it wasn’t making me happy; it wasn’t making my life better; it was holding me back and making me feel isolated. I didn’t want to sit at home anymore; I didn’t want the alcohol to rule my life; I didn’t want to end up like my mother. I was sick of the torment in my head about my drinking; I was sick of wasting so much of my time on alcohol.

I felt desperate; I didn’t want to live like that anymore, drinking to get confidence before I went out, drinking alone and at times having blackouts. I remember a few years ago I stopped drinking for a few months with the help of ‘Hello Sunday Morning’, so I got straight back onto the site and saw an app called ‘DayBreak’. This is what has helped me get through the past three months. The community is so supportive, very positive and doesn’t have a negative thing to say even if you have a down day; they pick you up and understand where you are coming from. There are so many people out there that want to stop drinking, and this app is amazing.

I’m still not drinking and what I have noticed is that I am more alert, focussed, happy and, believe it or not, much more confident. I am happy to be out and about; I have put my heart and soul into my health and fitness, and I feel amazing. I still take each day as it comes but have worked out that alcohol is not for me right now.

I don’t know if I will ever drink again, but at this stage I really need to keep on HSM and the Daybreak app to help me keep going. I know I am a better person within myself, without alcohol.

Lee

An excerpt from A Happier Hour, written by Sexy Sobriety‘s Rebecca Weller.
Sexy Sobriety is an online life-coaching program designed for women who are ready to take control of their lives and unleash their authentic selves onto the world.

Back when I was in my corporate job, we were encouraged to take a ‘Defensive Driving’ course that involved performing a variety of manoeuvres on a race track. In one of the exercises, we were instructed to speed up and then slam on the brakes and avoid hitting a particular safety cone. Despite our best efforts, we all hit that cone.

We tried the activity again, but this time, rather than focusing on the cone, we were instructed to look for a safe place to steer the car. Same distance, same speed, same brakes; just a different intention and focus.

We were stunned. Every single one of us avoided the cone.

Our instructor explained that if something or someone jumps out in front of you, the worst thing you can do is look straight at it as you’re trying to avoid it. You need to focus on where you want to go, rather than where you don’t want to go.The lesson was powerful and I often found myself telling clients about it. Time and again, I noticed that when we focus on our fears, we often smash into them. And if we’re not focusing on where we really want to go, how can we expect to get there?

When it came to drinking, how many times had I given myself a lecture about not making a fool of myself, or letting the night get too messy, only to find that’s exactly where I’d ended up? Too many to count.

I thought about the next three months and everything I wanted to do, see, hear, taste, and experience in that time. Above all, I thought about how I wanted to feel. I wanted to feel playful, with confidence that was authentically me, not poured from a bottle. I wanted deeper connections, less anxiety, more space, more love, more potential. I wanted transformation, dammit!

I didn’t want to undertake a challenge that would make me miserable, and I was determined to make this experience a positive one. Sensing that overwhelm was not my friend, I decided to start with just two words of intention that inspired me most. I opened my journal to a fresh page, and wrote, My Sobriety Experiment.

My biggest fear around sobriety was that I’d never have fun again, so I decided to start with the big one. On the next line, I wrote, Playful. I thought about what playful meant to me. Creativity, fun, spontaneity, mischief, joy. I tapped my pen against the page, thinking about what I could do to feel that way without booze. I brainstormed on the page:

Choose love over fear. Trust. Believe. Tell jokes. Send funny messages to friends. Create fun, easy recipes. Schedule time off-line. Watch comedies. View each day as an adventure. Try new things. Take beautiful photos. Invite friends to lunch. Paint my toe nails. Create. Share. Skip. Giggle. Dance.

I took a deep breath as I reviewed my list. See? I told my inner critic. That doesn’t sound so bad. I turned the page and chose my next word, Radiant. I thought about what that word meant to me. Sparkly, healthy, glowing, connected, blissful. Obviously, just skipping the alcohol would guarantee that I felt infinitely more radiant, but what else could I do? I jotted down everything that came to mind:

Go to bed earlier. Stretch at sunrise. Juice. Run. Go to yoga class. Offer help. Eat fresh, whole foods. Feel sunshine on my skin. Splash around at the beach. Picnic in the park. Keep a gratitude journal. Meditate. Write. Create. Eat dinner by candlelight. Choose quality over quantity. Phone friends and family. Listen. Practice random acts of kindness.

I reviewed my lists, and started to feel tingles of excitement about this little adventure. Inspired, I switched on my laptop and created a secret Mood Board on Pinterest. I wanted something pretty I could look at on my phone whenever I felt wobbly; images to remind me how I wanted to feel, and why I was doing this. Why I wanted to change; what life might be like without this unhealthy habit; the kind of person I could become if I were free of its clutches.

Like a woman possessed, I spent hours clicking around the internet. Nutritious food, women doing yoga, women running on the beach, women splashing around in the ocean, click click click. Job done, and feeling marginally better about the whole endeavour, I decided to go one step further. I had a feeling this challenge would be one of the biggest of my life and I’d need all the safety nets I could possibly create.

For my birthday the previous year, Dom bought me the large vision board I’d been swooning over for months. It was gorgeous, with a huge expanse of white space to pin pictures, and a beautiful wooden frame, painted white. He’d kept it a surprise, filling the board with photos from our travels and other meaningful souvenirs. He snuck it into our study before coming in to meet me and a huge group of friends at a bar in the city. Naturally, because it was my birthday, I got rather silly indeed, downing cocktail after cocktail like it was the eve of Prohibition.

Dom had planned to surprise me with his thoughtful gift when we got home that night, but my actions robbed him, and myself, of the chance. I was a drunken mess and didn’t even remember the cab ride home. The next morning, when he took me into our study and showed it to me, I felt wretched with guilt and stupidity.

Now, I took a deep breath and lifted the board off the wall. It was time for an update: to the board, and to my life.