I Am Wickedly Rebellious (Sober)

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One of the things I love most about being sober is the notion that it’s a wickedly rebellious act. It is! Think about it. 

An alcohol soaked world…

We live in a world that is literally soaked in booze. Every social occasion, gathering, celebration, achievement, commiseration, high point, low point and Friday night is marked with alcohol. It is freely sold in numerous stores around our neighbourhoods. It is advertised left right and centre, hailed as a wonderful liquid libation that helps you win friends and influence people.

 

From a very young age we are told through marketing messages, and shown by our friends and neighbours, that drinking booze is the best way to relax, celebrate and grieve. We’re told that we deserve it. It’s normal and everybody is doing it. And we believe it. We go along with it. We drink and we drink and we drink.

 

Having fun till you’re not…

I certainly did anyway. I drank enthusiastically and regularly for over twenty years until the wheels really started to fall off my habit and I sank into a deep, dark pit of addiction.

 

Then I did the unthinkable, or at least the very rare. I decided to remove alcohol from my life completely and re-frame myself as a sober person. In other words, I decided to walk around this booze-soaked planet of ours never touching the stuff. Given almost all of the people around me regularly drink alcohol, I am the rare exception. I really do feel like a rebel by not ever touching the stuff.

 

Radical? Counter-cultural? Sober?

Quitting booze is an incredibly counter-cultural, radical move.

 

I love thinking about sobriety this way – that it’s a rebellious act. For me it puts a great positive spin on the situation. And given I have always identified as being a bit naughty, sobriety appeals to the rebel in me.

 

I often feel like people are looking at me with sympathy for what they think I’m missing out on, or perhaps in recognition for the hell I’ve been through to get here. But little do they know that inside my head not only do I not feel like I’m missing out on anything (having completely reshaped my thinking about alcohol and now seeing it for the expensive, destructive, waste-of-time drug that it is), I feel incredibly powerful and awesome.

 

In truth I feel like a complete bad-ass. They shouldn’t feel sorry for me, they should envy me!

 

 

Outside the alcohol industry’s sphere of influence…

Because, aside from the fact that I am living my best life, being healthy, clear-headed and grounded all of the time, I am also dancing freely outside of the powerful alcohol industry’s sphere of influence. I am immune to their seductive messages. They don’t sway me, I just see them as glossy lies.

 

I love wearing my alcohol-free status like a badge of honour. I love the fact that I am going against the grain by being a non-drinker. The inner rebel in me who used to see drinking as a form of rebellion, now sees sobriety as the ultimate form of rebellion. Yet this lifestyle choice has much more rewarding side-effects.

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And for an article in the Daily Mail on Lotta Dann:

It was like looking into a black abyss’: Mother-of-three, 46, who battled alcoholism for 24 YEARS reveals the ‘horrifying’ moment that made her finally quit drinking.

 

 

Mrs. D is the name Lotta Dann gave herself when she began anonymously blogging in 2011. Through her long-running blog, Mrs. D Is Going Without; Lotta discovered the incredible power of online support for people quitting drinking. Her best-selling memoir, telling the story of her recovery, was published in 2014, and later that same year, Living Sober was launched. Living Sober takes all of the powerful aspects Lotta discovered about online recovery and condenses it here into one space, making it readily accessible for thousands of people so that they can also turn their lives around