Happy ten-months-sober-I-must-admit-just-because-you’re-clean-don’t-mean-you-don’t-miss-it to all who celebrate 💃🕺
It’s me. I celebrate 😅🥳
But before getting into my celebration, happy Monday and happy new week dear reader. Long time (47 days, but who’s counting 😅) no post, so I feel it is best to start with a check-in. I hope all is well for you and yours 😊
On my end, things are pretty damn great if I do say so myself. The day after my last post, I got my Schengen visa and four days later I flew to Europe with mon husbebé to support him as he made his bodybuilding debut at the WNBF International Open Amateur Natural Classic’s Steve Reeves Cup in Tarragona, Spain.
We spent five nights in Tarragona before heading to Barcelona for three nights, then Florence for two and Rome for three. Italy has been on my bucket list for YEARS, so when I wrote this in 38 Days Left of Being 38 (Send Help Pls), I was speaking a successful Schengen visa application into existence.
And DID!! And just like that, I got to spend the final month of being 38 finally checking off the number two country on my bucket list 🤩
Speaking of 38… what a time to be alive! But alas, it had to end 😭 38 was always going to be the most monumental age of my life – with 83 coming in second… if I am fortunate enough to see it 😅 – and it was a phenomenal year! Because of that, 39 feels like it will be the best bridge to my best decade yet, but not ever. Or maybe ever? I don’t know… I’ve heard great things about the 40s 😏
38 was phenomenal for several reasons, but chief among them is that I did not drink for most of it. 2024 was the year I became a functioning alcoholic ’til nobody noticed my new aesthetic, and I really struggled with my mental health in 2024 and 2025 when I was 36 and 37 respectively. What started as a thread that came loose in February 2024 continued to unravel until, by June 2025, there was nothing left to stitch up anymore. That month, I had my third – and last – bender of 2025. A bender that had my sister rushing me to four hospitals in 48 hours.
Long story short, after a cost-benefit analysis I decided to take an indefinite break from booze after realising that my relationship with alcohol had become all cost, no benefit. And, 10 months (and 1 day) later, every single thing in my life is sooo much better for it.
That said, “indefinite break from booze” is deliberate as I am not sober in every sense of the word because my abstinence is not forever. It is simply what I need for this period of my life while I get my shit together.
But just because I’m clean, don’t mean I don’t miss it. We live in a society where alcohol often acts as a social lubricant at gatherings, so in the beginning, whenever I was kicking it with people, I would feel the biggest FOMO about what I was missing out on. But in these 10 months (and 1 day), I have since learned that an urge to drink is a sign from my body that I am missing something in that moment in my life. Maybe a connection, or fun/spontaneity. Or maybe I am feeling overwhelmed and in need of an escape… Whatever it is, it is never about the alcohol but about the feeling that booze used to give me in those moments.
I do not know when I will be back to drinking, but I do know that for the foreseeable future I am deliberately choosing sobriety because I was lucky to survive what alcohol did to me in a specific chapter of my life. Ten months older, I won’t give in. Now that I’m clean, I’m never gonna risk it.
Lwile the Leo 