Today felt like time for a positive twist on the journey of sobriety. A lot of my posts have been about my own journey, which has been filled with frustration, pain and immense shame. But there have been recent benefits in those around me that I did not anticipate and thought deserved their own post.
My darling DD husband (explanation of that label here) in solidarity for this journey quit the booze around the same time as me. Earlier, technically, since he’s had much better results in his journey than I have. And I won’t speak to his journey, but I will speak to my perspective of it. The reasons I perceive he quit are:
- He’s a wonderful and supportive partner who saw this would help my own journey
- He was really quite done with the hangovers that would keep him in bed a day afterward
- He agreed with a lot of the reasons why I was quitting: health, harmful stress coping, etc.
As Darling DD has the enviable success in having ACTUALLY managed to quit, he is seeing some of those fantastic 6-month-out-of-the-drinking-spiral gifts that I’ve read about but have not yet experienced. Whereas I have had some glorious sober stretches with much falling off/out/under wagons, he’s getting into that lovely space where booze has lost some of its allure. These things are both marvelously fascinating and incredibly frustrating to watch from the perspective of someone still struggling, but gosh has it been an amazing side by side scientific study. Nothing like adding a live-in example of “this is what you could have if…”
Some of the external benefits I have witnessed in Darling DD are:
- Better sleep
- More productivity and motivation (took on a side hustle since quitting)
- Weight loss (~ 15lbs so far)
- Coping with stress differently (see side hustle above)
- More energy (see pt 1 and 2 and 3)
And get this! Recently we went to an event that served wine and made the decision together that we would indulge with friends, and watch each other so that we didn’t overdo it. It was a lovely evening! We had a great time and only mild regrets. Mild is pretty good. But poor Darling DD! His body was no longer used to the gloriously luscious red poison that we imbibed and he fell quite ill. Imagine someone who has had a few of glasses of wine look like they’ve drank an entire bottle of tequila. He was not well. At all. His body’s reaction was perhaps my most recent moment of thinking: huh! That stuff really is a bit of delicious poison, isn’t it?
As mentioned, these things are simultaneous infuriating and incredible to watch. But I am grateful for both him, and these lessons. And I really hope he knows that. The real unexpected gift here is that a decision we made to try to get me out of the pit, may have helped him out of smaller pit of his own. A pit we didn’t see yet. So thank you Darling DD. A journey shared is infinitely better, for all of the reasons.