No one warns you about THIS in sobriety...

One of the things I struggled with in the beginning of sobriety was the abundance of time. My days basically doubled when I quit drinking, and it was really hard to fill my time when I was SO bored, yet also hyper and restless.

What was once a burden on my life is now my favorite part about life!! Having the entire day to be productive and enjoy life has truly been a blessing. I went from "when is this day going to end?" to "I've done so much with my day."

In this episode, I'll give you some advice for those tough early days and share how I transitioned from hating the extra time to absolutely loving it :)

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Transcript

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Literally, how did we make it work when we were drinkers? There is so much more time in the day. In sobriety, it's actually crazy. And in today's episode, I want to talk about the adjustment from having double the amount of time in your day and that being truly a struggle in the beginning of sobriety to then eventually having it be like a superpower. You can get so much done with your day, you can live life to the fullest. We only get one life. And deep into my sobriety now, I feel so blessed to have this time and like to be able to accomplish everything I want to accomplish. But it hasn't always felt like this. In the beginning, this extra amount of time was a burden. It was something I really had to work through. So I'm gonna walk you through what that transition looked like for me and provide you with some tips if you're feeling like there are too many hours in the day and you don't know what to do with yourself. Welcome to the Sober Scoop. This is a judgment-free zone where we talk about how to get sober and stay sober. You're not alone. I hope you feel seen. Quitting alcohol is the best decision I've ever made. So when I first quit drinking, I will never forget this intense feeling that I had of hyperactivity and restlessness. Like I wanted to be doing things at all hours of the day. I was full energy all the time. It was full throttle all day long. And I was like, where do I put all this energy? And even once I've done everything that I had to do, I already cleaned, I already did the dishes, I already finished my work day, I already finished my side projects, I researched, I watched a YouTube video, I watched my TV show. It was like I still had extra time. And it was a really weird feeling to be like, how is the day still going? The days are so long in sobriety, especially compared to how they were as a drinker. Because when I was drinking, I mean, sometimes I would start drinking in the mornings, but a lot of times I would start drinking around lunchtime or around five o'clock on the East Coast, because even though I was on the West Coast, I was working East Coast hours. So it's like 2 p.m. for me was people at my company clocking off, and so I would start drinking then. A lot of times my drinking started around 1 or 2 p.m. Or if I was drinking earlier than that, then it intensified at 1 or 2 p.m. So once that started, even though I still did things under the influence of alcohol, I was a lot less productive, and you guys know what I mean. It's like time just passes when you're drinking. Even if you are sitting on the couch and doing nothing, time just passes. I was so lonely and really like quite bored, but drinking made my life feel more exciting, feel less lonely, and time just passed. Like the evenings just I like you asked me what did you do last night, and it was like uh kind of just nothing. But I was drinking the whole time, so it seemed fun. It's so weird. Like the concept of time as a drinker is just bizarre. So let's say I start drinking at two o'clock, or I start drinking more intensely at two o'clock, then my days really winding down. You know, by five o'clock, I'm just ready to relax. There's not much thinking going on. I'm not gonna be going to the gym, I'm not gonna be cooking myself a nice dinner. Like my brain is kind of useless after I've been drinking more intensely. And I also kind of used an alcoholic beverage as my sign to relax and mentally clock off. So two o'clock, three o'clock, my mind is off. I'm done for the day. And that means that from 3 p.m. until 10 p.m. when I pass out on the couch with a drink in my hand, I'm doing almost nothing. Alcohol is just kind of making the time pass by. So that's seven hours of my day that's just kind of nothing. Maybe I watch a show, but I'll probably forget where I left off or what I even watched. I'll forget the details of the episode and have to reread it. Um, I was just I was just useless. Sometimes I would watch a movie with my boyfriend and like want to watch it again because I would forget the details. I was I was quite useless after a few drinks. So seven hours of my day completely just wasted. Ha, figuratively and literally, sometimes. Um yeah, so when I got sober, I had all that time back, and it was really weird. So now, instead of mentally clocking off at 3 p.m., I'm alert and awake and alive and doing things till 11 p.m. or something, because I'm not even using alcohol to pass out and fall asleep. So I'm staying up until I actually get tired. Maybe it's midnight, maybe it's 1 a.m. or 3 a.m. or whatever. So I have all those seven hours back and some probably. That is literally like doubling your day. I quit drinking and I instantly had double the amount of time. I remember feeling like, wow, the days just feel so long. I also got sober on June 20th, and so it's like the beginning of summer, the days literally are really long. It's sunny outside till 9 p.m. Um, it was a weird, weird adjustment. I just felt like no matter how productive I was and how many hobbies I had and how many things I was checking off my to-do list, I couldn't fill my day. There were just still more hours, and I didn't want to relax. Like a way to pass some time is to watch some TV, watch a movie, but I couldn't even focus on a TV or movie because I was so fidgety and restless. So one of the things that I did was I chewed sunflower seeds because I felt like that helped with the kind of hand-to-mouth motion. It helped keep my hands busy, keep my mouth busy. It allowed me to put my energy into something else while I was watching a movie so that I could actually focus. And I would like fidget with some things. You don't have to buy a fidget spinner or whatever, one of those fidget toys, but you can just fiddle with pretty much anything in your hand. I mean, I'm looking at this chapstick right now, and I've a lot of times just like open the lid, close the lid, open the lid, close the lid. You can probably hear that. Sorry if it's really loud in the microphone. Um, but I would fidget with something while I'm watching my show. And that helped with the restlessness and made me able to just actually focus on something. I also always kept a notepad nearby because I'd be trying to have like a date night, you know, movie night with my boyfriend, and my mind is just racing. And so I would write down my thoughts so that I'm not like pausing the movie and saying, oh my god, do you believe that aliens are real? Or, you know, just talking about some random thing that came into my mind. And I really thought to myself, like, this is never gonna get better. Like, what am I gonna do? But I tried to tell myself that of course it will get better. This is how humans were designed. We were not designed to drink our life away from 3 p.m. onwards. We were designed to live a full 24-hour day. Yes, we have to sleep some, but we're designed to be awake for the hours we're awake. We're not designed to just drink it away and waste our lives. And actually, thinking about human life in its natural form has really helped me in a lot of ways, even with grasping the idea of sobriety, because sobriety itself shouldn't even have a name. There should be no name for not consuming poison, right? Like if if we're talking like heroin or harder drugs or something, there's no name for someone who doesn't do heroin, right? You're just a normal person. And so it's weird that there is a name for someone who doesn't drink alcohol because the natural human state is to not consume alcohol, to not be altered, even by coffee or whatever. Like human life is designed to just exist with uh nutrients from our food and water. And so it's weird that there's even a name for sobriety. We are just living life as we were designed to live as humans, which I find kind of interesting. But that abundance of time, that is how we're meant to live. And it is a harsh, it's a hard adjustment in the beginning. It was weird for me. It was, I was like, what am I gonna do? I'm like signing up for Spanish classes, getting a Spanish tutor, I'm walking like seven miles a day, I'm signing up for volleyball, and I didn't do that all right away. It was more like checking things off my to-do list. Like I was in the backyard doing yard work. I was um uh, what do you call that? Deactivating one of my credit cards that I don't really use anymore. I was signing up for a different one. I'm researching things. I would go down the rabbit hole like crazy about various topics, just learning. I mean, I I really did want to be doing things at all hours, and I still feel that way today, uh, this deep into my sobriety, but I don't look at it as a burden anymore. It's not a hindrance to my life to have all this extra time. It just it just is, it's amazing actually. It's like I think to myself, how the heck did I do it before as a drinker? There's so many hours in the day, and I don't know how I would ever have accomplished all the things that I want to while drinking alcohol and basically just writing off seven hours of my day every day. Not to mention the hours in the morning that I'm hung over and I'm not feeling my best and I can't get to the gym and all this stuff. I mean, it's just crazy to think that I was able to exist like that for so long and somewhat disguise myself as a regular person who wasn't absolutely suffering with an alcohol problem. To a lot of people, I looked like I was still doing okay and like thriving and having a good career and doing good work, and I talk about this a lot, but still to this day, my highest earning month ever in my entire career was when I was at the height of my drinking problem. I made the most money in a month that I have ever. And that kind of bothers me because I put so much effort into my work now, but I'm building long-term wealth, sustainable income, all that good stuff. That was a random fluke, but it is crazy that I was able to reach that high grossing month during my drinking problem. I'm literally like, how was I doing that? And until I started putting on a lot of weight and started to really look like someone with an alcohol problem, with my face being round and reddish and very chunky and cellulite-y and greenish everywhere. Before I got to that point, I still looked nice, I still showed up to things on time, you know. I was a what society calls functioning alcoholic. And a lot of people in my life didn't know that I was struggling, which is crazy. Because now it's like I'm the complete opposite. It's been a long transition to get to here. I I didn't just instantly become this like health and wellness, fitness, nutrition guru type of person. It took a long time. In fact, I remember when I was struggling really hard with my drinking, I would look at these health girls online, and I would see them like making their cute breakfasts and drinking these juices and wiping down their counters with non-toxic cleaners, and I'm just like, imagine having that be what you care about. Like, I prioritize alcohol over everything, and then it was my family, and then it was my boyfriend, and then it was my finances. You know, the list didn't even make it to the non-toxic cleaners and the nutrition and the green juices and whatever. That was so not a priority for me. And I would see these girls' lives, and they're so pretty and fit, and they just have it together, and I thought it would be so cool to actually have the mental capacity to be able to be passionate about those things that they are passionate about. And now here I am, almost two years after getting sober, and I am passionate about those things. I prioritize my wellness. I work out, I prioritize prioritize movement, I take a lot of walks, I try to get all of my nutrients from my food so I don't have to supplement much. I'm passionate about getting all my vitamins and stuff through my food. I'm passionate about eating high protein. I'm passionate about bone health and longevity and mobility and so many different things in the health and wellness space. And it's like, wow, what a 360, you know, I've just completely turned around my life. And it's it's just amazing that now because I don't drink alcohol and write off half of my day, I get to think about that stuff. Like I have not just the mental capacity, but also the time in the day to be able to care about those things. The abundance to the abundance of time in sobriety now is truly such a blessing. It is my superpower. And it does feel like I have an advantage in life, which is so cool. Like we get the advantage here, guys. How cool is that? When other people are drinking at happy hour and that's it for them, like they're having their cocktail at 4 p.m. and they're gonna go home and probably just sit on the couch and watch TV. That's their night gone, but not us. I can go to a happy hour and drink my, you know, club soda and lime or whatever I choose to drink, and then go home and clean my apartment or work on my fitness program, or do the dishes, do the laundry, listen to a podcast and go on a walk. Today, actually, I got back from an event at this hotel. They're opening a new hotel called the Kimpton something in Seattle. Um, it's like a remodeled location or something. Anyway, um, I went to their opening and they had like all sorts of drinks and little bites and things like that. I had the bites. I also had um some NA champagne with some NA April mix in it, and it was really, really good. Um, but I felt obviously like totally fine afterwards because I wasn't consuming alcohol. And I came home, I left the event um about an hour before it ended. A lot of people stayed longer. Everyone stayed longer, but I just headed out because there was it was kind of a drop-in. Come whenever you want, leave whenever you want. So I left. I stayed for an hour and a half, and I left the event. I said goodbye to my friends, and I headed home. The sun was still shining. I took a walk. I took a walk after the happy hour, which is for a lot of people the end of their day or the start of their relaxation. But for me, I got changed. I got all of my packages from the package room, I went on a walk, now I'm recording this podcast episode. I'm still gonna work on my fitness guide, I'm going to clean while I listen to my podcast, and I'm gonna do laundry while I watch the new episode of The Pit. All of that after the happy hour. Oh my god, if I was drinking, first of all, I would have pre-gamed the hotel happy hour thing, because Lord knows I'm not showing up to any event where I'm gonna have to talk to other people without having a couple drinks under my belt because I fully thought that I was unable to function without alcohol and like hold a conversation. I've proved that to be wrong in sobriety because I think I'm a better conversationalist, conversationalist, and more well-spoken when I do not have alcohol, obviously. So I would have pre-gamed the hotel party. Then at the hotel party, they're given out free drinks. And by the way, I'm just thinking back to how that was set up. They were serving drinks in so many different locations, and you know what alcohol-e me would have done? I would have, so that nobody thought I had a drinking problem, I would have gotten one drink from that bar. I would have gone to a different bar and gotten one drink from them because they had like little drink stations. You know how they do that at events? It's like there was a bar over here. There, then there was a lady just serving on a small table over there. Then in the other banquet hall, there were like two different places you could get drinks. Then upstairs, there was champagne just sitting on the platter. Um, the alcohol was everywhere and from so many different locations. And so when I was a drinker, I would have gone to all the different servers and all the different locations so that nobody knew that I was like over-drinking. I probably would have like snuck away from my friends to down one by myself to like get ahead a little bit because these people will have like two drinks the entire evening and feel tipsy. Whereas me, I need like 12 drinks to feel tipsy. So that would have been the old me. And then after the event, I would have gone home and maybe I would have had to Uber home and leave my car in Seattle overnight. Oh my god. I mean, who knows? But, anyways, I get myself home, and then I'm probably gonna drink some more because I love to keep a buzz going. That was one of my favorite things. If I'm already tipsy, you uh I mean I'm not stopping until I literally go to sleep. I couldn't have imagined getting home after drinking and not drinking more. It made no sense in my mind, and I would always drink until I fell asleep. So I'd continue drinking, definitely not going on a walk, no energy to go get those packages, not gonna do my laundry or clean. If I watch that episode of the pit that just came out, I'm probably not gonna remember it. I'm gonna have to re-watch it because I'm in and out of sleep. I'm tipsy, I don't remember. Like, what a waste of an evening. Compare that to all that I was able to do as a sober person. It's crazy. Literally, it is the hack to life. It is a beautiful gift to have your evenings back in sobriety. And not to mention, tomorrow morning, I'm gonna wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, not hung over. I'm gonna be feeling 100% as always. Whereas the drinking me, after a night of drinking and then drinking when I got home, I probably wouldn't have been feeling great. I probably would have cracked into a drink in the morning, and the cycle continues. But here we are, fully sober and able to just accomplish so much with our lives. How was their time when we were drinkers? Literally, how did we make it work? I have no idea. Just a quick tangent. I made a video about this not long ago, but I want to talk about it here too, because I said waking up and feeling 100% as always, and that's so true, and that's also a struggle, and that's something that I actually still struggle with this far into my sobriety. Is feeling 100% all the time. It's a blessing. I'm never gonna, you know, complain about that because it's amazing to not feel hungover, to always feel 100% unless you're like ill or something. But let me tell you why this is hard. Sometimes when I was a drinker, actually, not sometimes, about once a week, I would have these days where I just called them like my mental health days. That's what I actually called them. Like to my boyfriend, I would say, like, I'm I'm having a mental health day today. I would take the entire day to just drink alone. I wanted to be able to drink in the way that I wanted to without anyone judging me, including my family or boyfriend, like people close to me. I wanted to be alone. I wanted to do nothing. I didn't want to have to work or record videos or talk to anyone. I wanted to have a full day to myself, like a write-off, where your brain is just completely fried, you're drinking all day, nothing matters, no one's contacting you, you don't have to do anything. You can just be a disaster in your own home alone. And I did those quite frequently when I was a drinker. Now in sobriety, I mean I find it really, really hard to relax, if I'm being honest. I told you in the beginning of this episode like it gets better, which it for sure does. Like, I I'm excited to watch my show tonight, but I'm gonna be doing laundry while I'm doing it. So it See what I'm saying? It's like I definitely struggle to fully turn off my brain and chill. And anytime I do chill, I feel like it's almost a waste of time. I'm like I could be doing something else. I I should be able to do something while I'm doing this other activity. I mean, the thing that's hard for me that I actually challenge myself on is going to the movies because you can't be playing on your phone or checking things or being productive. You have to just sit there and watch the movie. So I actually use going to the movies as like my challenge to um just sit there and not do anything other than relax and watch the movie. But yeah, so when you're 100%, 100% of the time, it's almost like sometimes I crave those days where I'm just off, like my brain is turned off and I'm doing nothing. But I don't really get an escape from my thoughts anymore. Yes, there are ways. I talked about in my last episode with managing stress, about like doing a puzzle while you watch a show or going on a walk. Walking really helps and everything like that. But that's not like fully just vegging. I mean, you know the feeling. If you've been a drinker in a similar way that I was, it's the feeling of like eating whatever you want, drinking as much as you want, not talking to anyone, not doing anything. And just your mind is completely blank. And I don't have those days anymore. But here's the the flip for you. Why would we want to waste our life away with days where we're doing absolutely nothing and just drinking it away? If you think about yourself on your deathbed, or when you're a grandparent and telling stories, or when your legs are not working like they used to, are you gonna be happy that you just vegged on the couch and did nothing once a week? I mean, that's a lot. Every now and then it's fine. Obviously, we all deserve that, but not in the drinking way, but we deserve days off and days to relax and recharge for sure. Um But I I do struggle with that. I struggle to do that. And I say to myself, when I'm 90, I'm not gonna be mad that I lived how I did. I'm not gonna say I went too hard. You know, I went on too many walks, I booked too many trips, I I was too productive. I'm not gonna be saying that stuff. I'm I'm gonna be glad that I lived it up. Every day on this earth is something special. If you've ever had s if you've ever had somebody in your life pass unexpectedly, it's like time is limited. And I'm not saying that you have to like go hard every single day, but if you're like me and you struggle to relax and turn off your brain, I don't think we should be looking at that as a negative. I do think we should be forcing ourselves to relax if possible, like going to the movies, as I mentioned. I also will sometimes get a massage or like a facial, some sort of service, even like a manicure where you can't use your hands. Those are good for just being in the moment and focusing only on what you're currently doing. There are ways that you can force yourself to feel relaxed, but I'm just not gonna really be the person who just sits and veggies on TV. I'm always like doing something on my phone or doing the laundry or d whatever. I I always like to multitask, and maybe that's a fault of mine, but I'm gonna choose to see that as like I'm living it up, I'm making the most of life, and that's just how my brain is wired. I struggle to just chill. But as I said, that's just something in sobriety that I still struggle with to this day, and it's like sometimes I feel that we deserve to turn our brains off. So that's why it's important to do those things where it kind of forces you to turn your brain off. So, long story short, the abundance of time. It was a burden in the beginning, and now I find it to be a superpower. Even now I'm like, there's not enough hours in the day. I've gotten to that point where I'm making the most of my day, of course, and I get to the end and I'm like, man, I still didn't get to everything that I wanted to do. You know, I still wish there was more. So it just makes me think, how did I do it before? It's so wild, and I'm so grateful for the the time that sobriety has given me. I can't imagine if I spent another 10, 20 years, whatever, drinking in the way that I was. You add that up, that's so much life wasted drinking. And if you're listening to this and you are 50 or 60 and have been drinking heavily for 20, 30 years, whatever, it's never too late. It's never too late to turn things around, and you can make up for a lot of lost time with how you choose to spend your sober life. And I think that is what we need to focus on is like making the most of our sobriety. We did that thing. We've been given the gift of life, the gift of time, and it's our chance to enjoy it and make the most of it. So thank you for listening to today's episode. I will see you in the next one. Bye.