Sober October Challenge
Valuable life lessons from a month of sobriety
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Inspiration
I felt inspired to give the sober October challenge a try after my party-loving friend Michael told me that he was going to do the same. The rules are simple: stay sober for an entire month.
I have no idea when I was last sober for an entire month, but it’s definitely long enough for me to not even want to work it out…
Now although Michael only lasted a measly three days. I managed to get through the entire month completely sober and learned a valuable lesson on the way.
I realised that I need to learn how to relax.
Burnout
In “Why We Sleep” by Matthew Walker, Matthew makes it very clear how detrimental alcohol can be for our sleep and what he thinks is the best remedy:
“Nightly alcohol will disrupt your sleep, and the annoying advice of abstinence is the best, and most honest, I can offer” — Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep
Matthew is right!
I was sleeping so well for the first two weeks of October. With all the extra energy that I had on the weekends (from not being hungover), I very rarely felt like I could use that extra time to relax.
This is great in some ways because I achieved so much throughout October, but it’s terrible in other ways in the form of broken sleep patterns and burning out.
One day I woke up at five in the morning frantically thinking about my personal football project until I got out of bed and got to work on it. I ended up working for fourteen hours that day.
Although I don’t think about my side-hustles and my full-time job as ‘work’ (because I love them both), they definitely both require my energy. As my battery becomes drained, I raise my risk of burnout.
During my time at university, I heard some daunting stories from close friends of mine about burning out during exam season.
One girl was studying so hard for her exams that she literally collapsed on her way to the library out of pure exhaustion.
Sadly, these stories are far too common and we have to remember to be good to ourselves.
Close Call
Thankfully I didn’t burn out in October, but I almost gave up on the third weekend.
I tried to convince myself that the reason I couldn’t relax was due to my sobriety because I had nothing to ‘take the edge’ off a day of working on my laptop in my flat.
Drugs and alcohol help us feel like we can relax, but although we may temporarily fool our minds, our bodies will let us know the reality of the situation one way or another.
Unlike Michael, I made it through the entire month of October completely sober (actually I stopped a couple of days early for a good friend's birthday, worth it).
By the end of October I was happy to have a drink with my friends, learning so much about myself made the entire month worth it.
Be kind to yourself.
