Woke up this morning, checked my phone and smiled at the notification from my I Am Sober app: I’m nine months alcohol free today! Yay me! I’ve hit the 3/4 of a year milestone and I can barely believe it- feels like these nine months have flown by but also like its taken forever to get here.

So much has changed during this time, I’ve endured some difficult situations along the way and while some still remain, just about every other aspect of my life has improved. My skin is brighter, my face and belly aren’t bloated anymore, I’ve lost weight, sleep is The Best (have never slept this good in my life! ever!!), my blood pressure has dropped, the relationships with my kids and husband have improved, and I feel like a freaking Sober Super Hero- hands on hips, chest puffed out, cape flapping fashionably behind me, villain triumphantly defeated.

From the start, I inhaled as much writing as I could about alcohol addiction and its effects on the brain, body, relationships and how much our American society applauds/ supports/ encourages our consumption from all of our day ones. I’m just at the tip of the Quit Lit iceberg, yet I have a much clearer understanding about why I drank the way I drank, the influences (direct and indirect) that kept me drinking for nearly 30 years, and how all that impacted my sense of identity.

I started drinking my freshman year of college, fall of 1992. That word “drinking” means a lot of things to different people but my version was the sober-all-week-party-all-weekend-Sundays-are-for-hangovers kind of binge drinker. No social event went without an alcoholic beverage in hand. As soon as that warm, intoxicated, pain-free blanket of escape was wrapped around me, I only wanted more. One of my most epic drinking days started at 10am with vodka smoothies, followed by mimosas, margaritas, lots of beer and tequila shots, and then of course red wine once the beer ran out. By 3am I attempted puking/sleeping only to get up at 5am to run a half marathon. (Said half marathon had me vomiting at mile 1, 6, and 9, then walking/ crawling/ cursing the final 5K only to grab a glass of champagne once I crossed the finish line. Yeeeeaaaaah.)

Drinking in college, makes sense. Post-college, I continued my weekend partying ways. Stopped drinking when I got pregnant, had both of my children back-to-back and once I stopped breastfeeding my second, I went back to drinking but this time it was different… the Mommy Wine Culture was very real and I jumped right in (as evidenced by my shirt in the above photo). Met a great group of like-minded moms who also loved to party and we took turns hosting “play dates” which amounted to us drinking and chatting while the kids occupied themselves. We insisted on our Moms’ Night Out every month, wherein we would go out to a fancy dinner, indulge in the best-of-the-best, and go dancing all because we sacrifice and work so hard as stay-at-home-moms, we felt we deserved these nights to ourselves even if we blacked out and couldn’t recall any of our “good times” the next day.