It’s been 31,536,000 seconds.

It’s been 525,600 minutes.

It’s been 8,760 hours.

It’s been 365 days.

It’s been 52 weeks.

And it’s been 1 whole year since I’ve had a drink.

No alcohol for a year.

NO ALCOHOL FOR A YEAR!!!!

No Blue Moons,

no Kirkland margaritas,

no Franzia,

and no fruity drinks in a fake coconut.

NO NOTHING.

I am so proud of myself.

I AM SO PROUD OF MYSELF.

This was a decision I made for myself.

I wasn’t given an ultimatum.

There wasn’t an intervention.

A doctor didn’t tell me I needed to stop drinking.

I simply woke up one day and decided,

It’s time.

It was time to start taking care of myself.

Completely.

It was time for me to acknowledge that my body, and more importantly, my brain, do not handle alcohol well.

They just don’t.

I didn’t want to stop going to Mom’s Nights Out. I didn’t want to stop going to parties. I didn’t want to imagine a summer by the pool without Blue Moons. I didn’t want to give up my identity as the life of the party.

But I also didn’t want to wake up wondering what I had done and said the night before. I didn’t want to lose anymore days “after” because I was too hungover to function. If I had an argument with my husband, I didn’t want to wonder how I would have handled it differently if alcohol hadn’t been a factor.

So…I gave it up.

It definitely wasn’t easy at first. I found myself getting angry when other people were drinking. I was either angry that people were able to drink without going way overboard, or I was angry that people who clearly drank to the point of not being healthy hadn’t had their epiphany and joined me in solidarity.

I stopped going to parties where alcohol was involved. I stopped hanging out with the people I associated with drinking.

I didn’t go to meetings or do anything else.

I just woke up one day deciding I wasn’t going to drink that day, and I’ve managed to do that 365 days in a row.

My life did not end when I stopped drinking.

The fun did not end when I stopped drinking.

But my life certainly changed when I stopped drinking.

And the things I did for fun also changed when I stopped drinking.

I have lost quite a few friends.

Maybe not lost, but most of the people I used to hang out with have fallen by the wayside.

People don’t really want to organize a sober Mom’s Night Out.

Your drinking friends don’t contact you on a regular basis and say, “Let’s go out to dinner!”

Once you make the proclamation that you are done drinking, I’m not sure what it is exactly, but things change.

Maybe you being sober makes people uncomfortable.

Maybe they think they’ll be a bad influence on you.

Maybe it forces them to take a good hard look at themselves and they aren’t ready or willing to do that.

Or maybe you weren’t really true friends to begin with.

The hardest part of quitting drinking for me hasn’t been the quitting drinking.

It’s been the loss of friends.

But this has been one of the best parts of it, too.

Because it has shown me who my real, true friends are.

There aren’t too many of them, but you don’t need too many of them really.

Now that I’m a year into not drinking, I realize there are a lot of things I would miss about not drinking.

I’d miss doing this kind of stuff

and this kind of stuff with my kids early on a Sunday morning.

I’d miss full night’s of truly restful, spin-free sleep.

I’d miss waking up early and feeling great.

I’d miss being present.

So I’ve got 365 days under my belt.

And I feel pretty confident in saying that tomorrow I’m gonna have 366.