Beyond the Struggle

To choose not to drink has so far for me been a decision that needs to be taken over and over again. I’m not saying that I fight everyday, I have long periods when I don’t think about alcohol at all. But lately I have been thinking more about it. It’s like my brain is following a cyclic transition of states: proud non-drinker, overly self confident, grieving non-drinker, acceptance and back again to proud non-drinker to start the cycle again. My hardest triggers are always when I’m in the grieving period right before I once again accept that I can’t drink. That’s when I feel pity for myself and come up with the strangest ideas of why the decision not to drink is not really necessary for me. These lies are hatched in the overly self confident period, the longer I’m there the more lies I will pile up. And the longer I’m in the acceptance and proud non-drinker periods, the easier it will be for me to look through these lies. So, in order to be in my good space AF feeling, I ...

“In the midst of chaos inquire yourself and listen - because nothing makes the truth     clearer than when everything else is turned upside down” It’s easy to get grabbed by panic given the recent turn of events. This is for many the most dramatic period ever and the reflex to numb and escape the anxiety is strong. I think it’s important to remember that in times like this what really is important will show itself to you: maybe you see your role as a parent in another light or you feel that the job you have is not worth wasting time on. A lot of us will make choices that will change our life from now on.  If you stay AF all these things that need to be changed will be clear to you. In some ways that can be hard since it might feel overwhelming but when you have steered through these hard times and choices with a clear head instead of numbing them away you will come    out as a stronger person with your life path clear in front of you. Instead of your t...

I thought I knew myself. I thought I was a night person staying up late and always struggling to get up in the morning. But when I let my body find its own rhythm it turns out I was wrong . I’m a morning person, waking up to the sunrise never gets old. I thought I knew myself. I thought I was positive when constantly looking forward to fun times in the future. And I thought that I could only be here and now when inebriated. It turns out that looking forward too much prevents you from being present. And there is nothing here and now about being drunk. I’m way more here and now than I was before. I thought I knew myself. I thought I needed alcohol to connect with people, to get to know them to the core and that my real friends were them who always were there when I wanted to drink. It turns out I connect better with people without alcohol and that my real friends are the ones who like me for who I am, not who I drank to be. I thought I knew myself. I though I was true to myself,...

We’re living in a kick-economy. Everything with our new technology is designed to give us kicks. The notifications badge has EXACTLY the right color to trigger us the most. It’s easier to get a endorphins from posting a funny picture on social media than going to the gym. We are used to getting kicks when we want them and how we want them. Is it easier or harder to go AF in a kick-economy? I haven’t decided yet: on one hand before social media alcohol was much more alone in the “get instant kick right now”-department. On the other hand we don’t know how to be bored anymore.  I have definitely traded some of my own alcohol kicks for social media kicks. But the best thing for me is that I don’t combine them anymore. It was actually pretty stressful to go through the notifications to see what stupid things I’d written on Facebook when I was drunk. No matter what changes you try to accomplish in life I think that being present and focused will help. Instead of trading th...

I’ve had a couple of days when I’ve thought about drinking. I have tried to follow my thought processes why. It does not feel like it is the strange days corona fever that has tempted me. I’ve felt somewhat bored and have longed to welcome the first spring evenings with a couple of beers. But then I ask myself if it’s really boredom that is the problem. It’s more like I mistake ease of mind for boredom. Like my easy AF life feels a little bit too wholesome and that I’m on the verge to start knitting, baking banana cake or broidering cushions. What I miss the most is not to get drunk but to be irresponsible and to not give a cats ass about tomorrow. It’s like I’m longing back to my youth when I didn’t need to take any responsibility. I’ve got a rebel in me. And when I was drinking that rebel got fed all the time. Now that I’m not drinking the rebel will sometimes call for my attention, like it wants me to do something stupid to show that I still got that rebel part in me. I will h...

Some people seem to get triggered when the world go crazy while some others seem to feel the opposite: the more stress the less inclination to drink. Why is it so? I think it partly might have to do with if your true motivations are external or internal. External means that someone else pointed out your problem with alcohol before you saw them yourself. If the motivations are mainly external they also gets more fragile if the world outside changes. If your decision not to drink first and foremost is your own not conditioned by anyone else I think that you’re less likely to get triggered when the outside changes dramatically. I think that some of us can transition from external motivations to internal: actually I think that’s what many are doing when they reset over and over again: for every reset the motivations become more internal and less external. When you see which power alcohol really has over you, your energy gets more focused in you because you understand that it’s the on...

I’m buying myself flowers today White and red tulips which I love Because I’ve listened to my innermost needs and heeded my subconscious wishes to simplify my life I’m buying myself flowers today I’m buying myself chocolate tonight In a heart shaped, pink, paper box Because I’ve shown myself a path I didn’t know existed and inspired myself to live my life in full without alcohol I’m buying myself chocolate tonight I’m buying  myself strawberries tomorrow when I wake up Big strawberries to have with my yoghurt with honey Because I want to show how much I love myself and how awesome I can be if I just give myself the chance I’m buying myself strawberries tomorrow And I’m going to let those tokens of self gratitude guide my dreams and show me the path forward on my new path of self love, self healing and easiness of life.

“Why am I doing this?” I was standing in the bathroom about half a year ago watching myself in the mirror. The time was past twelve and I must at least have drunken 7 large beers. On a Thursday evening. I stood there inebriated and still was wondering why I was doing it. Why I started again after eight years sober. I have spoken about my experience not being able to moderate quite a lot here. That    I after all my sober periods thought I could moderate but always fell back in the same patterns. The longer I’d been sober, the longer I seemed to be able to moderate but sooner or later I always crashed with my head first.  But I’ve actually come to think of something that I’ve learnt from my sober periods that has become stronger for every day I’ve been AF: my inner self conscious loving voice. The same voice that were asking me “Why am I doing this?” when I was looking in the mirror that Thursday evening. Every day AF makes that loving voice stronger. Sometimes ...

In moments of crisis we see a lot of people do stupid and even horrible things out of fear. It is easy to focus on those things and lose hope for humanity. Since negative news spread faster than positive and with the speed of Internet it is easy to get the image that our world is a way darker place than it is. Humans are flawed and selfish but not all of us and not all the time. We are probably the only animals that can feel empathy and we actually use this character istic more often than we think. We should not forget that acts of love and compassion tend to spread in all directions. I’m so happy for community I have in One Year No Beer because the concentration of love and empathy is way higher that anywhere else in my life. We help each other with fear on a daily basis there, so for us it is business as usual. If we use our common goal to stay away from alcohol to spread love outside of this group I think that we can be a force to be reckoned with through these hard times. I...

Sometimes we get reminded that the world is a scary place even if our societies and institutions usually does a good job hiding that from us. The threat of an invisible virus really gets to me, with this creepy feeling that I need to watch where I touch and who I go near. I'm not really scared that the virus will affect my health that much but I'm thinking about the mayhem at the hospitals that probably is about to break loose in a couple of weeks. And I'm thinking about my parents and other elderly that I hope will not catch it or catch it when there are resources at the hospitals. I've sent my parents to the countryside to live there for a while. And my ex-wife is home coughing, after treating someone who had been in Italy,  so I will have the kids at my place for a while. Every party, concert or other event the coming month is cancelled. I've stashed up with food in the fridge and the freezer and I'm gonna be home with the kids this weekend, play games and ...

If we go back to day 1 of our journey we all know that drinking will bring more sorrow than joy to our life. There’s a reason we came to the conclusion to not drink. Like a bad relationship we know it’s time to move on when it takes more than it gives. Still we get triggered. Because we buy in to our own lies: The miserable: I will NEVER be able to have fun with my friends again. My life will get BORING if I don’t get to drink. The oblivious. Why was I not drinking, again? Was it really that bad? The over estimator. By taking a break for a couple of months I have completely rewired my brain. I can not fall back into old habits since I am AWARE now. To the miserable: You WILL be able to have fun again, but not in the same ways you used to. You will actually have way more fun with your senses not numbed. When you laugh you will laugh for real and when you cry it will be because you're sad or moved.  To think that you will have a boring life without alcohol is just lac...

I was AF for eight years and started drinking again. How did that happen? My last AF period started pretty dramatically. I was home alone with my two year old daughter and got so drunk that when my wife came home I had to throw up. For me that event was a wake-up call. It was almost like I'd met Jesus or something, I was shining of confidence because I knew that I could never drink again. I also knew that if I ever broke my vow to my wife she would leave me. As a fairly new father it became part of the parenting role not to drink so these eight years actually passed by rather easily. I just didn't drink. After eight years I started again. Why? I had one truth and one lie. The truth was that I couldn't drink. The lie was that "I couldn't drink under certain CIRCUMSTANCES". See what I did? Just added a few words and all of a sudden I could come up with a plethora of other lies convincing me that my problem with alcohol actually was not that bad. When I s...

Hope. Such a wonderful thing, like a small silver bell in the wind when times are hard. Like a core inside of me that tells me that everything will be ok. It’s like hope is the manifestation of positivity. Hope is a beautiful thing, but it can also preserve the status quo. For a long time I hoped that I wouldn’t need to deal with alcohol and just continue drinking. I hoped that my behavior would be forgiven by my children. I hoped that I would be one of these people whose health would not be that affected. And I hoped that I would not  make a fool of myself at the next party. Like I thought that hope would save me from the inevitable truth that alcohol was the only real threat to me living a good life. Then I understood that the opposite of hope was not negativity but CONTROL. All this hoping was to handle my lack thereof. My addict brain would say that control is something boring but now on the other side it is anything but boring. Control is about setting out for an ad...

Alcohol is supposed to bring us joy in life. But it is actually just a big energy waster. When thinking of it nowadays I just get tired. These are things that I actually wasted time and energy on when drinking: 1) Bad sleep and hangovers. Duh. Many days wasted. 2) Planning how to buy alcohol and get in into the house without anyone noticing the amounts. 3) Getting all the empty bottles OUT of the house without anyone noticing. 4) Excusing why it was not that bad last night to be able to stand my behavior. 5) Practice the quick "inhale"-kiss, on the back of my hand,  so that my partner wouldn't notice my breath. 6) Doing loud and unnecessary household work to mask when I was opening another beer. 7) Planning where to put different, identical, glasses so that I could fill them up independently to make it harder to track how many I've had. 8) Texting people to convince them it's a good idea to go out on a Tuesday. 9) Having the same conversations over and ...

We all know them: the people who has a problem with AFness. They try to get you to drink “How bad could just one glass of wine be?”. It’s like you not drinking is a silent demonstration that their decision to drink is bad. Some people doing this have problems with alcohol themselves - but not all of them. Most people are actually just scared: they haven’t socialized without alcohol since they become grown ups and are terrified to conquer their social demons. They might also be scared that not drinking, just for a little while, signals that they have problems with alcohol. Or they are just plain scared for change or to try something new. We all have different reasons for going AF but one thing that unites us is that we are NOT scared. We might have been in the beginning but once the decision is made it wears off. What defines us as a group is NOT that we have a problem with alcohol but that we are brave and ready to take responsibility for our own lives by inviting change, presenc...

Today was a wonderful spring day here in Stockholm. The first spring day, also being a Friday, is very connected to drinking beer for me. Trigger, trigger. But whenever I feel like drinking, instead of pushing the thoughts away, I go through the whole process IF I would drink. Because resisting thoughts make them stronger and unbearable where instead inviting and accepting them make them go away. I’ve written about why fighting thoughts is counterproductive   here . The first beer would probably feel weird. I would not be able to think about anything else than that I would have to post to the blog and tell you guys I’ve failed. I would probably need to drink at least two more real quick to suppress that bad conscience and forget how lousy I would feel the next day writing that post. After three beers I would be in the mood for some drinks. I would probably harass some friend to come out and join me in a bar somewhere. Since all my friends know that I do not drink anymore I wo...

Hey life! You can't even begin to grasp how much I'm enjoying you right now! The energy and love I feel for you is so dense that you could bottle it! I'm feeling like a cannonball of love shooting through my everyday life with force and purpose with nothing stopping me. It didn't use to be like this. Waking up hungover does not make you a cannonball of love, but an anxious and uneasy little squirrel that has no direction. Every day thinking if it would be ok to drink tonight and endless tries to just have a few glasses. So much energy put into drinking, not drinking or trying to drink just enough. God, that was tiring! Like filling up your gas tank in your car with 50% water and wondering why it's running badly.  Superman is here! Nothing can virtually stop me as long as I stay away from my kryptonite. I smile at you, life and you smile back! If I find I way to bottle this love and energy I will sell it like a cologne, to people who just stopped drinking or...

Many think that REGRET is something that we should avoid. If you mention to someone that you feel regret the usual response is that it's probably not that bad, or that you should look ahead instead of back and not  dwell on things that you can not do anything about. It is true that I shouldn't waste my energy on things I can not change but I think that regret contains very important information: it's a signpost for something I need to change in myself in order to not feel regret for the same thing again. If I only allow myself to feel the regret but not go deeper to understand WHY I feel it,  I will repeat what caused it. Serial actions causing the same regret will transform into self loathing: "What's wrong with me? Why can't I control alcohol?" I think many of us ended up in this self loathing regret spiral when we were drinking. It's tough to break your own promises over and over again. You feel worthless and it takes a lot of en...

My eldest daughter is thirteen and will be fourteen this year. She will probably in a year or so try alcohol for the first time. Even it it will not be simple the time ahead will definitely be simpler being AF. I'm talking about my own first experiences with alcohol  here . 1) As sober dad she can always call me if she’s in a tight spot. I’m thinking about all parents risking either to drive drunk or letting their teenagers try to get home by themselves every weekend. If something happened to my daughter because I was too drunk to get her home safely I wou ld have a hard time forgiving myself. And this is something almost every parent risk every weekend. 2) The discussion about alcohol will be much easier to have if I do not drink myself. Teenagers can smell double standards a long way. If I tell my daughter that alcohol is bad for her while still drinking my story will not be coherent. Kids do not do what you say - but what you do. 3) Even if some memories of me being drunk i...

Imagine that you’ve been working hard all day on a new writing project with someone you met online with similar interest. The whole day you have been productive, and your personalities have clicked. You have found a new friend and it’s Saturday. The night is about to start, and your new friend offers you a glass of wine. Maybe you will go out for dinner later, or maybe go and fetch take-away. The night is young, and all the possibilities lies ahead of you. It feels like that glass of wine is the spark that sets the whole night off. The moment you raise your glasses and toast for your new friendship will be the promise that the night ahead will be great. Alcohol - the symbol for relaxation after a hard day’s work, the promise of that what lies ahead will be great and the illusion of getting closer to someone you just met. We are so ingrained with that alcohol is needed to make the night great. Alcohol is like a big party starting hammer: it will do the job and make you beli...