Problems to Solve or Processes to Manage?

Two and a half years into my sobriety journey, I am learning problems are not often solved permanently. They can manifest from a variety of sources and are not always alleviated by a single solution. In short, if a problem keeps recurring, it is usually a process to be managed.

In my first year of sobriety, I was convinced that abstaining from alcohol was the cure-all for all my problems. Decades of drinking led to problems with weight, anxiety, depression, overall health, motivation and dependability. When I stopped, my weight started to decrease. I had more energy and was more happy and stable. I started to rely on myself, as did others. I stopped taking Zoloft for my mental health issues and high blood pressure was no longer a problem. I had the motivation to help myself, and help others and the desire to make up for lost time. I got into nutrition and tried an elimination diet to sever my ties with refined sugar and processed foods. I started writing again, exercising daily, and my relationships with people, and with God, improved tremendously.

Looking back on that first year, it seemed like a honeymoon phase. I also attributed every single good thing in my life to quitting drinking. While many of the positive changes may have only been possible because I quit drinking, I was naive to think that sobriety would solve all my problems.

Over the past year or so, my weight has slowly crept back up. And according to my last doctor’s visit, so has my blood pressure. I catch myself breathing shallowly and feel a general sense of anxiety surrounding most of my days. The positive habits I built when I was newly sober are not immune to my periods of feeling unmotivated. My healthy eating plans were lost in the Battle at Sugar Hill, and honestly I don’t even know if I care very much.

But I’ve realized that things such as health, weight, exercise, and other positive routines I’ve cultivated to get the most out of life are long-term processes. Recognizing that the wellness journey is a life-long journey, gives me permission to sit with things and be patient when they aren’t working or going the way they should. It assures me that taking baby steps or skipping some steps altogether, is still okay.

So no, sobriety didn’t solve my issues with weight and body image. It didn’t make me thin for good and love they way I look in the mirror. It was a game-changer for awhile, because I traded exercising for drinking and stopped consuming thousands of liquid calories and late-night, calorie dense meals.

The clean eating phase prompted sobriety further propelled my weight loss temporarily, but ended up being more of a learning process than anything. I learned a restrictive diet is not sustainable (especially one that doesn’t include chocolate). I learned that “wellness diets” are just diet culture in disguise, and that 95 percent of diets fail in that people gain it all back and sometimes more within the first or so.

Add this learning process to me entering the second half of my forties where hormones fluctuate and metabolism slows. Oh and my recent tendency to eat something sweet on a daily basis that makes up for all or any calories I don’t drink. Sadly, not drinking does not make you immune to gaining weight in any number of other ways…

Sobriety also did not solve my mental health issues or high blood pressure. It did for awhile, but both seem to have made a reappearance as of late. Because mental health and conditions like high blood pressure aren’t problems to be solved, but processes to be managed.

And sobriety didn’t make me a faith warrior/writer/spiritually enlightened human. Practices like prayer, and reading scripture, and yoga, and meditating are processes as well, and subject to the laws of motion and motivation.

So you could say I’m right back where I started…

But you would be wrong. Because, even though I’m not currently where I would like to be on my overall wellness journey, I recognize now that challenges are always part of the terrain. The road doesn’t suddenly smooth once you get sober. Problems don’t magically or permanently disappear… You just become way more capable of handling and re-handling life’s difficult processes that ebb and flow along the way.

And while I’ve learned that I will have to navigate many of the processes that have plagued me most of my adult life, sobriety enables me to move through instead of being stuck in the mire of existing, but not progressing. Because I now know that even a lack in motivation or a set-back with my weight or mental health is part of the overall journey. And as long as I remain sober, I have the perseverance, patience and self-trust to know that my pace will pick up again.