I read a story in an online sober group the other day that felt painfully familiar.

A woman, about 3 months sober, went out for a nice dinner with her husband. Instead of enjoying the dinner, she could feel anger bubbling up in side her chest the whole time. She felt angry that she couldn’t have a glass of wine with such a lovely dinner. Angry that everything felt different now, that she was left out, that it wasn’t fair.

And she wanted to know how to stop the anger.

I remember this Anger vividly from early in my own sobriety.

I was about 90 days sober, and my husband and I were on vacation in Iceland. We were at a microbrewery, and he was sampling a flight of local Icelandic beers. And I. Was. Mad. I don’t know that I even really wanted to drink… I was just mad that I couldn’t. That I was left out of that cool experience.

And I felt stupid for being so angry. All I wanted was to make it stop.

The most common advice given in the comments of the post was, “Just wait it out. It’ll go away.” Some version of – just white knuckle it through the anger, and eventually you’ll start to feel better. In the meantime, just avoid going out on dates.

And that, my friends, is how people become sober and bitter.

Have you ever met one of those people? The ones who are sober for 10 or 20 or 30 years, and are still just angry that they can’t have alcohol? I don’t know about you, but that’s not who I want to be.

Why do Sober people end up angry and bitter?

Because they never allowed themselves to grieve the loss of alcohol.

It sounds silly, doesn’t it? A little selfish, or even spoiled? When there are people all over the world who are losing loved ones, losing their homes, being diagnosed with devastating illnesses… and here you are, upset that you’ve lost alcohol. It’s easy to tell yourself to just get over it.

But that’s the worst thing you can do.

That’s what will keep you stuck in anger. Or worse, stuck in a cycle of drinking.

I’ll say it a thousand times – telling yourself you shouldn’t feel the way you do will always put you in danger of wanting to drink. Minimizing your feelings, dismissing them, shaming yourself for feeling what you feel – any version of “I shouldn’t feel this way and I need to make it stop” is exactly what makes you start looking for a way to NOT feel it.

The right way to handle your emotions – including grief – is to acknowledge the way you feel and allow yourself to feel it.

Every. Single. Time.

The 5 Stages of Grieving Alcohol

Denial

Removing alcohol from your life is a significant loss. For someone who leaned on alcohol to support them through the hard times, to liven up the good times, to medicate for sleep or sadness or anxiety… Choosing not to drink is making a choice to leave a bit ol’ void right in the center of your life.

That’s a hard choice to make!

When we start thinking about what that might look like, the first thing we do is deny that alcohol is really a problem. We don’t want to believe it. We don’t want to have to face that void and learn how to live with it.

So we sit in a state of denial – sometimes for many years.

It feels safer than the alternative, but that denial that keeps us feeling safe is actually keeping us stuck.

Denial is based in fear. Fear of not knowing what life will feel like and look like, fear of the unknown. Fear that you aren’t strong enough to do life without the support of the toxic best friend you’ve kept around for so long.

To overcome denial is to find the courage to face the fear. To walk right into it, and stop letting that fear run your life.

Bargaining

Bargaining is when you’re looking for every possible way to justify cutting back, so you don’t have to give it up completely. Trying to moderate. Setting rules and trying to force yourself to drink less. Telling yourself that if you just didn’t drink so much, everything will be fine.

I can tell you from experience that this phase of the grieving process is exhausting.

It takes so much energy to try to manage your drinking. If you’re anything like me (and I’m going to guess that if you’re reading this, you probably are) then alcohol is on your mind constantly. Between coming up with reasons for drinking, to figuring out when you’re going to drink, to finding excuses to run to the store, to worry about whether anyone knows how much you’re drinking…

It takes up so much mental space and energy.

Let me just tell you – from this side, having gotten past all that, it is SO much easier to just stop drinking. I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but getting back all that energy feels an awful lot like freedom.

Depression

Anyone who has quit drinking knows just how many tears come with that decision!

It’s normal for a very deep sadness to come with any kind of loss. Often in sobriety, that sadness shows up as feeling like nothing is fun or happy anymore, now that alcohol is no longer a part of it. It feels like you can’t enjoy any of the things you used to love, and it’s hard to believe things will ever feel good again.

This depression is often multiplied by the imbalance of “happiness chemicals” in your brain as your body adjusts to living without alcohol. Dopamine is the biggest culprit. Each time we give in to a craving for alcohol, we’re creating a massive flood of dopamine. As we continue, our body begins to depend on that flood of dopamine to feel good at all.

This means when we do pleasurable things that provide a normal amount of dopamine, it doesn’t have much of an effect.

When you combine these two aspects – the dopamine system being off-balance and the loss of alcohol – depression is a very normal response.

Over time, your dopamine levels will reset. You can help speed up the process by continuing to do things that are pleasurable, even if they don’t seem to actually affect on the depression. Regular, healthy doses of dopamine will start teaching your brain what it can now depend on.

And always – if depression lasts for more than a week or two, please see a medical professional. There’s no reason to suffer unnecessarily in a state of prolonged depression. Getting some medical support – even temporarily – will make this stage easier.

Anger

I think this one comes as a surprise to people.

Of course, anger is a tough emotion, and it’s one that comes up frequently in sobriety when we’re treated poorly or feel helpless or disrespected.

But there’s a different kind of anger – the one that’s based in grief.

This is the anger I wrote about above. The kind of anger that stems from not being able to drink. The anger that makes you want to stomp your feet on the ground like a child and shout, “It’s not fair!” Because in those moments, it feels like what you loved got taken away from you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

The only way to deal with this anger is to allow yourself to feel it.

Of course you’re angry! It makes perfect sense. What you’re dealing with isn’t fair, especially when you see other people who can just have a drink here and there and not have it send their life into a dumpster fire of chaos and self loathing. Go ahead and feel angry for a while.

Eventually, the anger will pass. But only if you lean into it, instead of trying to turn it off.

Acceptance

This is where it starts getting good.

Accepting the loss and deciding what you’re going to do about it is where the magic happens.

You can’t rush the process to get here. Likely, you’ll have to go through each of the previous emotions multiple times, and sometimes you’ll get to acceptance and then go back through them again. Moving through the grief of alcohol is a process – just like grieving anything or anyone else. But when you finally arrive in this state of acceptance, the fog lifts and you can start to see where you’re heading.

Acceptance is when you stop wishing things are different than they are.

It’s when you stop trying to change things you have no control over.

It’s being able to say “It’s not fair that this is how things ended up, but this is where I am. So what am I going to do about it?” It’s making the choice to start reflecting inward, understanding yourself and why you wanted so badly to escape your life. It’s choosing to do hard things and make hard changes, so you can move into a life that feels good to be living. Acceptance is seeing the void that alcohol left in your life, and finding things to fill that void that make life so good you would never want to ruin it by drinking.

It’s taking back your power.

Be patient with yourself

As with the grieving of anything else, grieving the loss of alcohol takes time.

Be gentle with yourself, and don’t try to rush anything. When you allow yourself to sit with whatever you’re feeling, it actually helps the painful emotion pass more quickly than it does if you try to fight it. As the emotions come up, try to name them. Understand where in the grief cycle you’re at. When you can notice it and name it, it will feel less overwhelming. You’ll be less likely to want to run from the feeling, and more capable of sitting with it.

It’s easy to want to rush this part of sobriety. But the old adage rings true – the only way out is through.