I grew up in a small country town where alcohol was highly prevalent, or maybe it was just being a child of the 80's and 90's? Whatever it was, alcohol was everywhere and used as a coping mechanism for everything.

Heading into my 20s and 30s I partied like it was 1999 (the year I graduated high school funnily enough) until I went into the Nursing profession, became a mother, and then isolated my drinking.

Wine Mummy memes were everywhere which I used as a good excuse to get through motherhood and working a stressful job.

I was downing more than the ‘average person’ weekly and sometimes nightly to cope with stress of life. That was my excuse not to rein it in; stress.

My adult life coping strategies consisted of one thing– alcohol. That was it. Yet ironically, I knew it was not working for me, and it was in fact making my life worse.

Anxiety about whether I had texted, called, posted something on Facebook. I would check my phone in the morning – anxiety. I hated that everywhere I looked people drank and I just wanted to be able to cope with life and have fun without alcohol being everywhere I looked.

I was constantly overthinking everything, my mind always a race with the ‘50 open internet tabs’ inside my head, moving from one tab to the next never fully knowing what I was supposed to be doing.

Alcohol ‘soothed’ and quietened my busy stressed mind. Or so I thought. Little did I know back then that alcohol actually makes anxiety a hell of a lot worse.

 In the last 12-18 months I have been reading a lot of ‘quit lit’, talking to other people about how they felt about their own alcohol intake.

Often, I would hear the same story: ‘it’s how I learn to cope with life,’ ‘sober people are boring,’ ‘ I don’t trust a sober person how could you live life without alcohol?’.

This just did not sit well with me, I knew this was not true as I had met many happy and fun sober people.

In my years as a Nurse, I had seen the devastation addiction can do to a person. I did not want to become another statistic. So instead of just reading books and asking other people questions. I started to ask myself, where do all the sober people spend time together?

I had been so stuck in the ‘all adults hang out in bars’ mentality. I did not know what a normal functioning adult did for fun.

Until I came across Untoxicated, I found them initially on Facebook and then realised they did meetups. While I have not been to as many in person meetup as some, the ones I have attended have been so much fun and filled with SO many friendly people! It is just nice to know there is some friendly faces there for me when I need to get out and about, booze free.

I love talking to people and meeting new people. Even if I can be a little introverted initially, I like to push my limits of introversion. The Facebook group is filled with lovely supportive people, the meetups give you the opportunity to get off your phone and go meet people in person. I know that community is what helps people to feel reconnected to themselves and others.

So far I am loving my sober journey - I wish I’d known earlier of the link between anxiety and alcohol, I could have saved myself a lot of mental angst, but better late than never!

Kristy is the author of Confessions of a Professional Overthinker, a memoir/narrative of the dual world between The Irrational Mind (T.I.M) and a Rational mind or (R.A.D) and how one woman decided to find a way to gain control over her life via a deep dive into the deep inner workings of her mind.

www.kristyriggall.com