WHAT’S IT’S LIKE TRYING TO STAY SOBER DURING A LOCKDOWN

THE ALCOHOL-THEMED MEMES AREN’T HELPING, SAYS CATHERINE RENTON

In the past fortnight I’ve developed a ritual. I walk to my nearby supermarket and wander up and down the aisles filled with booze. My hand hovers over a bottle of prosecco or I wonder how many cans of beer I could carry home.

This may seem like ordinary behaviour for some, but I’ve been sober from alcohol since January 2017. For the first time in 38 months, however, I can’t stop thinking about getting p-----.

Everything I once took for granted to manage my sobriety has been taken away. Eating out, travelling, going to the movies and having coffee with friends has been replaced with endless days of catastrophic thoughts, like: “Why not get drunk? No one will know. And if we’re all going to die…”

The booze-filled memes and the jokes that “alcohol kills germs” aren’t helping. Opening Instagram at 5pm feels like entering a virtual pub. It currently seems like everyone is having a party I’m not invited to.

Life feels too distressing and anxiety-ridden and I desperately wish I could drink to dull my senses.

While in-person recovery meetings have been cancelled, online communities have been offering help to those struggling with abstinence. Twelve-step programmes are holding recovery meetings on Zoom. Popular recovery site, Soberistas has an online forum with over 60,000 members, supporting each other through this trying time. Instagram is also full of sober-positive accounts you can follow for inspiration.

It took me going back through my diaries from the past three years to see that I’ve already experienced self-isolation, sober. In the first six months of recovery, I rarely left the house. I think that’s what’s triggered me recently – how much of selfisolation looks like early sobriety.

The next few weeks and months will be tricky, but I just have to take sobriety a day (or an hour) at a time. I’ve come too far to throw it all away.