Adele Is Right: Quitting Drinking Is A Great Way To Get To Know Yourself
Alcohol can stop you from understanding what you truly think and feel
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Self-discovery gets a bad rap nowadays. It’s believed to be a luxury, an indulgence for the lucky few who can afford round-the-world Eat Pray Love journeys, posh yoga retreats, and unlimited kale smoothies.
There is some truth to that, however, self-discovery often has less to do with the experiences you can gain and more to do with the things you’re willing to give up.
For Adele, that meant letting go of alcohol.
“Once I realized I had a lot of work to do on myself, I stopped drinking,” Adele told Oprah during her CBS special, where she debuted songs from her new studio album 30. Among other themes, 30 is a record of Adele’s journey of self-discovery, which she embarked on after the collapse of her marriage with ex-husband Simon Konecki.
In several promotional interviews, including the one with Oprah, Adele revealed that her drinking escalated following the breakup. But as she began to rebuild a healthier relationship with herself, she made several lifestyle changes, including quitting drinking. “That’s one great way of really getting to know yourself,” Adele admitted. (Her sobriety stint lasted for six months, she previously told Rolling Stone).
This too may sound like a cliché, a bit like an Instagram motivational quote: a phrase that carries little substance and even less practical merit.
And yet, Adele’s revelation is much more perceptive (and pragmatic) than it sounds.
When you drink too much, you start to doubt basic things about yourself.
As Adele opened up to Oprah about her drinking, I was reminded of a chapter in Caroline Knapp’s excellent addiction memoir, Drinking: A Love Story.
“One of the first things you hear in AA — one of the first things that makes core — gut-level sense — is that in some deep and important personal respects you stop growing when you start drinking alcoholically,” she wrote.
Knapp believed this misunderstanding of the self could be all-encompassing. “You don’t even know the most basic things about yourself — what you’re afraid of, what feels good and bad, what you need in order to feel comforted and calm, “she wrote. “Because you’ve never given yourself a chance, a clear, sober chance, to find out.”
Unlike Knapp, Adele has never used the word “alcoholic” to describe herself or her drinking. It’s not a word I identify with either, despite having had a toxic relationship with booze.
This is a topic for another day, but in the context of self-discovery, I don’t think labeling your drinking matters as much as getting clear with yourself about the reasons why you drink.
Some people are using alcohol to erase themselves.
I know all too well how booze can hinder meaningful introspection — and that’s because I sought out the self-effacing qualities of the substance.
I was drinking alcohol so that I wouldn’t get to know myself. That was the whole point.
Self-discovery was terrifying because it meant getting intimately acquainted with the person I was right now, not some elaborate fantasy of a woman who had never existed. And the right now version of myself was unacceptable to me. I wanted nothing to do with her. Worse: I wanted to suppress her.
And wine did an excellent job at that.
Not only would a glass of Sauvignon Blanc distract me from the piece of sh*t I thought I was, but it made the ideal version of myself feel more powerful, more real. In states of intoxication, I could conjure her up, and at first, I liked what I saw: someone who was effortlessly fun and witty and less socially awkward with people. Prettier, too.
And so, alcohol was doubly inebriating, as I wasn’t just getting drunk on white wine — I was getting drunk on a version of myself that didn’t exist.
Alcohol can stop you from knowing what you really think and feel.
Because I started drinking in this way when I was 19, it wasn’t until I took my first extended break from alcohol at age 29 (for eight months) that I began to get clarity on who I actually was.
For over a decade, I had repeatedly changed careers, friends, and political views, to match an identity that was always in flux. It felt incredibly disorientating, especially as my self-doubt got worse as the years went by. Even among close friends, I didn’t know how to be myself and struggled to voice my opinion, even about trivial things, like whether I liked a movie I’d recently watched.
In Drinking: A Love Story, Knapp explained that this is typical behavior for problem drinkers. “They never really get the chance to know how they feel about anything,” she wrote. “We learn to pretend we have opinions because deep in our own hearts, we really don’t.”
And so naturally, I dreaded filling in “About Me” sections or talking about myself in general. I never knew what to write apart from “wine lover” or “craft beer enthusiast.” At least I knew that part was true. It was also the reason why I had no other hobbies to speak of.
Although I can now see that drinking was poisoning my relationship with myself, it took several months of sobriety to realize that. I’m almost one year alcohol-free, and I’m still uncovering more reasons why I drank the way I did.
But here’s the good news: if you feel like alcohol might be sabotaging your sense of self but quitting drinking forever doesn’t feel realistic for you right now, that’s ok. You can start by taking breaks — say, one month, three months, or six months at a time like Adele did, see how you feel, and take it from there.
This article is part of my sobriety series, where I examine society’s relationship to alcohol and my own. If you’d like stories like this in your inbox, consider subscribing to my newsletter on Medium.
