What I Do Now When I Have a Bad Day Instead of Drinking

What I Do Now When I Have a Bad Day Instead of Drinking

Take some of these for yourself

Photo by Christian Erfurt on Unsplash

For years, a bad day would go one way.

Something would go wrong. It would trigger negative feelings and anxiety, by 6pm, I’d have a glass of wine in my hand. I didn’t know what else to do with the feeling. The first glass of wine wouldn’t help, but the second would fix whatever I was feeling,

It’s been 3.5 years since I gave up drinking. Somewhere in that time, something changed. I stopped having as many bad days in the first place. My anxiety, which used to feel constant, is now something I only have to sit with occasionally.

Bad days still happen. I’m human, not a robot. The difference now isn’t that life stopped throwing things at me. It’s that I have better coping mechanisms for what to do when it does.

Here’s what that looks like.

I Let Myself Sit With It

This was the hardest one to learn, and it took a long time. My instinct is that wine will get rid of that bad feeling, it always has, I’ve never had to sit with it.

Now I try to just let the feeling be there. I don’t try to over analyse anything. I just notice it. I feel rubbish. This is embarrassment. This is anxiety. Naming it and staying with it does something that wine couldn’t, it lets the feeling move through instead of being swept under the carpet, where it comes back for me later.

I Let Myself Get Upset

I’ve always had strong emotions. I could cry after a few glasses of wine. But sometimes it would numb the feelings just enough. Now I can cry sober if I need to. Say out loud how I’m feeling. For a long time, feeling upset felt like something to fix immediately. Drinking was the quickest way to do it. Now I’ve learned that everyone gets upset, it’s a part of being human. It doesn’t always need to be fixed immediately.

Ironically, giving myself permission to be upset usually shortens how long I stay upset. Suppressed feelings are the ones that linger.

I Go for a Run

This is the one that’s most effective. When a bad day has my nervous system running in circles, feeling restless, anxious, out of control, sitting still isn’t always the best option for me. Getting all of the adrenaline out with a run makes all the difference. My body needs an outlet too, not just my mind.

Running gives the anxious energy somewhere to go.

Thirty minutes is all I need to turn a bad day into an okay or a good one. It’s the quickest way to change my brain chemistry. My thinking becomes clearer, more positive.

I Do Something Nice for Someone Else

I was always told since I was a child that giving is good, it makes others feel good and it makes ourselves feel good. Doing something for someone else whether that’s texting a friend just to check in, picking up something they need, offering a favour, saying something nice, giving money to someone who needs it, forces the focus away from myself.

It’s not about performing positivity or pretending I’m not struggling. It’s that being useful to someone else reminds me I’m not just a person having a bad day, I’m still a person who has something to offer. Also that other people might be having a bad day too, and I might be able to make a small positive difference.

I Make Nice Plans for the Future

Bad days have a way of making me doom. In the middle of one, it can feel like this feeling, this problem, this version of my life is permanent. So I push my focus to the future. I’ll book something fun I want to do, or even just plan a trip without making the actual bookings. The process of planning something I really want to do changes my mindset and makes me feel hope and happiness for the future.

It doesn’t need to be big. The point isn’t the plan itself, it’s the proof it gives me that there’s a future, and that I’m still someone who gets to look forward to things. A bad day stops feeling like the whole story when I’ve got something specific and good waiting a few days or weeks out.

The Main Difference

None of these things fix a bad day the way a drink used to promise to. They don’t erase the feeling instantly. What they do is let me move through the day as myself, instead of checking out and letting the version of me who drinks handle it.

3.5 years in, and the hard days haven’t disappeared. They’re much more few and far between, and when they do come I don’t immediately think of a wine first. I have other coping mechanisms now, that are much more effective in the long term.

If you’re early in this and today is a bad day, sit with it, let yourself be upset, move your body, do something kind, and make one small plan for later this week. It won’t feel like enough. But it adds up faster than you’d think.