Tip #20: Know a boomerang when you see one.
Because not everything coming back around is worth catching.
THE ART OF LIVING AN ALCOHOL-FREE LIFESTYLE
A series of one-off tips served with some straight talk, a bit of sass, and a penchant for not taking oneself or life too seriously.
Tip #20: Know a boomerang when you see one.
It literally has been over a year since I wrote one of these tips. Not sure how this is possible, considering over ten years ago I vowed never to stop talking about this?
But then I remembered that I don’t use words like never and forever, especially when it comes to this topic.
What I do is follow my head and heart. Not what is expected or wanted from the outside world. This is why there are such large chunks of time in between me throwing my words out into the ether and me just being in my life. Like right now. Like for the past year. Or five years if I am truly clocking it.
But then something stirs in me.
People living their lives without sharing them online have become quite rare. But I feel that may be changing. I feel more and more people are logging off and tuning into themselves. Can you feel that too? Or have I been logged off, navel-gazing too long?
There is this cultural push that has been growing, and it started with smoking cigarettes. The first kindling I noticed was reading a New Year's Eve IN/OUT list back in 2024, with smoking listed under the word IN. I balked. WTF?
Then, slowly, it started trickling in throughout the year. Now there are more and more people proudly smoking on TV, online, all around town. The recent article on The Cut Should We All Start Smoking Again in short, argues that everyone is staring at their phone and not talking to each other, but back when we were smoking, we at least stood outside together, talking, communing. Which, yes ok that is true, but also WTF.
Now don’t get me wrong, even as an oncology nurse, who used to be a NYC party girl who socially smoked when drinking, I can remember the appeal. Life, stress, inhale, release. Indeed, it sounds lovely at times. But I also don’t need to cover the idiocy of this either.
What I can speak to is that this is just one cog in the wheel of the boomerang effect we are about to feel when it comes to biohacking, optimizing every aspect of our lives, and, quite frankly, anything related to health and wellness.
Have you noticed?
Or maybe you are feeling it too?
Just a few months ago (here and again here), I wrote about how my sobriety has evolved. After that, I had many one-on-one conversations with other women who had quit drinking but who were now questioning other substances and how they may or may not fit into their sobriety. What that looks like, what it means. While I cannot and will not tell anyone what their choices should be, I do know that the more we move offline and start tuning in to our very individualized lives, the more in tune we become with our own needs, wants, and desires. And move away from what is known as mimetic desire.
Side note: This Substack article by Luke Burgis on mimetic desire is quite thought-provoking.
So it makes sense that the more offline and less vocal I am about sobriety, the more in tune I can hear and feel my own needs. Now I am still very much a non-drinker and don’t see myself drinking in the foreseeable future. But again, I don’t use words like never and forever. And I have, out of curiosity, explored other substances that technically (depending on who you ask, I suppose) have disqualified me from calling myself sober. Which is fine because I have always leaned towards alcohol-free and teetotaler since the beginning, even if I have the umbrella brand name, The Sober Glow.
So where is this going? Over the past few years, we've seen more and more people online promoting the choice to go alcohol-free out of the realm of recovery and addiction, and more for a healthy lifestyle (yes, guilty, I have been online pushing this since 2016), along with their 150 g of daily protein intake, weightlifting, and peptide-promoting social accounts. Now we are seeing a kindling of content that life needs to be enjoyed rather than optimized. And this kindling is getting more and more fuel.
Which, to be clear, I think is wonderful! Because hell yes, life needs to be enjoyed.
And yet.
This bounce-back is most certainly coming for the alcohol-free world. There is no doubt in my mind that people will start drinking again. Sadly, it may even be the ones who truly benefit from not drinking. And this is why I may be sticking my head out more often on this topic. Because no matter what is in vogue or the latest and greatest in content, this choice changed my life, and I will forever be grateful I made it. And I will not let this boomerang effect, or trend, or any single thing outside myself change this.
XX, Mia