I Never Imagined Myself Taking a Trip Without Alcohol
What I learned while traveling sober
I like to think of Charleston, South Carolina as New Orleans-light. I can satisfy my need for deep-south, gritty, gothic, haunted ambiance without feeling like the devil is following my footsteps.
I’m the kid who spent one night in New Orleans and changed my flight the next day. This empath just can’t take that much voodoo. But Charleston — I feel at home there. I’ve spent a lot of time in that city, but until last week, I’d never experienced it sober.
My aunt and uncle restored an old house in the city center and I remember them talking about how strange it was, coming from a county where blue laws closed the bars on Sundays, to be at a Charleston Baptist church function and have the pastor hand them a beer.
I visited them every chance I could as a teenager. We spent our days on a boat, exploring the creeks and marshes, anchoring in the shadow of a lighthouse where sand dollars and dolphins touched my legs in the surf. My aunt and uncle with their idyllic life on the coast were the parents I always wanted. They didn’t care if I drank.
As the years went on and I used their house as a landing pad in college, I never had to hide my hangover. If I found myself stranded in the middle of the night without a ride home from a party, I didn’t have to pretend to be sober. No boundaries — they took me as I was.
So, I really had no memory of being sober in Charleston. Until now.
I hate the phrase “new normal”
I’m a historic night drinker. I had a few months before I embarked on my journey to figure out what was making me anxious. I’d found a new routine to my sober life at home. All those hours that used to be spent drinking until bedtime had a new order firmly engrained with reading and working and writing. I didn’t really think about drinking anymore unless there was a crisis or a blip in my carefully crafted evening routine.
My partner and I had chosen to quit drinking at the same time mid-lockdown. His experience was a lot harder physically than mine. We respected the sovereignty of each other’s journeys, but to be honest, I spent many more hours worrying about him backsliding than I did focusing on myself.
I became convinced that he would start drinking again on this trip. The worry of it consumed me. It wasn’t until we were on the road that I realized that the whole time, I really had been worried about myself. Projection is real.
We planned to stay with friends who had secured a house on the beach for the first few days and we both knew that there would be drinking all around us. We just didn’t talk about it.
My entire adult life, the first hour of arrival at any destination was spent figuring out how to find wine. When did the shops close? Would I have enough for the evening? Should I buy a box and not bottles? Would I need to share? It was weird, driving the main stretch onto Edisto Island not charting my internal GPS to the stores.
The bonus that I discovered on the five-hour drive — I didn’t have to wonder if anyone was too buzzed to drive. Conversation was deeper, richer. We invented elaborate plot lines for stories and soundtracks to go along with them. It wasn’t simply a matter of getting from point A to point B. We took our time and enjoyed the journey. I never did that when I was drinking.
It’s not snobbery — it’s sanity
The first full day at the beach home, I was flummoxed. I felt unsettled, displaced, and triggered by everything. My partner and I kept our distance from each other. I tried to engage in conversation with our lovely hosts but kept walking away to regroup in another room or explore the shore by myself.
Alcohol was readily available on every countertop, and it had always been my crutch to tame awkwardness. I was acutely aware of every gesture my hands made, my choice of words, my timing. Hot tea became my stand-in. I selected, poured, and sipped it with deliberate focus.
When I could escape, I walked, and walked, and walked. Occasionally, my partner joined me and we invented themes to our search for shells — let’s find all the tiny spirals, the ones with holes in them that I can turn into necklaces, conch fragments, was that a shark’s tooth?
We discovered that we really liked walking together sober. We learned things about each other that we didn’t know and took delight in catering to each other’s desires. We were attentive to each other in a way that we had never been before, outside the daily existence of life that we had carved sober at home. This was positive and lovely and real.
We have to take this home with us, I thought, like the infinity spiral of a shell with the echo of the waves caught in its chambers, the perfect souvenir.
Back in the rooms of the beach house, I had to get over the way I was judging myself for appearing aloof. That knowledge opened a chasm of introspection. I realized how much time I spent caring about what other people thought of me and how I had used alcohol as a way to buffer my fears and inhibitions. I might have rationally noticed this about myself in the past, but on this trip I allowed myself to finally sink down into it and own it.
I gave myself permission to do what I needed to do in order to feel settled in my sobriety. If staying away from the house and exploring the world was necessary, so be it.
That permission was something that I could take home with me. Coming back full-swing, I realized how much of my schedule was dictated by my need to please others. I ran my own business and so much of that success happened because my clients came first. That old model was also supported by mind-blanking drinking every night.
A sober trip away from my usual routine highlighted the glaring spaces in my daily life that needed help.
The easiest ghost to spot
My partner and I left the beach house after a few days and drove an hour to downtown Charleston, proper. I lucked out with a last-minute Airbnb that gave us a carriage house to ourselves and miles of the city to walk.
Walking, again, showed the way — literally and figuratively.
Not spending my days hungover, my sleep schedule was healthy and I rose rested and ready to explore each morning.
Eating — why are we not talking about sober eating more? Since ditching alcohol, I ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner like a normal person and Charleston was a foodie shrine. I spent my early career as a food writer and while I enjoyed food, I was more in it for the cocktails.
Walking for hours through the cobblestone streets with draping jasmine in full bloom, my senses were attuned to the environment in a way I’ve never experienced before. The old buildings, doors opened to the spring breeze, told stories with their scents, like a book of secrets that had been locked in an attic.
We walked, and we ate, and we talked. We created our itinerary as we went, signing up for ghost tours, visiting all the places we’d partied in our younger years, and looking at them with fresh eyes.
When we dropped our key on the counter and stepped out into the morning to make our way home, I felt refreshed and full of life — the way I’ve always been told a trip is supposed to make you feel.
I’d spent so many years keeping up appearances despite a crippling dependence on alcohol that I could never see that the thing keeping me from happiness and fulfillment was me. The ghost in the mirror, the one the had been trying to get my attention for years — the ghost was my addiction. But it’s so easy to rationalize a spirit into non-existence. All the physical evidence in the world does nothing without belief.
Now that I’m home
I spread the shells we’d gathered across the dining room table. I organize them into categories of sizes and shapes and sip warm tea as I move them around. I knot a ribbon into a hole worn perfectly by the ocean. I can’t decide which shell I want to wear around my neck.
I do this for a while, unaware of time passing or other pressing items on my to-do list. I am perfectly contented, warm, safe.
I am sober.
I know myself well enough to understand that I will always be fearful of the future and grasping for benign addictions to keep my hands busy: knitting, reading, walking, tea. But, I also know that I have a choice in how I live my days, and in this moment, I don’t need complicated figures to tally the empirical evidence of how much richer my life is without alcohol.
I choose to travel sober.
Kimberly Carter is a writer and equine-assisted life coach who works virtually and in-person from Bramblewood Stables. You can read more of her work here.
