“Soberist coaching has given me resources, motivation and a sense of self-capability to influence my own well-being”

I AM Liisa, a 59-year-old university researcher and teacher. I must have realised a dozen years ago that I was drinking too much alcohol.

I HAD been almost sober until I was 40, but divorce, hard times in life and the awakening of traumatic childhood memories of an alcoholic family led me to pick up a can of beer so late in life. My addiction developed gradually, over a period of about 10-15 years. In the last five years, I can already talk about a problem, because I was drinking not only on weekends but also on weekday evenings.

HOWEVER, the corona era made drinking possible, as work was done purely remotely. Gradually, the urination started to become more and more hoppy. If a few cans of lonkeros or beer were sometimes enough, six or ten cans a night would be enough. Sometimes I’d go a week or two without drinking, until the same pace continued or accelerated. Towards the end, I noticed how the drinking progressed in cycles: a few weeks sober, and then a few weeks of almost constant drinking. I didn’t drink wine or spirits.

MY CONCERN was not visible to anyone except my spouse, who did little to intervene. He only saw the few cans he had drunk, not knowing that there were more empty and full cans in the cupboard stashes. While I was working I became quiet, kept to myself reading or doing crafts and went to bed early. Nobody knew how drunk I could be.
I didn’t drink in front of other people; colleagues, friends or my children, just by myself.

FEELING WATERLESS, melancholy and anxiety started to be a daily feeling. They didn’t help much during the non-drinking periods, but made me start drinking again and again. My work is not yet affected by my drinking, as I can decide independently when to do research and teach. Towards the end, I also started to quench the overstimulation and brain storm caused by work by drinking.

I became addicted to alcohol a few years ago, and attended AA groups, both online and face-to-face. I experienced a strong feeling of being an outsider, and I could not sign and label myself as an alcoholic according to a narrow conception of man. The idea of step work also remained unclear. I found it produced more ill-being than well-being in groups where there was no professional help available. I would also have liked to have had a joint discussion – not one-on-one conversations where people took out their bad feelings on each other. I left the meetings even more burdened and blamed myself for it.

THIS summer, I found research articles by Piia Koivumäki that dealt with the problem of substance abuse in a holistic way: as part of the human life course, and in relation to the physical, mental and psychological being of a person, as well as to the life situation, history and environment. This perspective gave me a whole new insight not only into the onset and progression of my own alcohol use, but also into the possibility of change.

WHEN I found out that Piia was a Soberist expert, I joined the coaching immediately. Now I have been a soberist for three months. I have gained resources, motivation and a sense of self-capacity to influence my own well-being, of which substance-free living is a part. I go to psychotherapy and do daily physical exercises, which I find help me a lot in facing and accepting emotions that I used to numb with booze. As a Soberist, therapy and exercise have a whole new impact.

The best thing about Soberist coaching is the COLLECTIVITY, the identification and use of your own resources, and the discussions with other participants. I recommend the Free Yourself from Wine with Ease and Joy training to anyone who is interested in a self-directed way of living a holistic, but holistic and well-being life, based on free choice and a holistic view of the human being.