We are the choices that we make

You can either watch me vlog about this and / or read about it below, the choice is yours!

We arrived at Nosara after a long, five-hour drive from Santa Teresa. Steve was feeling stressed out earlier on in the holiday and decided that he ‘deserved’ a beer, so his ‘one year no beer’ is now out of the window. He doesn’t have a problem with alcohol and can enjoy the odd drink here and there, but I was a bit shocked that he didn’t last the distance; I thought he would, but apparently, that holiday beer is just too hard to resist.

I noticed straight away that the hotel we are staying at had Kombucha on tap, which I was excited about.  We rushed down to the beach to get the last of the sunset and on our rerun, we settled down for a drink at the bar.

Steve ordered a local passionfruit craft beer and I enjoyed my locally brewed Kombucha, which was served in an ice cold beer glass. We were chatting about how much money we must have saved on this holiday, as usually on a evening we’d drink a couple of bottles of wine together before wobbling back to our room, waking each other up throughout the night, desperate for a refill of water to ease the dehydration. This holiday was different, when Steve and I have had a drink we’ve really enjoyed it and made it last.  

I’d spotted something else on the menu, a ‘Hibiscus Sour’ alongside the Kombucha and the coffees (see pic above), I made the assumption that this must be alcohol free because of its placement. I was in the holiday mood and after a mildly stressful day traveling I said to Steve ‘let’s go crazy and treat ourselves to another drink’, excited to have so many options which felt a bit different.  

I ordered my drink and the lady behind the bar hadn’t made one before so was following the instructions carefully. She got all her ingredients out of the fridge and then mixed them together giving them all a little shake at the end. I bounced over to Steve with his beer and my fancy looking drink and we did the ceremonial ‘cheers’ and then I took a sip…it tasted amazing, my tastebuds felt like they’d come alive…however, it also tasted alcoholic. I took a couple of sips and then stopped and said to Steve, this REALLY tastes like it has alcohol in it. I passed it over to him to try, hoping that he’d tell me that it was all in my head and how great it was that I’d discovered another fab alcohol free option…but unfortunately he agreed.

I hesitantly went over to the bar and said to the bar lady ‘This drink is amazing, might I ask what ingredients are in this?’ I HOPED that she wouldn’t say anything alcoholic. I mean why would it be on a list of non alcoholic drinks. I then noticed that the list was titled SPECIALS and that this drink was a little bit pricier than the others. BALLS, the realization that it might be alcoholic hit me like a tone of bricks. One by one the lady goes through the ingredients with me, lemon..yep... syrup mix…cool…she then points to the Hendricks Gin bottle…GIN...NOOOOOOOOO WTAF. At no point had she poured gin into a glass and then added mixers to it, it had all come from the fridge and looked like fruity bits and bobs, all alcohol free and 100% allowed.

I walked over to Steve, still clutching my drink and he could see the look of pure disappointment on my face. I was not only disappointed that I couldn’t drink this drink that I REALLY liked the taste off, but that I hadn’t checked the ingredients first. I always ask if something is alcohol free…why not this time? I thought long and hard about finishing that drink…I am not going to lie, the following things crossed my mind…what harm would it do? It was only one. I mean I WAS on holiday, I wasn’t doing the charity challenge any more. I wasn’t letting any one else down. I think Steve was genuinely shocked by how hard I found the whole thing, after all, surely Sober Jo doesn’t think about having alcohol any more, she’s having far too much fun being sober. As much as this is the case, most of the time, I am human and I had a lot of fun times with an alcoholic drink in my hand, especially on holiday and I guess old habits die hard. It took will power to Stop myself, I knew that I had to pour it away..it felt like kind of a big deal, it was a big deal. One of the things that I learnt was that It’s not always going to be easy, there will always be times when you question everything and that’s OK. We are our choices and I chose to pour the drink away. I had to, I couldn’t risk throwing everything away for one drink.  How would I have felt the next morning? The shame and guilt could have been enough to send me sideways. Who knows how my mindset would have changed. One drink could have quite easily led to a holiday of drinks and slowly but surely I am back to square one…habitually needing a drink for every occasion.

Before pouring it away, I also found myself trying to encourage Steve to drink it, I couldn’t see it go to waste, but he turned it down in favour of a fresh morning. Which takes me back to the fact that he doesn’t need to do a challenge, as nice as it was that he was going to support me through taking a break for a year, he knows his limits and I have now proved to myself that I know what’s good for me - every day I choose to be sober.