Ep 145: If You’re Afraid Life Won’t Feel Good Without Alcohol — Here’s What I Learned the Hard Way

If you're scared to quit drinking because you’re not sure who you’d be without alcohol, this episode is for you.

I’m taking you back to my first day of sobriety—not the polished version, but the shaky, uncertain moment when I wasn’t sure I could do it, or if I even wanted to, because alcohol still felt like comfort, connection, and relief.

In this episode, I share:

• What I believed alcohol was doing for me
 • Why quitting felt terrifying and the moment staying the same became even scarier
 • How understanding the brain changed how I viewed cravings and shame
 • Why AA helped me get sober but didn’t fully restore my identity
 • The shift that happened when faith became the source of healing, not just part of my life
 • How removing alcohol often uncovers deeper wounds that need care, not condemnation
 • Why freedom isn’t just “not drinking”—it’s no longer needing alcohol to feel okay

I also share why I now coach Catholic women through this process—not by pushing willpower, but by helping them build awareness, rewire their identity, and heal through faith and neuroscience.

If you are sober-curious, newly alcohol-free, or simply wondering whether your relationship with alcohol is costing you peace, you are not alone.

Ready for support? You can:
 • Join the Sacred Sobriety Lab community
 • Apply for 1:1 Catholic life and sobriety coaching
 • Book a free clarity call to explore what path fits you best

Healing isn’t instant—but it is possible. And it doesn’t require perfection. It just requires a beginning.

If you have ever...

• Struggled with the social pressures associated with alcohol use.
• Felt isolated, alone, and unsure of how to break the cycle.
• Experienced shame and frustration after drinking.
• Told yourself, “I’ll never get this. It’s no use.”

Then this 5-Day Sacred Sobriety Kick Start is for you! 

Each day, you’ll receive a short video with simple tasks to help you analyze your drinking habits with clarity.

I'm here for you. I'm praying for you. You are NOT alone!

Please subscribe to this podcast so you won't miss a thing!

👉🏻 JOIN THE FREE 5-DAY KICK START
https://the-catholic-sobriety-coach.myflodesk.com/5-day-sobriety-kick-start

👉🏻 JOIN THE Sacred Sobriety Lab
https://sacredsobrietylab.com

👉🏻 Book a Clarity Call
https://app.paperbell.com/checkout/packages/38683

Visit my Website: https://thecatholicsobrietycoach.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Naming The Fear And The Two Doors
• 2:05 Facing Consequences And Losing Old Circles
• 4:30 Cravings, The Brain, And Shame
• 6:40 How AA Helped And Where It Fell Short
• 9:15 Moving From Sobriety To Identity In Christ
• 13:44 Early Sobriety Is Hard And Honest
• 16:34 Rewiring Habits With Faith And Neuroscience
• 18:49 Yes, It Gets Easier: Mind, Body, Spirit
• 21:54 Joy Without Alcohol And Real Belonging
• 24:04 Freedom, Worth, And A New Self
• 25:39 Inviting Support: Lab, Coaching, Call
• 28:04 Closing Encouragement And Next Steps]

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to the Catholic Sobriety Podcast, the go-to resource for women seeking to have a deeper understanding of the role alcohol plays in their lives. Women who are looking to drink less or not at all for any reason. I am your host, Christy Walker. I'm a wife, mom, and a joy-filled Catholic. And I am the Catholic sobriety coach. And I'm so glad you're here. If I'm being completely honest, my day one wasn't brave and it wasn't inspirational. It was shaky. It was unsure. And it was full of bargaining. I didn't just wake up magically ready to change, but I was determined. I just got so tired of pretending the alcohol wasn't affecting me, that it wasn't the cause of so many poor choices and bad things that were going on in my life. But I was equally afraid of what life might look like without it. So if you're there right now, somewhere between, I think I probably need to stop and, but what does that even mean for my life? I get it. I've lived that tension. And I want to take you back with me because there are things that I know now that I really wish someone could have whispered into my fear back then. So today, I'm not giving you steps or statistics. I'm talking to you, the woman who's scared she might lose something if she lets go of drinking, and even more scared of what might happen if she doesn't. Now day one felt like standing in the middle of a room with two doors. One was labeled stay the same, and one was labeled walk into the unknown. And neither of them looked safe. Because staying the same meant admitting the alcohol actually had more control over me than I wanted to admit. It meant that things would probably get worse for me. That maybe I hadn't hit a quote unquote rough bottom like other people that I had seen or heard about or read about. But it was coming for me. On the other hand, quitting meant facing life without the thing that I had been leaning on to cope, to try to heal things, to numb out, to have relief, to give me a community. And when I started, even though I was determined, I wasn't confident. I wasn't even sure I could do it. I remember thinking, what if I try and fail again? Because I had tried many times before. And then I was thinking, what if I lose my friends? Which I did, but that was okay because they were just a bunch of drinkers anyway. And that was not who I could surround myself with at that time. And I thought, what is going to happen when I'm telling people no thanks or I don't drink, or how are they gonna look at me? Am I gonna have to explain myself every single time I interact with people who are drinking or where alcohol is present? It felt like I was cutting off my only escape route, cutting off my connection to other people. And I didn't know if there was another way out. There wasn't a heroic moment. It was more like exhaustion. I just couldn't do it anymore. I didn't feel strong. I just felt done. I was done pretending that it was no big deal. I was done waking up wondering what I had done the night before, who I had talked to, what I had said, who did I need to apologize to? And I was done waking up wondering why I kept repeating the same pattern over and over again. I was also done waking up feeling terrible with anxiety, with headaches, with fatigue, with mental fog. And I couldn't do it anymore. I was asked once, were you more afraid of living without alcohol or afraid of staying the same? And honestly, I was afraid of both because staying the same felt like slowly sinking into something I couldn't fully control. And that scared me. You know, I've heard of stories of these trainers. Actually, there was a recent story of like a tiger trainer, and he had done it for probably decades, and it was just reported that one of his tigers killed him. And that's kind of the way that I think about my relationship with alcohol. Like I was just playing with fire, or I was just cuddling up to this tiger for comfort, but it could have devoured me. At the same time, living without alcohol felt like losing my safety net. That one thing that helped me to take this edge of stress off, to fit in, to have confidence, to, you know, let go of social pressure, release emotional heaviness, to forget all the things that I had done just for a minute, just to quiet my mind. So again, even though I was determined, it wasn't a clean or confident decision. It was more like choosing the fear that felt slightly more hopeful. For me, the fear of staying the same just felt like slowly dying inside. Like my world kept getting smaller and smaller. The fear of quitting, though, that at least felt like there might be a chance at something better. It was like that light in the darkness. And even though I had no idea what that would look like, I do remember thinking, if I keep going like this, if I keep keep drinking, I already know how that story ends. But if I stop, maybe maybe there's another kind of life on the other side. Maybe the life that I have always dreamed of, a husband and children, and just that beautiful life that I had always hoped for and wished for, even as a young girl, could be possible. I think that's really what helped me take the steps necessary to break free and untangle myself from alcohol. In the beginning, cravings felt like proof that I was weak. I would say things like, I have no willpower, I don't have an off switch. And every time I wanted a drink, I would just, it would just reinforce in my mind like, I can't do this. You need it. You're not going to be able to do this. You've tried before and failed. And what I didn't understand at the time, that I understand now, is that my brain wasn't working against me. It was just running the same program that I had taught it through repetition. I didn't know that alcohol had trained my brain to expect relief in a certain way. And that the craving was simply my nervous system asking for regulation, the only way that it knew how, because that's how I had taught it. Back then, I thought craving meant failure. I wish someone had told me, no, no. This is your brain trying to find the safest, quickest way it remembers. But you can teach it a new way. And if I had understood that dopamine, stress hormones, and habit loops were a normal part of the healing process, I wouldn't have carried so much shame. I wouldn't have panicked every time the urge appeared. Instead, I could have said, This is just my brain asking for help. And how am I going to answer that in a healthier way? Now, understanding the brain doesn't make the process easy, but it definitely makes it less personal. And when that shame drops, then your confidence rises. This is something that Alcoholics Anonymous helped me do. I actually have a podcast episode called AA Helped Me Get Sober, but the Lord Healed Me. So if you want to know more in depth about my experiences in AA, then please go and listen to that podcast episode. But briefly speaking, I will say that Alcoholics Anonymous helped me change my thinking. And even though we didn't talk about things like dopamine, stress hormones, habit loops, and all of those things and the why behind what keeps people drinking and all those types of things, it did help me with its slogans. It helped me continually re-reinforce in my mind that I am powerless once I take a drink of alcohol. When I went to AA, my life was unmanageable. But as soon as I made that decision to stop drinking and start attending meetings, I was slowly taking my power back with the Lord's help, of course, because believe me, I did not want to be there in those rooms. It was only by God's grace and the power of the Holy Spirit that I ended up there and kept going back to those meetings. I know it's not for everyone. It was really the only other option besides rehab at that time that I could have, you know, gone to or sought help from. But that renewal of the mind that Alcoholics Anonymous gave me and praying and asking the Lord to remove my desire to drink, which thanks be to God, He did. Those two things are what started my journey and gave me a really good foundation to move forward. I do feel like I carried so much shame forever, like until very recently, when I really started diving into the neuroscience behind what alcohol does to our brains and our bodies, how it impacts our brains and our bodies. Just knowing the alcohol starts shutting down our prefrontal cortex, which is the part of our brain that tells us to stop. Hello? Yes, I didn't have an off switch because I was dimming the light. I wasn't, I was, it was like dimming the light switch. The more I drank, the more that light got turned down, down, down until pretty much I blacked out or passed out. But I wish I had known that before because I just think that it would have relieved a lot of shame. So as I stated in the beginning, one of the things I was afraid of if I quit drinking was a loss of community or loss of friendships. And AA was one of the first places where I didn't feel alone in what I was going through. It gave me a structure at the time when my emotions and everything felt really chaotic. And it helped me see patterns in my behavior. It taught me accountability and it helped me face the truth that, yeah, alcohol had a grip on my life. And I want to be really, really clear. AA helped me get sober. It gave me a start. And for that, I'll always be grateful. But over time, something started to feel incomplete. I kept doing the steps, but I didn't feel fully healed. I was learning how to stop drinking, yes. But I wasn't learning who I was without it. I was trying to manage my behavior without restoring my identity. And eventually saying, hi, I'm an alcoholic over and over again started to wear on me. It kept me tethered to the very thing I was trying to move beyond. And at first, I did need to name that struggle. I did. I needed to own it. But after a while, I didn't want that struggle to be my whole identity. Even though I couldn't articulate it at the time, I just knew that that wasn't who I was. I knew that Jesus didn't call me to live defined by my sin or my greatest mistakes. I wasn't trying to deny my past, but I also didn't want to live as though I was forever chained by it. Now faith was there. It was in the background. It was just kind of part of my life, but it slowly and subtly became the source of my healing. I needed restoration. I needed someone stronger than me to hold what I couldn't fix even after I quit drinking. I started to see that alcohol had actually not been the root issue that I thought it was. It was how I was trying to soothe the pain and the fear and the pressure and old wounds that I never fully brought into the light. And that's when my faith shifted. Slowly, it was a slog, y'all. It was a slog. It did not happen all at once. It was like running through mud. But Jesus was there with me. And pretty soon he didn't just become someone I believed in. He became the one that I trusted to reshape who I was becoming. And that's where God met me. Not in the action of quitting, but in the rebuilding phase. He didn't just remove something. You can't just take something away without filling it with something else. And I could feel him rebuilding me mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, putting people in my path that I needed to speak life into me, to speak truth. And that's when my identity started to change. And slowly I wasn't an alcoholic just white knuckling it, trying to cling to control. I was actually a beloved daughter of God, equipped, equipped, and learning how to walk in freedom. Even when my emotions still felt raw. Even when I couldn't turn to alcohol to numb. But that shift from managing sobriety to actually stepping into identity was when the healing process truly began for me. One of the biggest surprises in early sobriety was realizing that quitting didn't make everything better right away. Sometimes it actually, I said sometimes, but often it made things feel a lot harder at first because when alcohol was gone, all the reasons that I used it, stress, pressure to hold things together, emotional fatigue, unresolved wounds or memories were still there. Only now I had to face them without my best buddy alcohol. And that's when I understood that alcohol had just been this band-aid that I kept slapping over deeper pain and exhaustion. And this is where a lot of women get discouraged or think that something's wrong with them because they're still overwhelmed or emotional after quitting. But nothing is wrong. That's actually the point when healing work begins. You think about when you go to the gym and you start a new workout routine and you're really sore, you go back to the gym and you're sore again the next day. It's kind of painful at first. That transformation is painful. But if you keep at it with your consistency, taking pauses, figuring out what's working, what's not, pretty soon, it doesn't hurt so much. And things get a lot easier. Now, when I first stopped drinking, I didn't have someone walking with me in that space really. I had structure and I had steps. I did have a sponsor for a little bit, but she went MIA. And even when I did have a sponsor, I didn't really have someone who would help me unpack the why behind my drinking or guiding me into emotional awareness through the lens of grace rather than shame. I didn't really know how to replace alcohol, not just as a habit, but as a coping identity. And that is a big part of why I do the work that I do. They say that often our desire to help or serve comes from a place of wishing that we had had that when we were where that person is. And that's so true about what I do now. Because I don't help women just white knuckle their way through sobriety. I know from experience and working with many, many women that willpower alone eventually burns out. So instead, my work is to help them get curious about their patterns. I help them understand what their brain is doing and how their nervous system responds to stress. And most importantly, for the work that I do as a Catholic coach is how God invites them into healing instead of self-condemnation. Together, we build awareness instead of fear. We build new rhythms instead of just removing an old one. And most of all, we start shifting identity from I'm barely holding it together, I don't know if this is going to work, to I am a woman rooted in Christ, learning to walk in freedom. That is the freedom I deserve. That, my friends, is the kind of support I wish that I had had. And that's exactly why I know without a shadow of a doubt that the Lord called me to this work. Now, one of the questions I get often as women start their own journey toward untangling themselves from alcohol is does it get easier? And I'm here to tell you, yes, it does get easier. But not because life suddenly becomes perfect. It gets easier because over time your brain begins to heal. Your nervous system starts to stabilize and your identity shifts from craving escape to craving peace. In the beginning, everything will feel raw, but little by little, you will start experiencing real moments of calm that aren't followed by shame or regret. You will start feeling so good instead of panicking. It does take time, but physically your body will start to regulate itself again. Your sleep improves, your energy returns. Your brain isn't constantly fighting to recover from the chemical roller coaster that alcohol created. And that alone brings a sense of relief. And spiritually speaking, there's something deeply powerful about waking up clear-headed, not feeling like you need to hide from God. When you stop numbing, you start hearing your own soul again, and eventually you start hearing God more clearly, too. For me, that became one of the most unexpected gifts being emotionally present enough to sense God's presence in real time. Socially, yes, it's completely awkward at first. You feel like everyone is watching you or judging your choice, but the further you walk, the more confident you become. Eventually you show up not as the woman trying to keep up, but as the woman fully present, grounded, joyful, and confident in a way that doesn't depend on a glass in your hand. There's a moment that many women tell me about, and I experienced this too. The first time you laugh, like really laugh with full presence and no alcohol in your system, and afterward, you don't have to replay anything in your head. You don't panic that you said too much or acted out of character. You just go to bed peacefully and wake up so proud of your choices. That's when you realize that joy without alcohol isn't dull. You're not boring. So yes, absolutely yes, it gets better. Not instantly, but it grows like strength, like healing, like a new identity, being lived into one day at a time. What I know now that my day one self couldn't see is this quitting alcohol doesn't make you less fun or less free. It actually makes space for the truest version of yourself to breathe again. Back then I thought that sobriety meant losing part of me. I didn't realize it would return me to my authentic self. Healed, steady, and grounded in who God says that I am. Freedom isn't just about not drinking. It's about no longer needing alcohol to feel okay. It's about waking up clear, knowing you didn't betray yourself the night before. It's walking into a room and not needing to drink to prove you belong there. It's about giving yourself real, holy self-care and true rewards that are actually going to benefit you. And it's trusting that peace is possible. And the most important thing, uh your identity is not the woman who used to drink too much. Your identity is not tied to your struggle. You are a beloved daughter of God, learning to live as someone who is safe, valued, and capable of transformation. The journey is not about shame or perfection. It's about becoming more whole, more awake, and more rooted in truth and grace. If this conversation stirred something in you, whether you're sober curious, just getting started, or already walking this path and wanting deeper peace, you don't have to do it alone. Inside my sacred sobriety lab, I guide Catholic women through this journey with a blend of neuroscience, faith, and emotional awareness. We focus not just on stopping drinking, but on healing the reasons we turn to it in the first place. It's a space for women who are ready to get curious about their drinking and let go of shame and perfection, focusing on progress. If you're looking for accelerated results, I also offer one-on-one life and sobriety coaching. It's more personal, more tailored, and especially powerful if you're navigating deeper patterns, transitions, or identity work. You also get access to the Sacred Sobriety Lab for 12 months. And maybe you're not sure what you need yet. You just know that something needs to change. And if that's you, I invite you to book a clarity call with me. It's free. We'll talk through where you are, what you're struggling with, and which path may serve you best. No pressure, just clarity. Sister, you do not have to have it all figured out today. You just need to take the next right, faithful step. And if you're ready, I'd be honored to walk alongside you. Until next time. Well, that does it for this episode of the Catholic Sobriety Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I would invite you to share it with a friend who might also get value from it as well. And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss a thing. I am the Catholic Sobriety Coach, and if you would like to learn how to work with me or learn more about the coach that I offer, visit my website, the Catholic Sobriety Coach.

unknown: 31:27

Yeah, yeah.