Heartbreak and Alcohol: Connecting the Dots Now That I'm Sober

There are few things more painful than the end of a significant relationship. The loss, the rejection, the unraveling of a future you thought you had—it’s brutal.

So it’s no wonder so many of us reach for the one thing society fully endorses as a coping mechanism in stressful times: alcohol.

It’s easy, it’s everywhere, and for a little while, it works.

Until it doesn’t.

It’s only now, with over a month of sobriety behind me, that I can see the pattern. Every time my heart was broken, I turned to alcohol.

After my divorce, drinking felt like a way to take the edge off the grief and loneliness. I told myself it was normal—just a glass of wine to unwind, to make the weekends on my own feel less empty. But instead of helping me move forward, it kept me stuck.

I wasn’t healing. I was numbing.

Then, years later, after another heartbreak—a post-divorce breakup that hit me harder than I expected—I did it again. I reached for alcohol to dull the pain, to escape the reality of yet another loss. And just like before, it didn’t help.

It only dragged out my suffering, made my emotions feel even more unmanageable, and kept me from doing the real work of healing.

Now that I’m newly sober, I’m connecting the dots. Alcohol has never made anything more manageable—it just pressed pause on my pain, making it last longer than it needed to.

I could have done things a lot better if I’d known then what I know now.

The illusion of relief

With emotional pain, you suffer in silence. If you had a major physical injury and you were bleeding profusely someone would stitch you up and give you painkillers.

Emotional pain is invisible.

We walk around with our gashes inside of us, but they are no less painful. In fact, I would say they are far more painful. With a physical injury at least you have some idea how long healing will take, and there are plenty of powerful painkillers available.

With heartbreak, there is no quick fix. You have to live through each agonising day knowing that the next day will be the same, and the one after that.

Just when you get your nostrils above water to take a shallow breath, another trigger comes to knock the breath out of you and the cycle starts again.

I used to feel an almost panicked feeling when a fresh round of sadness would sweep over me. When this was still happening over two years down the track I began to feel desperate for relief.

Alcohol is pretty good at providing this short-term relief. It acts as an anaesthetic both to the mind and the body. There’s nothing quite like a few drinks to dull the edges and provide a distraction.

But the relief was temporary and the fallout was so much worse than the pain I was trying to escape.

After a night out or a few drinks at home, I’d pay a huge price! It wasn’t the hangover, it was the way it would shake me to my core and I’d feel totally weakened in every way. The anxiety would kick in and I’d deeply regret drinking the night before.

The worst part was that it would last for days. It wasn’t like in my youth when I could eat some fast food, take an afternoon sleep and feel like a box of birds. These hangovers lasted at least three days! Three days of going back to square one and feeling like I wasn’t coping at all.

The relief was a complete illusion.

How alcohol dragged out my suffering

After both my divorce and the end of a four-year post-divorce relationship, I have a much better understanding of what is required for efficient healing and recovery.

I’ll use the analogy of training to get physically fit.

If you wanted to transform your body from carrying a few extra kilos to being healthy and lean, you’d need pretty good discipline.

You wouldn’t go to the gym sporadically and include junk food in your diet. You’d be consistent with your workouts and eat good nutrition. If you were committed to the process you’d see results fairly quickly.

On the other hand, if you skipped workouts here and there and treated yourself to high-calorie junk now and then you might eventually reach your fitness goals, but it would take a hell of a lot longer to get there.

It’s the same with emotional healing. It requires discipline and intention. You need to sit with those feelings and process them if you want to get over them faster.

Instead, I used alcohol as my ‘junk food’. A quick, easy comfort that only made things worse in the long run.

I thought that I was doing well because I was talking to a therapist, reading books and doing lots of journalling. I figured I was facing my emotions head-on and doing the work necessary.

But on the weekends when my kids were with their dad, I’d reach for alcohol to fill the void.

I’d go for drinks with friends or I’d meet up with someone I’d been talking to on a dating app. I’d usually overindulge and take it too far. Then I’d wake up the next day feeling completely broken. Reality was back. Heartache, anxiety, depression.

Only now it was ten times worse because I felt sick, weak and shaky.

My thoughts would turn to my failures. I would berate myself for getting hung over again, I’d worry about what I’d said or done the night before, and I’d feel like a terrible mother waking up to an empty house instead of the bustling busy home that I had only a few months before.

Sometimes I’d go into my kids’ bedrooms and cry. It was putting me back to square one every single time.

If I’d stayed sober and gotten a good night’s sleep how different it all would have looked.

Waking up strong, working out, and eating well would have boosted my mood and energy (my usual morning routine) —setting me up for real healing, not more heartache.

It’s not like I wouldn’t have had my emotional struggles through the day, but the alcohol completely ravaged my mental and emotional state.

The Tolerance Trap

One of the biggest problems with drinking alcohol to numb emotional pain is how quickly you build up a tolerance. It happens faster than you think.

Over time, I found myself needing more to feel the same effect. What started as a couple of drinks turned into three, then four, and before I knew it, my baseline had shifted.

What scares me the most is that I didn’t even recognise it as a problem. I wasn’t consciously pushing my limits—I was just gradually increasing my intake without questioning it. It felt natural, almost automatic.

Looking back, I see how easily tolerance crept up on me.

A Hard Look - Questioning how and why I was drinking

I’ve had an on/off relationship with alcohol all my life, often going through long periods of not drinking at all. But during my divorce and then my breakup five years later, I noticed that my intake definitely increased when I was struggling with heartache.

I started to take a look at why I was drinking and I realised that I was using alcohol as an escape. I wasn’t doing this consciously. I believed that I was drinking to unwind, to relax, to have some fun and socialise.

But the uncomfortable truth is that I was drinking to avoid my feelings and to fill the emptiness I felt when I was on my own.

Alcohol was hindering my recovery, taking a toll on my emotional well-being and slowly damaging my physical health.

What I Wish I Had Done Instead

When I look back now I wish I had the knowledge I have today. I would have made some very different choices.

There were certain events that triggered me to want to drink to numb my feelings. Like the time I met my ex-husband’s new girlfriend for the first time.

And then there were certain times that signalled to my brain that it was time to crack a beer and relax. Like sunny weekend afternoons.

What I should have been doing was making a plan for those events and times that triggered me. I would have booked healthier activities to get me over those times.

I could have gone for a walk, cleaned my car, called a friend, gone to the gym, prepped meals or started a DIY project that needed to be done.

All of these things would have been a lot more beneficial to me than falling into alcohol.

These are things I’m doing now that I’ve decided to try living sober. I’m not living with heartache anymore (thank god) but I still have certain environmental triggers that make me feel like a cold beer.

Now I have strategies to get me through those small periods where I feel like a drink. I notice that they don’t last that long and then once they pass it’s easy to get on with what I’m doing.

Lessons learned: A better way to heal

The end of a relationship is tough, and it’s easy to lean on alcohol to cope. But I learned through experience that drinking makes everything harder.

If you’ve been reaching for a drink to get through, maybe it’s time to try something different. Sobriety—or simply reducing alcohol intake for a while—can lead to greater clarity, emotional resilience, and a more intentional path forward.

You don’t have to figure it all out at once. Just know that real healing happens when you face things head-on instead of choosing to avoid what’s really going on around you.

As for me, I’m just over a month sober, and while I’ve had a couple of tricky moments, I know I’m on the right path. I’m focusing on my physical and mental well-being, my productivity and my energy levels.

I’m already feeling incredible benefits and I’m excited to see what I can achieve with my new sober goals!

Until next time,

Carol

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