Welcome to the first installment of my new blog series, Sober Crush Sunday! I'll be interviewing people in my life who are alcohol free and featuring them here.
I’ve been a huge fan of Sarah Rocereta-Heller for many years now. We were sisters-in-law for a time, and during that time and beyond, I always admired her absolute badassery. She plays guitar in a band, she taught me how to make deodorant, she makes her own clothes, she’s been an incredible mom to her dogs throughout the years, and she’s always made me laugh with the way she tells stories. Her creativity, through her music, cooking, and the way she crafts her life has always inspired me. I thought about her a lot during my own alcohol-free path, because she went AF before being AF was a thing for the people in our circles. And she did it the way she does everything: with intention, love, and a steadfast commitment to being her best self not only for her, but for those around her.
Sarah has many incredible insights, enjoy the interview!
How long have you been alcohol free and what made you decide to quit?
Sarah: I’ve been alcohol-free for 15 years! When people ask why I quit, I’ll be generic and say I couldn’t handle the hangovers, but of course it was more complex than that. I have anxiety, sometimes debilitating social anxiety, and a highly critical inner voice. I learned pretty early on that alcohol could level those things out. The consequence though, was that when I was hung over, all the bad feelings associated with these things were amplified, and because I was a binge drinker, sometimes those hangovers lasted a week, and then I'd just drink again with no break from the cycle. I let the magnified pain I was in drive a lot of my choices and hurt my relationships. It became unbearable. I couldn’t live like that anymore.
What was your quitting strategy? How long did you think about quitting before you actually did?
S: Well, I never liked drinking, actually. Every single time I was hungover I thought about quitting. Every time. So…eight years? I was 26 when I started testing the waters and tried to ‘cut back’ but I realized pretty quickly it was going to be all or nothing. I couldn’t have just one drink.
I decided on my own, with basically no research and no insight from anyone who’d gone through something similar, that I was going to handle my drinking like a bad habit. I’d just replace the act of drinking with things that I considered ‘healthy activities’, without acknowledging in any way the reasons I had started drinking in the first place. So, yeah, that didn’t go well. Three years later, I had an impressive collection of cookbooks, craft supplies, half-marathon medals, and a binge-drinking habit that was worse than when I started. I mean, I loved discovering these hobbies and I still do a lot of them. But I was using them as a replacement crutch instead of dealing with why I was drinking in the first place. The drinking just morphed into this thing where I’d stay on course longer, but when I inevitably failed, damn, I knocked it out of the park.
It can be hard to start feeling all of the emotions that come up once alcohol is not there to push them back down. Was this your experience, and how did you handle facing those challenges?
S: This was absolutely my experience. Not having a plan for the mood swings and emotional battles was my biggest mistake, and this is where I failed over and over. I’m stubborn, hate asking for help and don’t like to talk about my feelings. I had to go through this whole painfully slow process of repeating the same mistakes until I learned how to ask for real help, get real tools--not just crochet hooks and Mod Podge.
And you know what? When I did finally start talking to people that had quit, I learned that everyone struggles with this. I mean, I guess it shouldn’t be shocking-when you use alcohol to repress feelings and then it’s gone, those feelings come up. But at the time, I couldn’t see what was going on, not really.
I had to learn how to be my own friend when I was struggling, instead of my worst critic. And I cried. A lot. So much crying. So. Much. Crying. But I needed it. I needed the release to move on.
How was your sobriety received by those around you? Did yourrelationships change?
S: You know, it’s funny how people react, back then and even now. I had and still have a great support system and I am so thankful that everyone I care about rolled through my ups and downs with me. But sometimes people’s responses were interesting. In my family, for instance, wine is its own thing, it’s separate from all other beverages. When I told everyone I wasn’t drinking, they were all supportive: fantastic, good for you, you’re making a great decision. Then, not even one hour later, someone handed me a glass of wine. I was like, ‘I said I quit,’ and they were so confused- ‘Even wine?!’ I just laughed, yes, even wine. The same thing happened a few years later when I told my family I was vegetarian. Someone tried to give me something with fish in it and I had to remind them. ‘Even fish?!’ Yes, even fish.
I also got a lot of “Great, but you don’t NEED to quit- you’re not that kind of drunk’ responses. I know people meant well, but it felt dismissive, like they were minimizing what I was going through rather than just saying ‘I’m proud of you.’ I had to learn that I can't control how people respond. Everyone processes these things differently.
Even years later, I run into awkwardness. I got invited to a happy hour at a new job, and I wanted to go to be social, but when they found out I didn’t drink, they were basically like ‘Why are you even here?’
There are always going to be times when sobriety makes other people uncomfortable. It’s not my job to make them comfortable.
What was the most unexpected benefit?
S: Honestly, I was at such a low point when I quit that I didn’t have any expectations. I wasn’t really looking for benefits, I just needed it out of my life. Don’t get me wrong, great things happened that I attribute in part to being sober, but really, it just felt like life was getting better because I wasn’t actively making it worse.
Describe your perfect Saturday evening
S: Canoodle with Scott Heller.
What would you tell someone who is struggling to start or maintain their sobriety?
S: You know, I don’t talk about my sobriety much because for a long time I felt like I didn’t do it ‘right’- like I didn’t go to meetings or join sober social groups, I white knuckled it for years, I failed over and over. But that thinking is part of the problem, right? There’s no one right way. And ultimately what worked was I made space to find the things that worked for me.
Even ten years into my sobriety, I started having really intense cravings. They were so strong, I really felt like I was going to slip up. I made the time to look at what I was doing and I had to adapt. Of course there was more going on- the cravings were telling me something was off. So, I went to therapy and started taking an antidepressant for a while- things I’d totally resisted before-and I got through it. I had to make changes, even after so long, but it worked. So that’s my advice. Give yourself permission to figure out what works for you.