When I got sober, people warned me I might start replacing alcohol with sugar. But sugar never had me. I’ve been living mostly keto for over two and a half years aside from fruit or sugar-free treats 🤤. No midnight snack spirals. No cupcake bandages. Sugar wasn’t my escape hatch.
What I did reach for, though, was people. Specifically, a person. For most of my life, I believed I needed a significant other to feel complete. Calibrated. Held in place by someone else’s love or at least their attention. I couldn’t imagine waking up without being someone’s somebody.
Then I got sober.
And in that quiet, slightly caffeinated stillness, I discovered something strange and wonderful: I liked my own company. I liked my routines. I liked being left alone – by men, by drama, by everything that once kept my nervous system wired like a cheap stereo. Yes, I miss my handful of close friends in Canada. Yes, I still like the occasional coffee date or long afternoon call. But I go to bed at 11 because I want to. Not because I’m “doing the right thing,” not because I’m avoiding the bar scene – but because peace feels better now than the chaos ever did.
So no, I didn’t replace booze with brownies.
I replaced booze and boys with coffee.
A lot of it.
It sounds silly, right? Trading a bottle and a body for a cup of coffee? But biologically, it checks out. Caffeine lights up the same parts of the brain that alcohol and love do – the ones linked to reward, pleasure and reinforcement. It gives a manageable buzz. A sense of control. A ritual that mimics old habits, minus the emotional hangover.
Love, too, has been shown to activate the same areas of the brain as actual drugs. That flutter in your chest? That stomach drop when they text back “k”? That obsession with being seen, chosen, claimed? It’s chemical. It’s addictive. It’s not just heartbreak that feels like withdrawal – your brain is literally adjusting to the absence of its favorite drug: attention.
So when I say I used to be addicted to significant others, I don’t mean it poetically. I was using people to soothe the same itch that alcohol used to also scratch.
And when I stopped drinking, that itch didn’t disappear. It just changed shape. I still have a vice. It just has better boundaries. These days, I pour a mug not just because I want to stay awake. I pour it because I miss something. The buzz of being needed. The chaos of romantic uncertainty. The illusion of being “better” just because I was chosen.
But here’s what I don’t miss: sobbing in bathrooms. Waiting for someone to text me back like my life depended on it. Compromising my boundaries just to be loved or at least tolerated.
Now, my morning routine doesn’t include emotional whiplash. It includes espresso. A walk with my dogs. Silence that doesn’t scream at me. Nights where I’m not glued to someone’s mood swings but tucked under a blanket with something warm in my hands.
I know it’s still a kind of replacement. I’m still feeding a need. But coffee doesn’t lie. It doesn’t ghost. It doesn’t forget my birthday or invalidate my therapy. It shows up, it wakes me up and then it gets out of the way. It’s not the best. But it’s certainly not the worst.
I don’t think coffee is some holy grail of healing. But it’s helped me stop outsourcing my nervous system to unreliable people. It’s helped me remember what it feels like to keep promises to myself. And it’s given me a space to land while I learn to sit in my own skin without needing someone – or something – to distract me from it.
Maybe I haven’t transcended all my cravings. Maybe I never will. But I’ve swapped blackout nights and performative love stories for quiet mornings and real calm. Not numbness. Not avoidance. Just peace.
And yeah, maybe I’m still a little addicted. But at least this time, my addiction comes in a mug and doesn’t leave me questioning my worth.
Everyone needs a vice.
Mine happens to be hot, sugarfree sweet and doesn’t ask me to explain my trauma.
And I can live with that.
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