Welcome Reno News & Review Readers!
If you have arrived to the Crawl Reno blog from our article Titled “The Year of Living Soberly,” thanks! If you haven’t read it, it recounts Ed & Heidi Adkins’ (owners of Crawl Reno) experience taking a year off from drinking. We love putting on these events, but even we have to be mindful of all the fun times and be able to step back if we think it’s a good idea. The full article is at the Reno News and Review.
Here’s a epilogue of sorts that needed to be cut from the article- we’re posting it here to give some followup. If you have any questions please use our comment form. Thanks, again.
Epilogue: Or, The Inquisition
The first question I get is usually, “did you slip up?” The answer is no. Not once, unless you count the once or twice accidental sips of drinks that were supposed to be alcohol free. I don’t think messing up would’ve hurt us, and I don’t think anyone should feel like a failure if they do, but we’d have made all our friends cry.
Another one is “how was it running the crawls?” It was actually great. With all the increased energy we were dynamos. We were lucky in that it wasn’t tough being around it. We were focused on work and even when we weren’t it wasn’t a temptation. We still kept booze in the house for guests. A lot of people who met us during the year didn’t even notice we weren’t drinking.
Some people have asked whether we’ve considered quitting forever. The answer is, we wanted to reboot our habits, we don’t hate ourselves. We don’t see alcohol as the devil, but now we kind of see her as like a sort of extra-passionate girlfriend we had to take a break from and now respect more how complicated she can be. Before we thought “who could say no to that face?” but now we’ve established better boundaries and that’s working out for all of us. We wouldn’t want to say goodbye forever because we all have a lot of fun, but if we need to get some space we all know we’ll be there for each other later on and be stronger for it.
Of course, our experience is just that. Ours. If you know or suspect that you may have a problem with chemical dependence that is a very real, very serious issue, and taking a break to realign yourself may not be enough. I urge anyone especially with a family history of addiction to seek professional help and not try to just deal with it yourself. There are wonderful groups locally like Join Together Northern Nevada and others who we’ve worked with through our events to create a safer environment that encourages those who need help to get it.
We hope that ties up some loose ends. If you’d like to hear more please let us know!