How a Sketchbook Helps You Explore Your Relationship with Alcohol

When I talk about how I use a sketchbook to help women explore their relationship with alcohol, there are often a few confused looks. The sketchbook became everything for me at the start of my sobriety journey, and four years later, still plays a very important role in keeping me grounded.

Here are a few ways a sketchbook helps you explore your relationship with alcohol.

EVERYONE NEEDS A SAFE PLACE. There are some things you just can’t tell anyone. Friends and family try to be there for you, but there are so many parts of sobriety and recovery that are too vulnerable to share. Your sketchbook becomes a safe space for absolutely anything in your life. Hopes, fears, dreams, nightmares. No one ever has to read or see the work that you do in your sketchbook. You can write words that are super scary and hard for you to put down and then you can paint over them. Or you can write down your craziest dreams and then hide them all away behind an added flap. You can do whatever you want with your pages, except you can’t rip out a page. If there’s something you don’t like on that page, think of a way to make it better. Add something. Paint over it. Everything in your sketchbook goes towards the blueprint of the life you’re creating, even the mistakes.

KEEPING YOUR HANDS BUSY FREES YOUR MIND The early days of sobriety are filled with trying to find ways to keep your hands busy, and your mind somewhat still. Especially when cravings hit. Keeping a sketchbook becomes a way to not only keep yourself distracted at these times, but it becomes a place where you begin to reimagine your life without alcohol. You start to remember who you were before you started to drink. The things you loved to do. The person you wanted to become. The more active you are in your sketchbook, the deeper the connections you make as you begin to move towards building radical self-acceptance.

GET TO KNOW YOURSELF A LITTLE BIT BETTER. The sketchbook meets you where you are. It’s not me telling you what you need to do. Drinking takes you further and further away from yourself. You lose touch with who you are. Your sketchbook becomes a place where you start to build yourself up again. Where you get to make choices about what you want to put in your sketchbook, how you want to fill it up. Topics you write about, phrases you’ve cut out and glued in, paint colors you’ve chosen, shapes you’ve sketched. These are all little clues about your mind and your life at that exact moment. And every small choice present on the page, becomes proof that can make choices and works towards building your confidence to make bigger choices. You do know what you want, you just have to get out of your own way and listen. Flipping through the pages of your sketchbook becomes a fascinating journey of your life.

WE ALL NEED “HIGH-TOUCH” EXPERIENCES. Technology has changed the way we write, design, interact, communicate, and create. We need to get messy. Life is messy. Emotions are messy. It’s hard to process what you’re going through while you stay on the sidelines not allowing yourself to get down into the mess. It’s difficult to take out your frustration while you type madly on your iPad, or enter your feelings into a journaling app on your phone. But, when you grab a marker and make a mess on the page, scribbling out your feelings there is a release that happens. When you start layering a page by venting feelings of anger and pain, and then cover those words with a layer of hope, by adding images and paint; you can begin to see a way out of that pain and grief. We tend to do our best thinking when our hands are busy and dirty.

IT’S FUN Adults have so few places to really let loose. Where we can let our hair down and let it all hang out. Children have these outlets all the time. They can sit and draw and paint for hours, they can escape into imaginary worlds and colors. At the start your sketchbook might feel awkward as you take the first few steps of working in it. As you begin to string together more days a shift will begin to happen. Your sketchbook begins to feel a little bit more like a playground, where you can try out all those parts of yourself that you might have forgotten about. All those parts of yourself that you’ve hidden for so long. Your sketchbook will become a place for imperfection, and we all could use a little more imperfection in our lives. Good ideas usually start from bad ideas and these bad ideas only get better when you spend time working on them, writing about them, painting about them.

If you’re curious about how to start your own sketchbook as you explore your relationship with alcohol, I’ve written a DIY guide. You can click here to learn more and to purchase a copy.