Sometimes, Sobriety Sucks Sober Living in Los Angeles

Not only did alcohol make me smart, it also made me impervious to the alternative viewpoints of almost everyone I encountered. I stop drinking my intelligence potion, work on myself for a few years, and whammo! Just like that, my ears are more than just sunglasses holders.

Achieving sobriety is something to be celebrated, and a sober lifestyle can be fun and fulfilling.

You don’t have to do AA, but you have to do something. Counseling, alcohol coaching, an alternative recovery program – choose something and stick to it. It would literally boost my mood to think about.

Not Everyone Is Going To Forgive You Or Be Your Friend Again, And That’s Okay

Think about it – being intoxicated might feel good for a while, but are you really enjoying yourself? Being sober lets you push your boundaries and have fun in ways that aren’t possible when you’re drunk or high. You can travel to different places, try new things, and just be present in your life – and that’s always more fulfilling than checking out with a drink. That being said, you might not be at a place where you want people to know you’re not drinking, and that’s OK.

Drinking Out of Boredom: Why It’s Risky Business

Whenever someone asks me how I managed to quit drinking, I struggle a little to answer. Maybe you’ve been more positive lately. Or perhaps you had a bad day and managed to handle it in a healthier way, and now you feel really good about that.

Best Foods to Cleanse Your Liver After Alcohol

But one day, you realize the clouds have lifted a little bit. For the first time, you notice just how much has changed. If you’re starting from zero and struggling to find something positive about yourself to genuinely believe, I recommend forgetting about yourself for a minute and think of others. Building resilience and training the voice inside your head to be less negative is a lifelong process. Hell, it takes time to get just sort of okay at it.

Drinking causes A LOT of problems.

You have to have a plan for dealing with the inevitable challenges that you’ll encounter. If you’ve been drinking a lot or are accustomed to binge drinking when you do, limiting yourself to one to two drinks is not going to be satisfying. I’m left with a lot of sadness which meditation and MBSR doesn’t seem to address and which alcohol at least masked for me. I’m not going back to drinking but am looking for ideas on how to move forward. As someone who writes a self-help blog, I struggle with the self-help world.

• You will have days when you don’t necessarily make the strongest choices to improve your well-being or strengthen your recovery.
• You have to have a plan for dealing with the inevitable challenges that you’ll encounter.
• Your sobriety will most likely be a culmination of a series of shitty things that happened, mistakes you’ve made, and consequences you’ll have to live with forever.
• Because life and all its problems do not stop just because we want to quit drinking, you’re going to need more than willpower to avoid alcohol.

Now that I’m sober, this is a bigger deal. Not only because my portion of the check is significantly smaller than anyone else at the table, but also because I refuse to invest in Big Alcohol. If you’re like most drinkers, you’ve likely surrounded yourself at some point with a group of people who also drink.

You are a mirror now, a flashlight of sobriety in a society that is laced with the judgment that it’s abnormal to abstain from alcohol. People will assume you drink and will be very curious about why you don’t have a drink in your hand when they do. The more I gave of myself to others without expecting anything in return, the more I genuinely liked who I was becoming. If you’re struggling to think you’re worth a damn, find a way to bring value to other people. I’ve learned to drop a lot of bitterness I’d been holding on to and it has been one of the most liberating mindset shifts I’ve experienced in sobriety. It’s also opened me up to new, closer relationships that are built on much sturdier foundations.

• It’s as though, in permanent sobriety, I am doomed to walk the earth with the kind of intact memory of someone fully engaged in the human experience.
• You will not be able to resist using substances if you do not make sobriety a priority in your life and seek help from a substance abuse treatment center.
• If you’re starting from zero and struggling to find something positive about yourself to genuinely believe, I recommend forgetting about yourself for a minute and think of others.
• But you don’t know until you try, and you have to genuinely try.

Obviously, you want to be careful that you don’t transfer all of your avoidance energy from alcohol onto the snack aisle, but don’t be hard on yourself. It’s okay to crack open a packet of Oreos in the beginning. You’ve got a lot on your plate (literally and figuratively). Nothing in my life improved for me until I learned to accept help and stopped thinking I knew everything already.

The Challenges of the First Year Sober

You must be willing to do the work and embrace the suck. You learn the hard lessons, And you evolve. But I also think the uncomfortable parts of sobriety being sober sucks provide the biggest benefits. Our ability to survive our darker side, and push through despite it, is what makes us better and keeps us sober long term.