Living Sober is Hard.
The first thing I need to say about living sober is that it's fucking hard. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either naive, from another planet, or they are delusional.
Let’s be completely honest, at least in the US where I live, alcohol is woven so deeply into the American fabric, so ridiculously normalized and over-consumed, that if you happen to choose a sober path, you will often feel like a cat along dogs, completely out of place, seeing the world from a completely different reality.
I am gonna guess this is why so many sincere people really fail so quickly in their attempts to be sober because most can’t face this feeling of isolation that sets in when their friends and family start ghosting them.
Ghosting is the right word because people look right through you and try to act as if you dont exist and cut you off like you fucking died!
I know I’m being over dramatic but I’m still only touching how it feels when the phone stops ringing and invites stop coming and half of these people do not want your sober happy-go-lucky ass around because your very cheerful presence just makes them feel like shit.
The other half are just annoyed by your problems with alcohol because it has never been a problem for them, and they make little comments to imply you are just “going through a weak spot” or even worse, “you just need to have more class when you drink.”
But nobody knows the real reasons why you chose to live sober except you. No one will ever understand how important your sobriety is except you. Nobody will understand the feeling you have when you hurt the ones who love you the most.
This was the first thing I had to understand to begin my sober life, was that sobriety was something that I was doing for myself. There was no one who could do this for me or even do this with me. My life was in my hands and God was the only one besides myself that could give me the courage to live sober.
Now that we all agree living sober is fucking hard, we can talk about how to make it easier with just a few quick tips I've picked up along the way.
The first thing I would say is to begin to REFRAME how you think about alcoholism.
I grew up going to AA with my mom, so I was inundated with the idea that alcoholism was a disease that you were just born with and if you were one of the unlucky bastards to have the alcoholic gene, you were doomed for life! And it was best to just plan on going to AA meetings every day forever or go back to the bottle with haste. This model leaves you hopeless without a cure. Always broken. Forever sick. Never healed.
I knew even when I finished my first round of in-patient rehab at age 13 this model was flawed. From my experience, I have come to believe we go through a variety of shit-storms in life, great and small, and we accumulate various kinds of traumas that cause us emotional discomfort and eventually suffering.
If we do not have healthy ways to process and heal from these accumulative traumas, we turn to whatever works best. For most, alcohol was the tool they learned to use when life caused emotional discomfort. In other words, when you had a fucked up day in my house you got really drunk and partied even harder to forget whatever was causing pain.
The only disease we have is the dis-ease of painful emotions.
Once you understand this, you can begin to identify healthy ways to process these harder emotions, and your journey into sober life begins!
This may look different for everyone, but I am going to suggest, they need to include three kinds of tools: Mind. Body. Spirit.
Mind. To keep a healthy mind, I need to take time to meditate on my breath throughout the day and practice mindfulness whenever I have the opportunity. So if I am eating, working, or even doing chores, I make an effort to give all my attention to the thing I am doing in the moment and practice being present.
Body. For me, it is essential that I walk daily and go for a long run weekly to maintain a sense of groundedness and balance in my energy levels. It will amaze you how much stress you unknowingly carry in your body that will eventually catch up to you if not addressed, often in the way of physical health problems.
Spirit. This is more about emotions than spirituality, although you may already know these are two sides of the same coin. So think of what helps you process stuck emotions. This is writing for me as I am able to literally “write it out” and in the process of writing what or how I feel, I am putting words to my emotions and developing an awareness of how I truly feel.
I have a huge toolbox filled with resources that I draw from to stay on point and keep feeling good, but I have realized over the years, that I need to be caring for all parts of myself to live life well and to be truly happy.
I look forward to sharing more of my journey with you all, what has been helpful, and what has been hard. If this content was valuable to you please like and share this post and follow my page.
Thank you for your love and support. Live Sober because you are worth it.
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