I know, I know, this website is called “Recovery Connection” and it is designed to encourage those who are suffering the slings and arrows of addiction to get help. It is also an educational tool for addiction professionals and those in recovery, and I am here to tell you I had some unexpected lessons to learn when I became sober. It’s Neo taking the red pill and realizing, “Oh shit, I need to stop taking so many pills from strangers.”
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- If you’re like me, this can feel entirely terrifying.
- Within the safety and supports of a trusted rehab program and sober peer community, many people come to like and love the person they are when drugs and alcohol aren’t in the picture.
- It was my jumping-off point into a life I knew I had buried inside of me.
- When we asked our alumna to describe what being sober feels like, she gave a detailed and inviting description that captured these key points.
- For that, you’re going to have to do some work.
- It’s more common for a normal person to become a problem drinker than for a glassy-eyed nightmare to effortlessly evolve into someone who has a glass of Sauvignon Blanc with dinner.
Now, I consider her physical and emotional wellbeing before suggesting physical contact. What a waste of my perfectly good perpetual horniness. First off, I had no idea how many sober women had antidepressants contribute to their worst and final drinking days. Lots of medications interact with booze, but SSRIs can actually lower your tolerance to alcohol and get you drunker faster. They also open you up to blacking out, which women are already at a higher risk for.
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- But then the other sides emerge – usually after a few drinks or in the absence of desperately needed ones.
- Take some compulsiveness, stir in some chaotic mind syndrome, sprinkle on some childhood trauma, and finish it off with a heaping dose of insanity.
- All you have to do is stay sober, and you stay free.
- I’m still doing a lot of work on myself and I still have moments where I choose to order unhealthy takeout food rather than deal with the fact that I’ve had a bad day.
The promise of sobriety is that “the way I feel stone-cold sober, even on my worst days ever … I would never trade to feel the effects of a drug and drink again,” our alumna said. She said anyone can have the same experience being sober. The hitch is you have to do it—as in get sober.
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Even if you’re not an addict, living a sober lifestyle can seem like a difficult feat. The FHE Health team is committed to providing accurate information that adheres being sober sucks to the highest standards of writing. This is part of our ongoing commitment to ensure FHE Health is trusted as a leader in mental health and addiction care.
Even when I first got sober, I was constantly trying to beat back thoughts that I was a failure or fundamentally unlikable. There is a difference between apologizing and making amends for the things you did when you were drinking and forcing yourself back into someone’s life. If you don’t get a handle on the answer to those questions, you will continue to play the sobriety-relapse-sobriety game.
In the early days, I felt that it was my responsibility to answer the question, “How come you aren’t drinking? ” I didn’t understand I could decline to answer or that I didn’t have to make sense to everyone. For a period it was, “I’m an alcoholic,” and that tended to silence anyone (for clarification, I no longer identify as an alcoholic). These days, unless I’m feeling generous, I simply say, “I don’t drink,” and leave it at that. Using drugs does not help society, it actually hurts society.
- It’s part of the sobriety package, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing.
- And depressingly, sexual assault and murky consent is a big factor at play for women who abstain from alcohol.
- There’s the real you in there, buried deep, but it’s suffocating under the weight of addiction, problems, and (in my case) untreated mental health problems like depression or anxiety.
But I’m also going to say something else that might not be what other people in recovery want to put out there, but what I have found in my experience to be completely true. It’s hard to overstate the importance of good sleep. When you’re sleep-deprived, you feel cranky, foggy, and unhealthy. Alcohol and drugs aren’t conducive to good sleep – they can keep you up late at night, make it hard to fall asleep when you want to, or make you sleepy during the daytime. When you’re sober, you’re able to stick to a healthy sleep schedule and wake up feeling refreshed every day. When you’re addicted to drugs or alcohol, the notion of getting clean and then staying sober over the long haul can be frightening.
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