Welcome to SR
Truthfully, I don't have a lot of experience with sober... many more drinking days in my past. But I can say that even in my short time of sobriety, I have found sober to outweigh drinking... if for nothing else than what you mention, the cycle of drinking to get rid of the pain of last time drinking, is out of the picture. You can do other stuff. And most of the time, I'm improbably happy for no apparent reason. It never happened before...
So yeah, sober has its advantages, even early on.
Take care of yourself,
TB