It was the terminal illness of my mom and her death that sent me over the cliff with drinking and a relapse on opiates. That was how I dealt with saddness and loss...before I got sober.
I had to learn it's okay to feel the loss. I knew that grieving wasn't fun, or easy. But what I had to learn was that the process has to be gone through. Not run from, nor escaped by drugs or drinking. I had to learn that it is OK to feel bad about stuff, that it was normal for loss to cause us grief.
People all over the world, every minute of the day, absord terrible loss without trying to "escape" it, without drinking, without drugs. I had to accept that I could do it too.
I hope you can too. That what learning to live sober means. Not sober through the easy times. Sober through the worse of times.