I always envied everyone else's "boring time." They always looked perfectly content sitting on the couch, browsing in a store, baking cookies, quietly cleaning the house, calmly reading a book, walking their dog, SOBER!
You can tell when someone is comfortable in their own skin. It's the vast majority of people. Alcoholics are never content to just "be." I always felt on the edge of insanity while doing or trying to do the activities listed above because I was either (a) hungover, (b) planning my drinking that night (what time to start, what store to rotate to this day, how much to buy) or (c) trying to get intoxicated and knowing the damage I was doing. I could never just "be."
It took awhile but now I'm relearning to just breathe and live life like a regular person.
I find it I find it very ironic that we drank heavily to always try to relax and feel good but in reality we were doing the opposite. When I was drinking every night I felt absolutely dreadful every minute of every day.
I remember waking up at a friend's house a few years back massively hungover. She didn't even drink the night before. We had watched a movie. She went to bed around midnight and I stayed up until 3 am drinking alone on her porch. I remember specifically looking at her as she sat on the couch the next morning quietly tapping and swiping on her iPad and thinking "oh my god. She's not hungover. Not even a little bit. Here she is on this Saturday morning and she is not hungover. I wonder what that's like?" I still think back to that moment on hangover-free Saturday mornings with my iPad.