Originally Posted by
LadyBug66 
I'm still going thru that... everything seems awkward not drinking. I did go to a concert and didn't drink and enjoyed the concert, it was on my mind 100% of the time though and I was watching everyone else that was drinking.
Our addictive sense if "instant gratification" does not go away when we quit drinking. The good news is that there are absolutely ways to change that pattern and things DO get better. You hear people say all the time that "it takes time". And that's true, but it takes more than time. It takes action in the form of recovery specific activities - meetings, self assessment, perhaps therapy or counseling, and many times changing the people we hang out with and the people we frequent.
I tried desperately to do the same things I did before drinking sans alchohol. I went to the same places and drank NA beer or soda when others were drinking around me, and I frequented places where drinking was the main focus...and it eventually led me to either drinking again, feeling left out/angry or both.
The cool thing though is that once you start trying new things you begin to realize that the opposite is true...we feel like were "missing out" by not being able to hang with our old crowd, but really we were missing out on the good stuff when we drank. There is a whole world out there to explore, and you'll find that most people go about their lives drinking very little or nothing at all. And their activities mirror that.