bmwcycle

Sobriety will not bring happiness any more than money, fame and attention..

Only you can make or allow yourself to be happy and prevent Forrest fires of course unless Smokey the Bear has been leading us on all this whole time.

Supercrew

Sobriety is a state of being, whereas happiness is a state of mind. If you are happy about being sober then sobriety can cause happiness. If you want to drink but don't, I would guess sobriety would not cause happiness.

Once I realized that I get to decide whether I want to be sober...and conversly I also get to decide if I want to be happy, happiness hasn't been an issue. If you want to be happy....be happy and don't do things, (like constanly drinking a depressant), that can change your brain chemistry and will eventually keep you from being happy when you want.

eJoshua

In a word, no, but it does help get you closer to happiness.

Trying to achieve happiness while drinking is like trying to walk in quicksand. You won't get anywhere until you get out of the quicksand, but once you free yourself you still have to use your legs to get you somewhere.

Threshold

at first I thought addiction=despair, but now I am wondering if actually, for me, addiction= symptom of despair.

I didn't care to, or try to get clean, or sober while I felt total dispair. What would the point of THAT be? So, somehow, in my bottom, I looked up, and was able to see that others as messed up as me had gotten better, so maybe I could.

It seems it was not until I hit bottom, that I was willing to look up. It was not till I hit bottom that I was able to identify with other addicts and then with other recovering addicts.

Sober, so far does not = happiness for me.

sober = hope

I feel hopeful and there IS hope of my life improving, now that I am clean and sober.

active addiction had gotten to the point where I only felt crappy, now that I am clean, I sometimes feel crappy, but I have the ability to feel ok too.

Threshold

Just a thought. For some of us, that WOULD be a huge improvement on what our previous state of mind and being had been.

Some of those people may be spouting the party line, and some of them may find what you would consider to be no life at all, a paradise compared to where they were before.

Boleo

My experience as well. Except I had burned so many bridges, career wise, that my financial situation got worse, much worse. I lost several jobs, my marriage, health insurance and bank-account. Most of it after long-term sobriety.

I suspect that is where my experience is different than most. I have a thousand times more excuses to drink now than ever before. Yet, somehow it does not bother me as much as I expected it would. Perhaps it is because I learned a long time ago -

"The best things in life are not things".

raindancer11

I wouldn't say happy but I did have an immediate sense of relief which lasted quite a while. This relief resembled euphoria. But that's gone now. Now, I have moments of joy, satisfaction, peace, clarity... Maybe more than before I quit but I can't remember it all that well. I come here to be reminded.

eJoshua

Excellent point.

Boleo

TV? What Luxury
Cigarettes? Who could afford such extravagance
Parents basement? I used to dream of living in a basement

Monty Python - Four Yorkshiremen - YouTube

least

I believe this with all my heart.

Bamboozle

No.

totfit

Well, a HUGE reason folks relapse is that they assume quitting drinking will make them happy. Quitting drinking just gives us an opportunity to DO things that make use happy. One never becomes happy by not doing something, but instead by what they do.

Veritas1

"Service, gladly rendered, obligations squarely met,
troubles well accepted or solved with God's help,
the knowledge that at home or in the world outside
we are partners in a common effort,
the well-understood fact that in God's sight
all human beings are important,
the proof that love freely given surely brings a full return,
the certainty that we are no longer isolated and alone
in self-constructed prisons,
the surety that we need no longer be
square pegs in round holes but can fit and belong
in God's scheme of things --
these are the permanent and legitimate satisfactions
of right living for which no amount of pomp and circumstance,
no heap of material possessions,
could possibly be substitutes."

c. 1952AAWS, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 124
^*^*^*^*^

BASEjumper

All my problems were still there, but I started getting happier pretty quick, simply because I was no longer sick and feeling miserable. Getting sober doesn't magically turn everything into butterflies and sunshine. That's an unreasonable expectation

PaperDolls

At one point, I quit drinking for 2 years. I attempted to work on myself through therapy and anti-depressant and LOTS of anti-anxiety pills. I was pretty miserable and most definitely miserable to be around.

This time around I am actually happy. I realized it's all I ever wanted to begin with. I was trying to find it the "easy" way .... pills, alcohol, and half-assing it. It wore me out. It wears me out just thinking about it now.

I believe I'm truly happy now because I choose to look at adversity differently. I have this more positive outlook on things .... even if I am still a glass half empty kind of girl. Don't get me wrong, things are not perfect by any means. I guess I just know now that I don't have to drink to "get through" things that are difficult. Even if sometimes I want to .... today I don't have to.

I still have lots of grumpy days .... but deep down, I'm a happy person.

soberlicious

Well this quest for happiness has been part of my problem all my life. The absence of pain at any and all costs. Run from it, stifle it, drink it away, etc etc. This was the cause of my suffering...not the events themselves that I thought were causing me to be unhappy. It wasn't until I started learning about the concept of equanimity, that I began to feel more peaceful. I am learning not to to fear or quickly try to extinguish "unhappiness"...because it's those feelings and the resulting reactions that actually cause the unhappiness. That said, obviously my mind being clear from all substances allows me to explore these concepts. Don't know if this makes sense to anyone, but it has been a defining concept in my growth.

OceanSize

I'm not sure that what others say and do matters to my sobriety, because freeing myself from that fear or the assumptions within (which end up creating resentments) has been part of my sobriety from day 5. I meditate on this a lot, and this is already a fundamental change in my way of thinking. Prior to getting sober, my way of thinking was mostly based in anger, feeling suicidal all the time, justifying my own behaviors even when i felt bad, blaming others, self pity & whole boatload of other cruddy ways i lived my life.

I was miserable.

The sadness and despair i feel now is completely completely completely different and that's what matters to me right now. There's a significant change, even just 40 days later, in the way i see my daily life. Oddly, I can't imagine commiting suicide whereas in the past, before sobriety and becoming willing, my go-to thought was "i just want to die."

I guess i was humbled enough by my "last drunk" and the process of hearing other stories like mine (including the suicide reflex) to surrender just enough to be willing to do something different. No, i wasn't happy at all, not even when I was. Something was always diseased in my mind, in my way of thinking.

40 days later (on the heels of years of therapy, anti depressants and whatnot) and I am feeling.....well, content...even though I'm experiencing sadness, loneliness and fear, I already have just enough tools (and self helpy notes around the house - which was NEVER me ever ever like, never) to say to you honestly that I am now more aware than ever before - more awake than i was 41 days ago and that even though I'm sad and all this crud that comes along with getting sober, I am actually happy in a new way.

I realize that's strange. But either way it's different.

i'm so grateful for this new feeling. It's different, and I don't want to die. Without sobriety, that's my plight. misery and death. With sobriety, i can live with ease and become whole for the first time in my life. I don't think that means I'll be happy all the time (ewwwww) it only means, I'll have a new way of dealing with strife and fear and anger and sadness and disappointment and social anxiety and celebrations and whatever emotion or event comes my way.

im hardly there now - but i can sense a change already. I'm told "you'll feel crazy for the first year" and I know it's true! but it's a happier crazy, and i'm cool with it.