keepstrong

Time certainly is flying! Luckily I'm still sober. Boy when they say you need to focus on sobriety they weren't kidding.

I went out last night for a friend's birthday and while I was incredibly tempted to drink, I somehow managed to not drink. It helped that my friend is in the Army Reserves and is currently "being good" so he can get his running times down to passing levels, and that I told him that I was focusing on staying sober and he was totally on board. It also helped that I asked to be designated driver. Most importantly, it helped that I've read enough stories here, and lived enough of my own, to know that no matter how badly I wanted to drink, "one drink is too many, a thousand is never enough". The urge would come in waves, and I was even offered a drink a few times, but I kept reflecting on that thought and it kept me in line.

I had a "hangover" today, but for once, it was a lack of sleep hangover!

Anyway, I'm curious. what are some of your interests now that you've quit drinking? I'm finding I don't know what to do with myself these days!

roscoe100

Congrats o 40 or so. I myself am at 68 days or so. Life sure is a whole lot better. I have been eating alot, cleaning, organizing, Church, AA meetings, time with my family. I am keeping myself as busy as possible.

Scolova

Way to go! I'm in week 3 and had an 'over-sleep' hangover on Saturday, felt very strange and kinda had me feeling guilty as though I had drank Friday night... cleared up pretty quick.

I made a few lists of things that I; enjoyed doing, good at doing and things I hated doing - Drinking was at the top of the lists. lol
I scratched that out and then had some things to work with or start working on.
(I've worked with electricians over the years and one 'thing' was to fix a few issues with our electrical system.. took about 20 hours last week mapping and figuring everything out, then fixed two poorly wired rooms in our old house. The kicker was I had put-off doing this for many years, but it ended up costing me about as much as two nights drink money.)
But it can be anything writing, drawing, painting, photography etc.. I now spend more time reading, walking, drinking lots of iced tea and actually enjoying it.

Beebizzy

Hi keepstrong,

Congratulations on your 40 days!!! And on not drinking during your night out.

The weird thing for me was that even before I stopped drinking (coming up on two months now) I really wished I didn't 'have' to drink so that I could do other things. Go figure.

So now that I have quit I am delighted to have the time, sobriety and energy to do those things. And there are so many more things I want to do. Oh, I'm not doing anything spectacular now, trust me, I live a quiet life. But I get so much joy out of the simple things I do now. Mostly it's reading, walking, swimming, watching DVDs, and preparing food. But NONE of those things happened before when I was drinking, though I truly wished for them.

I haven't had a second's boredom since I quit. BUT my base/starting point was very low. Even restoring the above things into my life, though they don't sound like much, was a huge change and achievement for me.

Good luck to you,
BB

CarolD

I filled my time with all sorts of things ....probably the most rewarding
was that I connected to an AA group with other singles.

we did many fun and nteresting things ouside of meetings..I wanted new sober
friends who understood and shared my goal of living sober and healthy..

Well done to all of our early sober members...

xxzzfile

U definitely need a hobby. There are many to choose from. Follow your interests and hit up Google.