The hardest thing I've found in sobriety is...
The hardest thing I've found in sobriety is...
For me? Trying to find a new normal! Its almost like I am trying to start a new life in a foreign land.
Any one else?
Any one else?
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Join Date: Jul 2010
Posts: 10,912
I tend to have a fairly forward kind of thinking and emotional orientation rather than ruminating over the past and mistakes but initially I had a lot of existential angst and was often plagued with frustration over lost opportunities due to my drinking (that I desperately tried to suppress but I could not truly). With time, I've learned to accept these things and found new inspirations, meaning and goals that were realistic and feasible considering where I was at that point in life.
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Join Date: Aug 2015
Location: Atlanta
Posts: 8,674
Honestly? Nothing. Hard is such a relative term and my drinking life, especially at the end, was so extremely hard that being sober is .... only a positive. When challenges come up....I know i can handle them. If I had to say what is sometimes bothersome, it's anxiety about the future (much less these days) and getting too tired. That first one is handle with a number of tools and that second one, well....not really what I'd considered a hard thing.
Life is not easy, but sobriety makes life about as easy as it can be when I stick to my spiritual fitness and emotional needs.
Life is not easy, but sobriety makes life about as easy as it can be when I stick to my spiritual fitness and emotional needs.
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Join Date: Aug 2015
Location: US
Posts: 5,095
I do relate to what you're saying. 'This time' I'm not trying to make anything into anything. In fact, I try not to think too much about much of anything. I go to AA, I exercise, parent, take care of my home/animals and pay the bills. I do the step that is in front of me, right now that's step 4. I am an infamous over thinker, over complicater. And all that does is keep me focused on me me and more me.
I believe that if I keep putting the right foot forward, one day at a time, it all starts to come together. I'll be 6 months on the 18th and the only thing I know at this point is I'm at peace. Oh and I'm sober.
Hang in there. More will be revealed.....
I believe that if I keep putting the right foot forward, one day at a time, it all starts to come together. I'll be 6 months on the 18th and the only thing I know at this point is I'm at peace. Oh and I'm sober.
Hang in there. More will be revealed.....
Lots of great, thoughtful posts. I'm on the tail end of my three-day weekend, and its one of the few that I'm sober for. Yeah, the little voice is there telling me to "celebrate", but I think of all the stuff I was able to do... that I couldn't have done sober.
The most challenging thing for me, as with so many posters to this site, was to finally, completely , and irrevocably accept that alcohol had become a problem for me and that I needed to kick it out of my life.
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Join Date: Jul 2010
Posts: 10,912
I did not mention the most mundane part, which was definitely the most challenging for me in early sobriety. The intense and frequent alcohol cravings I had for many months after quitting, both around my first quit and after a relapse following ~2 years sober. I am often amazed learning that some of us do not experience cravings (or obsessive impulses, call it whatever) at all or only mild ones after getting sober - it was definitely not my experience. But I have other obsessional tendencies as well so probably not surprising that I struggled with this quite a bit. The momentary cravings were pretty much why getting sober was hard in the first place (I did not miss anything from the lifestyle and am normally not bad at self-regulating my emotions at all) - I really needed to learn how to manage them and not give in to the strong impulses for the high. The funny thing is that I am not an impulsive person at all sober, it was really the effect of alcohol and it took a while to dissipate. No amount of self-awareness, involvement in recovery, connection to other people or abstract things made that go away for me, only time and patient discipline. I think it's a physiological mechanism. If nothing else, the memory of those cravings and obsession is a very potent element that makes even a vague possibility of another relapse highly, highly aversive. I don't focus on that or live in fear at all but it's something I cannot and probably will not forget.
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