Highercall

This is the first Friday and Saturday sober. It feels really strange my normal existence is being drunk or hungover. I will need to learn how to be sober.

I feel strong at present yet still feel uncomfortable with the prospect of not drinking alcohol again.

Hard days at work feeling stressed physically exhausted and deppressed those are the times when resistance will be hard.

yinzer

Congrats on a sober weekend! Hopefully the first of many.

AnvilheadII

i am glad to hear you gave yourself the gift of sober days. may you have thousands more!!!

feeling stressed physically exhausted and deppressed

let's break that down.....what are ways besides drinking to deal with:

1. Feeling stressed. Go for a walk, put on some thrash metal and rock it out, take a long hot shower.......

2. Physically exhausted. Not to be Captain Obvious, but REST comes to mind. down time, clean sheet night, a good meal that warms you inside and fills you up.....

3. Depressed. acknowledge the feeling, ask yourself WHAT is seeming to cause the depression, what are your worries.....write them down. self care, ask less of yourself for a while, survey your surroundings, your home, what changes could be made simply to create a safer more pleasing space?

what we do know is that alcohol solves nothing. fixes nothing. only makes everything worse.

MyLittleHorsie

Congrats! I remember thinking I could never be sober on a Saturday night, yet here I am, making my grocery list for tomorrow. Livin' the dream

I love my sober weekends. So much to do!

Dee74

Congratulations Highercall!

D

Berrybean

Yes. We need to learn how to LIVE sober. (Ì can recommend the little AA book, Living Sober by the way, although it won't tell you what to do with your Friday and Saturday evenings).

As Friday was 'kick off' for me for my weekend binging I found it important to add something in for that evening, so found a good AA meeting for that night. Actually, nowadays there are two I like. One is a Young Persons meeting (ive found that when AA say Young, they tend to mean young at heart rather than a specific age group). This group is from 7 to 8.15, and then anyone who's up for going to get some food does so. I like that nowadays - now I've got to know some of the people. In early days there is no way I could have managed that. Socialising sober with poeple I didn't know well?! Gah! My main one is a step study meeting, but it's full of some of my favourite people, and it's nice to come home from work and have a reason to get changed and go back out and be social,, as well as boost my recovery ready for the weekend. By the time I get home it's gone ten so I'm quite happy to chill.

On Saturdays, if I'm staying in for the evening it's important that I get out and about somewhere and meet with friends for coffee or lunch or whatever in the day. I've also got involved in various hobbies during my sobriety (creative writing group, tap dancing, bell ringing, playing the trumpet, a variety of stuff). I've also done various volunteer work (running groups will love you forever if you help Marshall their events, or maybe start running and participate in events if you want to get fit). For the last year (and one more to come) I'm doing a part time course which keeps me busy.

Basically, there are loads of things going on which have passed us by while we were drinking. Why not go for a walk with your phone and take photos of any notices / posters you see that might interest you. The public library and shop windows are a good place to start. Then you're tired of walking round you could come home and Google different options.

Might be an idea to get to some AA meetings though. It's a good place to meet others who are interested in doing sober activities is all your pals will be out drinking all weekend. There's no need to be alone.

BB

John65

That's great Highercall, well done!

Ladysadie

Waking up sober is such a great feeling, but waking up sober on the weekend is pure awesome! Do you have community events around your area that you could enjoy (sober needs things to do). For instance, we have a Saturday market and the best things are found earlier than later. We have groups of people that meet up to go mountain biking or river rafting, hiking while it's cool out, some Saturday community education classes like painting or pottery. One of the things about us alkies is we tended to isolate and use drinking like an Olympic training event, not much else to do but tip 'em back until we passed out. So you can formulate a sort of "bucket list" of the things you had an interest in but lacked the motivation (or $$) now that you're not drinking I bet you have a few more dollars in your pockets?

So here's the deal: life is waiting for you to join in! Good luck and god bless!

DontRemember

Meetings helped me get past that line of 'thinking'. Once I accepted there was no prospect of future alcohol,my days got easier. Think of it as a breakup with cheating involved..She/he is seeing someone else and things are going GREAT for them...set to be married in X days...There goes any future prospect of getting back together you had... Would you continue to call/text/look at their social media,thus causing yourself more pointless pain? Or....go the easier route and cut all contact?

Berrybean

How did the weekend go HC?

BB

Gabe1980

I hope everything went well for you HC.

I'm starting to really appreciate sober days off and this thread has been really helpful for me to read, so thank you for starting it and to everyone for posting.