Flowing

Hi all.

I'm wondering whether those of you who are happily long term sober learnt to love your existing life and realise that you already actually had alot of the things you needed to make you happy or whether sobriety gave you the strength to make dynamic changes to your life in order to a achieve contentment?

Interested to hear peoples experiences


Thanks

C0ntr0ls

For me, I really like my sober life because it is so much simpler. I've regained some things from the past that I lost or threw away you might say.

An example is after sometime of not drinking, I had more confidence about switching jobs because I wouldn't have to dance around the drinking problems and all the baggage that comes with that.

DriGuy

I sometimes ask myself why I didn't do it sooner, but that's the way alcoholism is. You can't understand how living with out alcohol could be satisfying. You don't have any point of comparison. Worse yet, what is ahead is an unknown. And the unknown is scarier than what you know, even if what you know sucks.

You can't just put the bottle down and see what happens, because you are immediately inundated with cravings. You sobriety experiment yields unpleasant effects. The cravings don't last forever, but you have no way of knowing they don't last forever. So you go back to the bottle thinking you can try again later after the craving is satisfied. It's a conundrum. You have to drink to find the strength to try again, but the results are always the same until you break the cycle, and then the light appears.

tomls

Very well explained!

Nonsensical

Both.
I kept the things I liked that were working (my wife*, my home)
I replaced the things that weren't working with new things (my job, my hobbies)


*I should probably note my wife was much closer to dumping me than I was to dumping her.

doggonecarl

My answer too.

Anna

Some of both for me, too.

When I learned I couldn't control most things in my life, it was profound for me, and I was able to feel peace in a way I never had before.

But, I also made changes. The most significant change was saying 'No' when I didn't want to do something.

LumenandNyx

Hi,

Once I changed my attitude - everything else changed.

BeABetterMan

This is a great question Flowing. I'm early in sobriety and I have not learned to love my life yet. I am extremely grateful for my life though. I have all of the important things (great kids, career, my health (mostly), and sobriety), but I'm struggling finding joy. I think it's important to note that just because we're on a sober board, that my lack of joy does not remotely lead me to entertaining the the thought of drinking. I know with certainty that alcohol does not bring joy. I have faith that my soul will be satisfied if I continue to do the next right thing. I have been so impatient my whole life, I'm really giving patience an honest go.

WeThinkNot

For me it is 100% the latter. Everything in my life as an active alcoholic sucked and I drank mainly because I was too lazy and too cowardly to make big changes.

You know how a classic car enthusiast will buy some beat up old car and then lovingly and painstakingly restore it to pristine condition over a period of years? That is what I'm doing except instead of a '55 Chevy Bel Air I'm restoring yours truly. It's the greatest and most rewarding work I've ever done.

nez

I am also in the combination camp.
A little copying, pasting, editing, and additions later: In sobriety I learned to access the strength, that I didn’t know I possesed, in order to make dynamic changes to my ways of thinking, which led me to realize that I already actually had everything necessary within me to lead a happy life.

Dee74

I didn’t have much of a life when I finally quit. All day every day drinking doesn’t leave much room for anything else.

Thankfully I found a lot of the good things I’d forgotten about myself were still there to be rediscovered, and I expanded on those and built a stable life I love

D

Surrendered19

When I quit nearly a year ago, I miraculously still had my job but had lost nearly everything else. Being sober has enabled me to dust off some gear, some cookbooks, some other things, and most importantly some relationships that had been stowed away for a very long time. Now each day, I get to work on those things with a clear head and a calm mind and body. And what do you know?? People and things and hobbies and new interests start to come back.

least

For me it was a bit of both. I kept the parts of my life I was happy with and improved them, and changed the unhappy/useless parts of my life to more rewarding things. The best thing I changed, that changed my whole life for the better, was to start practicing gratitude every day. That one thing has been the biggest catalyst for positive change.