Does Normal Feel Normal?
 

Got up this morning, made coffee, played with the pup, got on line then thought, damn, I'm not drinking. Used to be why I got up, the only reason. Now I got up because that's what people do. Others feel "normal"? What's it feel like for you? It feels nicely abnormal. Hope I get used to it but not completely.

Well, it's certainly nice to get up without feeling like something the cat left behind in his litter box!

I guess this is what "normal" feels like.

Yes, not feeling anxiety all the time nor being on the verge of having a seizure... Normal is OK by me. :)

So true.....normal (sober) is abnormal for this alcoholic. I'm sure one day sober will take over as normal in my mind but for the time being I am going to thoroughly enjoy feeling abnormal.

Last night my son, his girlfriend and I watched a Peanuts show that I had taped during Thanksgiving. We did this instead of my being on the computer, drinking, and them being elsewhere.

So that's what normal families do.

I'm at a little over ten and a half months sober, and it has just been in the last couple weeks that I'm starting to feel *normal*.

I think the biggest thing is spending time with other sober people. When I was hanging out at the bar (even as a sober person), binge drinking seemed VERY normal. Once I stopped hanging out there, I started to see what "normal life" really is...I definitely like it more.

"Normal" is getting up and not counting my pills in disbelief, trying to figure out who "stole" them from me. And then counting them again and again, endlessly, as if in counting them over again I would discover more than I thought there were.

"Normal" is not sitting in the pill mill doctor's filthy waiting room for 2 hours or more with the other 100 people standing up because there are no more seats in the filthy chairs, all the while listening the pounding music through the thin walls from the bar upstairs, staring into the other empty and hollow eye sockets of the others who are just like me and waiting to pay their $200 cash for a 5 minute visit to get their two week prescription and an appointment to come back and do this again.

"Normal" is not sitting in another pharmacy waiting area, hoping this pharmacy is not one of the forgotten ones who might catch me hopping from doctor to doctor and pharmacy to pharmacy to figure out where I am going to get my next pills.

"Normal" is not having to break up all the wine bottles so my neighbors won't see them spilling out of my trash can, or hauling them all away to some foreign dumpster so I can maintain the legitimate air of my "sobriety".

"Normal" is no longer waking up in the morning and counting this as "my first day".

Again.

"Normal" for me is not waking up sick as a dog.....I do not miss that-not one bit......

I had my first normal Christmas (we had to celebrate a little early) last night with my family. For the first time in at least 10 years I remembered what was in the presents I wrapped and I remembered this morning what everyone had received, even better I remember the excitement on my kids faces as they opened their presents.

I can really relate to this post! I'm sober over a year and still get a kick out of 'normal' life.

My latest normal thing was me at home by myself with my 3 kids at dinner time. My husband was supposed to be home late (Christmas shopping). One was watching a movie, one was on her way to bed and my baby was napping. I was making gingerbread in a clean kitchen.

My husband came home then, much earlier than expected. He missed the kids and decided to come home and go back out shopping after they were asleep.

My heart reflexively skipped a beat when I heart the garage door open unexpectedly. But I had nothing to be afraid of. I was sober. Not plastered trying watching the clock figuring out what time I'd have to stop drinking so that I wasn't too bad when he got home. My kids were clean, fed, relaxed.

of course normal isn't always so idyllic but it's still....

NORMAL! :scoregood

It's like being a teenager in reverse--"let's try this buzzed" replaced by "let's try this sober"...

[QUOTE=failedtaper;3214268
"Normal" is no longer waking up in the morning and counting this as "my first day".

Again.[/QUOTE]

Amen to this.

normal is wayyy fun!

I've never thought about it before but......yeah. Feeling "normal" still seems new and exciting to me. I'm only four months into recovery and the darkness of my alcoholic life is still quite fresh in my mind, so it's still easy to make the comparison between how I felt then and how I feel now. It's as different as night and day.

I guess the time will come when this will seem normal. I worry sometimes that I'll become complacent when that happens.

Ain't it a kick in the ass? Tao might say you can't have the day without the night, having just seen the Xmas Carol I'll say

"He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!"

I'm still getting used to my level of productivity on weekend morings. I used to wake up in the morning, drink, pass out, wake up in the evening, drink, pass out, repeat the next day. It feels extremely abnormal to have done 1 month's worth of chores and errands in just 1 sober morning!!

I like this normal post...I am about 4.5 months, and am getting my first glimpses of normal too. Fluidity of thought. Carrying thoughts out into action. Remembering what I went into the room for. Simple stuff like that! :)

I know exactly what you mean!

I noticed the increased productivity within three days of sobriety, when I actually went into the garden and did all the planting and weeding I'd been meaning to do for months. It occurred to me then that when I was drinking, I didn't do anything apart from the bare minimum required to enable me to appear "normal" at work and to the rest of the outside world. So I managed to get the washing and ironing done each week, I managed to shop for groceries and I got myself to work most of the time. But that was pretty much it. The rest of my time was dedicated to drinking.

These days, there aren't enough hours in the day sometimes to do all the things I want to.

Here we can be ourselves and speak and discover and share with no fear of judgment. The power of SR is the power of common bonds and shares. That is powerful in all situations. And not just being an alcoholic. But we have to be willing to change.

Being sober does bring some surprising rewards and possibilities we may have forgotten. Or worse, gave up on.

Remember in Matrix the guy that wanted to go back to the tanks and did not want to handle the real world? There will always be those. We learn to adapt to the norms and enjoy reality more having lost it for a bit.

Thanks, I like yor eyes