great question.

At the end the only euphoria I experienced was a brief half hour or less when I desperately drank to rid myself of the awful feelings of anxiety and dread and the shakes that I'd feel at the end of a day without drinking. I was strictly a maintenance drinker at the end. There was no pleasure involved. Like Della, I HAD to drink or I'd go into withdrawal.

Thank you for the reminder. This is a great topic.

Ah yes. The Eternal Pleasure seeker that I am.

It was in perpetually seeking that moment, that I almost died.

Kinda ironic, no ?

I think trying to explain why I don't live in a state of constant regret about the lost euphoria of drinking to someone in early sobriety is like trying to explain alcoholism to the non-alcoholic.

You don't really get it until you live it.

Believe that it is real. It is.

Running does it for me. Something I didn't do much of when the wine was flowing...

Great thread.

Once you've been sober a while, real actual pleasure and contentment come into play. Truly. Stick with sobriety, it's so worth it. Many here can attest that the trade-off is far superior. Trading chemical induced euphoria for authentic happiness and pleasure is, in my experience, something I had to have a bit of faith in order to undertake, and once things shifted, something I'll never give up. I won't go back to drinking. There are times when I'm surprised by a sudden urge of the memory of it, but I know better. I know how short lived that moment would be, and how unsatisfying, because it'll never again feel like it did when I was young and drinking. Alcoholism progresses. That euphoria wears down, and it gets to the point where there's not much of it, just the numbing and drunkenness, followed by the anxiety, the doom, and depression. Not to mention all the shame.

My absolute #1 tool for staying sober is to remember what it was like then. Some call it "playing the tape" through.