Chucklehead

Day 37 and the pink cloud has officially evaporated. I'm no longer marveling at my ability to stay sober, and this has been replaced by boredom, depression, and loneliness.

I'm not craving the drink again, so that's good, but other than my morning run, there isn't a single thing in the world that I get remotely excited about. If I'm not running, or at work, I lie in bed and wait for the next day. I don't talk to anyone, I barely have an appetite, and I seem to have lost my sense of humor.

The pink cloud ended, and I'm wondering if this will end as well.

Is this post-pink cloud crash a normal thing? Does it have a name?

Thanks in advance for any insight you might be able to lend.

Dee74

Hi chucklehead

I never had a pink cloud, but I've heard others call this phase...'Life'.

I didn't realise just how much I was still living my old life - just without drinking. The things that were tolerable when I was drunk weren't satifying to me as a sober person.

I had to think a little outside the box and thing of things that would challenge me and excite me as a sober guy.

Got any dreams you wanna chase down?

D

Chucklehead

I feel like I took all my dreams and flushed them down the toilet over the past 20 years.

Delfin

^This^. Dee always gets it right, chucklehead. :-)
I had a spectacular pink cloud going the first month of sobriety myself. What can I say, returning to life was not so much fun. I'm about 4.5 months sober now and I never found my pink cloud again, but what I did find is me. I'm not always fun, but I'm not the disgusting hot mess I was when I first came on here. Best of all, I have a chance to keep working on myself and my life and getting better. I wouldn't have that chance if I'd kept drinking.
Hang in there through the low moments, chucklehead. We get better.

Delfin

Dee74

nah
You're not dead...it's never too late for Chapter 2.

I've done more in the last 8 years than I did in the previous 20.

Looking back is fine - that's how we learn our lessons,....but looking back too much, indulging in self pity and/or beating yourself up endlessly....

all that means you might miss the good stuff about today...and that would be tragic Chucklehead

D

Trees39

Congrats on day 37. Something to be proud of.

Keep going, there's no going back and there's nothing back there for any of us.

tufty13

Hi Chucklehead, I'm in exactly the same place......same days sober too; jinx!

I'm just going to roll with it, I've just read Bigsombrero's post on the five stages of grieving and reckon I'm somewhere between denial and anger!

I'm just letting my alcoholic mind and body settle into sobriety and things will happen just as they are meant to.

The first week sober I was full of motivation and patting myself on the back at every opportunity.

I accept that right now I'm a boring, humourless recluse. But I have great faith that this is temporary. I'm much happier this way, it's so much better than being the funniest drunk in the pub.

Give yourself a break and be kind to yourself.

OfEpiphany

Sounds exactly like how I felt, I assure you that's the alcohol that has affected your mind. Give it at a minimum a year of sobriety and your brain will repair itself, new blood vessels and nerve pathways need to regrow, and I'm sure that takes a long time.

My tooth filling took 6+ months to have the nerves heal and settle down, now imagine the time your brain needs after all that brutal chemical squeezing your brain's life out..

sg1970

Early sobriety. I experienced it. The first 90 days was especially rough. As Ofepiphany said the brain has to heal. I also had to work through a lot of crap in my head like the feeling I had flushed all my dreams. A recovery program helped speed that process. But back to the physical healing. I know it took over a year for mine to heal and it still may be. I'm not saying it took that long to feel "right". Just that I started to feel right early on and at 14 months was feeling even better.

Hang in there and best wishes.

Soberwolf

Stick with us bud & watch the magic in your life happen we all have good/bad days some weeks I was like a yoyo but over time it balanced out

Your doing great

SereneEdition

Sounds like you're doing quite well.

Now begins the stage of recovery where you can rediscover your hobbies and make an effort to connect with people as a non-drinker. It may feel odd at first, but keep trying different things and eventually something will stick.

Congrats on day 37!

PurpleKnight

You can write a new chapter to your life, there's always hope, I had to sit down and really think what that was going to involve, as I also had soo much time on my hands, but I found what I was interested in, rekindled old hobbies, found new ones, worked out what I wanted to now achieve, new ambitions, new projects.

Day 37 is fantastic!!

Anna

I never experienced the pink cloud and I think it made things easier because there was no big dip.

This is the hard part of recovery where you need to take action and make changes in your life to continue to recover. My advice is to try to get out and do something to help people. Volunteer work was a huge factor in my early recovery.