brighterday1234

Keep actively engaged in recovery each day and keep working on healing and growing spiritually 🙏

DriGuy

Yes, with normal being defined as "not on a pink cloud" or "not walking around in a euphoric state," which is no one's default state. But if there ever was a time for using the phrase "a new normal," this may be it. When I was drinking it got bad enough at the end that I recognized it as something abnormal, even if it had become the way I "normally" was. I went from that to the pink cloud in recovery, and then onto a "normal" what was nothing like my old "normal." The old normal and the new normal were nothing like each other and miles apart.

All I wanted from recovery was to quit drinking, and if that's all I ever got out of it, with no pink cloud or personal citation from the mayor, I would have considered it a success, but there is more if you want it, and it does take more work, but it's more enjoyable work than grinding through those early recovery cravings. This is a fun part too, and those things yet to be done, don't seem to end. While I haven't been on the pink cloud for the last 20 years, I've noticed an increase in quiet satisfaction with my life. Instead of a manic high, it's a soothing experience that plays a bigger role in my life than it did before.

The pink cloud was enjoyable for sure, but I don't need that in my life. I'll take it when it comes, for sure, but it never was a goal, only something transient that happens on occasion. Even before I quit drinking, I'd had other pink clouds. Some psychologists call them "peak experiences." But they are the same thing that some people experience in early recovery. I've had them over the years since I quit, although they have not been that intense, and I don't relate them to sobriety. There more about self discovery. And sometimes they just happen.