Janet Gourand
The path to Soberland is steep and full of potholes so only the strongest get through but it’s really worth doing the work. The recovery community is so special and will embrace you with more genuine warmth and sincerity than your drinking buddies ever did! People who have struggled with alcohol understand each other straight away and the connection is deep. It certainly takes courage and confidence to go against the flow and ditch the booze. Socialising Sober can be especially hard but you must do it . You can’t become a recluse (because connection is the opposite of addiction.) How I coped with Sober Socialising was by treating every event as a Challenge. I didn’t expect to enjoy myself. Although it might have looked as if I was “socialising” and enjoying myself I was faking it! I was in fact “doing the work”. I went out again and again until one evening (about 6 months in) I was on my way home and realised that I had actually had fun! This was a personal breakthrough and the beginning of my subconscious (finally) accepting that I could socialise sober. Who knew? 3. Be Ready for the Wine Witch and Moderation Mary: You can guarantee that you will hear from both of these losers in early sobriety. The Wine Witch will show up first. That glass (or three) at 6 pm is a deeply ingrained habit and getting sober is all about building new and healthy habits. The way I sent the Wine Witch packing was to leave the house at 6 pm every day, stick on my headphones, and then power walk for one hour. Every.Single.Day. When I got home the craving was gone. Now I still do it—quite simply because I love it. Once you’ve dealt with the Wine Witch your next visitor is likely to be Moderation Mary . She usually shows up a few months into sobriety. She’s a smooth talker and will say things like:- “You’ve done so well, surely you can now have just one glass of wine now and then” and another of her favourite lines is “You weren’t that bad you know—are you sure you need to quit drinking completely?”
Whatever she says you need to realise that Moderation doesn’t work: once your drinking has crossed a certain line there is no going back. If you’ve ever found yourself googling “how to moderate my drinking” then the chances are that you can’t. If you I was either planning the drinking, doing the drinking, or recovering from the drinking. Week-ends would start with cocktails and evolve from there. No planning required. So when I stopped drinking I had time on my hands—and I wasn’t quite sure what to do with that all that time! could you just would. 4.Prepare for the void: During the first couple of months of sobriety our mood is usually quite good and that’s why we talk about the “pink cloud”. Our subconscious has accepted that we have a “project” (ie to get sober) and our brain likes to have a project. In fact our brain needs a project to keep our happy brain chemicals triggered. Trouble is after a couple of months our brain will register that the project is done. After all we are sober now! That’s when our mood is likely to dip and we may struggle to find pleasure in anything, the official name for this state of mind is anhedonia. The answer is actually quite simple— we need a new project! So use that extra time you’ve gained in early sobriety to look around for a project. Have a listen to Tribe Sober podcast episode 55 if you want to learn more about coping with the anhedonia that strikes some of us in early sobriety.
1.Get ready to feel those feelings: Did you know that our emotional maturity stalls at the age we start drinking heavily? That means I was 18 for a long, long time! If we’re in the habit of chucking ethanol down our throats every time we want to celebrate, comfort ourselves or relax then we will never actually learn to experience joy, cope with pain or deal with stress. Alcohol numbs us and enables us to bypass our emotions. In fact feelings are important signposts to connect us with what is going on deep inside us. They may be telling us to change our job or a relationship but if we miss the signposts then we will stay stuck. Difficult emotions help us to grow, become more resilient and develop as humans. So many women drink because they put everyone else first . By the evening they are so exhausted and they turn to the wine as a quick fix, as an act of “self care” which is most definitely is not! Feeling all the feels will enable us to build Emotional Maturity which will enable us to set boundaries and stop people pleasing. We need time for ourselves if we are going to be in a fit state to care for others. 2. Remember that not drinking hurts : Especially in the early months so be ready for the tough bits. If it was easy more people would do it. In fact you are on your way to joining a very exclusive club called Soberland!
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